Ezekiel 34:11-15
John 10:1-11
It is a happy coincidence that on this fourth Sunday of Easter, traditionally called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” we hear the words of Jesus as we recognize our high school graduates during worship and the University continues its commencement activities—the new physicians don’t graduate until next Friday and those hard working dental students wait until June to graduate!
“I am the gate,” Jesus says. “Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
There is much in this short sentence to inspire and encourage us in these days—and we can use some inspiration and encouragement in these days. I’ll come back to this.
But I also need to acknowledge that there is much in this short sentence that can confuse—and confusion is often a good place to start.
In our puzzlement, these words invite us to ponder them so that we might find in them deep meaning for our lives, whether high school graduation is approaching with all its excitement and possibility and promise or such a time has receded into the distant past.
Let then first consider the confusion caused by these words of Jesus.
Jesus speaks to those who are listening—we don’t know who they are, and we don’t know how many—about sheep and shepherds, about sheepfolds and gates, about voices familiar and strange.
Those who first heard these words were far more familiar with sheep and shepherding than most of us. Perhaps as they listened they remembered the psalm that begins: “The Lord is my shepherd.”
Maybe in their minds they recalled the ancient story of Moses, who was concerned that once he died the people would still need someone who would go out before them and come in before them and lead them out and bring them in so that God’s people would not be like sheep without a shepherd.
Or they might have thought about the prophet Ezekiel’s denunciation of the shepherds—the kings—who took advantage of the sheep. Perhaps they found encouragement in the prophet’s promise that the very God of Israel would become the shepherd of the nation since the kings had been so inadequate for the task.
Whatever memories and images these words of Jesus evoked, they ultimately fell on uncomprehending ears and hearts. John tells us, “Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.”
These could have been bystanders who had never seen or heard Jesus before.
They could have been those who opposed him, who felt threatened or judged by his words.
Or those who did not understand could have been Jesus’ own disciples, his closest followers. Over and over they missed the point, they drew the wrong conclusion, they did not understand.
It is just such people—the clueless and puzzled, strangers and followers, you and me—on whom Jesus has compassion, for so often we are like sheep without a shepherd: uncomprehending, straying into dangerous territory, and as the old hymn puts it, “prone to wander.”
The metaphors of a shepherd and the sheep are not getting across.
So Jesus tries again.
“I am the gate,” he says.
I’m not sure that really clears things up.
“I am the gate.”
William Miller was a Presbyterian minister working in Iran in the middle of the twentieth century. Stranded in a remote village for a day, he set out to explore the village and came to a mound of earth piled up in a large circle—and on the top of the mound all around that circle was a heap of dry thorns.
He asked a villager about the enclosure.
“Oh—that’s for the sheep,” came the reply. “They are brought in here at night for safety.”
And the thorns?
“The dry thorns on top,” he was told, “serve as a protection against wolves. If a wolf tries to break in and attack the sheep it will knock against the thorns and they will make a noise and the shepherd will wake up and drive off the wolf.”
“That’s fine,” Miller said. “But why does the wolf try to climb over the wall? Here is the entrance to the enclosure. It is open. There is no gate to keep out the wolf. It could easily enter here.”
“Oh no,” said the villager. “You don’t understand. That is where the shepherd sleeps. The shepherd is the gate.”[i]
“I am the Gate.”
Maybe we are getting somewhere.
“I am the good shepherd.”
Maybe we are getting somewhere.
Without the gate there is no coming in: no protection, no safety in a threatening world.
Without the gate there is not going out: no freedom to roam, no opportunity to seek out the new, no adventure.
Without the gate we face two common dangers in our lives: undue caution and undue risk. We cannot spend all our time in the sheepfold—nor can we spend all our time out in the wildness.
When extreme caution overtakes us, perhaps we need to see that the sheepfold offers not real security but only a temporary form of safety. We then go out to new or ongoing life. We do all those things that require us to step out and take chances—we act, we create, we love. We join with others in groups such as congregations and seek the good of many beyond ourselves.
And then there are times when we recognize, however dimly, that risky behavior is getting out of hand, taking us nowhere, or at least to places where we’d rather not be, where instead of clover and pasture, there are only thistles and dust. There are times when it is important for our own lives, for the lives of those we love and who love us, even for the life of the greater world—there are times when we need to seek out still waters and green pastures. We need to come in.
A gate opens and closes freely. It allows us to come in and go out.
The shepherd is the gate. This is to say, the gate is only there when the shepherd is present.
And in that going out and coming in, we find that we are saved—set free from harmful hesitancy and reckless riskiness; saved from the stultifying doldrums as well as from the destructive whirlwind.
There is nothing literal about this. John’s Gospel even tells us, this is a figure of speech. It is Jesus’ attempt to show us something about the One who both calls and protects the sheep of his flock.
So consider once more those words that confused those who initially heard them—and, if you are like me, confused you as well.
Shepherding the flock day after day, being their gate by night, a shepherd knows the sheep—knows their marks and features. Indeed, it isn’t uncommon for shepherds to have names for the different members of the flock.
So it isn’t surprising that Jesus says: “The shepherd calls his own sheep by name.”
Remember the title of the James Baldwin book? Nobody Knows My Name. In a world in which we are more and more anonymous, more and more a number, it often seems like he might be right.
But in scripture tells us again and again of the God who speaks—and calls us by name.
There is good news here.
In spite of the great loneliness that so many people feel,
in spite of the crushing isolation of contemporary life,
in spite of our devices that so often disconnect us from others,
in spite of the algorithms that seek to make us all the same in our isolation,
Someone does know your name—and calls to you.
When we stop to listen with the ear of faith, we can hear the divine voice that calls each one of us by name.
When Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd, he reveals to us a Creator who is vitally interested in the creature. This is a God who, out of deep compassion, calls us to lives that know both the security and the risk of love.
We can listen to the voice of this shepherd and trust what we hear.
You are not anonymous. You are known and loved by the One who calls you.
Listen. We hear the voice of the One who has known suffering and death. We hear the voice of the One who in dying has overcome death and invites us to live—and live abundantly—in the face of all that threatens to cut us down.
The voice of the good shepherd keeps calling each one of us by name.
The Shepherd is the gate.
The gate is open.
Desiring our life to be abundant, God opens a new way. Walk it and you will find yourself where you’ve always wanted to be.
[i] Eric Bishop, Expository Times, quoted in Easter Sourcebook, pg. 81.