I Am the Gate

John 10:1-10

Introduction

One of the scariest phone calls I ever received was from my mother, when she awoke to discover someone had broken into the house while she was sleeping. My father had already died and she lived alone. It was a major panic, as at the time I was three hours away and could not be with her immediately. Amanda and I jumped into our car and started our journey to my childhood home, thankful for neighbours who were available to support my mother.

What had happened was that someone went to the back of the house and grabbed one of her lawn chairs and brought it to the front of the house. He then stood on the chair and cut through the screen in the front window and climbed in the house. Thankfully my mother was not harmed and there really was not much of value taken.

But what sticks with me is that the person went in the front window, while standing on a lawn chair. It was a quiet street but there are lots of houses around and it is not outside the realm of possibility that someone could have been up at that time. There are plenty of streetlights on that street and if someone drove by or even looked out a window from across the street, they would have seen what was going on. How would someone react if they had seen this take place? While it’s possible that a homeowner could lock themselves out of the house at 4 am and need to take drastic measures to get in, it is not likely. Plus, the neighbours knew my mother as she had lived there for a number of decades. Since no one called the police, I assume no one saw the person.

Now when Amanda and I arrived to the house, we decided to go through the door rather than to crawl through the screen that been cut. Not that I never had gone through a window, as I had been locked out numerous times growing up in that house. This time we went through the door. While some neighbours would recognize me, the neighbourhood had changed and many would not have known me. Yet no one called the police when we entered into the house without waiting for my mother to greet us at the door. Why? Because entering a house through a door looks much less suspicious than crawling through a screen in the middle of the night.

Why do I share this? Because this is the kind of imagery that Jesus is drawing on in our story. We are going to take a closer look at what Jesus means when he says he is the gate, and how we can understand how this works today.

Jesus as the Gate

If you read through this passage carefully, you might walk away confused. The reason is that it seems that Jesus is mixing his metaphors. The overall context is about care for the sheep but Jesus compares himself both to the shepherd and to the gate. Next week, we will look at what it means for Jesus to be the Good Shepherd, but how do we keep these images straight? One thing to remember is that ancient writers did not mind mixing metaphors. In the book of Hebrews, the work of Jesus is compared to the Old Testament Day of Atonement when the high priest would go into the holy of holies and offer a sacrifice. According to the writer of Hebrews, Jesus is both the high priest that offers the sacrifice and that which is actually sacrificed. The role of Jesus is too complex to be relegated to one metaphor. So Jesus can be both the shepherd and the gate.

What is the point of the gate? The gate is the means by which one enters a place of safety and provision. There is a sense of comfort when one passes through the gate as there is a transition from danger to safety. But it is more than just physical safety. Think about what it is like after you have been away for a long time travelling and you finally get home. Something happens once you walk through that doorway, even before you unpack your suitcase and take off your shoes. You are home.

In the parable that Jesus is telling, the sheep are his flock. They are not wild sheep that go off any where they like, with no place to call home. In fact, any time sheep are described as being away from the flock, it is considered a time of great danger for that sheep. It was important, for the sake of the sheep, that they enter through the gate to the place of safety.

Interestingly, one of the gates through the walls of the ancient city of Jerusalem was called the Sheep Gate. It was one of the most important gates into the city, and it was the only one to be considered holy.

But what is the point of Jesus describing himself as the gate? You can understand why Jesus might describe himself as a shepherd encouraging the sheep to pass through the gate, but why identify with the gate? In this passage, the gate is equated with salvation. Jesus doesn’t just point toward salvation, in the sense of describing a method to be saved, rather Jesus is the salvation for people. This will overlap with what Jesus will later say, when he describes himself as the Way. Jesus is making the radical claim that there is no other way to experience salvation than through him. There is no side entrance. You cannot go to the front window and crawl through the screen. It is only through Jesus.

What Does the Gate Mean For Us?

What is your reaction to the idea that it is only through Jesus that we might be saved? If you are a Christian and most of your friends and family are Christians, this might seem like really good news. But if most of your friends and family do not identify as Christian, this may cause some anxiety. What about that family member who is not sure what they believe about God, much less a faith in Jesus? What about that friend that may be a devout member of another religion and yet seems more loving and compassionate than many of the church-going Christians that you know? Doesn’t the idea of Jesus as the gate seem too exclusive?

There is some irony here in that one of the goals of what Jesus was doing was to make salvation more inclusive rather than exclusive. Some of the contemporary religious leaders had made religion so strict that they know the majority of the people could never meet the standards. This is Jesus’ version of what Paul describes as salvation by grace. The sheep that enter through the gate do not need to meet a certain level of perfect before they are allowed in. All that is asked is that they come through the gate.

But this would seem to leave out those who do not come to Jesus. I will say that my views on things have changed over the years. I was raised attending church, left the church in my teens, strayed far from God, and then came back to God in my early 20s. At first I assumed everyone had to have a dramatic conversion like I did. I assumed those raised in the church and who still were there were just going through the motions and did not have a real faith. They had not yet passed through the gate like I had. But as I tried to shift postures from critic to student, I could recognize the fruit of real faith even when their experience was different.

But this still doesn’t answer about what happens to those who follow a different religion or have no religion. These are admittedly difficult questions and I don’t have clear answers. I hold two different thoughts on this topic. One is that I have a conviction that Jesus remains the only gate. The other is that I hold out hope that some people might pass through that gate in ways that we do not recognize. C.S. Lewis, in the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Last Battle, offers some food for thought. This is a passage, in which a follower of the false god Tash anticipates being destroyed by Aslan, who represents Christ.

“Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.”

This is not a claim that all religions are the same. Rather, when this individual thought they were serving Tash, they actually were serving Aslan. They had gone through the gate without realizing it.

It can all be very confusing. But I tend to be pragmatic in my theology. I don’t have to know what happens to devout members of other religions or compassionate atheists. My job is to point the sheep toward the gate and not to judge if they have entered that gate properly.

Conclusion

Do you remember when you passed through the gate? I thought I did, in the sense that I remember praying a specific prayer at a specific time. But if I’m completely honest, I may have passed through that gate earlier in a way that I did not quite understand at the time. Once again, I do not need to have all the answers. I know that I have passed through the gate and I am home. Jesus is the gate. It is to Jesus that we should be pointing people to. There are many social and theological issues that we might be concerned about, but ultimately it is only Jesus that is the gate. Jesus elsewhere talks about the narrow gate and it is narrow. But let us be careful that we not narrow it further with our own opinions that none can enter. Jesus invites all to come through the gate and to come home.