B.H.A.G.s & Spiritual Muscles

 

Matthew 9:35-10:23

Proper 6 / Year A

Are you at all familiar with the expression ‘B.H.A.G.?  It is an acronym for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal.  The notion of B.H.A.G. is rooted in the belief every individual and every organization needs something to push and stretch it; something to move it from complacency and comfort to challenge and daring. 

The other day I got to wondering if there is such a thing as spiritual muscles… values, attitudes, disciplines, and practices we need to employ to live a Christ-like life.  If there are spiritual muscles, then do they get weak and flabby from disuse?  When, I wondered, was the last time any one of us came home from church with achy spiritual muscles… not sore from being abused and pushed around, but sore from being stretched beyond our comfort zone?  What B.H.A.G. calls us forward as a community in Christ?  What challenge pulls us out of complacency and promises to stretch us spiritually?

Today’s Gospel reading invites us to ponder these questions.  Think about the disciples.  They have followed Jesus around the countryside.  They have listened to him teach, watched him minister, seen him stand with the powerless by confronting the powers that be, and witnessed his miracles.  To use our language, they have been spiritual consumers… getting from Jesus what they need and more.  But in this lesson, Jesus makes a dramatic shift in the relationship by moving them from consumers to producers. 

Look at what Jesus sends the disciples to do: cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons.  Essentially, he is directing them to venture forth and do what he has been doing.  And, to be sure, if they do what he sends them to do, their spiritual muscles will indeed be sore.  

· Cure the sick: if you have ever stood with someone through a major illness then you know how exhausting it can be physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

· Raise the dead: have you ever tried to breathe life and energy into a person who has given up? 

· Cleanse the lepers: think about the most physically revolting person you have ever known.  This is who Jesus sends the disciples to be with, to love, to touch, to heal.

· Cast out demons: again, think about the most troubled, most dysfunctional, most unsettled person you know.  This is who Jesus sends his followers to befriend.

You can bet the B.H.A.G. Jesus lays on the disciples catches them off guard.  And to make matters worse, Jesus basically sends them out with no resources or training.  The whole thing about taking no money, no spare clothes, no food, and no staff suggests the disciples are already equipped with everything they need to undertake this challenge.  And if they accept his commissioning, you can be sure their spiritual muscles will get sore, but stronger.  Eventually they will walk a Christ-like life with more stamina and confidence because pushing themselves spiritually leads to growth, fulfillment, and meaningful living.

Churches are interesting places.  On one hand we come here to be healed and comforted.  When we leave here we want to know God loves us and cares for us.  We yearn for a sense of contentment.  In the midst of an increasingly dangerous and chaotic world we want to come to a place like St. Paul’s and know green pastures and still waters still exist.  On the other hand, we sense the spiritual life consists of more than being comforted and coddled.  We know Jesus drops spiritual B.H.A.G.’s on us from time to time and we know we are impoverished when we continually avoid taking on big challenges. 

I once received an email from a camp director which ended with this automatic message:

Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting “...holy cow... what a ride!”

Jesus shares his ministry with the disciples for two reasons.  First, there is a lot of work to do.  And second, he wants them to experience the joy and thrill of life’s ride.  Spiritual muscles, like the tissue muscles of the body, feel best when used, when stretched, when strained.  St. Paul’s does you a service when you come here and find still waters and green pastures.  But we do you a disservice if we never call you to something that challenges you and tests you and tries you and calls you to be more like Christ than you ever imaged or dreamed possible.  St. Paul’s has to be a place where fearful people take up a calling and in the midst of it shout out, “holy cow… what a ride!”   

 

Matthew 9:9-13

Proper 5 / Year A

Plato was famous for posing questions to his students.  Once he asked them to ponder this: Which is better, to be an unethical person with a good reputation, or an ethical person with a bad reputation?  Perhaps framing the first part of today’s Gospel reading using Plato’s question will help us to understand the radical nature of what Jesus’ encounter with Matthew and his friends might tell us.

For sure, in the Pharisees, you have an unethical group with the good reputation.  They fool themselves and others into believing God is on their side.  Such a mindset always leads to self-righteousness, corrupted theology, and being critical of others.  Abraham Lincoln might have said of them what he said about the role of religion in national life.  “Our task,” he said, “should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God’s blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices, rather we should worry earnestly whether we are on God’s side.” 

The Pharisees, to their detriment, never entertain Lincoln’s concern.  When we are capable of introspection, either as an individual, a community, or a nation, it opens the possibility for penitence, repentance, humility, reflection, accountability, and moral growth.  This process is absolutely essential if you strive to be an ethical person or group with a good reputation. 

Now, in Mathew and his tax-collecting cohorts do we have ethical people with a bad reputation?  It is possible to romanticize this group as being a bunch of good guys who have a bad job to do; to find in them or in their social network some quality meriting Jesus’ endorsement; to find in them some trait or characteristic the Pharisees lack.  But, in truth, no such virtue exists in them.  They are traitors and cowards and greedy little crooks who are thoroughly disliked by all, and for good reason. 

The moral of this story is not about judging a book by its cover.  First and foremost, it teaches us about the nature of God’s love as it is expressly displayed in Jesus.  God extends love to all people regardless of how loveable they may or may not be.  It is not earned.  It is not elicited.  God loves because… God loves.  Plain and simple, God loves because this is who God is.

It offends our sensibilities to think God can and does love the sinner as much as the saint.  It goes against the grain to think God’s love is not in some way activated by our behavior… that the Pharisees don’t lose it through their narrow-minded self-righteousness and the tax collectors don’t warrant it by their willingness to celebrate at a meal with Jesus.  The meal reveals their desire to embrace God’s love in spite of who they are.

We are a society where, if you work hard, you can earn a degree, earn a bonus, and earn the respect of those who know you.  It just seems like there should be something we should do to earn God’s love, but there isn’t.  It is our Heavenly Father’s free gift to us, and to all of creation, emanating from God’s very nature.  The question, plain and simple, is whether or not we will receive the gift of God’s love, allow it to permeate our lives, transform our existence, and then extend it to others.

This question is the heart of true religion and devotion.  But how easy it is to believe one’s sins and shortcomings must be atoned; that somehow we must hide from God (and ourselves) those dark aspects of our life of which we are ashamed, over which we have so little control.  Surely God cannot love us if these things are front and center.  Back in the Old Testament, one could offer a sacrifice and cover sins with innocent blood or could pin them on the scapegoat and drive it out into the wilderness.  Such actions may have made a person feel better… knowing you had done ritually what needed to be done to merit God’s love… but it still created the false impression your actions have the ability to alter the very nature of God’s unconditional love.

Today’s Gospel reading introduces us to two groups of characters.  One group is unethical, but enjoys a good reputation.  The other is unethical and has a bad reputation to match.  God’s love engages both groups in the person of Jesus Christ.  No demands are made on either group; save they receive God’s love for what it is.  One group, the Pharisees, cannot entertain this because they figure they already have earned God’s love and they can’t imagine why God would love anyone who hasn’t earned it.  The other group, overcome by the generous nature of God’s love (which they have done nothing to deserve), embraces it with open arms.

And now, not knowing how hot or cold the current cultural waters may be in our parish family, let me say a word about Pride Month.  Like Black History Month, Native American Month, and Hispanic American Month – called ‘Awareness’ months – what I am aware of this June is how much resistance there is in our country toward a particular group of people.  Not everyone feels this way, certainly not the majority (I hope).  But the opposition to Pride Month by some is deep and zealous.  Our national mythos used to hold we are for the underdog; the person who overcomes all odds, perseveres, and succeeds in the end.  We used to cheer for the ‘little guy.’  The LGTB community certainly fits into this narrative.  But now, for some, there is a decided effort to undermine the cultural status of this group.  This week I read about a person who, upon learning Chick-fil-a had hired a diversity officer, said she was no longer going to be a customer because its not “the Lord’s chicken anymore.” 

I am not going to stand in St. Paul’s pulpit and tell you what your stance on these issues, as a Christian, is supposed to be.  I am going to ask you today – and pretty much every Sunday – to consider the example of Jesus and then ponder whether or not your practices and principles mirror his love for all people.

How do you look at religion?  Is God’s love something you earn or embrace?  Is it freely offered to you or given only when deserved?  How you answer these questions is terribly important… as is how they play out in your daily life.  If they weren’t, today’s encounter between Jesus and Matthew (and others like it) would not be included Bible and we would be left to work our way into God’s favor.  

Trinity Sunday

 

Matthew 28:16-20

Trinity Sunday / Year A

Most preachers do not look forward to Trinity Sunday because, well, who really knows what to say about the Trinity?  And finding something new to say year in and year out can be a daunting task.  After botching a sermon on the Trinity, a twelfth-century monk by the name of Brother Elric took a vow of silence and never spoke again for the rest of his life!  Hopefully after today you will not suggest I would be well-advised to follow his example.

In seminary we studied all the ancient creeds at length.  Imagine sitting through a lecture fleshing out how God is neither confounded in Persons nor divided in Substance.  For most people, the Christian faith begins with an experience rather than a system of theological intricacies.  We don’t meet orthodoxy, we meet God in the Father, God in the Son, and God in the Holy Spirit.  A three-fold experience of God precedes a three-fold explanation.  The Trinity wasn’t invented on the word processors for forth-century philosophers and theologians.  Rather, it began in the lives of everyday people who were grasped by faith in the Father, captivated by the revelation of the Son, and filled by indwelling of Holy Spirit.  And, as a result, the lives of these ordinary people were changed forever.

This is why, when we church folk talk about the Trinity, we speak more about our experience of God than we do about explanations.  Our language of God is born from very personal, intimate moments when a Mystery has been upon us; a Mystery we can scarcely describe, but certainly cannot dismiss.

We speak of God as Father, the one in whose image we are formed.  Like many teenagers, I did not want to grow up to be like my dad.  In spite of this desire, I am my father in more ways than even I realize.  I share in many of his good qualities and in a few of his bad.  My physical progression, including weight gain, hair loss, and body aches, mirror his.  In my case, the acorn has not fallen far from the tree.  I am, in many ways, the image of my father – Roger Hugh Emerson 

It is no mistake we use the notion of father to give name to a part of the Mystery we experience as God.  We are, in some ways, created in the very image of the Father.  Every time we demonstrate our capacity to love, to create, to rationalize, to think, to communicate, to build relationships, to make life-long commitments, to demonstrate righteous indignation, to forgive, to show mercy, and to act with compassion, we sense we are expressing God’s inescapable image within us.  And there is something very satisfying, very holy, when we are aware this, in fact, is what we are doing.

Think about the Mystery of God as expressed in the Son.  Jesus takes bread, give it to his followers, and says, “This bread is my body,” and he invites them to eat.  Then he takes a cup of wine and says, “This wine is my blood,” and he invites them to drink.  Think about how our bodies break down the food and drink we receive to nourish and build up the self.  In our Eucharistic thinking, we are expressing a belief the Mystery of God is not only a part of us, it also comes into us to sustain us emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  In an intimate way we come to experience what Jesus says, “We do not live on bread alone, but on every Word which proceeds from the mouth of God.”  We know we would starve without this Word.

Think about the Holy Spirit, which we describe as being like a mighty wind.  Think about how the body draws breath into itself, how some are drawn with great intension, but most without a passing thought, how the lungs break down each breath, and how the blood system carries this life-giving power throughout our entire physical structure.  Breath gives us life.  It animates us.  It becomes us.  This too is how we describe the Mystery of God: life-giving, animating, indwelling, God in us and we in God.

It is not by accident we speak of God in such personal and intimate terms because this is how we come to experience God in our daily life.  We see in ourselves the image of the One who created us.  We recognize how our lives are sustained and nourished by the One we encounter from beyond us.  We sense this Presence moving through us and invigorating us with every breath.  As Paul said, “God is the One in whom we live and move and have our being.”

Yes, all analogies of the Trinity fall short.  True, all doctrines and creeds represent our best efforts to comprehend something which is beyond comprehension.  And still the Holy Trinity is the core of our faith because it is the essence of how we encounter God in our lives.  On this Sunday, we ponder how the Holy One, the Mystery from beyond, comes to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And, as we celebrate and give thanks, we are neither confounded in persons or divided in substance.

The Paracletos

 

John 20:19-23

Pentecost Sunday / Year A

“The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the authorities.”

Most of us here are old enough to remember when people did not lock the doors of their homes, even when you went on vacation!  We recall a simpler time when church doors were never locked.  Now they are locked almost all of the time.  In fact, on Sundays, the Vestry usher goes through an elaborate process of unlocking only the most necessary doors before the service starts and then relocking them once it has begun.       

In his first inaugural address Franklin Roosevelt famously said, “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…. fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”  In the throes of the Great Depression, with Nazism and Communism on the rise, Roosevelt took office in a pretty scary time.  We also live in a scary time, what with Covid and mass shootings and political unrest.  Some of our fear is unreasoning, unjustified terror, still there is much to give us pause.

The disciples had good reason to be afraid.  Were the authorities going to come and arrest them, as they did Jesus?  Would they stand trial, as Jesus did?  Would they undergo a horrible execution, as Jesus did?  Cowering behind those locked doors, in no way, shape, or form do they appear to be a small band of believers about to set the world of fire for Jesus Christ.

The Greek word for Holy Spirit is “paracletos”.  It has a double meaning.  The better known of the two is advocate or counselor; a defense attorney who stands by your side when you are accused of a crime.  Less well known is the military role of the paracletos.  In the ancient world, when an army is preparing for a decisive battle, especially if the outcome is in doubt, the commander summoned a person called ‘the paracletos.’  This person is an orator exceptionally gifted in encouragement and morale building.  A trumpeter sounds a call and the army gathers and the paracletos speaks.  If he is effective, a nearly mutinous, disorganized, dispirited rabble becomes an impassioned, confident army. 

William James once characterized the modern world with one German word.  He said we are suffering from Zerishensheit, which means “torn-apartness.”  Surely the disciples experience Zerishensheit in the days following the Crucifixion.  Guilt about their past with all its betrayals, fear about the future with all of its dangers, and alienation from everyone else in the city of Jerusalem – this is the condition of the pre-Easter Church.  But when the Holy Spirit comes, this torn-apart community is healed and united and made strong and confident.  They unlock the doors of the house where they are staying and go out into the streets to proclaim the healing and the power and the love and the joy they have just received.  Such is the effect of the Paracletos. 

As St. Paul notes in today’s New Testament reading, the Paracletos manifests itself in a variety of ways.  Some are spectacular, most are not.  The English bishop John Taylor concludes his book on the Holy Spirit, which he entitles The Go-between God, with this story:

A West Indian woman… was told of her husband’s death in a street accident.  The shock of her grief stunned her like a blow.  She sank into a corner of the sofa and there she sat rigid and unhearing.  Friends and officials came and went [but no one could reach her].  The school teacher of one of her children, an Englishwoman, called and seeing how things were, went and sat beside her.  Without a word, she threw an arm around the tight shoulders, clasping them with her full strength.  The white cheek was thrust hard against the brown.  Then as the unrelenting pain seeped through to her, the teacher’s tears began to flow, falling on their two hands linked in the woman’s lap.  For a long time that is all that was happening.  And then, at last, the West Indian woman began to sob.  Still not a word was spoken and after a little while the visitor got up and went, leaving her contribution to help the family in its immediate need.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit comes in tongues of flame.  Sometimes it comes with a mighty wind so strong it shakes the pillars of a house.  And sometimes, Bishop Taylor concludes, The Holy Spirit comes to us “in the straining muscles of an arm, and the film of sweat between pressed cheeks, the mingled wetness of clasped hands.  The Holy Spirit is as close and unobtrusive as that and as irresistibly strong.”

Encountering fear and torn-apartness, the first thing Jesus says when he appears in that locked room is “Peace be with you”.  The second thing he says is, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Now, you can’t be sent if you are shivering behind locked doors.  And then he breaths on them the Paracletos – the Encourager.  And the rest, as they say, is history. 

May the Paracletos fall anew on each of us.  May it unlock whatever is holding us back.  May we know ourselves as one with one another.  And may we understand we are sent, just as the Father sent the Son.

Show vs. Tell Christianity

 

John 14:15-21

Easter 6 / Year A

When St. Paul enters the city of Athens for the first time he observes sign after sign of how that culture acknowledges and shapes the mystery its people perceive.  Building on their inherent awareness, Paul begins to preach, saying, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.”  He then comments on an altar dedicated to “an unknown god.”  He ceases on this as an opportunity to tell the people about the God who is Lord of Heaven and Earth.  He lays out a critique of idols made by human hands and explains succinctly God’s activity in human history.  He has the Athenians eating out of his hand up until he mentions God has appointed a man who will judge the world and we know this because God raised him from the dead.  At the mention of the resurrection most in the audience sneer at Paul.  Then, as now, getting people to join the church is an iffy proposition.

In an op ed published this week in the Washington Examiner, Ian Church, a professor at the very conservative Hillsdale College, sets out to identify why more and more people do not have a particular religious affiliation.  In fact, we who belong to a faith community are now in the minority in our country.  Church does not believe this is a result of atheistic or agnostic ideas winning day, noting most people rarely change deeply held beliefs on the basis of arguments, as Paul discovers in Athens.   

Church contends most people are walking away church membership because of the influence the religious institution is trying to have on their lives.  Specifically, the focus of the conservative right on cultural issues from abortion to wokeness, from gender identity to immigration, from Mickey Mouse to Mr. Potato Head.  Many believers have made subservient their personal faith to their politics.  And it is having an impact.  The Southern Baptist Convention lost half a million members… last year alone!

In his article, Ian Church notes the word “religion” comes from a Latin word meaning “to bind together” or “unite.”  “That is certainly what early Christianity did,” writes Church.  “It was defined by radical love and concern for the ‘other.’  It gave us a picture of love that transcended boundaries drawn by culture, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.  Men and woman, rich and poor, slave and free, the orphaned, the widowed, the sick, the marginalized were all welcome and bound together in one faith.  It wasn’t through political power, violence, or coercion that early Christianity spread.  It was despite such things, largely because of the early Christian’s radiant, countercultural love and concern for society’s outcasts, outsiders, and sojourners.”  Church contends only this kind of Christian witness will alter the downward trend in religious affiliation.

Well, if Church can critique his conservative congregations, let me tell you what I see ailing many churches in the mainline.

I will be in Ohio on vacation next Sunday and will have the opportunity to choose a church to attend in the morning.  There are several options.  A few years ago I went to an Episcopal church in a down-and-out part of town.  I knew it had a reputation for doing a lot of community outreach.  The people were warm and friendly.  Several folks greeted me and chatted with me after the service.  I accepted an invitation to go to their coffee hour.  There were easily 50 people who stayed; folks of all ages, shapes, and colors.  They asked me to stay for a pizza lunch and the pies looked delicious.  Sadly, I had to decline because I was meeting my nieces for lunch.

The next time I was in town I attended an Episcopal church in a middle-income neighborhood.  The congregation numbered about 10 and no one acknowledged me.  Turns out, I knew the organist from the Episcopal church I first joined after college.  After the service I spoke with him and he was delighted to see me.  I got the impression the rare visitor to the church was an old acquaintance of his and so the rest of the congregation ignored them.   I found my way to the parish hall where two long tables were pushed together end to end and folks were sitting around them.  Someone invited me to take a seat, which I did; squarely in the middle.  Now half the people were at one end talking amongst themselves and half were at the other end doing the same.  No one spoke to me at all or even made an attempt to include me in their conversation.  After 10 awkward minutes I excused myself and drove away.

I think if you told members of each church the word “religion” means “to bind together”, each congregation would say, “Oh, we are very religious.”  But there is a huge difference between the two.  One congregation draws on their binding to welcome others and the other is bound in the way a moat binds a castle.

Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, might sum all of this up by saying, “You can’t simply tell people about Jesus.  You have to show them Jesus.”  St. Francis is credited with saying, “Preach always, and when necessary use words.”  St. John the Apostle wrote “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth” (I John 3:18).  No one will be interested in what we have to say about Christianity until they see us living it as Jesus intended.

The True and Living Way

 

John 14:1-14

Easter 5 / Year A

One of the real blessings of my life has been the three pilgrimages I have made with colleagues and friends in the last few of years.  Each was remarkable in its own right, but one stands out from the other two in a particular aspect. 

The English and the Portuguese Ways of the Camino are two of several different paths leading to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain.  The routes have been well travelled for centuries and are well-marked in two different ways.  One is a scalloped seashell (the symbol of the Camino) and the other is a simple painted yellow arrow.  Without fail, any time the path offers a choice of directions a yellow arrow points the way.  Urban centers can be challenging and more than once my fellow pilgrims and I stood at a busy intersection scouring high and low, to and fro to find a marker to guide us.  Only once or twice on these two pilgrimages did I get ‘lost’ by missing an arrow telling me to turn.

I cannot say the same thing about the Way of St. Cuthbert along the English/Scottish border.  The route went along roads, through fields, and on remote paths, but was not nearly as well marked as the Camino.  Being ‘lost’ happened several times a day and more than once I had to access my google maps to figure out where I was and how to get to where I was supposed to be. 

This morning we hear St. Thomas say to Jesus, “We do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Jesus famously answers, “I am the way.  I am the truth.  And I am life”.  As with last week’s image of the gate, in its original context this teaching is much more generous than what it has become.  Today it is used by some to say any person who practices a religion other than Christianity (or who doesn’t practice any religion at all) is lost and will never get into heaven.  But as Jesus intends it, he is assuring his followers he will guide them through life. 

I have never warmed to how philosophical “The Way, the Truth, and the Life” sounds.  One scholar I read years ago pointed out the central theme of the passage revolves around the concept of way so he suggests a better translation of Jesus’ teaching might have truth and life modifying it.  He advocates we hear Jesus as saying, “I am the true and living Way.”  On last Tuesday’s clergy zoom call with the bishop we began our time by talking about this passage.  When I shared the translation “the true and living Way,” Bishop Susan said it suggests there are a lot of ways you can go that aren’t nearly as life-giving.  Amen, I thought.  I can tell you every single time I lost my way on a pilgrimage I only made it harder on myself.  I never once found a shortcut or an easier path.

In case you haven’t guessed, my favorite metaphor of the life of faith is a pilgrimage, a path, and a way.  In the 9^th chapter of the Book of Acts we learn before Christians were called Christians and before anyone used the word church, we learn following Jesus initially was known as “The Way.”  It is a rich image used throughout Scripture.  The Psalmist professes,

You will show me the path of life;

In your presence is fullness of joy,

At your right hand are pleasures forever more.

(16:11)

In Matthew we hear Jesus teach this to his followers:

Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.  (7:13-14)

Wendell Berry, in an essay in his book The Art of the Commonplace, invites us to ponder the difference between approaching the spiritual life as a path or as a road.  The road mindset looks like rushing into church once a week (or once a month), tanking up, and then rushing out afterward to a life of, well, rushing around.  Berry notes,

 

“A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place.  It is a sort of ritual of familiarity.  As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape.  It is not destructive.  It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.”

Roads get you efficiently (and mindlessly) from one place to another.  Paths change you.  I have never once sat in a traffic jam and contemplated all the people who have travelled on that particular interstate before me.  But I can tell you I have been on many different paths where I felt connected to people and events from across the centuries.  A couple of years ago I blazed a trail through a gorge in downtown Akron on a beautiful fall day.  At one point I stopped to take in the sights of falling leaves and the sound of rushing water and realized I was standing in a moment and a place unchanged since the end of the Ice Age.  It is times like these when I sense I am walking on the true and living Way.

Paulo Coelho, in his book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, cautions “It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think yours is the only path.”  Please don’t hear me saying you have to go on a pilgrimage in order understand the Christian life as being like a pilgrimage.  And please don’t hear me saying only I know the way.  I am in the best position to determine the true and living Way Jesus invites me to go, but it is not going to be the exact same path Jesus invites you to walk.  But, as Jesus promises Thomas, so he promises us, “I will show you the way.”

The Gate is Open

 

John 10:1-10

Easter 4 / Year A

The passage we just heard from John’s gospel is one section of a much larger story arc.  John frequently casts these arcs in a set pattern.  They begin with Jesus performing a ‘sign’, a healing or a miracle.  Then follows a dialogue about what happened.  It concludes with a discourse or teaching by Jesus.  The story arc which includes today’s reading begins in chapter 9 and runs through the end of chapter 10.  We read about the sign of the arc on the Fourth Sunday in Lent when Jesus heals a person blind from birth.  Remember all the back and forth between the man and the leaders of the synagogue?  That was all part of the dialogue.  Portions of chapter 10 are assigned to be read on this Sunday – known as Good Shepherd Sunday – in each of the three years of the Lectionary cycle. 

In today’s reading Jesus says to his followers and to the man born blind, “I am the gate for the sheep.”  In his day a sheepfold was an enclosure made by a wall of stones with a gate.  It was a place of safe rest through the night hours.  Multiple flocks bedded down in the fold and the various shepherds took turns guarding the gate through the night hours.  In the morning each shepherd called out to his sheep and, recognizing his voice, those of his flock followed him to pasture lands.

Now, it is fairly common to think of Jesus as being the Good Shepherd.  In fact, in the verses which follow today’s reading this is how he describes himself.  If you grew up going to Sunday School you probably saw multiple images of Jesus caring for sheep similar to our own Good Shepherd Window.  No doubt some kindly volunteer teacher had you glue together cotton balls on a sheet of construction paper which eventually became your rendition of Jesus and his flock.  My guess is you did not spend a lot of time talking about Jesus as being a gate.  In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you have never pondered this image before.

Perhaps one reason the metaphor of the gate is so seldom used is we are embarrassed by its exclusionary imagery.  Many of us shy away from proclaiming there is only one true way to pursue the religious dimension of life and we Christians are the only ones who have access to it. 

In its original context the image is much more generous than it has become.  Remember how the man born blind eventually is thrown out of his hometown synagogue – effectively excommunicated.  The doors to the synagogue are closed to him because he refuses to renounce Jesus as the source of his healing.  When Jesus tells him “I am the gate” he is saying to the man he is not expelled from God’s presence or from God’s people.  While the religious leaders of the day (whom Jesus describes as being “thieves and bandits”) close the door in the man’s face, Jesus opens the gate to his new community of love and acceptance. 

St. Paul’s is blessed to have a magnificent facility and beautiful grounds.  Although the green space and walls look like they have been here forever, the original property was not much wider than the sanctuary and ran all the way back to Clay Street.  There were several houses on various plots of land on what is now our parish grounds.  Acquiring them, tearing them down, and eventually erecting the walls in stages is a process which unfolded over 75 years or so. 

There are three iron gates leading onto our property and, wonderfully, they are left open.  The gates invite people to come in and enjoy the most abundant greenspace on downtown Main Street.  The gates are symbols of welcoming and suggest when you pass through them you are leaving behind one domain and entering into another.  The ways and worries of the world are on one side of the gate and a witness to God’s love is on the other. 

Our witness can be seen in the beauty of our grounds and the glory of our stained glass windows.  It is made real in our prayers, through our music, and most especially when we celebrate of the Eucharist.  And our witness to God’s love in manifested in our personal joy, through our faith, and by how we care about and for one another.  And when we pass back through the gate to reenter the world it suggests we should carry something of what we experience here with us as we go forward.

Let me say one final thing about Jesus’ words, “My sheep know my voice and follow me” because it ties in well with the image of Jesus as the gate.  Some Christian traditions today see themselves as ‘gatekeepers’, determining who God loves and who God hates.  And these folks have managed to get enough officials elected in their communities and states to bring their perspective into the mainstream of public debate and law making. 

Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry is famous for saying (as he did at our revival last weekend), “The bible tells us God is love, so if it isn’t about love it isn’t about God.”  If a voice is telling you not to love, but to hate, it is not the voice of Jesus.  Now, neither Bishop Curry nor Jesus is saying we should embrace all manner of self-destructive behavior or actions which harm others.  They are reminding us the gate to the church is open to everyone who desires to be a part of it by living into the beliefs, commitments, and promises of our Baptismal Covenant.  No exceptions.  Jesus is the gate and it is open to everyone who seeks to be a part of the community Bishop Curry calls “the Jesus Movement.”