The Gate: "Jesus is Lord!"

4^th Sunday of Easter: Acts 2.14, 36-41; 1 Peter 2.20-25; John 10.1-10
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the
Incarnation

[Hahaha...someone thought it would be funny to rearrange the pages of my homily on the ambo while I wasn't looking...if you listen to the podcast you will hear me fumbling to get things right...if I find out who...]

On the ideal ranch in an ideal world, the ideal shepherd leads his ideal sheep and ideally they follow him. For some, this is the ideal model for the ideal Church. Shepherds lead. Sheep follow. On the real ranch, however, real shepherds do not so much lead their real sheep as they stand behind them and drive them forward using fierce little dogs and a real big stick. Sheep, being enormously stupid and easily controlled, respond well to the shepherd’s staff and even better to the sharp teeth and quick barks of the fierce little dog. For some, this is the ideal model for the ideal Church: stupid sheep driven forward by a shepherd, his staff, and a fiercely obedient little dog. Fortunately, for us, our Lord has something else in mind when he uses the Shepherd/Sheep Gate metaphor to teach the Pharisees about who and what he is for them. We do not follow Jesus b/c we are stupid and easily controlled. Nor do we follow Jesus because he has the use of a heavy staff and a fierce little dog. We follow because we hear and recognize his voice as he calls us by name to join his flock. We also hear the “voice of strangers” calling us away from the flock, but we do not follow them because we not recognize the voices of these robbers and thieves. How do you know that it is the voice of the Shepherd you are hearing, inviting you to enter through the sheep gate?

Peter and the Eleven are preaching Christ in Jerusalem. Without apology, without any hesitation or worry, without any fear of offending or alienating anyone, the Eleven stand with Peter as he proclaims, “Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God had made both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom your crucified.” Simple, straightforward, hard-to-hear truth. Jesus is the Lord and the Christ by the grace of God, and you, the Jewish leaders, executed him on a Roman cross. That uncomplicated, unadorned declaration of the truth hits them hard, “Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart…” Cut to the heart! Peter’s words carry the Word to the center of their very being, that place where the Holy Spirit abides, and his words ring them like a bell. And while they are still ringing with the Word, they obediently ask, “What are we to do, my brothers?” Peter tells them what they are to do; they do it, and “about three thousand persons were added that day.”

The apostle Peter, in his letter to the exiled elect of the Church, writes, “[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” The Jewish leaders heard Peter speak the Word in his words and thousand joined the Way. These thousand, now, later, spread across the known world, continue to hear the Word, the truth of their salvation in the one time sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and hearing again the truth spoken and reading the Word written, they abide with Christ the Shepherd. How do these exiled followers of the Way abide with Christ despite their suffering? Peter writes, “…to this [suffering] you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps.” Hear his voice. Recognize his Word. Follow the Shepherd and Guardian of your soul. And by his wounds you are healed.

But how do you know that it is the voice of the Shepherd you are hearing, inviting you to enter through the sheep gate? Jesus says to the Pharisees, “…I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved…A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” You know you are hearing the voice of the Shepherd when you hear one message, the message Peter declared to the Jewish leaders: Jesus is the Lord and the Christ, the gift of sacrifice for us, the one we crucified with our sins, the one, the Only One, who suffered and died for us. Peter supplemented this simple, straightforward truth “with many other arguments,” but the force, the power, the fire of his first exhortation—Jesus is the Christ!—cut them to the heart.

The single most dangerous predator for sheep is the wolf. The wolf skulks around the edges of the flock, looking for an opportunity to strike, waiting patiently for just one lost sheep to kill and carry off for supper. The shepherd and his co-workers recognize a wolf immediately and work hard to drive it away. For the rest of us, Christ’s all-too-human sheep, we sometimes fail to recognize the stink of the wolf, fail to see his shabby fur and hungry eyes, thinking instead perhaps that this oddly colored sheep, this strangely hungry lamb, is one of us. If we listen, we might hear the sheep-shaped wolf whisper to us that the Shepherd is really just a man, just like one of us, frail and fallible, subject to temptation and sin. We might hear the sheep-shaped wolf say that our home with the Shepherd is really somewhere over there, over the hill, next to the more attractive, greener pasture. We might hear the wolf tells us that our flock is dull, hind-bound, exclusive, too structured and too authoritarian, too rigidly dogmatic for free-thinking sheep like ourselves. Or that we are indeed just sheep, stupid followers, easily controlled. The wolf will tempt us to see the Shepherd and his flock as unable and unwilling to meet our need for liberty and personal development. And as we listen, the wolf will lick his hungry lips and wait.

All extended metaphors aside. . .we all know that there are many voices out there competing for our attention, jockeying for our money, our time, our talent. We know that there are those inside and outside the Church who would love to see us boldly “stand up to” the teachings of the Body of Christ, challenge the truth of the faith, and walk away believing that we do not belong among the elect. But as the Body of Christ, his pilgrim people and servant-sheep, we cannot ask for a more explicit, more direct revelation than the one we have in this morning’s/evening’s gospel: “Jesus said again…I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved…” As vowed and baptized priests and prophets of the Gospel, we hear and recognize the truth of Peter’s words: Jesus is the Christ! There is no other way, no other Shepherd, no other gate.

As intelligent men and women, faithful Christians we give a hearing to the philosophers, the scientists, the novelists and poets; we listen to our political and financial leaders; we respect Caesar in his empire and strive to obey his laws. But our hearts are cut by the Word, not by argument or laboratory experimentation; not by a good novel or poem; not by a stump speech or Wall Street report; nor do we allow Caesar to sit on the throne of our souls and rule us out of his need for authority and power. We belong to Christ—body, soul, heart and mind. We will not follow a stranger. We will not recognize as Christ any other Shepherd, any other Gate. So, how do you know that it is the voice of the Shepherd you are hearing, inviting you to enter the through sheep gate? Is the voice saying to you, “Jesus is the Christ”? Yes? Then listen. If the voice is saying anything else, anything but: start bleating for your life, and wait for the Shepherd and his faithful flock to come find you! Listen and remember: “I am the gate…A thief comes to steal and destroy and slaughter; I come so that [you] might have life and have it more abundantly.”