I AM the Gate

Scripture Lessons: Proverbs 8: 1-11 and John 10: 1-10 Sermon Title: I AM the Gate Preached on June 20, 2021 About four years ago we moved here from Columbia, Tennessee. As we moved into our new house the first order of business was building a fence in the backyard for our two dogs, Lucy and Junebug. I worked on this project with the help of a couple new Marietta friends: Clem Doyle and Paul Phillips who volunteered to help me. You can tell now just by looking at the fence which parts Paul was involved in. I remember Clem and me eyeballing the fence slats while Paul got a string and a level going to make sure things lined up precisely. You might say engineers are better at these kinds of things than attorneys or preachers. To this day, four years later, it’s still a very good-looking fence, and I can’t put into words how much it meant to me that Paul and Clem would come over to help me build it, however they couldn’t help me with everything. Even with their help there were a couple things I had to do on my own since it was our fence. For example, no one else could choose where the gates would go. “I AM the gate,” Jesus said. If you have a fence in your backyard think about it for just a moment. Where did you put your gates and what does your gate mean to you? What are the gates there for? Who goes through them and why? In our backyard one gate opens into the yard of the next-door neighbor. The day we moved in we were greeted by them. Their names are Dan and Leeanne. I remember how un-neighborly it felt to immediately build a fence between us so soon after meeting them. We didn’t mean to fence them out, we just wanted to fence our dogs in, so I put a gate there from our yard to theirs. We built the fence and the gate and, on their side, now are stones lined up to make a path. They built up a flower bed on either side of the path that leads to our gate in their yard. We built the gate, and they built a path. Today it’s like an invitation to go from one yard to the other. “I AM the gate,” Jesus said. What we know is that he is like an open invitation from God to be in relationship. What’s required? Who is fenced out? He makes the way clear and invites us all to come in. Jesus spends all this time trying to convince us that a relationship with God is not nearly so complicated as we had imagined, and I wonder if we imagine a relationship with God much be complicated because relationships with people are. We’re always asking: who should I let in? How much should I let them in? Will they disappoint me? Will they take advantage of me? Do they like me? Relationships require a lot, so I think it’s good to be in charge of the gates around our yards. It’s not good for a family not to have any boundaries or limits. If we didn’t have a fence our dogs would be eating out of every neighbor’s garbage can and our children might be too. It’s important to have a fence. Rev. Joe Brice will remind us from time to time that we humans need boundaries the same way that cells need a cell wall. Without a cell wall the cell has no identity. The same is true of us. Without some limits we become blobs of availability, victims to the circumstances around us, so we must have limits, boundaries, and fences. Right across the street from our house there was a house with a swimming pool in the back. The family put up a flagpole to send out a signal to the neighborhood: when the flag was up that meant any who wanted could come over and swim, but when the flag was down, that meant that the gate was closed. The family needed time to swim, just them. That makes sense and we must all decide on the gates of our own homes while recognizing who is the gate into the Kingdom of Heaven. There’s an old story that goes like this: A Presbyterian died. He was welcomed into heaven by St. Peter through the Pearly Gates and he met an Episcopalian he went to college with right away. The Presbyterian was really excited to see his old friend, but the Episcopalian told him to keep his voice down. “Why do I need to be so quiet in heaven,” he asked. The Episcopalian answered: “It’s because the Baptists are right over that Hill. They think they’re the only ones who made it up here and we don’t want to spoil it for them.” You can make that joke about Baptists or whoever you want. It’s true in one sense for all of us. We all get tied up in debates over who is in and who is out as though the Kingdom of Heaven were a bigger version of our own back yards. It’s not. “I AM the gate,” he said, and we could all stand to learn a thing or two from him when it comes to the gates around our own homes and lives for leaving people out can hurt them. Have you ever been left on the outside of the gate? Years ago, this church supported me as a missionary intern to Argentina. There I lived with several Argentinean college students who were nice enough to befriend me and help me make my way around the city of La Plata. One Saturday night they thought it would be fun to take me to a dance club. It was the only time I’ve stood outside of a club hoping the bouncer would let me in. My friends encouraged me to speak English very loudly so that the bouncer would notice that I was American. Being American will get us in a lot of places, but not this particular club in Argentina, apparently, because we never made it inside. Have you ever been fenced out? “I AM the gate,” Jesus said. In one parable he spoke of great banquets hosted by a bridegroom who invited wealthy, upright, wellborn guests to a party though they chose not to show up. The bridegroom went to the streets then, and invited society’s cast-a-ways. The poor, the homeless, the rejected, the ones who are left out and left behind. The ones we are slow to invite in ourselves. “I AM the gate,” he said, and we must consider what kind of a gate this savior is. We all need to think about who he invites in and who has been kind enough to invite us in. “I AM the gate,” he said, and I’m prone to believe that what he means here is something like what author and journalist, Kelly Corrigan meant in her graduation speech at the Walker School just a couple weeks ago. She told the graduates to remember that more than wealth, influence, or career accomplishments, the true source of human happiness comes from meaningful relationships. “I AM the gate,” Jesus said. In that simple statement he reminds us that there is something sacred about walking into our neighbor’s yard. That there is something miraculous that happens to children when they know they are safe to run from one house to another. That something special happens when we fire up the charcoal grill. The smoke doesn’t respect our fences. Our neighbors wonder what we’re cooking, and it makes us happier to share of our abundance than to eat it all ourselves. Years ago, I cut grass for a living, and I cut grass for a company who never wanted to pay us over time, so on Fridays we’d often get sent home early, having already worked our 40 hours. That meant that sometimes the men I worked with would invite me over to their apartment for lunch. These guys were from Mexico. The six or seven, they all lived in a one-bedroom apartment to save money so that there would be more to send back home to their families. After going to the liquor store to cash their checks we’d have lunch, most often tacos, cooked by who ever happened to be in charge of the meal that day. Only once did I invite the group over to our place, also a one room apartment that just Sara and I shared. I cooked something and offered them a beer I had made myself. I was into homebrewing beer back then, and I thought that was a special thing to share. Only one of the guys said to me that the special thing about it was that this was his first time being inside a white person’s home. “I AM the gate,” Jesus said. What he means by this is not exactly clear, but I believe it is clear enough to point us towards thinking about large and small ways that our lives might change if we spent more time thinking about who we let into our homes and our lives. I think that’s important, because when I think for just a minute about those moments where I felt the genuine hospitality of a stranger, the genuine hospitality of a stranger who would become a friend, I could feel that something sacred was happening, because genuine hospitality is nothing short of a miraculous thing. “I AM the gate,” he said. Too often we go looking for God on pilgrimages to the Promised Land. Too often we think that finding God demands climbing to a mountain or fasting and praying for days on end. But let me remind you that Jesus said, “when two or more are gathered, God is present,” so if you want to glimpse Jesus this week, just think about the places in your life where there is a fence now but there could be a gate. Once again you have a ribbon. This is the third Sunday in a row when your pastors are asking you to do a little something different. Each Sunday this summer we’ll be asking you to write something on a different colored ribbon and to tie those ribbons on the chicken-wire structure just outside the church. Today your ribbon is gray or silver, to help all of us think about the gate, and today I’d love for you to write the name of a person who you pray would let you in. On this Father’s Day I’ve been thinking about John. John is not my father. My father’s name is George, but were it not for my father, there would be a fence between John and me, but instead there is a gate. What happened is that John and I were playing baseball in Laurel Park when we were 8 or 9. He was playing catcher without a facemask. I was batting without knowing how to lay my bat down after I hit the ball. The pitcher pitched, I swung and hit, then slung the bat right at John’s front teeth. I couldn’t get out an apology. I just remember all John’s blood on the grass and all my shame in my belly, but Dad was sure John would not hate me forever, we didn’t need to move away, and I could play baseball again. Dad was sure there could still be a gate and with those simple words that he pushed me to say, “I’m sorry” miraculously there was one. Where do you long for a gate? With whom? Write their name down on your ribbon, and as the wind blows through our ribbons our prayers will be lifted to the one who by his grace is “the gate.” Amen.