Easter IV 13 April 2008

Homily for Easter IV 13 April 2008 Today’s Gospel comes from St John, and as you know St John’s Gospel has lots of “I am” sayings of Jesus- you know them all: “I am the way, the truth and the life”, “I am the vine”, “I am the bread of life”, “I am the light of the world”, “I am the good shepherd” and so on. Today Jesus says “I am the gate”, “I am the gate of the sheepfold”. What does this mean? Well, when I was researching this text this week, I discovered something that I hadn’t realised before, that in the Middle East in ancient times, although sheepfolds would have a stone wall or a fence around them, they didn’t actually have gates at all. When the shepherd had managed to herd all his sheep into the fold for the night, he kept them there by lying down across the gap and sleeping there- he himself was literally the gate, his body was the gate. In a very real sense, to get into the sheepfold you had to pass over the body of the shepherd and the shepherd’s body was in the most literal sense the great barrier of protection between the sheep inside and the wolves outside. How full of meaning all this is for us! It is through our intimate connexion with Jesus, through our belonging to his body, the Church, through our Baptism, through our frequent absorption into ourselves of his body in Holy Communion, that we enter and make our home in the sheepfold that is eternal life, the fullness of life that begins already for us here on the earth but will only come to its plenitude beyond the grave in the life to come. Once we are part of the body of Christ, we are through the gate and involved with the shepherd in the process of salvation- Jesus says “anyone who enters through me will be safe”. We have, by becoming Christians, by aligning ourselves with Our Lord, by belonging to the Church he founded, entered the sheepfold of which he is the gate, we have joined his flock, we have become the sheep which he says will “be sure of finding pasture”. Now that is another important point. Pasture. Why shepherds are roaming around the hills with a flock of sheep is not so they can admire the view or get some exercise, it is so they can feed- the shepherd’s main job, apart from keeping them all together and not losing any of them, is to find them places where they can eat, where they can eat the grass and so on. Sheep are not good at finding food for themselves, they are easily attracted to the wrong stuff, stuff that tastes great to them but is bad for them. There is that famous passage in Thomas Hardy, in “Far from the madding crowd” when Bathsheba’s sheep run off and get into a field of young clover, and gorge themselves on it until their stomachs swell up and they foam at the mouth. The peasants come running to Bathsheba- “they be getting blasted, that they be, and will all die as dead as nits if they bain’t got out and cured!” Sure enough, the bloated sheep start to collapse and die, and of course Bathsheba has to send for the man she has only just sacked, Gabriel Oak, and swallow her pride and ask him to sort the sheep out. (He does, she marries him.) Now this is us, isn’t it, we are not always the best judge of what is good for us, what will bring us happiness, contentment, fulfilment. We run after fantasies, we find the young clover of a thousand delusions, and fall on it ravenously, feeding every selfish impulse we have. We gorge ourselves at our peril. We can be however in safe hands, for we can choose to stay in the sheepfold with the shepherd, and our shepherd, Jesus, is the good shepherd, who ensures that we have good pasture- that is, that our souls are fed, that we have a diet that is good for us, that we grow in maturity and in our faith, that we find in unselfishness the road to true contentment and inner peace. For once through the gate that is our intimacy with Our Lord, we have entered upon the fullness of life, life as it is supposed to be lived and understood, life in its reality and in all its potential. As Jesus says at the end of this reading “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”. But to look at this parable a bit differently, we can say, as St Paul often tells us, that Jesus is the Head of his Body the Church- the Church is Jesus’s body on the earth, and we are the Church, so we are called as Christians to be for those around us the Gate, the way to eternal life. There is a church in the East End of London, near where I used to work, that actually has that written in huge letters round its walls- “This is the gate of Heaven”. Our dear St Saviour’s too is a gate, a gate between earth and heaven. We could say, whenever we come in, those words of psalm 117: Open to me the gates of holiness, I will enter and give thanks, this is the Lord’s own gate where the just may enter”. And the flock of sheep, that is of course the human race, now as then in urgent need of finding the right food, the pasture that will satisfy its needs, and therefore in urgent need of having good shepherds to protect and guide it. And that brings us of course to our need in every generation for men to be willing to discern in their hearts the calling of the great shepherd to join him in his task, in the priesthood and diaconate, to guide and nourish his flock on his behalf, for today is Vocations Sunday. Let us pray that there will be found in our own congregation boys and young men, and indeed men in their maturity, who will have the generosity of heart to respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and offer themselves for ministry in the Church. But in all this, let us never overlook the fact that each one of us, man or woman, has a calling to fulfil, a vocation indeed to be, as a Christian, a Gate, a way for those we work and live with to come into the safety of the sheepfold and the contentment of the good pasture. And as we come this morning to the pasture that is Holy Communion, to unite ourselves to the Body that is the Gate, let us say: “Lord Jesus, you are the Gate; may we enter through you and be safe, may we have life and have it to the full.” Amen.