April 13, 2008

The Gate and the Keeper

Dana Ferguson
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 23
John 10:1–10

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

John 10:10b (NRSV)

My friends, amidst all the voices, there is a Voice—
making us to lie down by still waters,
leading us with vision on paths of righteousness,
walking with us in the darkest valley of our living.
But we must listen and we must learn
and we must follow.
That is our hope—
and that is our calling.

Susan Andrews
“Recognizing the Voices”

The image of gatekeeper: I have to admit it isn’t one with which I’m totally comfortable. It conjures up images of security lines and checkpoints, bouncers and watchdogs. It stirs up negative emotions—rejection, control, fear, separation. They are not the things that I want to associate with Jesus. It doesn’t match up for me with the Jesus I know from other scripture—the one who eats with sinners, befriends the outcast, heals the lame and blind, and appears first at the tomb to women.

But in the passage, right away, he claims himself as the gate. Many are wont to use this passage to divide, to say the passage is about Jesus deciding who is in and who is out, about dividing between people of differing faiths. But if we listen closely, we discover a different thing is happening. The shepherd calls to the sheep by name and leads them out. He goes ahead of them and the sheep follow. Again Jesus says, “I am the gate,” and continues, “Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” He doesn’t define who can come in and who can’t. There is no loud voice on the announcement system at the airport reminding you that only those with one-quart clear bags containing three-ounce bottles can enter. There is no bouncer sitting on the stool outside the club looking for the best-looking, most hip-clad patrons to enter the scene. There is no checkpoint bar waiting for the appropriate national passport before lifting the arm to enter. The purpose of the gate isn’t to keep some sheep in and to keep some out. It isn’t a dividing line between welcome and unwelcome, good and bad, desirable and undesirable. As we pay attention, we discover a shepherd not looking to divide but to protect. Jesus is the gate. He calls; we come in and we go out and we come in again. There simply is a shepherd calling the sheep to a safe place to pasture and to rest, to be saved.

These are very important distinctions and ones that we often have and do confuse. Time and again, civilizations and nations—and even the church—has divided people under the guise of protection. We have been found gatekeeping in the name of Christ and yet doing things that Christ wouldn’t have us do. Recent history has brought us walls and barriers, roads and checkpoints, separate schools and separate bathrooms established under the rationale of protecting citizens. More often than not, what was really going on was dividing people. The protections were often described as shielding citizens from dangerous enemies, protecting a moral culture that was at risk of being corrupted, allowing races to exist peacefully, sustaining socioeconomic structures. More often than not, what was really going on was the protection of self-interest, the greed of power and control and money, the need to oppress so that the oppressor could claim superiority, and the fear of change and loss of status. The issues are often complex, and the protectors of such interests can be persuasive and convincing. These fine lines between dividing and protecting can be blurry and hard to distinguish.

There is a commercial I have seen air recently. I can’t remember whose it is or what the point is. I have gotten too distracted by their lead-in to hear the finish. The theme is that Americans have always acted quickly. Some of the words go something like this, “We didn’t wait to put a man on the moon.” “We didn’t wait to move for civil rights.” That’s exactly where I get derailed. I would say that there are many who would argue we waited far too long to get on with civil rights in this country and the work isn’t finished yet. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous letter from Birmingham Jail after his Good Friday arrest. He was responding to a letter that appeared in the Birmingham News from eight Birmingham clergymen who characterized the demonstrations as “unwise and untimely.” King’s letter includes this:

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown in closed to colored children . . .

King’s list of the appalling actions and effects of racism continue and is followed by this:

When you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. (As reprinted in The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader, pp. 155–156)

And so we are reminded again that we as Christians and the church are not immune from misinterpretation—of scripture and of situations, of our own need to draw dividing lines between who is in and who is not. All too often in history we have had to years later claim the sin of our action or lack thereof—after not having worked more vigilantly for civil rights, having excluded people from the church on the basis of color, after having excluded women from positions of authority and ordination, after having shunned divorced people. And now we find ourselves in a debate that has gone on years longer than many of us had feared that it might and could go on for sometime longer: that of the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in this denomination, making clear the paths of ordination without reference to sexual orientation. Somehow in the midst of all of these times of division—of action and inaction—we have been confused about God’s voice in the midst of it, have not been ready to hear the voice, have been distracted from that which Christ was calling us to, have been slow to respond to the Holy Spirit at work in our world.

“When the shepherd has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” And so this question becomes ever so important: Do we know the voice of the shepherd? Have we been in conversation often enough with the shepherd that we can hear his voice when we are called? Have we trusted the shepherd enough to answer?

Anna Carter Florence, Professor of Preaching and Worship at Columbia Seminary, puts it this way:

We go out and we come in even when we are saved. The gate marks a place to rest and a place to graze. The rhythm of in and out is necessary to life because the green pastures are outside the gate; a sheep that flat out refuses to go out will die. Likewise, a sheep that flat-out refuses to go in, when the call comes, may soon be lost in the night. So the gate is part of life and key to life, but not because it keeps us out or in. It simply marks the boundary between what we are to do in each space. The secret of saving the life of a sheep is to know when it is time to go out and when it is time to come back in. The point is to listen to the voice of the shepherd—the voice you recognize above all others—and follow that call. (Lectionary Homiletics, p. 15)

I must say I am oddly saddened by so many television dramas that depict desperate family members whose loved one’s life is hanging in the balance, who find their way to some unfamiliar chapel to plead with God to save their precious one. It’s clear it isn’t a conversation they are accustomed to having or with someone with whom they are familiar. How will they know when God speaks to them, I wonder? Will they recognize the voice?

Recognition comes as we practice conversing with God day in and day out so that it is a familiar conversation and voice we know, so that when he comes calling, we can answer—not later, not later than the situation needs, or never, but then—that we might answer the voice of the shepherd calling us to what’s ahead. Our job is to listen for the voice telling us when it is time to move, when we are being called to the next task.

The voice tells us that we are known, cared for, tended, protected, and offered life rather than death and conveys the essence of the nature of God’s care for us. In this reassurance are implications for Christians and congregations. Jesus is the gate and those who enter through the gate become the shepherds to others. The obligation for knowing one another by name, offering care and nurture, and being trustworthy falls upon all of us who enter by the gate. All Christians are obligated to become good shepherds to one another, to be neighbors who are available as confidants to one another and who seek others out when we encounter troubles of our own (Lectionary Homiletics, p. 13).

Recent history tells us that we can miss the mark in grave ways: Rwanda and Darfur—genocide taking place in a postmodern world after so many pledges that it would never happen again after the Holocaust. And we Americans now in a war that has continued on for more than five years. The number of American fatalities has passed 4,000. The number of Iraqis that have lost their lives is more than 100,000. We Americans have spent immense time and energy debating who was and is being protected by the war. There have been complex issues to reflect upon and discern. And as we reflect on the staggering number of lives lost, the time and dollars invested, there is great clarity for many on the issue. We as church people have an obligation as we discern the role of America in war, the role of the world in such serious atrocities as genocide, oppression, and violence, an obligation to listen to and to protect—not our own interest or greed or society’s, but the other sheep. To welcome others to the safe pastures and protect against those who would steal and kill.

Peter Gomes, professor and chaplain at Harvard University, in his recent book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, writes this:

As a historian, I am often asked to what great period of history I would care to return, and I can think of none, for every age has fallen short of what the good news promised, and no past age has achieved an instance of grace for which I would sacrifice one second of the future. When I say, as I often do, that our best days are ahead of us, I truly believe that the good news that Jesus preached has yet to be experienced, for it goes before us, as did Jesus himself on Easter morning. (p. 55)

And so the opportunity is before us—the opportunity to become the shepherd we have known and trusted, to experience and to share the good news of a risen Lord come to welcome and tend, protect and love us all.

During the season of Lent, our Pastor, John Buchanan, received an email from a visitor to Chicago. She was forwarding an email she had sent to her friends, describing many of her experiences during her stay. I will share with you excerpts from her email:

Our time in Chicago was great. I spent most of my time hiking up and down Michigan Avenue visiting museums. On Wednesday it was sleeting, and I was absolutely drenched by the time I walked the forty-five minutes up Michigan Avenue to attend the Ash Wednesday service at Fourth Presbyterian Church. That sidewalk trip made the service all the more meaningful. About halfway along the route I was met by a group of college-age students who were inviting passersby to sponsor a hungry child, through an organization similar to World Vision. The wind was making it hard to stand up or see as it drove sleet, like sharp needles, into your face. I had to give those kids credit for being out there in that weather. In a space of three blocks four of them stopped me and asked me to support a child. . . . There also was a very sad string of about fifteen homeless people along that walk who very nicely asked for money. You could see all of their worldly possessions, packed in a plastic crate, under a tarp by their side.

When I finally arrived at the Gothic Fourth Presbyterian Church I was absolutely drenched from head to toe. I was surprised to see about fifteen to twenty homeless men sitting in the pews keeping warm and dry. I wondered if they were allowed into the building only because the building was open for the service, or if they are always welcome there for shelter and peace. The service was just wonderful, and they served communion, which was also wonderful. . . . It was a day I will never forget, a day filled with wonder, cold, and joy.

She concludes with this personal note, “This was all a part of my experience of the great city of downtown Chicago, and your church was at the heart of it for me, for many people, and for the homeless. Thank you for shepherding a church that allows homeless people in the pews on cold blustery days of winter.” And she signed it, “With sincere appreciation for the work of your church.”

The shepherd calls by name, tends, protects, and has gone ahead of us. And now it is ours to tend the pasture—to be about the work of the gate and the keeper. Just as we have been welcomed, it is ours to welcome in the sheep, God’s people, and to provide for safe pasture. And then we are to be found listening to the voice so that when the safe pastures of the world are threatened, when the thieves are threatening to steal life, we might hear from our shepherd the next task ahead.

All to God’s glory and honor and praise. Amen.