The Gateway to Abundant Life

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, April 30, 2023
John 10:1-10

    Have you ever visited a church and didn’t know how to get in?  Truthfully, I notice this about our own church; if someone comes during the week, they aren’t sure if they should go to the school entrance off of the parking lot, or the office, or to the main church doors.  Our signage could be better.  For security purposes in this day and age, we keep our doors locked.  Sometimes we go to the extreme so that people can’t get in when we want them to!  I was visiting a church after their Sunday morning worship service for a special meeting, and it was not even 15 minutes after the worship service had ended, and yet every single door was locked, including the main church doors.  I walked around the entire building trying every door before I found a doorbell and someone let me in.  When I have these experiences, I think about how if I as a pastor don’t know how to get into a church or feel uncomfortable trying, what is the experience of others?  In our safety-conscious age, how can we take appropriate security measures while still being hospitable and welcoming?  How do we heed Jesus’ words to allow people to “come in and go out and find pasture” in the loving arms of Christ, our Good Shepherd?  We need to remember that WE can be the way people come to know more about Jesus and see the kind of abundant life Jesus offers!  It is so important to be open.
    When I came to this church four years ago, we started a rebranding effort with a logo that has open doors with a gold cross at the center.  Our newsletter is titled, “Faith Opens Doors.”  Together, we have worked and struggled as a church to strategize how our building can be open to different community groups, how we can offer programming for people of all ages, to be about our mission, (to preach, teach and share God’s love in Christ) with open doors figuratively, if they can’t always be literally open.  Faith opens doors!  Jesus opens a way of life to us that is transformative, healing, life-changing.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, where we expect to hear Jesus describing himself as our Good Shepherd, but he uses an additional metaphor in John’s gospel passage this morning saying, “I am the gate.”  You might already know that Jesus uses seven “I am,” statements in John.  This phrase, “I am,” is connected to Jesus’ claim that he is the Messiah, God himself, in Hebrew, “Yahweh,” which means, “I am,” as the most sacred name for God.  Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.  I am the light of the world.  I am the vine.  I am the resurrection and the life.  I am the way, the truth and the life (which we will hear next week).  And here today in John chapter 10, we have two “I am” statements of Jesus, “I am the good shepherd,” and “I am the gate.”  Every Good Shepherd Sunday, I struggle somewhat to help people today understand what Jesus means when he calls himself the good shepherd.  In biblical times, people knew shepherds and what they did.  It is a common description of the Lord in the Old Testament as well.  Jesus makes connections with ordinary things that people would be familiar with throughout the gospels.  But how many of us today have interacted with a shepherd recently, if ever in our lives?  Gates, on the other hand, we understand and use, some of us, daily. Perhaps we can relate more easily to Jesus’ description of himself as a gate, by which we enter into abundant, eternal life.
    So let’s think about it.  If a fence does not have a gate, there is no way to get in, unless you are nimble enough to hop over or climb the fence.  The gate provides an opening – a way for people to come in and go out, as Jesus describes in the gospel for today.  Unlike the many confusing and locked doors of church buildings, I imagine Jesus the gate is pretty easy to find and enter.  Jesus describes himself as this opening, as a gateway to salvation and life everlasting.  As we seek to follow Jesus on a journey of faith, we literally walk in and out of the doors of a church to find a supportive, loving faith community.  We gather to worship together, to experience the life of Christ with one another, and then we are sent out to serve and to invite others to enter into this same way of Christ, this way of abundant life.  In fact, Jesus really shares with us his mission as both the gate and the good shepherd this morning: “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”  What a beautiful image for us to be encouraged by and hold onto, that Jesus our gate opens us up to a way of life that is abundantly lifegiving.  This is why Jesus came!  This is why he died and was raised for us.  We want to share God’s love in Christ because we want others to know this lifegiving, abundant Way.  Following Christ is not supposed to be some secret passageway with a combination lock that only some people know the key.  Rather, like signposts on the road or along the fence, we can show people the way to Jesus the gate.
    Of course, gates attached to fences also help keep the unwanted out.  Jesus promises protection and safety for his sheep.  We know well that in this world we are surrounded by forces that only want to steal, kill, and destroy.  Later on in John 10, Jesus says he will lay down his life for his sheep – for us.  I am told that in some places in the world like the Holy Land where there are still shepherds today, shepherds have a practice of sleeping in front of the sheep pen at night.  They guard the gate with their bodies so that no predators can come in to harm the sheep at night.  In a sense, Jesus is saying that as people of his flock, as followers of Jesus who have this amazing, precious gift of abundant life, nothing including death itself can truly harm us, “over my dead body.”  Because on the cross, Jesus lays his life down for us and is raised so that people might enter the gate of eternal life over his dead body.  Wow.  Jesus the gate, Jesus the Good Shepherd lays himself down so that sin, death and the devil cannot get past him to harm his sheep.  Jesus dies so that we might have life.  And by sharing his life with us, we are invited into a way of life abundant.  This is what Easter is all about, right?!
    Faith opens doors when we follow Jesus the gateway to life abundant.  How do we join Jesus in his mission to share his abundant life?  It could be as simple as helping people find the right door to come worship with us on a Sunday morning, inviting them to worship or letting people know your door is open, or your cell phone on, for a listening ear if they are struggling.  When people tell you they feel out of touch with their faith, or haven’t been to church in a long time, or have a lot of questions, we don’t need to pretend to have all of the answers, but we can tell them about what we’ve learned in following Jesus the way, the truth and the life and promise we’ll be there for them in their seeking.  Looking to Jesus our Gate and Good Shepherd allows us to focus less on who we need to keep out, being bogged down by the worries of the world, and more on how we are bringing people in to share the joy of abundant life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  May we continue to listen to his voice, follow in his way, and join him in his mission of sharing life abundant.  Amen.