These days, especially, even we privileged church-goers can identify with these sheep, with these little lambs wandering along disputed barriers and through a wide sea of scarcity. Every time I talk to people lately, whether we’re at St. Ambrose or on an airplane somewhere, the conversation seems to turn to fears, or divisions, or lack of resources, or terrible isolation.
When our political leaders disappoint us, or our social networks fail us, or our loved ones let us down, we long for someone strong to step in and bind up our wounds and feed us. When we obstinately wander off down paths that lead to dead ends, when we find ourselves stalked by wolves or caught with a lame leg in a briar patch, we wish for a good shepherd to swoop down and scoop us up in saving arms. We want to be accompanied by someone who can take us directly to those green pastures and still waters. We may not know much about sheep herding, but we do know what it means to be cared for, to be fed and carried and rescued when we go astray. When we hear, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” we feel peace descending upon our souls, even in times of pain and grief. The image of God as our shepherd brings with it a feeling of security, tender-loving care, and the close community of a well-tended flock.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” But the good shepherd that Jesus portrays in our Gospel isn’t just a bearer of security and comfortable community. Jesus is a shepherd so closely bound to his flock in love that he lays down his own life so that they may have life. Moreover, before Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd” in v. 11, he says in our passage, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.” A gate?! A gate doesn’t gather us up into loving arms and carry us to safety! A gate doesn’t feed us or search for us when we are lost! A gate does not die in order to heal us. Even worse, a gate can close and be locked against us. What does Jesus mean by “a gate?”
A gate is a passage into and out of community. Right? It’s the threshold between the safety of home and the challenge of the beckoning world. In Jesus, we have both a home and a mission. Jesus says, “whoever enters by me will be healed, and will come in, and go out and find pasture.” In Christ, we will come in, and we will go out. Jesus leads us out into the world to do the difficult things that we are called to do, and Jesus leads us back into the worshiping community, into the security of our cozy flock. Life within the limits of the sheepfold, no matter how comfortable, is not “abundant life.” Life in fear and exile, cut off from any home, is not “abundant life,” either. In Jesus, we are offered both. In order to have the rich, deep kind of life that God wants for us, we need a way out of the bleating huddle, and we need someone to lead us down those paths of righteousness that we cannot find on our own. In the Gospels, Jesus is the gate not just to green pastures and still waters. Jesus is the gate to right relationship and to self-giving love.
The trouble with the gate imagery is that, rather than seeing the gate as a necessary passage for all of us sheep, we tend to see it as a door, a door that shuts and excludes some of us from the presence of God.
“Hey,” we shout at each other from across fences, “I’m in here with the shepherd. If you think differently than I do, then you will be stuck outside.”
But beware. It is not the gate itself that keeps the sheep from following their shepherd; their ability to follow, depends on whether or not they recognize their shepherd’s voice as he calls to them. Remember the Easter story of Mary Magdalene, who first recognizes the risen Christ when he calls her by name. “Mary,” says the strange gardener to the frightened, grieving disciple. And hearing her name, Mary suddenly knows her risen Lord, and despair gives way to joy.
One of my favorite stories about the power of names is the story of the famous Rabbi, Yahuda ben Bezalel.[1] Rabbi Yahuda, a famous scholar and inventor, had a dream. He dreamed that he died, and as he approached the throne of God in heaven, he wondered if his name was written in the book of those who would share in God’s eternal kingdom. He introduced himself to the angel of the Lord as Rabbi Yehuda ben Bezalel, famous inventor. He asked the angel holding the great book of life to search for his name. The angel began reading out from the great book all the names of those who had died that day, and the rabbi watched soul after soul rise up and be admitted before God’s throne in response. When the angel had finished reading, the rabbi had not heard his own name. He began to weep.
Filled with the injustice of it all, he cried out, “Why didn’t you call my name? What have I done wrong? Why did all of these people get in, while I am excluded?” The angel calmly replied that the rabbi’s name had most definitely already been called, for everyone’s names are inscribed in God’s book. The problem is that many people never hear their true names during their lifetimes. They think that they know their names, but since they have never heard their real names, they don’t recognize them when they’re called. These people must stand before the throne until they hear their names and know them. After hearing this truth, the rabbi awoke from his dream. He prayed that he might be granted just once to hear his true name from the lips of his brothers and sisters before he died.
Like the angel in the story, Jesus calls out to each of his sheep. Like the rabbi, however, we have to recognize the name that is called. We have to be prepared that we are going to hear a name that marks us as a child of God. We all have one! As Rowan Williams says, it is going to be a name that is “our particular way of playing back to God his self-sharing, self-losing care and compassion.”[2]
Yesterday, many of us spent five hours of our Saturday trying to hear the name that God is giving to this community, St. Ambrose, today. Somehow, in all the years of worshiping together, serving Christ, having fun, struggling for resources, planning projects, we have forgotten our name. Christian communal bodies, you see, like individuals, have a particular way of playing back to God his self-sharing care and compassion.
Yesterday, I know that many of us were probably thinking, “Why are we wasting time with some silly self-understanding stuff? We have finances and buildings to worry about! We need to grow our membership! Or we need to get out there and serve the world!” We can’t hear Jesus calling us, though, if we don’t know our name. We have to recognize our name when Jesus calls us to go out and when he calls us to come back home. We’ll only recognize that name when we hear it from the lips of our fellow members, from the lips of our neighbors, and from the whispers of the Holy Spirit. Yesterday, we finally heard the first letter of our name. It seems to begin with H! Our “Four H Sheep Ranch” sounds like: Hospitality and care for others; Healing through connection; Holy Spirit guiding our lives; Homecoming for ALL. We heard our name as reflecting God’s care and compassion as the healers of what has been broken: specifically, healers of our broken Creation and healers of broken relationships with our LGBTQ+ siblings.
Now that we’ve begun to glimpse our name, we can start listening for God’s call to us. God is always calling--calling out to us a name shimmering with love and so valuable to him that he shed his own blood that we might hear it. Our prayer must be that we will know our true selves well enough to answer his call.
As we recite at Morning Prayer, “He is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Oh, that today we might hearken to his voice.”
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