READINGS

1. John 10:1-10

HOMILY

The Gospel today is about the gate, the Sheep gate.

And it’s actually one of my favourite passages from John’s Gospel, because I think it’s one of the places, one of the very few places, where Jesus is actually using the architecture of the place that he’s speaking from as part of his parable. 

We’re told that this chapter 10 takes place in the Portico of Solomon.

And, if you’ve ever been to the Portico of Solomon, it’s at the very top of the tall steps that lead up to the platform on which the Temple was built.

It was the place where people could walk and talk on the platform.

The normal way for ordinary people up to the Temple was up those steep stairs to the top.

But there was, in fact, another way in, which you can still see to this day, to the Temple Mount from the side; and that was the entrance that the priests and Levites would come – a stage entrance for the Temple Mount, rather than the theatre entrance.

And you can clearly see the other entrance from the Portico of Solomon. 

So Jesus starts by saying something which I think we’re wrong to think is very mysterious.

I think that he’s saying something dead simple:

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.

Here he’s talking to people who understood their agriculture, who knew what it was like for shepherds to look after sheep, understood how all that worked and he said something very obvious.

In any ordinary sheepfold, the boss comes in and out through the door.

And the one who comes in and out through any other way than the door is probably not got good intentions.

This is pretty straightforward agricultural stuff.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

This is so far pretty straightforward. 

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. 

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Let’s suppose that there’s someone in charge of that thing, the gatekeeper recognizes who that shepherd is, and opens for him as he hears his voice.

The shepherd, supposing that there are lots of different sheep being kept there, calls the ones by his name and leads them out.

In other words, there is a complicity between sheep and shepherd that is easily done by all of them.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

You’ve probably seen this in real life yourselves, this is in fact something that happens.

There usually at least in the documentaries that I’ve seen and in my memories of having seen this in the countryside in my youth: there are dogs around as well to help.

We don’t get mentioned of the dogs in the Gospel.

They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

I just want to say so far so good and so obvious.

The whole point of this is: this is not supposed to be something immensely deep and complicated and pious or any other thing.

It’s supposed to be: you all know how this works with shepherds and sheep.

Then it says:

Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

I suggest to you that it means that they understood perfectly well what he was saying to them as it dealt with sheep, shepherds, and ordinary agricultural practice.

They haven’t the faintest idea of why he was talking to them about this matter now.

Why stand on the Temple’s Solomon’s Portico and give them a little treatise on agricultural behaviour.

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.

He’s standing at the entrance of the Temple, he’s able to point to the people who come in by another way who he refers to here as thieves and bandits.

Furthermore, he says: I am the gate. 

He actually says two different phrases:

1. I’m the gate for the sheep and I am the gate.

I want to suggest to you that he’s bringing together two quite specific physical gates: the first – the gate of the sheep – was a known function in the city of Jerusalem.

There was a gate known as the Sheep gate through which the sheep were driven into the Temple compound. 

Please notice that unlike what Jesus our Lord says here, this was not a two-way gate.

This was a one-way gate.

It was no more two-way than the train tickets to Auschwitz.

The sheep who came into the Sheep gate and into the Temple compound were not going out again to pasture.

This was their run to the death. 

And then, at the Temple itself amongst a variety of gates, which were apparently brilliantly ornate and decorated, several which opened, and one which didn’t, which was the gate through which the great Shepherd, the Davidic promised heir, was to come at a certain point of time.

And this was get closed.

Now what I’d like to suggest to you is that Jesus is using the Temple geography to say something about what he is doing. 

He’s saying he’s the Sheep gate.

That’s to say: the one that sheep would go in on their way to being slaughtered.

And that he is the gate – referring to the one through which the Most High would come to enter into the Holy of Holies and bring together all God’s people.

But he’s making this in a very critical way.

It says:

Whoever enters by me will be saved.

It says saved, but I think probably the original meaning was simply safe.

He’s talking about people being safe.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. 

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Yes, he’s apparently talking about religious leaders who run the show for themselves, make money off it, for whom keeping sacrifice going is very much in their own interests.

And yet who becomes scandalized whenever there’s any matter of fear, and run away.

Because they were actually not with the sheep.

They don’t really think of themselves as part of the same thing at all.

He says: I’m not going to be like that, I am the gate, they will come through me.

And by pointing out at the Sheep gate, the one-way gate, if you like, the gate to slaughter, and bring them together, he’s bringing out something about his freedom which he then talks about.

I could lay down my life and I will take it up again.

And because of that, we should not be afraid. 

How it is that we are kept safe in the midst of a world in which religious leaders of all sorts – it’s not only Catholic or any Protestant or Islamic religious leaders who do any of these things, but all religious leaders, in fact, all leaders – are inclined to be in it for themselves and not indeed for those who are the sheep.

And the real difference precisely consists in here is the one who is going to show both that he is the Davidic Promised One entering through that Sheep gate, but also he’s going to enter through the gate of the sheep laying down his life in such a way that thereafter we – you, me – need no longer be frightened of being slaughtered and killed, harassed and victimized, treated as disposable by religious and political leaders who are in for themselves and.

That we can walk with safety because the one who was given his life and risen again is greater than death, its scandal, the sacrificing manoeuvrings of wicked leaders of whatever sort. 

And that he calls us by name.

In his calling us, we discover who we are and we can walk freely and without fear.

This I think is part of the continuation of the message we’ve been getting over these Easter weeks – of the oddness of the voice of the One who speaks to us, the oddness of the one who spoke to Mary Magdalene, who spoke to Thomas, who spoke to the disciples at Emmaus.

And now rather than speaking to us from a position of great haughtiness or great apparent leadership, he’s speaking to us as one who has been through death, is not frightened by it, is not scandalized by it, and knows that, as we are able to relax into hearing his voice, so we will be able to live abundantly.