A Sermon for St. Andrew Church in Newcastle, Maine, preached by the bishop, the Right Reverend Thomas J. Brown, on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, 30 April 2023.
To God be the glory.
The image of the Good Shepherd is both among the oldest and deeply loved images for the meaning of the resurrection. During the first 700 years of the church’s life the Good Shepherd was a predominant image to depict Jesus in Christian art.
And it still is. Ask anybody who plans funerals, or clergy and lay leaders who make pastoral visits in hospitals or skilled nursing facilities about what people say when they’re asked, “do you have a favorite psalm?”—
A wonderful patriarch at a church I served in Vermont was planning his funeral, joyously choosing hymns and readings, and when he dropped off his notes to be kept on file in the parish office he popped his head into my office and said, “And, for goodness sake make sure Psalm 23 is from the King James; the contemporary version is utterly unpoetic.”
So the image of Jesus as shepherd is a powerful and familiar one. But what about the image of Jesus as the gate for the sheep? Jesus uses this figure of speech–talking about sheep and gates–but it was as incomprehensible to his audience then, as it might be to us now. So he gets plain and says, “I am the gate for the sheep. I am the gate.”
I grew up with cows, not sheep, but a decade in Vermont introduced me to sheep. Cows are pushed and prodded; sheep are led. Unlike cows, sheep get attached to their shepherds, and they follow the leader. If you walk through a herd of jersey cows you create chaos. Trust me, it’s true. But when a shepherd approaches the gate of a paddock with sheep in it, the sheep remain calm. There’s a back-and-forth between the shepherd and the sheep signifying a deep, abiding relationship.
Fredrick Law Olmstead, the legendary landscape architect of Boston’s Emerald Necklace and of New York’s Central Park surrounded Central Park with a stone wall, leaving entrances to the park at each opening in the wall. Each entrance is called a gate, but there aren’t any gates. In fact, the gates were designed, but Mr. Olmstead disliked what he saw, and decided against physical gates, yet the word gates stuck, and they were named: Mariners Gate, Boys and Girls Gate, Artists Gate, Emigrants Gate, and so on. Those of you who know Central Park better than I can name the others I’m sure.
Here at St. Andrew’s you have a lychgate, a feature of 15th and 16th century churches to mark the entrance into the churchyard, and importantly, to place a casket, under the covered roof of the lychgate, before or as part of the burial service. I love lychgates…I feel a beckoning call to come thither, and to enter into a whole, new world.
You know something about the beckoning power of gates. There’s the gate of financial success. The one that reads, “You are what you own,” and so we buy, and buy, and buy. And there’s the gate of “You are what your job is and how successful you are” and so we work hard to define ourselves. And there’s even the gate of “You’re how smart or athletic your child is.” and so we push our children to succeed in everything, at any cost.
The Easter message is that our Risen Lord is active and at work shaping and guiding our lives, and that he himself is the most beckoning gate of all—by him, and with him, and in him, this Good Shepherd, this Gate, calls us by name, makes us lie down in green pastures, and leads us to still waters. Other gates might be alluring, but the heart of the gospel is that walking through this gate, whom we know to be Jesus Christ, gives abundant life.
There aren’t any qualifications in his statement; it only takes recognition. And this Gate, this Risen Lord of ours, is also a shepherd who will lay down his life for the sheep.
If we choose to walk through this gate, we discover new life in some unexpected places. You have already—through you relationship with Marc and Ralph Zoorob, the local food pantry, and CHIP. Of course we’ll receive new life in some familiar sheepfolds as well: in our marriages and homes, with friends at school, and at this Altar.
In George Fredrick Handel’s Messiah, the Prophet Isaiah’s words, as well as excerpts from the New Testament, are put to glorious music, and it offers now both counterpoint, and conclusion: He will feed his flock like a shepherd, an alto and soprano sing, and soon, again, voices blend, beautiful music is made, and the gate is opened wide. Amen.
