Heaven’s Gate (John 10:1 - 10)

Shepherding in the ancient Middle East is difficult, lonely work.  You are alone with the herd, alone with the elements . . . if it is excruciatingly hot, you are there, in the middle of it.  If there is a sudden rain, and maybe a flash flood to boot, you are there, in the middle of it.  If there are bandits or wolves or some other critter relishing a mutton dinner, you are there, in the middle of it.  There’s not a lot of shelter from the elements or unscrupulous predators, but it’s your job to protect your charges from it all, so a certain toughness—of mind and body—is part of the job description.

Your life moves along with a diurnal rhythm: you lead your flocks out to pasture in the morning, and back down into shelter, into a sheepfold, at night.  The sheepfold is made of stones from the surrounding rough pasture, so it looks like it has risen from the surrounding soil, or maybe weathered from centuries of scouring wind.  You can feel that wind, day by day, night by night, pelting your skin with sand and sometimes even small pebbles, fired with the velocity of an arrow.  Or at least, that’s what it feels like sometimes.  Toughness of mind and body is a requirement.

As is—of all things—compassion.  You don’t last long in the shepherding business without compassion for your charges.  You don’t put up with nostril-clogging sandstorms or blistering heat or sneaky, dangerous thievery if you don’t truly feel for them.  And that isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do.  Sheep aren’t the most lovable creatures on the face of the earth, nor are they the brightest.   What they are is stubborn and obstinate, they want to do things they want to do, the way they want to do it, and it helps to know what that is.  In fact, to do the job of protecting and nurturing a flock right, you have to be able to think like a sheep, to put yourself in the place of a sheep, to almost become a sheep yourself . . .

This image, the image of a shepherd is used frequently in the bible to describe a wise, compassionate protector . . . it was used of good kings, like Josiah and Solomon and most famously, David, the Shepherd King, who started out life as a shepherd of his father Jesse’s flock..   And Jesus uses the image in our passage, which is the first half of the so-called shepherd discourse which goes through verse 18.  And so strong was this image, so potent the metaphor, that up until the time of Constantine, the primary title for Jesus was Kristos Poemen, Greek for Jesus the shepherd.   In fact, the oldest known depictions of Jesus are as a gentle shepherd.   It wasn’t until the coming of Constantine, and the need  for Christ to be a strong, emperor-like figure, that the image of Kristos Pantocrator—Christ the Supreme Ruler—became primary, and it’s been that up until this day, just look at the violent-final-day fetishes of folks like Tim LaHaye or Hal Lindsey.

Well, how I do go on . . . today is sometimes called Good Shepherd Sunday, and we sing all the shepherd-y hymns—some of my favorites—and we are well accustomed to thinking in those terms, but it’s important to realize that this Jesus uses two metaphors to describe himself in this passage: he is both Good Shepherd and  sheep-gate.  And with our logical Presbyterian minds we’re likely to go “say what? Which one is it, Lord?  Shepherd or gate?  We’re much more comfortable with the notion of a shepherd . . . after all, it is an animate object . . .”  And I urge you to get over it and consider what the metaphor might mean.  (Ok, ok, if you insist, then it was common for a shepherd to sleep in the opening to the sheepfold, making him both shepherd and gate . . . there?  You happy?)

Anyway, let’s look at the overall structure of the story: there’s the sheepfold, which pens up the sheep, the shepherd, who enters through the gate, and the gatekeeper, who opens the gate.  And anyone who doesn’t come in through the gate is a predator of some kind, either a thief or a bandit, as Jesus mentions, or a big bad wolf.  And so, the sheep, if they are bright enough to distinguish who comes over the wall from who comes through the gate, can tell friend from foe.  They can also tell the difference through sound: they’ll follow the shepherd when he leads them out ‘cause they know his voice.  They won’t follow a bad guy ‘cause they don’t know his voice.

So.  Sheepfold, sheep-gate, gatekeeper, shepherd.  And notice that in the first half of the passage, he doesn’t identify any of them.  That is, he doesn’t tell his audience—Pharisees, and the like—who represents whom in the allegory.  Does the gate represent . . .  scriptures?  Does the gatekeeper represent . . . the religious authorities?  Just who is who in this metaphor? Evidently, he expects them to get it, and when they don’t, that’s when he has to spell it out, no doubt with a heavy sigh:  “I am the gate for the sheep,” he says, “and all who came before me are the thieves and the bandits.”  And I can see the religious authorities getting kind of nervous, maybe tugging at their collars, or getting real mad, steam coming out their ears like in a Popeye cartoon or something, because now he’s getting personal, because they represent who has come before, don’t they?  They represent the religious apparatus which had become corrupt and rotten in the centuries before that time.   And here Jesus is accusing them of being thieves and bandits, whose voice the sheep—and who else could that be but the children of God—no longer hear.

Remember: the thieves and bandits climb over the walls, they don’t enter by the gate—which, we now learn, is Jesus himself.  And Jesus is the sheep-gate, the one who keeps out, but also the one who lets out.  The sheep must get out of the sheepfold to feed and be fed, so even though it may be tempting, there’s not a one-to-one correspondence between the sheepfold and the afterlife.  And in fact, Jesus says as much: whoever enters by him will be saved, and come in and go out to find pasture.

And here’s another thing:  Jesus uses the word “saved” to describe what happens when the sheep enter through him, but it’s clear that he doesn’t mean by that where you go when you die.  It’s clear that he means that this salvation begins right here on the earthly plain, that the sheep who are saved will go in and out, and have life and have it abundantly.  Thus, being saved, in this context, at least, has to do with abundant life in the here and now, not—or not just—life after death.  Perhaps the best that can be said is that the sheepfold represents the condition of being children of God, of resting in the presence of the almighty.

The image of Jesus as the sheep-gate, when it has been considered at all, has been preached as keeping those on the inside from those on the outside, for purposes of (a) protection or (b) privilege—those on the inside get all the goodies God is offering—or (c) both.  The Gospel of John is particularly concerned with this: after all, it’s in John where Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  And in John’s time, this made sense: those who had entered through Christ the sheep-gate necessarily had to close the gate on the flock who remained in the synagogue.  On both sides, questions of exclusion and inclusion raged: who was in and who was out theologically, morally, ethnically?

Since John’s time, there have been many who have led the people of God in different ways, splitting the flock into separate folds, and they have turned out to be strangers, not shepherds.   They have been popular preachers, leaders, teachers who have led the flock astray, promising to show us the kingdom for the price of a seminar or a DVD.  But they are not the gate, they are not the shepherd  . . . abundant life is not to be found through their voice, through their teachings, only through Christ, who is the gate of the sheep-fold.

But how do we separate the myriad voices in our culture from the one true voice of the Shepherd?  How do we recognize the voice of Christ from that of false teachers, well-intended or not?  Well, we have time-honored ways of doing that—Bible study is one way, familiarizing ourselves with the only record we have of Jesus’ voice, of Jesus’ teachings . . . worship is another, as we worship our Lord and Savior we are energized and readied to go out into our communities and our city and our nation, we are equipped to meet the third source of Jesus’ voice: the least of these, our neighbors and friends and, even, those whom we consider to be enemies.

And it’s something of a paradox, isn’t it?  We listen to the Shepherd’s voice through scripture and preaching and worship, and we try to avoid listening to the bandits and thieves, who come not through the gate, but over the walls via the internet and self-improvement seminars and pop-psychologies, and yet one of the prime ways we hear the shepherd’s voice is through others outside of the fold . . . but did he not tell us that he is in us all?  Don’t Benedictine monks spend much time and energy discerning Christ’s voice in the world?  Paradox or not, we see and hear his voice every day, in the people we meet and the sights we see.  We only have to learn to distinguish the shepherd’s voice from all the background babble.

And that’s where the other two pieces of the puzzle fit, the other two legs in the discernment stool—because that’s what we’re practicing when we learn to hear the shepherd’s voice.  Within the community of believers, within the flock we study scripture and engage in corporate worship, then we go out of the doors to encounter Christ’s voice in the world.  Each leg of the stool reinforces the work of the other . . . what we learn in Scripture helps us to worship rightly and meaningfully, and helps us to understand and seek Christ’s voice in the world.  In worship, we are sustained and fed for our journey back into the Bible and out in the world.  And finally, as we listen for Christ’s voice in the world, as we seek those places and those people through which Christ speaks, it directs our study and worship in increasingly meaningful ways.  In science, we call it a feed-back loop.

In strophes from his poem Spanish Trilogy (III), Rainer Maria Rilke describes a shepherd he experienced in his travels in Spain:

With slow and steady strides, his posture is pensive

and, as he stands there, noble. Even now a god might

secretly slip into this form and not be diminished.

                                                                               

Rilke, who was a Christian, clearly is speaking of incarnation, and it is apt: our God slips into the form of a shepherd, and like a shepherd, he leads us into the fold, into God’s loving arms, into the arms of our Christian community for rest and study and rejoicing and praise, then out to pasture in the world.  And as we do, as we enter through Christ the sheep-gate and are led by Christ the Shepherd, we experience ever more sacred and abundant life.  Amen.

Cleopas’ Lament (Luke 24:13 - 35)

So, a couple of disciples are walking down the road from Jerusalem to the little tiny town of Emmaus, about 7 miles away. I don't imagine them hurrying too much, seven miles isn't that far, and although you can walk a mile in a quarter hour or so, you really have to book, and I can't imagine they are doing that in their condition of sorrow, their condition of a abject grief, because just two days ago, their master was nailed up onto a cross and allowed to suffocate to death, and it was the end of a dream.

And as they walk, they're talking about all that has happened in the last few days, and as they walk, a man joins them and tags along. Now, we know it's Jesus, because Luke tells us, but the two men don't. And here's a troubling and mysterious thing: we're told that they are prevented from recognizing him. And so the first thing I always think about when I consider this passage is prevented by what? Or by whom?

We know that Luke had something in mind because of the passive construction of the sentence, the "was prevented," but he doesn't tell us about who or what is doing the preventing. Was it something that would have been obvious to a first-century audience? Does he mean it to be a cliffhanger, a to-be-continued into the next installment? If he did, he blew it, because it's not in the sequel, it's not in Acts, at least not explicitly ...

So what's the story here? Could it be a supernatural thing? Could it be God doing the preventing, for some inscrutable God-reason or another? Could it be like in the Old Testament, where God hardens the heart of the Pharaoh? Or could it be something about Jesus ... maybe he doesn't look like he used to. After all, Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener, until he said her name . . .

For whatever reason, they're kept from recognizing him, even after he speaks to them, asking what they're talking about. And at that, they stop as if the weight of what has happened, of what they're about to tell this stranger, was too heavy to say in motion. And they're so astonished that this man doesn't know what happened that they just stand and gape. Cleopas is certainly surprised, because he asks him--rather sarcastically, I think--"are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who doesn't know what happened?" As if one more execution of one more Jewish rabble-rouser would get the whole town talking. But Jesus says "what happened?" and Cleopas starts in, telling him about all the stuff that had been going on, about how Jesus was a prophet “mighty in deed and word,” and how the religious authorities had turned him over to the Romans to be condemned and crucified, and how they were just sure he’d been the one to take Israel away from the Romans, and all that had been ruined, and some women told this fantastic story, about an empty tomb and some angels, but when the men went there, there was just an empty hole . . .

And you can almost hear the pathos, almost hear the lamentation, and maybe just a touch of self-pity, and when he stops to catch his breath, maybe to contemplate anew the complete tragedy of what they’d all been through—never mind that the tragedy didn’t happen to them—Jesus jumps in: “Oh, how foolish you are,” he says, and he’s clearly exasperated, “and how slow to understand what the prophets have said.” And it's worth noting that it's clearly a set-up. He knows very well what's going on, and he probably had a pretty good idea what their answer would be. He sets them up for another one of his teachable moments, this time about the nature of the Scriptures and what they really mean, which he proceeds to tell them in great detail, he gets out his pocket Torah and power-point slides and explains to them just where it says that the messiah must suffer and die, all the way from Moses on forward.

And it seems to me that this points to at least one answer to our question—maybe it isn’t something from outside the disciples that prevents them from recognizing him, maybe it isn’t Jesus’ changed appearance or God hardening their minds like the Pharaoh’s heart . . . Maybe it is something inside them, some prejudice or belief, that is preventing them from recognizing the risen lord.

And what could that be? Let’s look at Cleopas’ lament . . . they thought Jesus was going to be the one to redeem Israel, and the Greek word our translation renders as “redeem” means redeem in the sense of liberate, set free from oppression, and of course he means set them free from the Roman occupation, liberate them from the crushing weight of the Imperial boot. And as we’ve seen in the past, this was a common belief in Israel about the Messiah: that he would be a great military leader, who would lead an uprising against Romans and their collaborationist toadies, and throw them forcibly out of Palestine. Cleopas and his friend had been so sure that Jesus was their kind of Messiah, a Messiah who would kick some Roman rear and take down some Roman names, that his death stopped them in their tracks. Because how could he be the Messiah if he was nailed to a tree?

And now they were stuck—stuck at the fatality, stopped by the crucifixion. Held fast in their grief and mired in their sorrow . . . they were prevented from identifying Jesus by their own failure to comprehend his true nature, even though they’d had plenty of evidence for it in the past, and had even been told outright that he would be arrested, killed and be raised again.

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes get like those two sorry disciples . . . I get focused on the pain in this world, focused on its sorrow, and I can’t move on to the resurrection. There is so much violence, so much war, that I cannot see the hope that the resurrection portends. I hear about the hundreds of school-girls kidnapped in Nigeria, or ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, or the latest massacre at an American achool, and I despair, and am caught-up in the hopelessness of it all. And just like those first disciples, I have a hard time recognizing the risen Christ when I see him in the world.

Well. As they near Emmaus, Jesus makes as if to go on, but Cleopas and the other disciple urge him strongly to stay with them, because the day is almost over and evening is nigh, and right here is the turning point in the entire story . . . it isn’t when Jesus berates them and explains the scripture, nor is it in Cleopas’ self-pitying lament. The turning point is when they offer Jesus hospitality, despite him being a stranger, as Cleopas emphasized his earlier, incredulous question.

And even if hospitality is a Middle Eastern social requirement, it still requires a certain amount of chutz-pah, a certain amount of courage. Hospitality expresses deep vulnerability; welcoming a stranger is always risky, and the tables might be turned—for better or for worse. The Palestinian roads could be dangerous, even that close to Jerusalem, and they still had no idea who Jesus was.

But they take the chance, they open themselves up and invite Jesus to supper, and all of a sudden, the tables are turned, and Jesus is the host instead of the guest, and he takes the bread and blesses the bread. Then he breaks the bread and gives the bread to Cleopas and his friend. And in those actions—take, bless, break and give—their eyes are opened and they recognized the saviour. And note again the passive voice: they didn’t open their own eyes, something—or some one—did the opening. And what was it? Take, bless, break and give . . . the four movements of the Lord’s Supper that he instituted in the upper room. Take, bless, break and give . . . the actions that recall for them the self-emptying sacrifice of Jesus, the Christ. Take, bless, break and give.

Do you remember when Abram and Sarai are camped at the oaks of Mamre? The extend hospitality to three strangers and behold! They are given a theophany, a revelation from God. It is through their hospitality that God speaks to them, even though Sarai—not yet Sarah—laughs it off. It’s the same way with the Cleopas and his friend: their hospitality has opened a space, a window for grace to enter in.

It has been suggested that hospitality is the indispensible to evangelism these days, that welcoming the stranger is the key to spreading the gospel in thought, word and deed. Certainly, it hasn’t been that way in the past, especially, perhaps, in mainline churches. They’ve had a tendency to set up shop on some prime piece of real estate and expect people to just show up. At the same time, as this has proven less and less workable, they’ve turned inward, worrying more about survival than extending hospitality to folks not like them. Many times, they become just one more club, like the flower club or Rotary, instead of vessels of God’s grace for those who desperately need it.

In a few minutes I’ll take the bread and bless it, then break it and give it, but it won’t be me who is doing it, but Christ through me. In communion, Christ becomes the host, we are only vessels, but we are important vessels nevertheless. It is through our hospitality—which begins with the Lord’s Supper, but extends into all that we do—that God’s grace flows into the world. The church offers hospitality—not just to its own members, but to the entire world, to every stranger in it—the church offers hospitality through the Eucharist in the name of Jesus Christ, and grace rushes through that hospitality like an ever-flowing stream. Amen.