The Fourth Sunday of Easter / Year A
John 10:1-10
The Fourth
Sunday of Easter is known informally as Good Shepherd Sunday because the
Collect of the Day and the appointed readings focus on God’s shepherd-like care
for us. Perhaps the three best-known
Christian texts are the Lord’s Prayer, the first verse of Amazing Grace, and the 23rd Psalm. And perhaps the most beloved and comforting
image of Jesus is the Good Shepherd. When
we acknowledge Jesus is our shepherd we infer we are his sheep. We sense Jesus cares about us passionately
with a love that never flags or fades.
When I went with a group of
pilgrims to walk the Way of St. Cuthbert, our plane landed in Glasgow and we boarded
a charted bus, which took us west toward our first destination – the Isle of
Iona. In a very short time we were out
of the urban region of Glasgow and travelling through the incredibly beautiful
Loch Lomond National Park. I can still
picture in my mind’s eye the first time it happened... when one of my bus mates
spotted a sheep with a little baby lamb nestled between its front legs. We all threw ourselves against the bus window
to get a look, our smartphones capturing picture after picture after picture. It was so cute and so heart-warming and so
terribly Scottish.
We continued to spot sheep (by
the herdfull) throughout the day as we made our way to the city of Oban for our
first night’s stay. And while the
excitement of seeing sheep abated somewhat, it was still a thrill. Over the course of our pilgrimage we did more
than spot sheep from inside a bus, we actually walked with them, around them,
past them, and through them. And not
just sheep… also goats and cows and horses and pretty much any kind of
livestock you care to name. Toward the
end of the pilgrimage I became so desensitized to seeing sheep I jokingly said
the only way I would bother to stop and take a picture is if I saw ten sheep
standing in line doing the Macarena!
In today’s
read Jesus says he leads his flock to the sheepfold. The sheep enter the fold through the gate,
which the shepherd then guards.
Sheepfolds in Jesus’ day were stone-walled enclosures varying in size,
but most roughly about the area of a tennis court. They were large enough for several shepherds
to safe-keep their flock through the night hours. In the morning, each shepherd made a specific
sound to call his flock out through the gate and only his sheep heeded the
call.
It is a
comforting image… the voice of Jesus calling us to enter into place or a way of
being where, in times of danger, we will be safe and then calling us out of the
fold into lush meadows when the time is right for us to flourish again. This day finds us sheltering within the
sheepfold of our individual homes. God
is keeping us safe. Thanks be to
God! We long for the day our Shepherd
will let us know it is safe to go out again to enjoy the green pastures and
still waters we all long for.
Jesus uses
a second image in today’s reading to describe himself, one a little bit more
obscure but equally as powerful: “I am the gate for the sheep.”
Britain is
crisscrossed by an amazing system of National Trails, of which the Way of St.
Cuthbert is one. These trails often go
right through privately owned property, much of which is pastureland. And these fields are divided, some by fences
and many by stone walls. Every time we
came to a fence or a wall we encountered some kind of gate. Some were little more than a rickety A-frame
ladder, which required a ballerina-like maneuver at the top so you could turn
and descend down the other side. Others
involved a narrow zig-zag easily navigated by a human, but far too difficult
for an animal. And still others involved
a latched gate. Far too late in the
pilgrimage it occurred to me I should have been taking pictures of the
different latches we encountered. The
variety was endless and some took considerable time to figure out how to work.
My fellow
pilgrim Dale Custer observes every time he encounters a gate while hiking he
realizes it is there either to keep something in or to keep something out. I remember approaching one gate as we walked
the Way that had a sign on it: “Warning!
The bull is in the field!” I
don’t know exactly what happens when one encounters a bull in the field, but I
was not the least bit curious to learn, so I kept a sharp lookout as I made my
way across the field as expeditiously as possible.
I suppose
most associate people associate the image of Jesus as the Gate with a kind of exclusive
claim some Christian believe we have… only those who can name Jesus as their
savior will be able to pass through the gate that leads to eternal life. But during these days and given what we are
experiencing I wonder if a different interpretation might be more
accurate. The gate represents the way you
pass through the thing dividing what was and what will be. We know what life was like before COVID
19. We have no idea what it will be like
afterward, let alone when it will begin.
We are now (and will be for sometime) in a between space and time. We are in the gate, which is not where we
were and not where we are going to be.
If Jesus is
the gate, then we should expect Jesus to be present in this moment in a
powerful and personal way. And this is
exactly what many of us are experiencing.
Our faith means more to us now than ever before. We are turning to prayer – especially the
Daily Offices – like never before. We
experience Jesus as being close in a way we have not experienced before. We are in a gateway time between what was and
what will be and because Jesus is the Gate we are in Jesus as never before.
It seems
impossible today is the eighth Sunday we have not been able to gather for
public worship. We have come a long way
and most likely we still have a long way to go.
I am so proud of how all of you are adapting to this time in the
gate. I am so honored to be able to
gather daily with many of you as the Good Shepherd leads us into the fold in
the evening and calls us out in the morning.
Like never before, the Lord is our shepherd and we shall not want.
