Year A
 Acts 2:42-47
 Psalm 23
 1 Peter 2:19-25
 John 10:1-10

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to something…  for example…  someone who allows or denies access to an ancient city…  or a bouncer at a nightclub…  or more abstractly…  some who controls access to a category…  like whether or not you’re a member…  gatekeepers determine who’s in…  and who’s out…  and there are gatekeepers at places like Children’s Hospital…  sometimes called Security…  there are TSA gates at the airport before you get to your gate…  there’s the Gateway to the West in St. Louis…  there are horses lining up at the gate…  in many ways our elected officials are gateways to the federal government…  in many denominations…  in many parishes…  baptism is the gate though which we must pass in order to get to another kind of gate…  the altar rail…  and Jesus is the gate to the Father…  to the Kingdom of God…  and to eternal and abundant life…  and calling someone by name is a gateway to relationship… 

I think I’ve told the story before…  about how when my former wife was pregnant…  I spoke to our daughter…  called her by name…  told her stories…  played music for her…  told her that she was already our beloved…  in a small way…  I had called my own…  and within minutes of her birth…  the very first time she heard me speak…  she immediately turned her head in the direction of my voice…  she knew it’s sound…

Today’s Gospel makes us yearn to hear God’s voice in this way too…  we want God to speak directly to us…  for God’s face to be close to ours…  we want God to speak to us from a burning bush…  we want God to speak to us from the clouds…  even though some will say it was just thunder…   we want our eardrums to vibrate with the melody of God’s love song…  and we want God’s ear to be close to our mouths…  we want to be the beloved sheep…  the one God will come looking for when we get lost…  and the truth is…  we are…  ] in spite of what the world sometimes says…  we know that deep in our souls…  but we are like sheep…  and sheep are wanderers by nature…  they’re curious…  that’s why they get lost and why shepherds need to go find them… 

And one of the ways we get lost…  is when we pay more attention to voices other than the still small voice of God within us…  when we believe judgment more than we believe forgiveness…  when we believe the voices of the world which yell curses…  more than that we are God’s beloved in whom God is well pleased… 

And although we generally dislike the idea of having a shepherd looking over our shoulder…  no matter how grown up we think we are…  we continue to need God’s guidance…  no matter how much we like our independence…  we can’t do it alone…  that’s why we have community…  ] but we do have free will…  and sheep do not…  we have the blessing and the challenge of free will…

Almost twenty years ago…  when I was taking Education for Ministry…  an idea came to me…  it may sound a bit radical…  but it’s based on the Hebrew name Emmanuel…  God with us…  and I call the idea Spiritual Anarchy…  it means that deep within us…  we already know what we need for healing and wholeness…  that we already have some sense of God’s truth for our lives…  but sometimes it can take YEARS for us to name what we need…  and then maybe even longer to speak it out…  even if our voice shakes…  but once we name it…  and once we speak it out…  there are others who have walked that road and who can be supportive…  or help us heal…

I call it Spiritual Anarchy…  because within different religious frameworks…  it can look like we’re going against the flow…  against the grain…  it can look like we’re wandering off…  and the people in our lives…  and the institutions to which we belong…  may not trust that we know what’s best for us…  and it’s true…  we may get lost…  we may make mistakes…  but Jesus will guide us back…

And part of where the idea came from…  was that when I decided to join the Episcopal Church…  it was because I learned about Richard Hooker’s three-legged stool…  which represents scripture…  tradition…  and reason…  and all three provide the stability from which we can navigate our journey on The Way…  and the leg of the stool which represents reason is another way of saying that the church doesn’t expect us to check our brains at the door…  but trusts us enough to puzzle through our way toward God…

In today’s Gospel…  Jesus first states the obvious…  the shepherd enters the sheepfold through the gate…  and the sheep know his voice and will follow him…  and then…  in one of his “I am” statements…  Jesus reveals himself as the gate…  as the opening through which we must pass on our way to God…  when he does this…  he says that one’s place in the sheepfold and as a member of the flock…  is determined by one’s relationship to Jesus as the gate…  because it’s through this gate…  through Jesus’ way of being…  that we are given salvation and abundant life…  and Jesus may be the gate through which we need to pass…  but he’s all about welcoming everyone…  not keeping anyone out…  ]  and Jesus’ use of pastoral imagery here…  is based in Ezekiel 34…  where the kings of Israel were the bad shepherds who endangered and exploited the flock…  and where God is the good shepherd who rescues the sheep and places them in the care of God’s servant David…  under the care of a restored monarchy…  a restored monarchy which finds its fullest expression in Jesus… 

But the Pharisees didn’t quite get it…  they thought of themselves as the shepherds…  even though they just drove out the man whose sight was restored by Jesus…  they demonstrated that they didn’t have the flock’s best interest at heart…  but it was Jesus…  whose healing of the blind man showed him to be the shepherd…  who comes to the flock…  and to whom the sheep respond… 

But Jesus is concerned…  even at night…  even when we’re in the safety of the sheepfold…  in a place of sanctuary and rest…  there is potential danger…  thieves may break in and steal…  may destroy and kill…  may whisper that our Easter hope is misguided…  that we’re following blindly…  that death will have the final word…  some thieves just stand outside the sheepfold and tell us that our shelter is a prison and that we’d be better off leaving our false sense of security behind…  that there must be an easier path to transcendence…  without all the work and bother and uncertainty of transformation… 

The Rev. Cole Gruberth wrote… In the end…  our only wisdom is to know our shepherd’s voice. Our one skill as sheep is to listen…  to listen from the deep place in which we recognize that Jesus doesn’t call us to become something different…  but calls us to grow into who we truly are…  and whose we truly are…

So let’s listen more closely to our shepherd…  who calls us by name…  and trust our gut…  to know that although we’re members of one body each one of us is also unique…  to know that we’re invited through the gate into holy relationship and communion…  and to know the voice we hear in this fragile world in which we live…  and know it so well…  that when we hear it…  we immediately turn our heads…  and our hearts…  in its direction…  and let ourselves be found…