Temporary Shelter

Easter 4A: John 10:1-10

If anyone were to come to Anna’s and my house and walk around the property, they would likely be struck by the number of fences we’ve erected in our yard—fences around the front flower bed, around the hydrangea hedge, around the raspberry and blueberry patch, around our vegetable gardens, and several layers of fencing around our bird yard, where the chickens and ducks live. And these aren’t squat little fences, mind you—they’re four feet tall in most cases, but around the coop, the fence is taller than I am with a layer of netting overhead.

Looking at all these fences, you might think that we are a little obsessive, perhaps paranoid. Or you might suspect that we have some real problems with our animal neighbors. I assure you it is the latter. Deer mostly, who would eat all of our plants down to nubs, but also groundhogs and rabbits and squirrels, as well as owls, eagles, and hawks who would love to make a chicken dinner out of our birds.

That’s why we have so many fences—to keep out animals we don’t want getting in. Other fences, like the ones you see along the roads throughout central Virginia, exist to keep things in—cows, goats, dogs, horses. In both cases, fences exist to keep something away from something else you don’t want meeting—livestock and automobiles, vicious dogs and heedless children. That’s the main purpose of fences.

I read a gardening book years ago, though, that suggested another purpose that fences can have. Fences, it said, can also signify a place of transition, marking off one section of a garden from another. Think, say, of a hedge or row of trees in a formal garden and how it can help distinguish one part of a garden from another part, indicating the boundary of one area and the beginning of another. These fences don’t exist to keep people out as much as to mark a passage from one space to another. You pass through such a fence and leave one place and enter another where you weren’t before.

That’s a little abstract and esoteric, I know, but thinking of the different purposes fences serve can help us to better understand the gospel lesson before us today. In today’s reading from John, Jesus is speaking to his disciples about fences, specifically the kind that you keep sheep in, a “sheepfold.” He says that those who are thieves and bandits try to “hop the fence,” but the shepherd comes in the right way, through the gate, and the sheep know him, know his voice, and they follow him.

Now, the way John tells it, Jesus just starts talking about this out of the blue, as if he expects the disciples to know immediately what he’s talking about. But judging by the disciples’ blank stares, they obviously don’t. So he tries again: “Ok, let me put it this way, I am the gate for the sheep. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find good pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

I don’t know if Jesus’ second attempt to get his point across to the disciples was any more successful than the first, if his “explanation” was in any way a clarification or just a further muddling. But the gist, we gather, is that we Christians are part Jesus’ “flock,” and Jesus protects us and cares for us. And we should be on alert for “strangers” and “thieves,” because they will lure us away from the protection and providence of the Shepherd. We might also get from it a more subtle but still urgent warning: make sure to get inside the fold and stay there, so that the predators won’t get you.

Some people are, understandably, uncomfortable with this fencing imagery, with this talk of who’s in and who’s outside of it. It strikes them as exclusive not inclusive, unfriendly and unwelcoming. And to be sure, at certain times in history, Christians have used this passage and others like it to alienate and even demonize those outside the Church. But to understand this passage in that way is to misunderstand Jesus and to misunderstand how fences work.

Fences, as I said, keep some things out and other things in. A fence is not some unbreachable barrier, though. In order for a fence to be a fence and not wall, there has to be a break in the fence, a gate, a door, a way into and out of the enclosure. Such a gate may stay perpetually open, closing only for a short time, when something needs to be kept inside, like the door to my chicken coop, which is closed at night. Or the gate might stay closed, only opening for a few seconds to let in something that needs to be protected. But whether it stays open or closed, the gate is an essential part of a fence.

And just as a fence or wall is designed to fit a certain need, so should the door by which one enters it. That is to say, a gate or a door should fit not only the physical opening in the wall, but also fit the lives who use it.

“The most important part of a church is the front door.” So declared a distinguished church architect in my hearing. I thought she was going to say the sanctuary, the baptistery, the altar, or the fellowship hall, maybe even the pulpit. No, what she said was the most important part of a church is the front door. The front door, she explained, is the first thing about a church that newcomers encounter.

A banker once told me that, when banks changed their front doors, it was a signal of a fundamental shift in the business of banking. In the early days of the last century, he said, banks were built to look like impregnable fortresses. Their front doors tended to be hard wood reinforced with bronze—thick, impenetrable, solid, secure—all things that people wanted to believe about a bank. You put your money in here, they promised, and they will make sure that nobody can get to it but you. Then, in the mid-twentieth century, banks became more “user friendly.” Banks attempted to attract customers, to put a warm and friendly face on banking. Gone were the big, thick, heavy wood and bronze doors. In their place were glass doors that allow you to look into the bank and see activity going on in there. You felt welcomed. The bank became accessible. In either form, the bank door conveyed the kind of life that went on inside it.

In today’ passage from John, Jesus describes himself not as the gatekeeper, but as the gate itself, the door to the sheepfold. What kind of life then does this gate suggest goes on inside? Well, what kind of gate is Jesus? For that matter, how can a person be a gate? We can imagine Jesus as a shepherd or as a gatekeeper, but a gate? It seems a little too abstract, too metaphorical to be useful, let alone inspiring.

But Jesus as the Good Shepherd and Jesus as the gate are really not different at all. You see, often during dry seasons, sheep and shepherds looking for uneaten grass have to range far and then stay out overnight. In which case, sheep are kept in round enclosures shepherds have made from uncut field stones and hedges. These freestanding stone structures are rough but tough. The only vulnerable spot, once the sheep are inside, is across the entrance.

Some years ago, in a commentary I read, a Bible scholar explained how he was talking to an Arab shepherd. He was not a Christian and didn’t know the Bible. But he was a keeper of sheep and so was showing off his flock as well as the pen where his sheep slept every night.

“And when they go in there,” the shepherd said proudly, “they are perfectly safe.”

But the scholar noticed something. “Your sheep sleep in that pen and yet I just noticed that the pen does not have a gate on it.”

“Yes, that’s right,” the shepherd replied, “I am the gate.”

“What do you mean?”

“After my sheep are in the pen, I lay my body across the opening. No sheep will step over me and no wolf can get in without getting past me first. I am the gate.”

“I am the gate.” That’s just what Jesus said. He is the gate, the one who protects the vulnerable sheep in the pen from the predators who would kill and consume them. He puts himself between two things that shouldn’t meet the flock on the inside and the evil that seeks to destroy them, us.

Even understanding the practice of Middle Eastern shepherds, we have to admit a shepherd makes for a rather funny gate. For usually gates are permanent, immovable, attached to the fence. But a shepherd as a gate is able to get up and move about. This is, we recognize, essential for the purpose of this gate, to fit the kind of life that it protects. You see, the sheepfold that shepherd guards is necessary for protection and security, but that is not where the sheep live. It’s temporary shelter. They can’t stay there if they want to survive. There’s no food there, no water there, no life there. As the gate, Jesus protects the sheep inside but, as the shepherd, he also leads them out to where they can find nourishment, plentiful grass and water, “abundant life.”

What this suggests is that being in Jesus’ flock doesn’t mean we can huddle in the sheep pen. The church enables us to gather in a safe, protected space in order to worship, to study, and to strengthen one another. But as much as we might like to stay here, safe in the confines of the Christian community, in our Christian enclaves, we are not meant to hide behind these walls. Just as sheep leave the safety of the sheepfold during the day to pasture in the field, our life is in the world, in the sometimes hostile, frequently tempting, always conflictual world.

Jesus knows this. He knows the cold cruelty of this life. When Jesus looked at the Judean countryside, while he may have seen sheep and green pastures, he also saw the hunger, disease, and oppression. He knew from experience what it is like to be misunderstood, falsely accused, betrayed by a loved one, abandoned by those he called friends and ultimately killed. He knew how ugly this world can be.

So Jesus clearly did not mean to suggest that as his followers, we are guaranteed perpetual health and constant comfort. When he talks about having life and having it abundantly, what he is promising is not freedom from hardship, but rather relief and renewal and refreshment, amidst all the hardships of this life.

This is an even more amazing, this promise of “abundant life,” than that of protection in the sheepfold. Jesus promises us, in the midst of this harsh, sometimes dreary and painful life, the chance to not simply survive, but to thrive, to not just exist, but to increase, to flourish. For the “abundance” he speaks of has nothing to do with having “more”—more stuff, more power, more influence—but about having enough, being so caught up in relationship with Christ that we are freed from want or envy, the sense of not having enough, because our present lives are so full, filled with love and joy and peace, because we recognize God has given us everything we need. Such a perspective—and really that is what it is at base—this life of abundance, is not something we have to wait to have “in heaven,” after we die. Jesus offers this fullness of life, this sense of having enough, here, now.

And because Jesus was resurrected, because he came back to us, because he has revealed himself in Scripture and the sacraments, we can trust that he will lead us to this life of abundance. This is no pious platitude. It is rather an invitation to know Jesus as our shepherd, to trust in him, to listen to his voice, to follow him through the challenges and hardships to a better place, a greener pasture. Jesus will never leave us. He goes ahead of us, watches out for us, provides for us, and brings us to such fullness that it overflows this life and spills over into the life to come. He does this, because He is our shepherd and we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Thanks be to God!