Gospel of John 10:1-10
1 Peter 2:19-25

Introduction: We are taught in so many ways in this society that there is a public realm, run by the state and the market. These institutions set the basic rules of our lives. Then there is a private realm whereby we individually participate in the public realm according to our values, our choices, our inner lives. Each person exists according to their personal freedom, their ability to consume as they chose. This consumerism has the ability to take even languages that rage against the machine to shape even protests into another option -- a private, personal value to help make the public realm better. What is good becomes separated from what is true; what is beautiful becomes a matter of one’s own choice. In the process, this capitalistic system creates an inner realm, a private realm of values now called the “spiritual” that will help us give a basis in something universally within our inner selves to help us make our choices for the public good.

This is a pagan system, even if we try to baptize it with Christian language. It is not neutral, but seeks to undercut the witness of Christ in the world, even against our own intentions. It is the greatest peril of our age. The formation of life erodes our ability to maintain the distinctiveness of our election by the Father in the Son as the body of Christ in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. Such a system of consumerism absorbs us into the distinctiveness of the modern state and capitalism. It is not a general, non-specific system, despite its rhetoric of tolerance and respect for the individual. It is as particular, as hungry, as vicious as any system that fallen humanity has devised.

It is interesting that the church year will not let allow us live in such a manner. In the church year, we live with our lived hidden with Christ in God. So far we have observed Advent, the anticipation of the return of Christ. We celebrated the Nativity of the Son of God in the Christmas season. We rejoiced in Epiphany, the revelation of God to the world in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. We mourned in repentance, as we traveled through the sufferings of Christ in Lent, celebrating his entry as King into Jerusalem; observing the gathering of the twelve, the washing of their feet and the sharing of his body and blood in the Last Supper. We mourned Christ’s death on Good Friday. Now we continue our celebration of Easter, God’s resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Oh death where is your victory? O, death, where is your sting? God has defeated death, vindicating God’s kingdom has come in Jesus Christ in the resurrected body of Christ. Life is not about a public realm that we try to make better with our private choices out of some inward spirituality. Life is participating in God through the resurrected Son by the Spirit’s presence with us, a participation that is nothing less than the kingdom of God witnessed to in Jesus. Life is the unity of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good that is God that God gracious calls us into through the Son by the Spirit. Life is not a life-style option.

Okay, John, but what does this have to do with our readings this morning? I want us to understand, friends, that we are engaged in a great battle, a battle in which the enemy is sly and subtle. It is a battle that we must engage with a fanaticism, for the enemy is fanatical. We must be so formed that we hear the voice of our Shepherd, not of robbers and thieves. I want us to see a deep connection between our Gospel reading and the reading from 1 Peter this morning. Our ability to be at war against war as followers of Jesus hinges on our ability to live out of God’s resurrection of Jesus Christ. For even as Jesus is the Resurrection and Life, so also is He the only Gate into Life eternal.

1. The Resurrected Jesus is the Gate into salvation, life, life abundantly.

The absolute claim made here by Jesus in the Gospel of John makes us uncomfortable. Jesus’ claim makes us squirm. Well, honestly, it’s not Jesus’ claim about himself that makes us uncomfortable, but the absoluteness of his claim. Sure, if a person finds Jesus as her gate – hey, that’s cool. If someone finds abundant life in Jesus, that’s fine. Everyone needs to pick his own value in life; everyone must make up her own mind where one finds life.

But that’s not what Jesus says. Jesus is exclusive in his claim. “The one not coming into the courtyard of the sheep through the door, but climbing over at another place, that one is a thief, a robber.” The image here is not a pen outside in a field someplace; the image is a village, Palestinian home. The house is not a single-family dwelling; it is a household, a compound surrounded by walls. In the courtyard, the domestic animals are kept for safety during the night. They come in and out during the day for pasture, but during the night they remain within the confines of the home. A bar on the gate would keep the animals in, and various predators, human or otherwise, out. To get in, one would climb over a wall, and into the house – thieves and robbers. Then they could lead the sheep out.

Jesus does not present himself as a value, as a lifestyle option, as an individual choice, a means for my own self-actualization. Jesus seems to be saying something about himself, about his very nature, in relationship to God, and therefore, about us. As the gate, Jesus is the way into our Home, our true Home – God. Through the Son, the Gate, we might dwell in the Love that is the Spirit uniting the Father and Son, one God. In Jesus, the Word through whom all things were created has become flesh and dwelt among us. In Him, we see God; in Him we see humanity, not as opposition to God, but human nature as God created us to be – in God. In Jesus, we find that God is not about equal rights to consume, but that God is Love, the Love that we desire to consume us even as this triune Love gives us life. Anything other claim that claims to be our true Home, any other way in is going to exploit us, for it will turn us into a consumer of goods that are separated from the Good that is the Triune God. It will hold itself up as an idol, part of creation that seeks to set itself up as a god for its own end, rather than our true End – they are robbers and thieves. Jesus reveals to us the Love that is God, and in his resurrected body, in his resurrected blood, calls us into Home, into the very flow of Love that is God!

No one comes to the Father except through the Son by the power of the Spirit – Jesus is the door into our eternal Home in God, into Life that is abundant, because this Life is God!

2. And as Jesus is the Gate into Life, we find that we must be a people of Life. We find the distinctiveness of our call to be formed into persons who do not retaliate in violence, but live within the Necessary Life that is God, even amidst the culture of death that is our world.

Part of the subtlety that seeks to turn us all into consumers of our own private judgments – which, of course, is to understand ourselves as members of the state and the market—is the claim that proclaiming that Jesus is the Gate, that Jesus is the way into our Home in God and that other ways are thieves and robbers, is actually an invitation to violence against others. We’re told that we must either give up Jesus or accept that we are violent, give up understanding our lives as Christian and become spiritual or we will necessarily become horrible, nasty, ugly, vicious, rude people in our exclusionary practices. We’re told that we must give up being the church, the body of Christ in the world, and instead, become citizens of a state that gives us freedom and consumers within the market that can give us real life. We’re told that we must be tolerant in stating that gates into abundant life are personal choices. If we don’t affirm that our deepest convictions are merely personal choices, the state is going to uphold the market by making us tolerant. If there is one thing the state and the market cannot tolerate, it is intolerance! Both are extremely intolerant of any intolerance -- except the intolerance that legitimates the states and the markets own violence to make us individuals.

Friends, this is a lie, largely historically and definitely theologically. We see this lie in our 1 Peter passage. Only in recognizing that Jesus is the only Gate, the Gate to our home in God who is Life, who is Harmony, Who is Peace, Who is Beauty, Who is Love. Living in God through this Gate, only then can we be formed into a non-violent, non-retaliatory people in the world. “For into this you have been called, that even Christ suffered on our behalf, having left for us an example in order that you might follow in his steps, who “knew no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth,” who when he was reviled, did not revile; when he suffered, he gave himself over to the One who judges righteously; who bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness by whose stripes you are healed. For you were as sheep going astray but are not returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls”. We are called to imitate Christ exactly at the point of non-retaliation to the violence of this world that led to his suffering, led to his death – Why? Because Christ is the Gate into our true Home, unto God, and Christ shows us that violence does not lead to life; retaliation does not bring forth the Good. No! Violence is the absence of the Life that is God, the Peace, the Love, the Harmony that is the Father, Son, and Spirit. Retaliation does not restore Justice, retaliation is that tries to impose because justice is lacked, rather than recognizing that God is Justice, the Triune God revealed in Jesus is righteousness, and that we cannot fix injustice by unjustly taking the place of God in retaliation. “Do not avenge yourselves but leave a place for wrath, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ says the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy hungers, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink; for in so doing you shall heap burning coals of fire on his head. Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

The whole basis for non-violence is not in its success – Jesus wasn’t particularly successful stopping the injustice of his crucifixion. It is not because people are really just misunderstood, and not really sinful – they just need the opportunity to let their goodness shine. No!!! Christians are called to be non-retaliatory because we are called to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, a very particular Jesus, who is the Gate into the Love that is Life Abundant that is God! Christians have something better than tolerance. Christians have non-retaliation!!! Christians don’t have to call a wrong, right, end up justifying the culture of death in the name of tolerance. We can live truthfully, speak truthfully, because all the world can do is kill us – yet God can give life to the dead, for we have seen this already in the Resurrected Body of Jesus. By giving ourselves over to living a life of non-retaliation, of non-mortal violence, we participation through the One Gate, Jesus Christ, in the ultimate Peaceableness that is God, our True Home!

Christians must be the culture of Life in the world, in what the world calls our private lives, but also in what the world calls the public life of the state and the market, because one can only participate in God through the Son as we walk by the Spirit in his very steps, and therefore, participate in God.

Conclusion: In the foyer this morning, you will find the conscientious objector form provided by the Church of the Nazarene for its members who find participation in the violence of the state against the holiness life-style, as we all should. But more, the way into the courtyard is here for us again this morning, in the body and blood of Christ, given at this Table. He is the Gate. Come, remember that he bore our sins in his own body that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, justice. By his stripes, you are healed – not as a private life style option, but as the One Who is Life, and Life Abundantly. Come, friends, come in your particularity to the Gate. And be thankful.