"The Jesus Gate"
Acts 2:42-47; Ps. 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10: 1-10
Dr. George R. Sinclair
Pastor
April 13, 2008
There is a gate to our back yard. Actually there are three gates. One, a big double gate, is locked most of the time. Another is open only when I’m mowing grass or working in the yard. And the third, which is the one we use most, is never locked and can be opened from the outside.
The big double gate is not like that. It can only be opened from the inside. It doesn’t have an outside handle. The second gate is also secure. Like the first, it doesn’t have an outside handle and is locked with a six inch steel bolt.
The third gate, the one we use most, can be locked, but we never lock it. We do keep it closed. We have cat and with the gate closed the cat is safe and free to roam the yard. Superfluous (yes, that’s a strange but fitting name for a cat I think) likes the gate closed because it keeps the dogs out. If she wants to leave, she can go under the fence, which is high enough for her but too low for dogs. So Superfluous is happy and we are happy.
We don’t advertise the fact that our back yard gate is never locked, so don’t tell any one. Not that it would make much difference. If someone really wanted to, they could knock down our gate and the fence for that matter. Both are made of wood and are not very strong. But, still, I like having a gate and a fence. People are discouraged from walking through our yard and picking up stuff that doesn’t belong to them. And too, people are less likely to peek in our back windows.
I also like having a fence with a gate because I worry less about what I need to do and don’t need to do—I mean as far as yard work is concerned. I like that at least as much as Superfluous likes dogs leaving her alone. When I go inside my gate I see what I need to do—not more, not less. It’s a defined space and I like that. I don’t have to worry about the neighbor’s yard or their azaleas or their dog or their cats. I’ve got my own garden to tend. So, I like my gate. It lets me go in and lets me go out.
“I am the gate,” says Jesus. “Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
“I am the gate.” John calls it a “figure of speech.” His words can also mean “proverb” or “parable.” Figures of speech, like jokes and parables, are more “heard” or “enjoyed” than explained. Humorists and story tellers have long understood that proverbs, jokes, and parables, crack open possibilities in ways that rational discourse does not. It’s good to “laugh at ourselves.” Laughter helps us take ourselves less seriously. When we laugh at ourselves we let go of those parts of us that keep us from changing. Humor is more than mood altering. It is behavior changing.
There are times, however, when laughter doesn’t help. There are times when we resist humor. When the “joke is on us” we can dig in our heels and resist change. Something like that happens with Jesus’ figure of speech. John says that some of Jesus’ listeners didn’t understand it. What he really means is that they “got it,” they understood it, only they didn’t want to go where Jesus was taking them. That’s when Jesus backed up and took another tact. He explained his figure of speech.
While it’s not entirely clear who resisted Jesus’ figure of speech, the most likely resistors are the Pharisees, earlier called “blind” by Jesus because they were more interested in seeing folks labeled, blamed, and excluded, than they were in seeing folks welcomed, forgiven, and named God’s children.
Frankly, that’s a recurring problem. God people have long fretted over who’s in and who’s out and that fretting has led to labeling, blaming and excluding rather than welcoming, forgiving and naming. The Pharisees weren’t the first to misunderstand God’s boundaries. From time to time, their worries are still echoed: “Will everybody be saved? What about other religions? Does everybody have to believe in Jesus? Is Jesus the only way to salvation?”
I think Jesus calls himself the Gate because he’s trying to crack us open. “Whoever enters by me will be saved.” That sounds like the Jesus Gate lets people in. Then again Jesus acknowledges that there are “thieves and bandits and strangers” who threaten to “steal and kill and destroy,” so it also sounds like the Jesus Gate protects and excludes. The Jesus Gate not only lets people in, it keeps fraudulent people out, creating safety for sheep.
What does it look like when you enter the Jesus Gate? Can a person know when he or she finds safe pasture? What does it look like to enter the Jesus Gate?
When I was in high school there was a nightclub called The Cellar. Everybody wanted to go to The Cellar. I started hearing about The Cellar when I was in 9th or 10th grade. It was famed for its wonderful adventures but you had to be 18 to enter, which meant that not just anybody could get in. You had to have a fake ID, which I didn’t have, or you had to look 18, which at 6 foot five, I did.
Sometime during my senior year I drove the twenty miles from my hometown, which did not have wet places like The Cellar, to nearby Charlotte, which did. The Cellar was a very cool place and was so called because you entered The Cellar by descending a dark flight of stairs to its smoky confines where beer and other forbidden things were found.
I liked The Cellar. Having paid the cover charge your hand was stamped with an insignia that glowed under a “black light.” The Cellar was famous for its “black lights” which not only allowed re-entry but lit up the dance floor, giving teeth and white shirts that wonderful 70’s glow.
I mention The Cellar because getting in was a Big Deal, at least as big as the dancing and accompanied adolescent indulgences. Going through The Cellar’s door there was a moment when you could see the guy taking up the money and as you inched forward you wondered, “Am I going to get caught or will I get through? Will the bouncer ask for ID or will I get stamped?”
I’ve been through other gates when I’ve wonder that, when I’ve fretted about getting caught or being approved, being exposed or getting stamped. You know, signal passages, like 30th, 40th and 50th birthdays; graduations; getting married; being ordained. I was ordained 30 years ago this summer. That was a big deal. There were lots of gates—classes, exams, papers to write, people to please. You’ve got to fool a lot of people to become a minister. That same summer I also became a father, which has its own foolishness.
I’ve passed through many gates in life, places where I’ve wondered if people would find out that I’m not really cool and 18 but only pretend to be. That’s why I like the Jesus Gate. With Jesus I don’t have to pretend. In fact, with Jesus I can’t pretend. With Jesus I’ve already been caught and exposed. Jesus knows I am fraudulent, not that he leaves me that way. Walking through the Jesus Gate changes everything. You can’t walk through the Jesus Gate and remain the person you were. When you are stamped with God’s approval you are made new.
I want to make to a modest observation about entering the Jesus Gate, actually two. The first is this: crossing the Jesus Gate creates freedom which is not self-indulgent. And secondly, entering the Jesus Gate calls for discipline that makes us different but not arrogant. Let me explain by lifting up four instances which happened in past couple of weeks. I think they’re indicative of people walking through the Jesus Gate.
A few days after Spring Break, a father with teenagers said to me, “You know, I just don’t know about our kids. I worry about them. I worry about them getting hurt.” The father was worried about underage drinking. Some kid, he explained, got drunk over Spring Break and ended up in the hospital. “You know,” he said, “getting drunk is almost a rite of passage in Mobile. I don’t know what parents are thinking. And I worry about the message my own kids are getting.”
Example number two. The father of a five year old asked me if I’d heard about the camera phone incident. I said I’d read about one in Baldwin County—was that what he meant? “No,” he said. “This one happened in Mobile. A 14 year old girl took a picture of herself in her thong underwear and sent it by way of her cell phone to a boy in her class. Can you believe that,” the father said. “Man, we didn’t even have Internet when I was a kid. I just don’t know.” The father who told me that has a five year old daughter. What will her world be like when she’s 14?
Incident number three. I guy says to me, “I don’t know about the war. I don’t know if it’s done any good. You hear stuff about what we’ve done over there and it just doesn’t sound good. There’s been some bad stuff going on. And I just don’t know if we’re doing any good. And think about all the money we’ve spent. We’ve spent a lot of money and the Chinese are buying our debt. And think about all those boys who’ve died over there and the people we’ve killed. I just don’t know.”
Incident number four. A school teacher says to me, “Did you see that report about kids and poverty?” And I say, “No.” And she says, “Well, you ought to read the paper.”
So I get the Press Register and sure enough on the front page beneath the fold there’s a headline: “State’s rich/poor gap 2nd widest in U.S.” According to the article, the gap between rich and poor is widening. It’s gotten worse, several times so over the past few years and Alabama ranks second in the nation, second worse. Some people, so the article said, say we ought to do something about the gap, that it’s not fair or right, that it will lead to higher crime rates, more cynicism about politics, lower support for public education, and more housing market trouble.
Others, according to the same article, say the gap is simply a function of the market and that subsidizing poor people will only diminish their urgency for a better education and will only create higher taxes and reduce money for investment.
“So, which is right?” the teacher asked.
These four stories are not made up. They are real. They’re all ones I heard from people I know—people in this room. Parents worried about their teenagers drinking. Parents worried about adolescent sexuality. Citizens worried about a costly war. Citizens worried about a widening gap between rich and poor.
These problems are not new, perhaps newly felt and perhaps acutely felt, but they’re not new. These problems have always been around, which is why I believe in the Jesus Gate. When we enter the Jesus Gate, we’re not fated. The Jesus Gate leads to a safe, protected space. It leads to freedom. But getting to that freedom means making choices. It means saying Yes to some things and No to others. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t have gospel freedom and self-indulgence. Gospel freedom comes with gospel discipline. And that discipline makes us different, it sets us apart. It need not make us arrogant, but it does set us apart. Entering the Jesus Gate makes us both secure and different.
You see, I hope our parents teach their children to enter the Jesus Gate. I hope our parents teach their children that they don’t have to fit in by going along and pretending to be cool. I hope our parents teach their children the “coolness” of God’s green pasture, coolness that comes by entering the Jesus Gate.
Likewise, I hope all of us enter the Jesus Gate so that we speak gospel words out loud in public. And I’m not talking Red state and Blue political philosophy. That’s not the word we’re invited to speak. We’re invited to gospel speech. And gospel speech is not silent when it comes to violence or poverty. Gospel speech declares God’s out loud word of peace and sharing.
God sends us into the world. We are not of the world, but we are in the world. And being in but not of the world means our public speech is different, not arrogant, but different. And it is different because it is the speech of Jesus, speech which Jesus gives us when we walk through his Gate.
The Jesus Gate leads to freedom, not to self-indulgence but to gospel freedom. And that freedom, grounded in disciplined choices, makes us different, not arrogant, but different. Enter by the Jesus Gate so that you may have life and have it abundantly. Amen.