gnarly gate Jesus

Monday of the

Fourth Week of Easter

May 4th

READING: John 10: 1-10

‘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.

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

REFLECTION

Stained-glass window Christianity has tended to fixate on Shepherd Jesus. Looking suspiciously like a pre-Raphaelite milkmaid sauntering through clover, amalgamating good shepherds and lost sheep, Good Shepherd Jesus meanders home with a Southdown on his shoulders. Since the 1970s and the work of Kenneth Bailey we’ve probably got that middle-eastern sheep are more Awassi than Perendale, but Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild imagery holds sway. Don’t stub your toe on the clover, bro.

Perhaps we should have focused more on Jesus as gate, this earlier passage. Here he returns to that blasphemous “I am” thing, too. We saw it a couple of weeks ago. Roughly what Jesus says is “me = gnarly-gate = God.” It was never going to win him a lot of followers, friends, or stained-glass windows.

A sheep-gate is superfluous without sheep, so we get a mention here. Mindless sheep are vulnerable to mindless impostor-shepherds. I think of those who have worn the name “pastor” (sometimes in its form as “bishop,” but I’m not referring to our mob, here): worn it obscenely. There have been predators, and there have been those who confuse freedom to be followers of Jesus (life abundant) with freedom to be life-destroying. There’s a few pastors who have lost their lives and perhaps taken the lives of others, because they got this demonically wrong in a time of covid-pandemic.

Through the Jesus-gate we have freedom, yes: freedom to live with responsibility, compassion, decency, justice. Not freedom to infect others with our idiocy. Jesus warns against false shepherds: their voices are not his, their gateway not him.

There’s false gates, too. We’re not talking about other religions and none here (see John 10: 16). No. Any form of the “me and my rights” gateway is not him, but a lying impostor, life-denying, even in a this-worldly sense. He often struts side-by-side with the “grease my palm” gateway. Gnarly Jesus, in this biblical metaphor, comes through the gate (John 10: 2) and becomes the gate (John 10: 7). He invites us to check the integrity of the gate, pass on through, following the voice of abundant (but not clover-filled) life. He will become the equally gnarly shepherd of the next passage, and his followers will have life abundantly.