With our routines and world upended by the Shelter in Place Order that affects all of California, we are looking for ways to stay connected during a mandate to physically stay apart from one another. This is a continuation of our time together, even though we’re in different spaces.
Opening Hymn • Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us • Page 558, Chalice Hymnal
Invocation
Lay Leader: Victoria Thomas
Creator of the universe,
you made the world in beauty,
and restore all things in glory
through the victory of Jesus Christ.
We pray that, wherever your image is still disfigured
by poverty, sickness, selfishness, war and greed,
the new creation in Jesus Christ may appear in justice, love, and peace,
to the glory of your name. Amen.
Psalm 23
Special Music • Like a Shepherd by Bob Dufford • Performed by Mary Jo Renner
Tithes and Offerings
Checks can be mailed to:
Grace Community Church
C/O Rene Horton
P.O. Box 368
Auberry, CA 93602
Holy Scripture • Acts 2:42-47
Lay Leader: Victoria Thomas
Children’s Time
Faith formation resources for families and those who like to color as prayer.
Gospel Reading • John 10:1-10
Church at Prayer and The Lord’s Prayer
All are invited to email me prayer requests for next week’s prayer, or to get in touch any time during the week. We are in the midst of an unprecidented global event, and I am available as a compassionate ear if you find you need to talk through what’s going on.
Due to the public nature of worship and prayers online, prayer requests will be vague on the video recording to respect privacy and confidentiality, trusting that God knows our intention.
Hymn • My Shepherd, You Supply My Need • Page 80, Chalice Hymnal
The Message
Sermon Transcript
The Bible has a lot of really great pull-out quotes in it that fit nicely on a cross-stitch hoop or make a great bumper sticker. What home décor is complete without “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” on a wooden shabby-chic panel? Then there’s the ubiquitous John 3:16 that always makes its way onto sweatshirts and coffee mugs. I’ve seen a lot of Good Shepherd art, but you know what we never see written in an edgy font across the rear windows of a lifted truck “I AM THE GATE.” John 10:9. It’s just kind of a weird one, right?
And yet, it shows up in this morning’s reading. Of all the “I am…” statements Jesus makes, this one is a little harder to pull out and emblazon on a license plate frame or tack onto a piece of jewelry. It’s kind of awkward.
Let’s think about gates for a moment. What comes to mind? For me, the first thing I envision is the entrance to my husband’s grandma’s gated community. She lives in this absolutely gorgeous neighborhood that seems to pop up in the middle of nowhere in Friant. It’s like, hill, hill, hill, friant dam, hill, LUXURY. So you pull into this oasis of fountains and greenery in the middle of the yellow grassy hills, blinking a bit at the contrast of it all, and there’s the little call box to enter the dreaded “code” to enter. The one that I KNOW I saved in my phone so that this wouldn’t happen again, but somehow it’s nowhere in any of my notes, not in Grandma’s file in my phone book, not anywhere. So then I get desperate and start re-reading every text message I’ve ever had with anyone in Chris’s family, hoping maybe if I scroll back to December, I might find the message where my brother in law may have sent it. And, aha!, it’s there, and I read it to Chris, and he triumphantly punches it into the keypad to discover…
…
… the code has changed. And grandma isn’t answering her phone. And we’re just sitting there, waiting for someone else to come along and open the gate for us so we can get in. Gates are frustrating. Gates are exclusionary. Gates can imprison people against their will. Gates imply an “Us and Them” that gets really murky really fast. Gates, gates make for a weird “I am” statement, Jesus!
And yet, here it is, waiting for us to faithfully make out the meaning behind it. This week’s reading ends one verse shy of the more well known “I am” statement, “I am the Good Shepherd.” The revised common lectionary skillfully pairs today’s reading with Psalm 23, adding more depth to the Good Shepherd theme, and aiding us in our understanding of this imagery. Otherwise, we could be reading it all wrong. And sometimes, what with the closed-to-the-public nature of gates, we do read it wrong.
The “Good Shepherd”, minus the actual verse that says “I am the Good Shepherd” comes chronologically after Jesus has healed the man who was born blind, and Jesus has just been scrutinized by the Pharisees, who have balked at his suggestion that the man’s physical malady was not in fact caused by a big bunch of sin, but rather that they, people who see, are the sinners. Getting into he nitty gritty of sin is another sermon for another day, but know that the lead-up to this pericope is Jesus saying to the Pharisees, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” (John 9:41). It’s one way of telling them that the person who is afflicted is not to blame here, but instead those who are completely sure of the correctness of their “vision” are toeing a dangerous line, morally.
So this leads us into Jesus speaking in riddles about gates and shepherds. The Pharisees in the previous passage are clearly the self-and-socially proclaimed gatekeepers to God. Have you ever come into contact with a gatekeeper who was so enamored of their own power that they made things harder than they should be? I ran into one last week when on the phone with my health insurance company, and the whole conversation was dismissive of my need or concerns.
Taken without the backstory of the pharisees as the “Gatekeepers,” we could assume that John 10:1-10 is about Jesus giving us the authority to be gatekeepers, after all, we’re on the right side of the fence, right? We can say that anyone who hasn’t entered the gate the same way we did is a bandit and thief. That’s what it says, right there. Except, it doesn’t.
Jesus is a gate which needs no keeper to demand the password or secret handshake to pass through. It isn’t our job to do that for him. Instead, Jesus is lecturing the pharisees (and those of us who are tempted to be the bouncer at the entrance to check whether someone’s name is on the guest list or not) that he is the only one who gets the title of gatekeeper. The gate is open, and his voice is calling to his flock to come in through the gate, to come to the safety of being cared for within a secure area. One cannot hop the fence and be part of this community of mutual respect and care because to do so is to claim what does not belong to you. To come in as an authority by way of climbing over the gate will ultimately cause harm because if one does not enter into relationship by open and honest means, there is a lack of care for anything beyond one’s own personal interests. There is no need to enter by any other way into the unity of compassion, neighborly love, and justice when the gate is being held open wide for those who earnestly seek to live in such a way. This is a conversation that Jesus has with the leadership to convince them that political power plays and personal gain only get in the way of creating the kind of community and world that God requires us to live in. By arbitrarily assuming sin on a man who was born blind, they are assuming the role of gatekeeper, and instead, they will find that this is not what God intended at all.
How does this hit in 2020 during “COVIDtide?” (attribution for this term goes to Rev. Daniel Ross-Jones. It’s too clever not to put to use.) How can we read this ancient chunk of text in a modern light?
Right now, leaders all over the world are reacting to and making decisions regarding how long to keep our communities and cities and states under shelter-in-place orders. This is a heavy weight to put on the shoulders of any leader, where lives and the health of our communities are at stake, while people suffer economically because of it. In the meanwhile, rampant misinformation and unchecked facts circulate quickly around the internet. There are things that sound right, and we agree with, but may not be based in fact. Our leadership is tasked with holding all of this in tension and making decisions that will best usher us safely through this epidemic. One way we can apply the lens of the “fake gatekeeper” to our situation is by asking how the responses look when contrasted with beloved community. There may be a call to rise up against injustice, but is the call rooted in love for neighbor or love for business interests? There could be talk of unifying and needing to have an “all in this together” approach, but if “together” neglects the least and last—the unhoused, the elderly, the chronically ill, the “others”, then justice is neglected. If these areas are notably lacking, then it does not follow the kind of fellowship that God intends for us. The “I am the Gate” story provides a helpful way for us to track how we are holding up our end of the bargain when it comes to being the sheep who are loving tended to by a Good Shepherd on this side of the gate. If what we see does not uphold these things, we can come to our savior, our Shepherd, for guidance in how to speak truth to power and look past the fake gatekeepers of our time while supporting those who are upholding Jesus’s shepherding practices and care for all in the flock. Jesus as the Shepherd and as the Gate helps us to distinguish between God’s sovereignty and the authority of elected leadership. As God’s people, we can hold our leaders accountable to stay in line with the just world for all that God imagines for us.
The other takeaway is that we are protected while we are in the care of our shepherd. Psalm 23 lets us know that with the Lord as our shepherd, we are not left on our own. We are not condemned to wander across hill and dale without purpose, we are not left to the harsh elements around us. When one of the flock becomes ill or sprains a hoof, the shepherd carries them to a safe place. While we are safely inside the gate, we are connected to God in a way that will never leave us alone as we heal from whatever ails us. We are reminded that as long as we trust in God, and follow the voice of our Shepherd, we are given abundant life in a safe pasture. This sheep enclosure is not exclusive. Jesus makes no claims about separating the good sheep from the one who maybe sometimes headbutts the other sheep when it gets bored or the one who obnoxiously bleats while everyone else is trying to sleep. We are all assumed to be in this relationship with the Good Shepherd, given safety and security through our relationship with him.
And in a time when we are asked to wear masks to Save Mart and go without the in-person, physical comfort of one another, being cared for by a loving shepherd and protected by, yes, a gate, is the good news that we could really use right now. May we be held in the loving care of our Shepherd, now and always.
Closing Hymn • I Have Decided to Follow Jesus • Page 344 Chalice Hymnal