+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)
Already by the time of the Lutheran Reformation, one of the Sundays after Easter was centered on our Lord Jesus’s description of Himself as “the Good Shepherd” (John 10:11, 14), as the historic one-year lectionary appointed for the Gospel Reading that day the section from John chapter 10 in which Jesus twice said, “I am the Good Shepherd”. However, when a three-year lectionary series was introduced by Roman Catholics in the late 19‑60s, and subsequently followed by Lutherans among others, the Gospel Readings on what was affectionately known as “Good Shepherd Sunday” in both the first and third years of that three-year series no longer included Jesus’s explicit designation. Instead, for example, today we twice heard Jesus say, “I am the door”, after His speaking about the difference between a thief and a robber, who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, and the shepherd, who does enter by the door. But, calling today “Door Sunday” does not seem to have the same ring or appeal! In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus arguably is talking about Himself in the third person as “the Shepherd”: to Whom the gatekeeper opens, Whose voice the sheep hear, Who calls His own sheep by name and leads them out, Who goes before them, and Whom the sheep follow, for they know His voice, in contrast to a stranger, whom they will not follow but will flee from, for they do not know the voice of strangers. And, much of that teaching is continued in the verses of John chapter 10 that are heard in the other two years of the three‑year series, but only today do we twice hear Jesus say, “I am the door”, and so today we consider Jesus as the door, directing our thoughts to the theme, “Those who enter by Jesus are saved”.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus first used this figure of speech with at least some of the Pharisees who overheard Jesus’s speaking to the man born blind to whom Jesus gave sight (John 9:1-41), but they did not understand what He was saying to them. So, Jesus spoke a second time, but He does not appear to have said exactly the same thing, but He appears to have shifted somewhat the figure of speech. In the first case, the gatekeeper—perhaps God the Father—opens the “door”—or maybe, better, the “gate”—to the Shepherd—Who seems to be God the Son—Who then brings out all of His own sheep. In the second case, Jesus says He is the door of the sheep—or maybe, better, the door “for” the sheep—and that, if anyone enters by Him, He or she will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Thus, when understood in view of “the temple and the liturgy celebrating the coming of the legitimate king of Israel” (Weinrich, ad loc John 10:1-2, 357), in the first case, we may see that the Shepherd, the King of Glory, is let in through the gate to the sheepfold—or “courtyard”—in order to gather the sheep, the people of Israel, and lead them out as if in a new exodus from the world of sin and death to the holy land of eternal life (for example, Psalm 24:4‑10; 100:1-5). And, in the second case, we may see that Jesus is the Door through which His people enter into that eternal life, perhaps just like the temple’s Nicanor gate through which only the righteous were to enter (Psalm 118:19-20). (Weinrich, ad loc John 9:39‑10:10, pp.336-404.)
Of course, by nature, none of us on our own would be able to enter such a gate! Before God we are only un‑righteous. Our sinful nature produces countless actual sins of thoughts, words, and deeds, for any one of which sins we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. But, out of God the Father’s great love and mercy, God the Holy Spirit calls and enables us to repent and so to be forgiven for God the Son’s sake. To paraphrase today’s Epistle Reading, we were straying like sheep but now have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls, Who heals us by His wounds (1 Peter 2:19-25; confer Isaiah 53:5, 6).
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus says that He, the Door, came that people might have life and have it abundantly. But, Jesus seemingly likens the Jewish leaders to thieves and robbers, who do not enter by the door, who do not have the ritual purity to be in the temple; He likens them to strangers whom the sheep do not hear and will not follow but will flee, for their voice they do not know. Such thieves and robbers, Jesus says, come to steal and kill and destroy. Later, when Pontius Pilate gave the Jewish leaders a choice, instead of Jesus they took Barabbas, who the Divinely‑inspired St. John says was a robber (John 18:39-40). They handed Jesus over to be crucified. On the cross, Jesus died for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. He died in our place, the death that we deserved. As His resurrection in part shows, by Him we are reconciled to the Father, and so we have God’s peace and joy. As we heard in the Epistle Reading, Jesus committed no sin but bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. Jesus’s active and passive righteousness becomes our righteousness. “Those who enter by Jesus are saved.”
Earlier in St. John’s Gospel account, Jesus told Nicodemus that, unless one is born or water and the Spirit, he or she cannot enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:5). For most of us, Holy Baptism is our entrance into Jesus and the Kingdom of God. The washing of water with the word (Ephesians 5:26), or the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, is a means of salvation (Titus 3:5; confer 1 Peter 3:21). Usually at the Baptismal Font we are given our names, but, more importantly, we are given God’s Triune Name, as He marks us as His own people. We come to know His voice and, when we confess the sins that we know and feel in our heart, then we hear His voice speaking through our pastors’ forgiving our sins in Holy Absolution. So baptized and absolved, the door is not closed to us but open, and so we are admitted to the Holy Supper of bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and thus there we receive forgiveness and so also life and salvation. The Gospel Reading’s context of Jesus’s saying that He is the Door indicates that His statement is a figure of speech, but no such context is present when Jesus says that the bread and wine are His Body and Blood, and so we know that they truly are His Body and Blood.
In today’s First Reading, those whom the Lord added to His flock of the Church on the day of Pentecost devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, that is, to the breaking of bread and the prayers—again the one part of the Sacrament signifies also the other part of the Sacrament (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXII:7). Those believers attended the temple publicly to reach out to the Jews, and they in their house churches privately broke bread. We can hardly miss the emphasis on Word and Sacrament, faithful teaching and practice. With reference to today’s Gospel Reading, in his book on The Church, one of my now-sainted seminary‑professors in part saw evidence of the holiness of the Church in the Shepherd’s calling His own sheep by name, the sheep’s knowing the Shepherd’s voice, and their fleeing and not following anyone else (Marquart, CLD IX:18). And, also on the basis of today’s Gospel Reading, he said that false teachings and false teachers are to be clearly renounced and abandoned (Marquart, CLD IX:59). How else are we to come to distinguish the Shepherd’s voice from the voice of strangers? The Jewish leaders of Jesus’s day are hardly about whom we need be concerned! With eternal life at stake, may God forgive our dis‑unity and weakness, and may He grant us the unity and strength so to renounce and abandon all false teachings and false teachers and all false practices and practicers!
Although today is not “Door Sunday” but “Good Shepherd Sunday”, we nevertheless twice heard Jesus say, “I am the door”. By the power of the Holy Spirit we realize that, though we are sinners who deserve present death and eternal damnation, by God’s grace “Those who enter by Jesus are saved”.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
