Easter 4, Year A | John 10:1-10
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
April 30, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
Note: Due to lack of amplification at our “Mass on the Grass” service, the recorded message does not directly follow (or hit all the details of) the text below.
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Today, the fourth Sunday of Easter, is commonly known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” This year we’ve read the famous 23rd Psalm, heard Peter talking about “the shepherd of our souls,” and listened to the beginning of Jesus’ “Good Shepherd Discourse.” A lot of preachers use this Sunday to promote the innocence and frailty of their congregations and explain how Jesus keeps and guides us, leading us to plenty while protecting us from the wolves and other dangers of our world. They’ll emphasize how he’ll leave the ninety-nine safely in the fold and search out the one lost lamb because each of us are special and indispensable to God. And those things might all be true, to some extent, but that isn’t what our text is talking about today.
Those of you paying close attention may have noticed that Jesus didn’t make his “I am the Good Shepherd” statement today. That happens shortly after our reading ends—the very next verse, actually. But today the Lectionary points us in a slightly different direction, emphasizing Jesus’ other “I am” statement in this passage: “I am the gate for the sheep.”
Theologians like to make a big deal about Jesus’ “I am” statements in the Book of John. Throughout its history the Church has used these claims as proofs of Jesus authority, Messianic nature, and divinity. So it’s a little strange that no one gives much attention to this one. Commentaries tend to shoot right past it, rushing toward the claim in verse 11. It makes some sense. “I am the Good Shepherd” isn’t necessarily all that hard to figure out. “I am the gate for the sheep” is a little more opaque.
When we imagine a gate, we think of a moveable barrier—something on hinges or a lift we use to manage access to a particular location or item. I have several of these at my house. There’s the heavy wooden one to our front courtyard and the two chain link ones on either side of the backyard. Indoors we have another three we use to manage our dogs. Gates help us keep an eye on who’s coming and going and, in our case, prevent fights between certain of our animals. Gates lend us a sense of safety and comfort that we might otherwise lack. They allow certain of us to move freely while limiting the mobility of others. They help us determine what—or more often who—is allowed to participate in any particular group or activity. With Jesus as the gate, we assume he’s the one who decides who’s in and who’s out regarding God and the Church.
There are a couple of problems with this, however.
First is that a gate itself is passive. The gate doesn’t control who comes and goes. The gatekeeper does that. The gate has no choice but to sit open or closed depending on the will of the one who’s managing it. We might make a mistake and leave a gate closed when we want it open or open when we want it closed, but that wasn’t the gate’s choice. The gate doesn’t act; it simply is.
The second issue is that Jesus isn’t actually talking about the “gate” as we think of it. The word he uses simply refers to the gap in the wall, what we would call the gateway or the doorway, not to what might block or allow flow through that opening. So Jesus isn’t setting himself up as an obstruction here. He isn’t trying to erect barriers between people or worlds. In fact, as a gateway, Jesus role is to disrupt those things we use as division, creating opportunities for access through the walls we set up for exclusion.
This leaves us with a little bit of a conundrum. If Jesus’ role isn’t to keep us apart or distinct from one another but to allow us the freedom to come together across boundaries, we need to ask two questions: first, who built the walls? And second, who exactly is the gatekeeper mentioned in verse 3?
We can debate about whether we or God play either of those roles. If we say that God built the walls, that suggests they must have established a “natural” order that allows us to distinguish between who’s good and bad, who’s in or out, who we can accept and who we can safely reject. But if that’s the case, why would Jesus, God’s Son, announce himself to be the gateway? Why would he be creating points of contact and access where there weren’t any before? If God built the walls, wouldn’t God’s heir, God’s perfect reflection, function in a manner that maintains or even strengthens those walls?
For the second question, we need to look at what the gatekeeper actually does. A more literal translation of the word Jesus uses is a person who “unblocks the gateway.” That suggests the person’s role isn’t to prevent access but to allow it.
We could say that both people and God might play either part, wall-builder or gatekeeper, but I don’t think that’s quite right. As I said, Jesus, who came to show us God and reflect God’s will, declares himself to be the one making a way where walls once blocked us. That suggests to me that we, human beings, are the ones who built the walls. We’re the ones who’ve invented way upon way to exclude ourselves not only from one another but from God.
As for the gatekeeper, I suspect that both God and God’s people are meant to function in that respect. We know that God doesn’t avoid the riff-raff. God doesn’t fear and hate the other. God doesn’t treat the so-called godly with respect and favor while scorching the fields of their “pagan” neighbors. God, as the ultimate “unblocker,” sent Christ to create these opportunities to interact across division, to move freely between areas and among people we presume ought to be kept apart. We now, as God’s heirs and children in Christ, have the task and role of keeping these gateways open, of removing the barriers that still prevent us from accepting, loving, or serving one another.