I AM the Gate for the Sheep

John 10:7

 

            I was an eighth grade sales champion. Yep, our history club was going on a trip to Washington D.C., and we were selling those ubiquitous boxes of chocolate that kids sell for school fundraisers.  Each student was required to sell $150 worth of product, 15 boxes at $10 a pop.  I sold $2,000 worth of product, a school record! 

 

Now those of you who know me well know how surprising it is that I could do this because I am not a salesperson.  I hate sales.  I do not have a single gene strand of sales in my entire DNA.  One “money sermon” a year during stewardship season about does me in. I am in awe of you realtors and insurance people who make a living through sales; God bless you.  So, how is it that I was once an eighth grade sales champion? The story goes like this….

 

            I knew a guy who knew a guy.  One of my dad’s golfing buddies was a local businessman named Bill who owned his own business with 200 employees.  You might think of him as the CEO of his own company. My dad got me a meeting with Bill, the CEO, who was a bear of a man who stood well over 6 foot and tipped the scales at well over 300 pounds.  The meeting was brief and to the point; it went something like this: Bill, loudly, “Whatcha got there boy?” Me, timidly, “A box of chocolates, sir.” Bill, loudly, “I’ll take 200.  I’ll give ‘em to my employees for Christmas.  Can you do 200, boy?”  Me, completely intimidated, “Yes, sir.” And that’s how I became an eighth grade sales champion.  Sometimes it’s not what you know but who you know.

 

*****

 

            What if I told you that I know a guy who knows a guy, and I could get you a meeting with the CEO of the Universe. Would you take that meeting? I hope you would; I presume you would.  Why would anyone pass up the chance to have a face to face meeting with the CEO of the Universe, the one we call Almighty God, the Father?  Jesus gets us that meeting.  Because of what Jesus did on the cross, we now have access to the Father, Almighty God, CEO of the Universe.

 

            In John 10 Jesus makes at least two audacious statements.  Once again Jesus uses the divine name and takes that name upon himself: “I AM the gate for the sheep” (John 10:7), and “I AM the gate” (John 10:9).  The divine name revealed to Moses through the burning bush becomes for Jesus a way to express his role in God’s economy, that through Jesus Christ we have access to God.  Jesus is the gate. But notice, here, the second audacious statement made by Jesus: he does not say that he is a gate but that he is the gate.  If one is to get to God, one must deal with Jesus.  Access to God comes no other way.

 

            The imagery to which Jesus refers is foreign to most western Christians, for we are not sheep keepers. In the ancient Middle East, however, Jesus’ image would have been understood fluently.  Let me unpack the image for us moderns.  There were two kinds of sheep pens in the ancient world, one for villages and one for open spaces. Village sheep pens were communal spaces in which sheep from several shepherds would spend the night.  In these sheep pens, there was only one door, which was closely guarded and under lock and key.  Anyone entering the sheep pen by other than the door was a thief or a robber (John 10:2).  Sheep pens in open spaces were found among caves and outcropping of rocks where a shepherd could find a measure of protection for his sheep.  The shepherd then would lay across the cave entrance so that the sheep could not get out, nor wolves get in, unless they dealt with the shepherd.  In essence, the shepherd became the door, the gate, for the sheep.

 

            Jesus’ word in the Greek of John 10:7 is thura, which can be translated as either door or gate. The imagery of a door or gate is rich in biblical context and helps us to understand what Jesus is saying.

 

·        In Exodus, God and Pharaoh are scuffling over God’s people, with God demanding, “Let my people go,” while Pharaoh remains hardened of heart. God finally sends a tenth plague upon Egypt: the angel of death will take the first born from every household. In Exodus 12:7, the Israelites are told to place blood upon the doorframes of their homes so that the angel of death will “pass over” that house and not inflict the tenth plague upon any Israelite home. The blood is to be placed upon the top of the door and upon each side, which one may notice makes the sign of the cross. The door of the Passover is the door that protects the people and becomes for them the passage to their freedom.

 

·        Further on in Exodus, God instructs the Israelites in the building of the Tabernacle, a large tent used for the worship of  I AM as they journey through the desert.  The most sacred place of the Tabernacle is called the Holy of Holies and is said to be that place where the shekinah glory of God is found.  The problem for the Israelites, though, is that no one can stand in the presence of God’s glory and live, for we are all broken vessels, incapable of the full glory of God; what, then, are the Israelites to do?  In Exodus 26:33, God instructs them to place a curtain between themselves and the Holy of Holies.  This curtain creates a barrier, a gate or door if you will, between the people and God, preventing the people from endangering themselves.

 

·        Skipping forward to the New Testament, the curtain between the people and God is no longer in a tent, the Tabernacle, but in the Temple of Jerusalem.  However, the architecture surrounding the Holy of Holies remains the same, and the curtain functions as a door to keep the people and God separate.  We learn in Matthew, however, that when Jesus died the Temple curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51). What we are to understand by this imagery is that Jesus’ death rent asunder that which kept us from God; the shekinah glory of God is no longer hid from view, for Jesus opened the door to God’s presence.

 

·        The Book of Hebrews takes this imagery of the Temple curtain and advances the metaphor a bit.  Hebrews shares Matthew’s sense that through Jesus we now have access to the direct presence of God (10:19), but Hebrews makes the bold claim that Jesus himself, through his broken body, is the Temple curtain (10:20). That is, Jesus’ work on the cross opens the door to God and so the writer to the Hebrews can exhort: “Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (10:22).  The door to God is open in Jesus Christ.

 

I know a guy who knows a guy.  Do you want to meet the CEO of the Universe?

 

*****

 

            The gifts of access to God are immeasurable but they are not innumerable.  I would like to highlight three of these gifts.

 

            The first gift of access to God is knowing that we belong. It is a great gift to know that one belongs somewhere, or, more importantly, to someone.

 

·        The first question of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”  The answer is given, “Our only comfort is that we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to ourselves but to our faithful savior, Jesus Christ….”

 

·        The glory of a wedding is found in the sacred moment when the couple offers their vows to one another. In that moment they are confessing to one another that they belong to each other, that, ideally, they will never be alone so long as they have one another.

 

·        My teenage children both started a new school this year, junior and senior high respectively.  I am not sure they were anxious about their new beginning, but I know I was anxious.  I know how important it is at their age to belong.  I am grateful that my daughter has found a place, a people, through the choir program and that my son has found a place, a community, through his soccer team.

 

Our belonging to God is not a matter of deserving but an act of grace.  That is, we do not belong because God has to love us but because God desires to love us.  As Paul told the Roman Christians: “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (Romans 5:1b-2).  Brennan Manning speaks eloquently of our belonging as a matter of grace in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel.  Writes Manning:[1]

 

[The gospel] is not for muscular Christians who have made John Wayne and not Jesus their hero.

[The gospel of Jesus] is not for academicians who would imprison Jesus in the ivory tower of exegesis.

It is not for noisy, feel-good folks who manipulate Christianity into a naked appeal to emotion.

It is not for hooded mystics who want magic in their religion.

It is not for Alleluia Christians who live only on the mountaintop and have never visited the valley of desolation.

It is not for the tearless and the fearless.

It is [certainly] not for red-hot zealots who boast with the rich young ruler of the gospels: “All these commandments I have kept from my youth.”

[The gospel] is for the sorely burdened who are still shifting the heavy suitcase from one hand to the other.

[The gospel of Jesus] is for the wobbly and weak-kneed who know they don’t have it altogether and are too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace, [although they need it more than they know].

It is for inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker.

It is for poor, weak, sinful folk with hereditary faults and limited talents.

It is for earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay.

It is for the bent and the bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God.

It is for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags.

 

            Do you want to know what access to God is like?  Access to God is like the college freshman who comes home for Christmas holiday.  She rings the front doorbell to her parents’ home.  No one answers immediately so she rings again.  Finally a woman answers the door and the college freshman says, “Hello, mother.”  Seeing her father in the background, she adds, “Hello, father.  I know I did not call beforehand to let you know of my arrival, but I was wondering if I could come in?”  That’s what belonging to God is like, right?  WRONG!  Belonging to God is the college student who swings open the door and shouts out, “Mom, Dad, I’m home!!!”

 

            Do you want to come home?  If you do, I know a guy who knows a guy.

 

*****

 

            The second gift of access to God is knowing we can call the CEO of the Universe.  Have you ever been in a business situation in which it was impossible to speak to the person from the other company?  I bet even Bill Gates experiences this frustration once in a while. We say to ourselves, “Come on, just pick up,” or, “If I wanted to talk to her secretary, I would have called him!”  But to no avail; the person we are trying to reach is too busy, too important, too whatever to take our call.  Not God.

 

            The access we have to God through Jesus Christ is called prayer. No matter who we are, we can talk to God anytime of day or night.  There are no roaming charges, no minute plans; in fact, with God we have unlimited “anytime minutes” on our call plan. 

 

Most Christians I have encountered fall into two broad categories: either they are prayer warriors and love to spend time talking with God, or they are frustrated by the practice of prayer.  I believe most people fall into the second category.  For most Christians, prayer is not only frustrating but the thought of it creates mild to severe guilt: “I know I should pray more, but….”  For the people who may feel guilt about their prayer life, I place most of the blame on their pastors.  Pastors have done a grave disservice to the faithful by our teaching about prayer.  We, pastors, tell people they ought to pray.  We model prayer as talking at God, usually asking God for things, even while suggesting, along with the Psalmist, that the faithful “be still and know the Lord is God” (Psalm 46:10).  Our teaching, in other words, is disparate and confusing.

 

Let me share with you the single best piece of wisdom ever spoken about prayer: pray as you can, not as you cannot.  I do not know who first spoke this wisdom but it is essential wisdom to heed if one is to enjoy a healthy, helpful prayer life. 

 

I am part of a pastors’ covenant group that meets once a quarter.  At our last meeting we discussed our devotional lives.  One of our group asked about meditative type of prayer styles such as centering prayer or lectio divina.  Of the seven pastors present, two of the seven liked this kind of praying; the other five expressed deep frustration about more meditative forms of prayer.  Two of the pastors said they prayed best when writing their prayers (i.e. when keeping a journal).  The other three pastors said the only time they could pray was when, respectively, they were walking, running or riding a bike. Prayer as you can, not as you cannot.

 

The other piece of wisdom I would pass along, since we have the CEO of the Universe’s ear, is that, regardless of how we pray, what we pray should express the fullness of relationship.  Too often is Christian prayer expressed as a laundry list of wants and wishes: “gimme, gimme, gimme.”  There is a psychological term for a relationship in which one person relates to another in such exclusively needy and manipulative ways, and the term is not “healthy.”  Rather, a healthy relationship expresses a variety of emotional, intellectual and spiritual states.

 

One tool for holding oneself accountable to express a full, rich relationship is the ACTS prayer.  ACTS stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. Through the ACTS prayer one is led to “present your requests to God” but to do so within the framework of a much healthier way of relating to God.  To be honest, however, I find the ACTS prayer to be difficult for many folks to remember: what does the “s” stand for again?  A rabbi I once heard has a better way of saying the same thing; I think of the rabbi’s way of explaining prayer as “Everything I Needed to Know About Prayer I Learned In Kindergarten.”  Here, according to the rabbi, is what we should pray: Please, Thank you, Oops and Wow!

 

Please and thank you are among the first things a child learns about relating to another, so it is with prayer. Please and thank you correspond, of course, to supplication and thanksgiving, and both are important.  If we have a need in our life, God wants us to share that need with him.  If another has a need, lift them up to the Lord.  If God answers a prayer, thank him.  If we encounter a friend that brings a smile to our face, thank him.

 

Oops is also among the first of life’s important lessons.  When we are at the dinner table and our elbow knocks over our glass of milk, what do we say?  We say, “Sorry!”  And what do our parents say, “That’s nice, now why don’t you go get a towel a clean up your mess.” So it is with God.  If I confess my sin against Jeff to God, God is pleased about my honesty.  And then God says to me, “Now go make it right with Jeff.” 

 

Finally, like a little child, we must never lose a sense of wonder.  On his death bed, the great rabbi Abraham Heschel confessed to his friend, “Sam, I never asked God for riches or fame.  I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.” The sense of majesty and mystery before the universe is a source of eternal wonder: the night stars, the purple mountains, the birth of a baby, the Red Sox winning the series.  Wow!

 

Do you want to be able to talk to the CEO of the Universe any time day or night?  If you do, I know a guy who knows a guy.

 

*****

 

The third gift of access to God is knowing we have someone watching over us.  In John 10:9 Jesus alludes to Psalm 121:8: “The Lord will watch over your going out and your coming in now and forevermore.”  Psalm 121 begins with the eloquent words: “I lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help?  My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.”  Western Christians misunderstand this verse because we think the psalmist is looking at the mountains, being filled with awe and wonder, and asking a rhetorical question.  That is what we would be feeling if we were looking up to the hills.  Unfortunately, we are not the psalmist.

 

When the psalmist, looked up to the hills, what did he see?  He saw an Asherah pole on one hill and a temple of Baal on another hill.  In other words, when the psalmist wrote Psalm 121, idolatry was rampant in Israel, and the signs of that idolatry dotted the hilltops.  Thus, the rhetorical question the psalmist is really asking is this, “When I lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help? Does it come from there or there or there?  No, my help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.” Jesus said there are some who seek to enter God’s pasture by means other than the front gate; Jesus called all such interlopers “thieves and robbers…who have come to kill and destroy” (John 10:1, 10).  Many commentators think Jesus might have been referring to those who would lead Israel into armed rebellion against the Gentile occupiers, as Jewish zealots attempted unsuccessfully in 4 A.D., 66 A.D. and 135 A. D. The commentators may be correct; however, by referencing Psalm 121:8 in relation to “thieves and robbers,” Jesus also is implicitly contrasting the Lord’s help to all false claimants to provide divine help.

As we lift our eyes to the hills of western culture, from whence comes our help?  For many folks, including many Christians, help is sought through materialism, entertainment and a variety of pseudo-psychological and philosophical ideologies. We trust our trust fund to provide for us.  In the words of Neil Postman, we entertain ourselves to death.  We seek “self-help” at the expense of God’s help.  Now, I am not opposed to materialism, entertainment or, for that matter, even an honest agnosticism; all have there place.  The Munroe family owns his and her cars, a minivan and a Civic; thus we are immersed in our material culture.  The Munroe family rents movies at Blockbuster, and even saw a nice Garrison Keillor flick last night; thus we are immersed in the culture of entertainment. I personally respect an honest agnostic who legitimately says, “I’m not sure,” for such an honest confession can be the first step of searching that becomes a journey into faith.  It is not because these lifestyles and ideologies are bad that I object to them, it is that they are limited, for they do not offer the help we really need and ultimately desire.

 

Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  Only Jesus, who watches over our going out and our coming in, knows what we really need.  Only Jesus, who sees us when we come home beaten and bedraggled from our day’s work, knows what we ultimately desire.  Only Jesus, who lays across the opening of the sheep pen and hears us toss and turn in our sleep, knows how to lead us into life abundant and life eternal, for, you see, Jesus has one thing all the “isms” and ideologies lack: the burning passion for our ultimate good. Only Jesus can help us become the person we were created to be and move…

 

…from being self-centered

…to being God-centered,

…from searching desperately to justify ourselves

…to finding the freedom to receive God’s gift of justification: grace,

…from finding the serving of others to be utter drudgery

…to discovering obedience to God is pure joy.

 

            Do you want to know someone is watching over you, closer than your own breath, ever more ready to hear than you are to pray?  If you do, I know a guy who knows a guy.

 

*****

 

I never took that trip to D.C. I was too involved in sports and lacked the focus to stick with the history club.  But there is a trip I am literally dying to take.  Literally, dying.  Oh, I hope it’s not soon; hopefully I’ll leave on this trip in a matter of decades not months or years. But we will all take this trip.  And when we shuffle off this mortal coil, we will travel into eternity.  There we will look beyond the veil, and the question will not be what have we done in this life but who do we know for eternal life.

 

As for me, I know a guy who knows a guy.  Would you like to meet him, too?

 

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