The right Door

Therefore Jesus said again, “I will tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal, to kill and to destroy; I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

Many like to think of the comfortable image of Jesus (and therefore God too) as the Good Shepherd. A pristine Jesus dress in a white robe, surrounded by a few sheep, a staff in his right hand and a lamb draped over the left arm. There is nothing threatening about this kind of Jesus. But there are a few things that we ought to consider about this passage if we are going to address it properly; and maybe it is going to make a few and maybe many of us uncomfortable.

For example, it is impolite if not outright scandalous, to suggest that Jesus is the only way the Father.   Many in the wider society and even some within the Church would suggest that we need to get over such thinking. We are (supposedly) beyond all that now. We don’t need to talk about the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. That is all in the past. And we are smarter than that now.

What would be scandalous to us? Well first, Jesus claims more than just a mere connection to God. He is telling us that he is God through saying, “I am the door”. He makes it clear who he is and who he is for all of us. We have a choice: we can go through Jesus to receive life, our faith encouraged and our joy made complete by being in relationship with him and through him with the Father.  Or we can listen to someone else, anybody else we like and find our door opens to having our lives, our joy and our faith stolen, murdered and utterly vanquished. This is the challenge that Jesus puts to the Pharisees. The Pharisees want their own righteousness, to make themselves good people. Rather than letting God make them holy people, entire his people.  Jesus, in claiming to be the only door to life, shows us who God is and what real joy and real freedom are like as he lives such things out in his own life.

And if we leave things there, we might leave many in the Church happy because, there are many in the Church who seem to think that once you are in, that’s enough. That’s all there is. They would be what I often think of as “wrong”. Sheep are not kept in the fold against their will. The shepherd at night would lie down across the narrow entrance so that if some restless lamb needs to go out and run around for a bit, the shepherd knows that the lamb is gone and knows to keep one eye peeled and one ear open as well as his rod and staff close at hand, to watch and listen for trouble.

Moreover the life we are given is not meant to be spent “all penned up”. We are not given this life to play it safe and to be nice people and that we are “good enough” to get in when our time comes. Rather our community centers itself around the Shepherd who not only who is the life of the flock, but willing gives his own life to make the flock what it needs to be. So if I am going to rally around something, then I am going to rally around the Shepherd who not only lays down his life for the flock, I am going to celebrate the Shepherd who rises again that he might lead us on. I choose to rally around a Christ who loved us so much that he would not live without us; that he offered himself in our place to suffer our pain and death in our place. Because he has done so and because God has raise Jesus from the dead, I too shall rise some day.    So in this moment, we need to stop and listen, hear Christ’s voice and follow on. Which door will you choose?