Jarrett McLaughlin
“I AM, So You Can: The Gate”
March 9, 2025
John 10:1-10
Cold Open:
If you were here last week, you were treated to a truly magnificent worship service in which our choir offered an exquisite Gospel message through music. There were selections from Handel’s Messiah as well as a more contemporary piece that Liam Drake, our youth piano prodigy, called “cinematic.” Then the choir came out into the aisles and offered a moving Benediction in surround sound.
As soon as the service concluded, the first thing I said in my head was “Wow – God is good.”
The second thing I said was “…how in the world am I supposed to follow THAT!”
Seven days later I do not have a good answer, but in desperation I hope to distract you with what I know you consider to be one of my more endearing tropes as a preacher – interactive trivia games.
This one definitely plays to the more literary among you, but I bet we can get there together.
I’m going to say the name of a character in a book – books that many people will know or at least heard of – all you have to do is say the name of that book. Holler them out when you know them. Deal?
We’ll start with some bonafide classics:
Boo Radley – To Kill a Mockingbird
Hester Prynne – The Scarlet Letter
Quasimodo – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Now a little bit more challenging:
Lennie Small – Of Mice and Men
Joe Christmas – Light in August
Carrie White – Carrie, as in Stephen King’s Carrie
Kya (Ky-uh) Clark – Where the Crawdads Sing
Let me throw a couple out there for the kids –
Luna Lovegood – Harry Potter
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III – How to Train Your Dragon (I really just wanted to say that name)
Thank you for playing – but one more question.
Do you know what all of these characters have in common?
Every one of them is an outcast – a castaway – a reject – a pariah.
Today we pick up our sermon series again, “I Am, so You Can.” It’s an examination of Jesus’ seven “I am…” statements in the Gospel of John. So far we have covered “I am the light of the world” and “I am the good shepherd.” Today, we come to the one that is seldom quoted:
“I am the gate” from John chapter 10, verses 1-10.
Scripture:
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 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.”
Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
This is the Word of the Lord
THANKS BE TO GOD.
Sermon:
One thing they teach you in seminary is that Gospels don’t just tell you about Jesus.
They also tell you about the community in which that Gospel took shape.
It makes sense when you think about it.
These early Christian communities, separated by geography and time, would not be the same so why would the books they wrote about Jesus be the same? Encoded within each account of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection – the curious student can discover clues about what that community was experiencing or what values they held most sacred.
I’ve often described John as the Australia of the Gospels – it detached decisively from the other three Gospels, went off on its own and now has some really weird animals.
By that I mean John is certainly the outlier of the Gospels.
Matthew, Mark and Luke eat lunch at the same table in the cafeteria, but John is off in the corner doing his own thing.
For starters, there’s a lot of dualism in John – a lot of binary thinking.
There’s Jesus vs. the World.
Children of Light vs. Children of darkness.
Those who follow the truth vs. those who listen to liars.
That dualistic thinking is in our text today – there are the thieves and bandits who came before and there is Jesus, the true shepherd.
Even if we don’t live in an agrarian community; even if we don’t deal with livestock on a regular basis, there’s something about Jesus the Shepherd that is deeply comforting and relatable. Perhaps it’s fueled by paintings of Jesus with a lamb slung over his shoulder, bringing the lost back into the fold.
But he also has this odd saying that I would wager has inspired NO paintings – “I am the gate for the sheep.”
So wait, Jesus – you’re the Shepherd who leads the sheep, but you’re also the gate those same sheep walk through? The metaphors are enough to make your head spin.
What in the world does it mean for Jesus – to be a door?
My parents were over for dinner this week and as we sat at the table eating tacos the conversation turned to when my daughters were little. “What were our first words?” they asked us.
My Dad looked at Naomi and said “I bet it wasn’t your first word but I remember one time you were at our house and you had a whole lot of sounds coming out of your mouth but I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it…until you said ‘ousside, ousside’ and pointed at the door.”
“Oooooh, you want to go out-side.”
And they spent the afternoon going out the door and closing it and then opening it and coming back in. When you’re 20 months old I guess a door is all the entertainment you need.
I thought about the two of them going in and out through that doorway. What is a doorway if not a passage that separates outside from inside, right?
When you walked up to the Church this morning you were outside.
You opened a door and came through it and then you were inside.
Here at UPC there are other ways we endeavor to make you feel welcome – like you are inside – and I have to give a shout-out to our Ushers who welcome you with a smile and hand you a bulletin.
(11:00 – A special shout-out to Bob Johnson who is back after an injury kept him away for so long). It’s important that people feel welcome – like they are on the inside of a community.
I began this sermon saying that Gospels don’t just tell us about Jesus.
They also tell us about the communities that gave us that Gospel.
A major hypothesis about the Gospel of John is that it was written right after the community who created it had been expelled from the Synagogue.
I should probably explain.
The earliest Christians were Jews, they just happened to be Jews who confessed that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. They didn’t wake up as Christians and build churches for themselves…they kept going to the Synagogue. It’s just now they had this belief that Jesus was the savior the Jews had been waiting for.
And that continued for some time – decades really. The Synagogue has always been a place of spirited debate so the community could hold together those who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and those who did not.
But it was only a matter of time before something had to give, because another unique feature of John is that it has a very high Christology; it makes some extraordinary claims about Jesus – claims that go way beyond what the other three say. John makes no qualms about saying that Jesus is in fact God.
This would be a breaking point for devout Jews – it flies in the face of the first commandment, “the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, you shall have no other gods before me.”
And so, the theory goes, these Christians were kicked out of the synagogue – outcasts who were literally shown the door.
Think about the trauma that would be for this group of Jesus followers.
Think about what it cost them to confess Jesus as Lord – how it cleaved communities, perhaps even families, in two.
What power, then, for Jesus to say to such a collection of throwaways “don’t worry if they showed you the door – I Am the door.”
They cast you out? Let me remind you that I am the gate – I decide who comes in and who goes out.
The community that gave us John needed to believe that – in addition to being a good Shepherd who would lead them – Jesus was also the grounds for their belonging. They needed to believe that Jesus was for all people, and not just for some.
They needed to believe that he was the gate…the doorway by which outsiders could become insiders.
I think that we need to believe this as well –
In these days where diversity programs are being dismantled and affirmative action is under attack – maybe we need Jesus the Gate.
In these days when more and more countries are being added to the no-fly list and we are building wall after wall to keep people out – maybe we need Jesus the Gate.
In these days where our communities are retreating to a comfortable homogeneity rather than embracing the admittedly messy and uncomfortable breadth of God’s family – maybe we need Jesus the Gate.
Maybe we need him now more than ever – Jesus who brings sheep together from other folds until there is one flock and one shepherd.
Incidentally, as I read about this passage, one thing I learned about shepherding in middle eastern cultures is that there aren’t just one kind of sheep. They are classified in a bewildering number of categories. There’s the usual categories of gender (rams and ewes), but they are also classified by age – there are different words for sheep that are 0-6 months old, 6 to 12 months old, one year and older, etc.
Then there’s the time of year in which they were born – there are “early” lambs, “Spring” lambs and “summer” lambs.
And then finally there’s the category of coloring which is truly dizzying –
There are white sheep, black sheep, black sheep with white spots,
black faced sheep, blue-black faced sheep, white sheep with black face and neck,
black-spotted faced sheep,
brown face with white nose sheep,
brown-headed sheep,
brown-and-white-spotted faced sheep,
black-and-brown-faced sheep,
grey headed sheep.
There’s a different words for all of these sheep – but they co-exist in the same flock.
So it is – so it must be – for any community that claims that Jesus is Lord…because that Lord is a Good Shepherd, but he is also the gate, the door that makes it possible for all outsiders to come inside.
Preacher Fred Craddock tells a story from early in his career when he served a little church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee – it was a beautiful white clapboard building nestled in the pines with hand-hewn pews and a pump organ.
At that time, Oak Ridge was growing and changing fast.
Lots of new people moved in to help with construction – new mobile homes and trailer parks sprang up overnight it seemed, and these neighborhoods were just full of families and children.
Fred noticed this and at the Church’s next Board meeting he recommended a plan to reach out to the newcomers.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea” the chairman replied. “They just won’t fit in here. Besides, they’re just here temporarily.”
Fred was shocked: “They may be here temporarily, but they need the gospel, they need a church.”
The meeting lasted a long time.
They decided to table the matter until next month.
At their next meeting the chairman said, “I move that in order to be a member of this church your family has to own property in the county.”
The motion passed 18-to-1 – and they reminded Fred that he didn’t actually have a vote.
Many years later, Fred – now married – was driving through Tennessee with his wife Nettie and he realized he was not far from that first church he served. Of course everything so different now – lots of new construction and now Interstate-40 was there – but Fred was sure he could find it.
It took a while, but finally Fred identified the country road and, nestled in the pines, there it was – that beautiful white frame church was sitting there just as always. Fred saw that the parking lot was just full of cars and trucks, motor homes and motorcycles – way more than ever gathered to hear him preach.
As they pulled into the lot they saw a big sign in front of the church.
It said, “Barbecue: All You Can Eat. Chicken, ribs, pork.”
It wasn’t a church any longer – but a restaurant.
They went inside and the pews were there, just pushed to the side. The pump organ was still in the corner, but the place was packed with all kinds of different people—white and black and Hispanic. Rich and poor. Insiders and outsiders. Boo Radleys and Luna Lovegoods. Hester Prynns and Quasimodos…maybe even a Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III.
Fred turned to Nettie and said, “It’s a good thing this isn’t a church anymore. If it were, these people would not be welcome here.”
That’s the story of a little white-clapboard Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
It might be the story that some are determined to cook up for our country right now.
But it can never be the story of the Church of Jesus Christ – Christ who said “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will come in and go out and find pasture; they will have life and have it abundantly.”
Amen.