Don't Let That Screen Door Slam Behind You

Text: Luke 17:11-19

What is a gate? If you are in prison, a gate means one thing. If you are in a castle, it means something altogether different.

If you are in prison, the gate keeps you in. It is a place you do not want to be, but you cannot get out. If you are in a castle, the gate keeps the other people out. It is a place you do want to be, and you do not want anybody from the outside getting in. You think the gate keeps you safe if you are outside the prison and the people on the other side cannot get to you. You think the gate keeps you safe if you are inside the castle and the people on the other side cannot get to you. Closed gates both hold us captive and keep us safe. Open gates both free us and frighten us.

I am the gate, explains Jesus. Which gate is he?

The Gospel verses we just heard have confused scholars for centuries. They can’t decide whether the passage is a parable or an allegory. Both parables and allegories are a kind of figurative speech. They tell us things through stories. In an allegory, the players in the story stand for other things, often God and Jesus and Pharisees and us. In a parable, they don’t. In this passage, for example, are the bandits supposed to be the Pharisees, or do they simply represent the idea of a threatening evil? It is not always easy to tell. The consensus opinion about this particular story is that it is two stories. The first one is a parable and the second an allegory.

The trouble is, the Gospel writer has mashed them together so that one follows the other. When we hear the first story about the sheep and the bandits and the shepherd and the gate and all, it is pretty hard not to wonder: who stands for what? And when Jesus starts to explain it, we think “ah hah! things do stand for other things.” Jesus says so. But what he says is not what we expect, or at least not what I expected. The shepherd calls his sheep by name, and they know him and follow him, the story says. So we are all thinking. Right, Jesus is the shepherd. He loves us and cares for us, not like those nasty bandits. He knows us and we follow him. And if we were to read some verses further on in John, we’d hear Jesus say, “I am the good shepherd.” So, we would be right.

Except, in reading this passage, we are not. Not right. Jesus does not say what we expect to hear. Jesus does not say he is the shepherd. Jesus is not the shepherd. He is the gate. “I am the gate for the sheep,” Jesus says. Which is kind of a different thing.

Walls, with or without gates in them, define two different spaces. Inside and outside. My side and your side. Or like the wall in Palestine, the powerful side and powerless side. There is a difference between the two sides for a reason. Walls that separate two things that are the same tend to fall down. So all around New England are stone walls that are in disrepair because they don’t separate things usefully. Walls require maintaining. It takes too much energy to maintain the stone walls that serve no purpose. Except they are beautiful, so they are more like decoration. It takes a lot of energy to maintain the wall between Israel and Palestine, but people spend that energy because somebody cares a lot about it. Someday, one hopes, that wall, too, won’t be worth the energy. Prison walls and castle walls stand as long as people feel there is a need to keep people separate.

For the sheep and the shepherd, there is a difference between paddock and pasture. The sheepfold keeps the sheep in and safe. So that’s good. But it is kind of crowded and a little stinky, and the food is just hay, so that’s less good. The pasture is open and free, and smells great, and the food is green grass. If you’ve ever seen sheep eat grass, you know the sheep think that’s very good. But the pasture can be a dangerous place. There are not wolves in the sheepfold. There might be wolves in the pasture.

One reason the 23rd Psalm moves us is that it so clearly portrays a place of peace and safety. But the green pastures that the Lord makes for us are not in and of themselves safe. It is only safe because the Lord keeps it that way. The sheep can only lie down in green pastures if they know they are safe. A friend was talking the other day about the fields of Iona, a small island off the coast of Scotland. The island is home to an ancient and famous abbey. It is also home to a lot of sheep. The fields of Iona are full of sheep. Nothing threatens the sheep. There are no wolves on Iona. Iona is the perfect safe pasture. The fields there are the perfect green pastures of the 23rd Psalm. But for even the sheep on Iona, there is time to go back to the sheepfold.

All creatures, including us, balance safety and risk. In the sheepfold, behind walls, things are safe but limited. Outside the walls, things are free but risky. In our lives we move back and forth. Responsible or adventurous. Frugal or extravagant. Somber or silly. Mature or childish. Cautious or passionate. Prudent or impulsive. Found or lost. Obedient or rebellious. Faithful or skeptical. You can make your own list based on your own life.

Our lives are not a constant progression to better and better, whatever that means. We don’t start out one way and smoothly become something else. We go back and forth, in and out, taking risks and being frightened of those risks. Sometimes the sheepfold feels like the right spot. Other times we cannot wait to get out of there. Sometimes the pasture seems pretty perfect. Then something scary comes up, and we think how nice a safe sheepfold would be.

And through this all, all these changes and changes back, there stands Jesus. Jesus at the gate. Jesus seeing us work out of lives in experience. Jesus making a way for us to get through the walls that might otherwise block us. Jesus understanding that we are of two minds—at least two—about almost everything.

A gatekeeper is someone who polices the gate. The admission committee at a college is a gatekeeper. The hiring committee. The Department of Motor Vehicles. The guard at the checkpoint. The gatekeeper is the decider of who gets to pass and who does not. The gatekeeper has to power to keep people in and keep people out.

Jesus in this story by his own assertion is not the gatekeeper and he is not the shepherd. He is not the decider or the boss or the owner. I am the gate, Jesus said. I am the gate, and the sheep get to go in and out, Jesus says. When Jesus is the gate, we are not trapped. When Jesus is the gate, we are not captive. At the same time, when Jesus is the gate we are not thrown unprotected into danger. Jesus the gate keeps the wolves out there, not in here.

There are many names for Jesus in the Gospel of John. Messiah, Lamb of God, Son of God, Rabbi. He calls himself the Bread of Life, the Resurrection, the Light of the World, the Truth. These are, some of them, strange titles. But they are all ways to describe and think about Jesus. They tell us different things about Jesus, about the way Jesus works in the world. And one of those things he does is be an opening in the middle of the walls that surround us.

I am the gate, says Jesus. One of many things that I am. I come to free you from your prisons and let you walk in freedom. And I am the gate, says Jesus. I come to gather you in and keep you safe from harm. I am the gate. I invite you to go out and to come back in, as often as you must. Safe and free.