I need to confess a bias: I am not a fan of gated communities. I say this as someone who has lived in one. For two years of my adult life, I could neither leave my neighborhood nor return home without passing through a very large set of gates, waiting as they slowly swung open. This was in a part of the country where gated communities are common; where cozy, suburban neighborhoods are all surrounded by walls. A friend of mine, who lived in a neighboring gated community, once remarked that they don’t keep bad people out, they just close good people in. I’d have to agree. The assumption of such communities is that there are people who must be kept out, an assumption that is rooted in fear. They show the symptoms of a wider social disease: the failure to bring about justice for all, to produce a society in which the fear of our neighbor becomes unnecessary. If I need a gate to feel safe in my neighborhood, there is a much deeper problem that needs to be solved, and it won’t be solved by more gates or higher walls.

So in today’s Gospel, when Jesus proclaims that he is the gate, what exactly does he mean? On its face, the picture of Jesus as a gate sounds fear-based and exclusionary. We know what religious gatekeepers are like, who so often turn us away from the faith we are seeking. How are we to hear Jesus’ words? Like the disciples, who “did not understand what Jesus was saying to them,” we may be inclined to shrink away from thinking about Jesus in this way.

If the word gate is too much of a stumbling block, perhaps we should think of it less as a gate for keeping out than a doorway for passing through. Think about it like a door—which is how the King James Version of the Bible translates this passage. I am the door. Doors are the means by which we pass through rooms, structures, vehicles. Without doors for our cars, most of us would be very unhappy. Without a door to the sheepfold, most sheep would be in danger. A door to the sheepfold keeps the sheep in when it is dangerous for them to be out, and allows the sheep to go out when they need to graze. A door may restrict access, but it can also grant freedom.

As the gate—the door—Jesus defines the movement of the Christian life. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus opens the door to life with God, because Jesus is God. Jesus is at once the means and the end, the doorway and the destination. Christians cannot do an end-run around Jesus, because we are ruled by his life and his words. As Christians, we cannot hate our neighbor and then say that Jesus is the door. We cannot do them harm or speak evil against them in one moment, while saying that Jesus is the way in the next. To do so is to be like the thief or bandit, who doesn’t enter through the gate but climbs in another way.

For Christians, there is only one way. The sheep know the voice of the shepherd. Can we hear the voice of Jesus, and walk in his way, rather than whatever way seems best to us?

Jesus sets the parameters of our lives as Christians. And his doorway is the way of life. As he says in the Gospel:

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Abundant life can never happen through unfettered freedom, like sheep roaming day and night without a shepherd. That would be the way of death. This is an important word for us to remember in a time such as this, when many are growing weary of the need to restrict our distance from each other and remain in our domestic sheepfolds, as it were.

Freedom without limits is never really free. In the verses that follow the ones we heard today, Jesus says this:

I lay down my life for the sheep.

Of course he does—he is the good shepherd. And as we pattern our own lives after his, we know that we are called to lay down our lives for others as well. As Christians, we can heed this call by remaining distant from one another for a time, so that others can live. We do this because we have heard his voice, and passed through his gate, and walked in his way, which is the way of perfect freedom.

Let us listen to the voice of our Good Shepherd always, so that we may hear him who calls us each by name. Who dwells with us, who knows us, each and every one. Who gives us rest in green pastures, and leads us beside still waters, and restores our soul. Who came that we would have life, and have it abundantly.

Let us follow where he leads, to the glory of his Name. Amen.

Sermon on May 3, 2020: Easter 4