SPEAKER_00: O Lord, grant that when we hear your voice, we may know you who calls us each by name.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: In the Church's liturgical calendar, the fourth Sunday of Easter is commonly called Good Shepherd Sunday, because we focus on Jesus' image of the Good Shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: We always read Psalm 23 and from chapter 10 in the Gospel of John, because it is here where Jesus eventually says, I am the Good Shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: But you may have noticed that in today's Gospel reading, Jesus does not yet call himself the Good Shepherd, but says instead, I am the Gate.
SPEAKER_00: And it is worth stopping for a moment to consider this image.
SPEAKER_00: But this too requires a step back, because the moment leading to Jesus calling himself the gate begins well before the assigned reading in John chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples, seeing a man blind from birth, ask Jesus if the man is blind because of his own sin or his parents.
SPEAKER_00: Neither.
SPEAKER_00: He was born blind that the glory of God may be known in him.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus spits into dirt, creates mud, and rubs it on the man's eyes, telling him to wash in the pool of Siloam.
SPEAKER_00: The man does, and he sees.
SPEAKER_00: And this healing becomes an occasion for a buzz about town, moving the conversation beyond Jesus and his disciples to the man's parents, neighbors, and the Pharisees, who cannot believe that this has happened.
SPEAKER_00: Even after the parents are questioned, this is your son, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he was born blind.
SPEAKER_00: Are you sure?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's our son.
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, he was born blind, but you'll have to ask him about the rest.
SPEAKER_00: Once the word is out, people want to know where and from whom the power to heal has come, and especially that it has been done on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: Those who hear the account of healing from the man, though, do not believe that he is who he says he is, and back and forth they go with the man who has been healed.
SPEAKER_00: Who healed you?
SPEAKER_00: But finding his testimony inadequate, assuming that it's not of God, they drive him out of the synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, hearing that the man has been driven out, seeks after him and asks if he believes in the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the Son of Man?
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus says, the Son of Man is he, is me, the man born blind sees Jesus for who he is and worships him.
SPEAKER_00: His eyes have been opened, but it brings more clarity than just sight.
SPEAKER_00: He's heard the voice of Jesus and recognized that Jesus is the one who offers healing and care for which the people have been waiting.
SPEAKER_00: When the gatekeeper calls the sheep, Jesus says, they know his voice.
SPEAKER_00: This man is from a covenant people, a people who have been ministered to by God in their relationship with God from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: He has been healed, but his life also becomes a parable for the healing that is coming to his people.
SPEAKER_00: He worships Jesus for who he is because he has seen him and heard him.
SPEAKER_00: But this man who has come to see and hear, who acknowledges Jesus for who he is, has been driven out.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where today's lectionary text picks up.
SPEAKER_00: Shepherds and sheep were a very potent image for the people of Israel, who had considered their national leaders, everyone from Moses to David, as shepherds over the people.
SPEAKER_00: The task of the shepherd is to facilitate the relationship of the people with their God.
SPEAKER_00: Because in the relationship the people have with God, they are promised the life of God for which they have been made.
SPEAKER_00: For the people of Israel, this means not only that they are a people who are recipients of a blessing, but that they will become a blessing to all of the people and peoples and nations of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So so much is at stake in this care and abundance.
SPEAKER_00: And as we head toward Jesus' famous identification of himself as the good shepherd, he begins, very truly, very truly I tell you, and this is like saying, Therefore.
SPEAKER_00: What follows, the gate, the bandits, the gatekeeper, the shepherd, is all explanatory for what comes before.
SPEAKER_00: A gate encloses and protects the precious sheep who have come in from the pasture.
SPEAKER_00: If one needs to take care of the sheep, they do so by way of the gate, as it is from that threshold which one moves between pasture and fold, abundance and safety.
SPEAKER_00: The sheep make their way into safety or out to abundance in the pasture.
SPEAKER_00: While gathering the sheep and bringing their faithful caretakers in, the gate is part of the disclosure of who the thieves and bandits are, because they are the ones who use means other than the gate to access the sheep.
SPEAKER_00: They're not interested in the sheep and their safety or abundant life, but in their own ends, their own needs.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, when they arrive, they steal, kill, and destroy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus uses this image of himself as a gate to highlight the expulsion of the man born blind, and the killing of himself only eight to ten chapters in the future, as though either Jesus or the man should be out of the fold according to the community.
SPEAKER_00: The man expelled from the community should have been shepherded and tended, but was instead subjected to the betrayal and isolation of being cast out.
SPEAKER_00: But the man is precious to Jesus and cared for by God in him, folded into the safety of the sheephold or the abundant life of the pasture.
SPEAKER_00: Not only should the man not have been cast out, but the authority to decide who is in and who is out, that belongs to the Son of Man, for he is the gate.
SPEAKER_00: And for Jesus, he's the actual Messiah, but it doesn't make any difference for his perception.
SPEAKER_00: Even those who are supposed to see that most clearly are not up to the task of recognizing him.
SPEAKER_00: But if these images are challenging, we're not the first to find them so.
SPEAKER_00: Because the people who hear Jesus say, I am the gate, do not get it either, or even at all.
SPEAKER_00: And they especially do not get how it is about them and the man and God.
SPEAKER_00: And while this image is meant to help the people around him consider what they've done to the man, what they're about to do to Jesus, their place in the story as those who seek to steal, kill, and destroy, it's not intended to be strictly allegorical.
SPEAKER_00: It's an image with layers.
SPEAKER_00: It can be turned this way and that, the meaning adjusted to the moment.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gestures toward this in his own identification of himself, not only as the gate, but as the voice of the gatekeeper, and eventually in his calling of himself as the Good Shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: As the image changes or deepens, people can inhabit different roles, and Jesus is asking them to consider what caring for the sheep by way of the gate, by way of him, looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier this week, I was drawn to John chapter 18.
SPEAKER_00: It is the night that Jesus is arrested.
SPEAKER_00: Judas has departed the upper room to betray Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: With the disciples, Jesus goes into the garden to pray.
SPEAKER_00: And Judas brings troops and a mob of people, including the Pharisees, to arrest Jesus in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, seeing this mob, puts himself between the disciples who are in the garden and Judas and the mob.
SPEAKER_00: He embodies a gate or a door.
SPEAKER_00: He stands between the mob who has come to arrest him and the disciples and says, If you're seeking me, let these go their own way.
SPEAKER_00: In the garden and at the cross, Jesus does not just describe the gate, he becomes it.
SPEAKER_00: And what he means by I am the gate becomes clearest as he places himself between what would steal, kill, and destroy, and those who are entrusted into his care.
SPEAKER_00: He is not the gate at the threshold to keep people out, as those who are anxious about the testimony of the man born blind excommunicate him, but the gate in which the sheep are gathered, protected, and led into life and belonging.
SPEAKER_00: As with the man born blind, in Jesus Christ, God stands between destruction and abundance, highlighting who the thieves and bandits are, offering safety and refuge for the vulnerable for all who need him, for the sake of life and abundance.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.