Do you pay attention to gates?  Look at gates sometime; they send different messages.  Some gates are perpetually open, only closed when something inside the gate—a dog, a horse, and a child—needs to be kept inside temporarily.  Other gates are perpetually closed, only open for a few seconds to let in what is to be protected from what's outside.  Some gates are attached to fences, the access point between what is in and what is out, a breach in the security of the fence, but one that can fill the gap momentarily.  Sometimes, it seems, gates are simply for decoration.  Jesus, however, is not a decorative gate.  As gates go, Jesus is an odd choice, but He is not decoration.  He describes the role of the gate clearly—it’s the entrance to safety, the threshold between security and threat, and the place of division between what should be let in and what should be kept out.  He says, "I am the gate."  Jesus is the barrier between the thieves who want to steal, kill, and destroy and Jesus' hapless sheep, who need His protection from those who would bring harm, destruction, even death.  Jesus is the gate who divides the realm of life from the realm of death.

If Jesus were not who we believe Him to be, we might think that He has some real identity issues.  In seemingly every chapter in the book of John, Jesus claims a new identity for Himself.  We know John's hearers are familiar with God's self-revelation in Exodus ("I am who I am").  What is peculiar is how Jesus qualifies Himself. I am: the bread of life; the light of the world; the good shepherd; the resurrection and the life; the way, the truth, and the life; the vine; and, in this passage, the gate.  We wonder: Can we point to anything and say it is Jesus, or is there some method to His self-identification?  What is the common thread in how He chooses to identify Himself?  In fact, there are two threads, woven together like the beginnings of a tapestry, the threads that hold John's Gospel and, indeed, his theology, together.

The first thread is made of familiar elements of this world: bread, light, shepherd, vine, and gate.  These are images of the people’s daily life.  They know these things because they live in close connection with them.  Jesus did not have any difficulty finding these illustrations.  He could point in any direction and come across one of these items.  More importantly, His hearers understood how these function.  Bread and light give and sustain life.  Shepherds and gates lead and protect lives.  Vines grow and branches depend on them for life.  Life, life, life, each of His examples is life-giving and life-sustaining.  So it is with the second thread, the eternal thread.  Jesus is claiming that in Him eternal life has come.  He is the resurrection and the life and the way, the truth, and the life.  He doesn't claim this as a future happening, but a present reality.  John has woven the most common elements of this life with the most surprising word about the life to come—it has already begun.  We can live the resurrection life now.  Just as Paul and others in the Bible speak of salvation as a past, present and future reality.  We have been saved, we are saved and we will be saved.  According to Jesus, we can live as resurrected people here and now—there is a sense in which we have eternal life now even though we will all die. 

In His claim to be the gate (which follows a display of the contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees, likely setting the Pharisees up as the thieves and bandits of this passage), Jesus again combines the temporal and the eternal.  Anyone familiar with shepherding (and all of His hearers would be at some level) knew the importance of a sheep gate—literally, the means of dividing the sheep from danger, even death; and also the passage into safety.  It is not a jump, then, for John's hearers, who are familiar with his employment of layered meanings, to understand Jesus' claim to be the gate as an eternal claim that begins in the temporal.  Whether the thieves and bandits are Pharisees, false prophets, drug dealers, or advertisers who endanger appropriate body image, Jesus' point is clear: beware of those outside the gate who would call you away from the gate that leads to abundant life.  More pointedly: get inside the gate before you die to something that is not God.

Of course many of us modern people are uncomfortable with gate imagery because we know that when the gate is closed something or someone is excluded.  In this case, the someone is the thief or the bandit, the one who is not of Jesus' fold.  Even moderns don't want the thief in, but we also do not want any mistaken judgments, any rash decisions, or any of "ours" left out there.  We want there to be time for change, mercy for those who are not convinced to change, and forgiveness for how we might have been a stumbling block to change.  All of which reveals that, as usual, we have made the passage more about us than about Jesus.  We act as if we are the gate or have the ability to grant who may enter the gate and who may not.  A more faithful reading of the text gives those decisions to the One who claims that He alone is the gate and that we remain sheep who must dependently follow the voice that calls us by name and no other voice.  Following that voice exclusively is a tremendous challenge when we live in a society of options.  Every day more options are created that threaten to kill the spirit and harm the flesh.  We clamor for the latest whatever because it promises new pleasure or status.  If we get it we find that the pleasure is short-lived or there is already something new to replace it or that it does not live up to its promise, so we clamor for the next thing, whatever it may be.  We become something less than sheep as we listen for any voice that we might follow.

Sheep will not do that, as the passage explains.  Sheep focus only on the voice they have come to trust; His is the only voice they will follow.  When we are drawn to any voice out there, we prove ourselves to be less than sheep.  When we provide an alternate voice than that of the Shepherd's, a voice that leads to death rather than life, we prove ourselves among the thieves and bandits.  But there is a gate, One who offers abundant life.  He is a threshold to enter into the safety and peace of a life protected from those who would steal, destroy, and kill.  Those who enter this gate find pasture, the eternal dimension of the temporal life.  

Even so, the temporal life is yet to be fully lived.  While we appreciate Jesus' promise to give us pasture and protection, eternal life in this world, we are still in this world and, at times, seemingly unprotected, unfed, and at the mercy of those who would lead us astray or kill us.  What is a sheep, even one who listens carefully, to do?

Our task is challenging and two-pronged: we are sheep that are, ultimately, within the gate's protection, yet, at least for now, vulnerable to thieves and bandits.  We are disingenuous if we give the impression that the abundant life found within the gate equates to a temporal life without thieves, bandits, and death.  Unless we abandon the broken world, we will face the temptations that can lead to death and the thieves and bandits seeking to pull us away from the pastures secured by the gate.  But, it is not our task to abandon the world.  Therefore, we will face these temptations and encounter these thieves and bandits.  When we do, it is as sheep that belong to a flock secured by an eternal gate.  The security of that gate is what emboldens the sheep to live in an occasionally hostile, frequently tempting, always conflicted world.  It is also what allows the sheep to proclaim the hope of the gate even to those who want nothing more than to break down the gate for selfish gain.

          A pastor tells the following story.  I was returning from the beach with a friend one afternoon.  We took a break at the convenience store and were making our way to the restroom when I heard a "hey, you!"  There were only two options of who that "you" might be and something told me it wasn't my friend—his long legs already had him at the back of the store when she called out.  I stopped, turned around, and saw the cashier walking toward me at an unfriendly pace.  "You just blew my mind," she said.  "Turn around, I have to read that again."  I looked down to see what tee-shirt I was wearing—high school was the last time I had any mind-blowing tee-shirts.  It was a Wesley Foundation, the United Methodist campus ministry, shirt, not exactly the risqué material that she sees throughout the summer.  In fact, that's what startled me most: all summer she sees what sunburned vacationers wear on their long journeys home, and she stops me for a Wesley shirt.  It has words written in a circle on the back, the words that blew her mind.  "Serve the world" alternates with "Worship God" three times with arrows connecting them like a recycling symbol.  "Worship God . . . Serve the world . . . Worship God . . . Serve the world . . . Worship God . . . Serve the world."  It was more than she could take, apparently.  It blew her mind.  "I just don't see how you can do both," she said.  "The way I see it, if you worship God you can't serve the world because the world is too tempting; it's too evil.  It's nothing like God wants it to be."

As best I could in the candy aisle of a convenience store, while hoping to quickly resolve the issue for which my friend and I had originally stopped, I talked about service to the world as a demonstration of our love of God and God's love of God's creation and everyone for whom Christ died, but there are limits to convenience-store theology, particularly in that moment after sitting in a car for a couple of hours.  But the mind-blowing slogan on the tee-shirt was, essentially, the question of the gate—how much of the world do we risk encountering knowing that there are portions of the world that steal, destroy, and even kill?  How high, strong, and impenetrable do we want the gate to be in order to be insulated from the world?  Do we want our own little gated community?  How can we live in the world without letting the world claim us; without letting it determine who and how we are?

Gates do a lot of things.  Some hold us in.  Some keep others out.  Some mark a place of transition.  Gates can be the point of demarcation where what we were is no longer what we are nor what we will be.  As gates go, Jesus is an odd choice.  If He keeps any out, it's those that everyone thought were locked in—the religious zealot, the chief priest.  If He keeps any in, it's those that everyone assumed couldn't get in—the Samaritan woman, the tax collector, the Roman official, the woman caught in adultery.  But as strange as His choices are about who gets in His pasture and who is kept out, that He lets us come and go is even stranger.  Shouldn't He lock us in before the thieves and bandits get us?  Shouldn't He hold us tightly before we're lured away by yet another voice?

It turns out that the gate, Jesus, represents more than a barrier; He's a threshold, a passage to new life.  Jesus knows that ever since we crossed into the gate, ever since we were claimed by Him, we are changed.  Who we were before we came to the gate and who we are since we entered are not the same people.  Yes, we remain imperfect, subject to temptation, and continue to disobey, but we are not the same persons that we were before we entered the gate.  Everything has changed.  And because we are changed, the gate no longer need lock us in.  We no longer need cower behind the gate's impenetrable walls.  Rather, assured that the gate has claimed us, we are free to live in both realms—to love God and to serve the world.  For the Christian this is really the only choice we have—if we love God we will serve others.  When we do live in both realms, we are not so much choosing to put ourselves at risk of destruction, as we are putting the destroyers at risk of coming to the gate.  We are salt and light in a bland and dark world.

As gates go, Jesus is an odd choice, but that's because there is no other gate like Him.  He is the gate that leads to abundant life, both in this realm and the one to come.  He is the gate who enables us to worship God and to be secure in our service to the world in God's name.  There's no other gate like Him. Thanks be to God.  Amen.