Sermons (Page 62)

Jesus said to the Pharisees, “I am the gate.” It’s not an error in translation which we should interpret as Jesus being a gate keeper. Instead, this sentence is the key to understanding today’s gospel. Jesus as the gate in John’s gospel is similar to what brought comfort to the Psalmist in Psalm 23, namely the rod and the staff. Back in Psalm 23, the rod is the thing the shepherds use to fend off threats­­ and the staff is the longer stick with the hook at the end that can help redirect sheep or rescue them from, say, a ditch. The hook helps to bring sheep back into the community of the fold. So too, in John, the gate is a protection mechanism for the sheep by limiting or slowing outside threats while also giving access to pastures so as to be “saved.” Or, to translate “saved” in another way from the original Greek, the gate gives access to the pastures so that the sheep can be healed, made whole, or restored. You see, the gate, which in this metaphor is Jesus, is what protected and granted access to wholeness and healing…