[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]John 10:1-10
I saw video clips of a world-famous talk show host this past week. Her initials are Oprah Winfrey. In these clips, Winfrey, who seems like a nice person, was holding forth on spiritual issues. She said, for example, that sin doesn’t exist. She also claimed, several times in several ways, that all religions and spiritual quests may lead people to God. Is that true?
Well, not according to Jesus. And in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses two illustrations to point us to Who He is and to the relationship with God that you and I…and every person on the planet…can have through Him. But only through Him. Jesus calls Himself a shepherd and a gate. More on that in a moment.
First though, we must establish the context for these illustrations. How is it that Jesus came to speak the words we find in John 10:1-10?
It all started when Jesus gave sight to a blind man in John 9. It aroused controversy because Jesus had the temerity to do the loving will of God on a Sabbath day. The Pharisees accused Jesus of doing work when He shouldn’t have. It made them so angry when the blind man declared that Jesus, in spite of this Sabbath violation, must be from God. It made them so mad, in fact, that they excommunicated the guy.
Now, at one level, the Pharisees were nothing like Oprah Winfrey. Unlike Oprah, who seems to say that any religious belief will get you to God, the Pharisees believed that only by abiding by their extensive lists of religious rules could one be right with God. They differed in other ways as well. But, based on both the Old and New Testaments, both Winfrey and the Pharisees have one big thing in common. They are equally wrong.
Over the centuries, starting with a desert people to whom God gave a land and a promise that they would become a light to all the nations, through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of a Man Who showed Himself to be God in the flesh, God has revealed Himself and His plan for the human race.
From the beginning, the plan for a right relationship with God and for a life with Him that lasts forever has been the same. We are simply to believe in Him and only in Him.
Genesis says that Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, believed in God and God’s promises and that God “reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was right with God through belief in God.
Now, the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, God has revealed Himself in Jesus. All who turn from sin and believe in Him have the same blessings enjoyed by Abraham, rightness with God and life in His Name.
It isn’t because God is an egomaniac or because God wants to establish an exclusive club that the first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods.” It’s that God wants to give us life and only He can give it. All other roads are dead ends, literally.
In the words of our lesson for today, Jesus is trying to convey this truth to the Pharisees and others who may be listening to Him, the truth that salvation comes to those with faith in the God revealed to Israel and ultimately, in Him.
So, first He tells them that He is the shepherd. Only Jesus can lead us into God’s sheepfold. People who try to get into the kingdom of God by other means are, Jesus says, thieves and bandits. He says:
The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.Sheep are pretty dumb creatures, I’m told. But if a stranger comes among them, they will en masse, move away, alarmed. Once a person familiar to them shows up, they relax, knowing that this person won’t lead them astray. They respond to the voice of the shepherd who takes care of them.
We may be brighter than sheep. But it's not that different for us.
Have you ever noticed how you can hear the voice of someone with whom you’re close even in a crowded, noisy place? Both of our kids were in a 100-plus-voice choir in high school. I can remember when we accompanied the kids on a concert tour in England. I particularly remember listening to them during a performance in the Milennium Dome in London. Like all parents, Ann and I found that if we perked our ears just right, we could hear both of our children’s voices in the midst of the others. You can dial into the voices of those you love and those you know love you.
When you allow the God we know in Jesus Christ to communicate with you through His Word, the Bible, through prayer, through the fellowship of other believers, and through Holy Communion, you begin to know His voice. You go to Him when He calls you. And when other voices call you to walk away from God’s will, you ignore them.
Jesus, our Gospel lesson tells us, called Himself the shepherd of God’s sheep. But his listeners “did not understand what He was saying to them.”
So, like many a frustrated communicator, Jesus tried another illustration to make His point. Now, He wasn’t a shepherd. “Very truly,” He says, “I am the gate for the sheep…Whoever enters by Me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief [which can include perfectly nice people who follow some other path in life, like Oprah] comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Jesus is the gate to eternity. Years ago, Ann and I went to a Halloween costume party. She went as a man, coat and tie and Mascara beard. It was the era of the first Battlestar Gallactica the sci-fi series on TV. So, I went as some interplanetary character, my costume composed of a Hefty bag around my torso, cinctured at the waist by a wide cloth belt, and…I hate to admit it…leotards. Leotards!
Now, if you made a list of the worst time for us to forget our house keys, this particular night would have been it. But, of course, we did lose our house keys and when we got home, struggled to find a way to get into the place.
Picture this, folks: Ann is in drag and I’m in leotards. Leotards! We began working our way around the first floor of the place, trying every window. Finally, on one side of the house, I stretched up and could tell that one of the dining room windows, which set about 7-feet off the ground, was slightly ajar. If I could hoist myself up, I might be able to slide the window open, throw myself into the house, and let Ann in.
The previous occupants had left behind half of an old pickle barrel they'd used as a planter. It wasn’t very big. But by standing on it and letting Ann push me from behind, I was able to throw myself through the window. I was halfway into the house, my hosed-legs still hanging outside, Ann no longer able to help me, when a thought crossed my mind: How would I explain this to a passing cop? You see, if you belong somewhere, you don’t have to break in. You go through the front door.
Some people think that getting to God happens as the result of a long spiritual quest. The Christian life does have its challenges. Belonging to Jesus doesn’t insulate us from the difficulties of this life, for example. And sometimes, as our second lesson for today points out, we face rejection precisely because we follow Jesus.
But we know too, that Jesus is the front door, the only door—the only gate—to life with God, to the abundant, everlasting life that God wants to give to all people. The real quest of the Christian life is to get to know God, which isn’t an onerous task, but a joy as wonderful as falling in love.
That’s why I hope that every member of Saint Matthew will not only regularly worship and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, but also get involved in a Bible study, whether in Sunday School or the next offering of the Witnesses for Christ class or the WELCA group. I also hope that we’ll all make prayer a daily priority and that you’ll choose to participate in the upcoming Pentecost Prayer Vigil, when we’ll invite Jesus to enter even more deeply into our life as a church.
Jesus once told Thomas and the other disciples, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you will know the Father also…”
After mouthing the famous words of John 3:16, He told Nicodemus, “…God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Those who believe in Him [that is, in Jesus] are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.”
And after Jesus became the only Savior in the history of the world to die and rise so that all who believe in Him will not suffer the consequences of our sin, eternal separation from God, His first followers proclaimed the same message about Jesus. When the religious authorities in Jerusalem arrested the apostles Peter and John for bringing healing to a man in Jesus’ Name, the two disciples told them, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”
Jesus is the good shepherd and He is the gate—the front door—to eternity. Let yourself get to know Him better. As you do, you’ll hear His voice over the din of an often confusing world and He will lead you to a life prepared for you, a life that never ends, a life filled with the presence of God.
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