Enter the Gate

April 13, 2008

Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

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How many of you first came to Christ Church sometime after 1999? Go ahead and lift your hand if that’s the case…. I’m asking because in that year we accomplished a small gesture that had a rather potent effect. Prior to that year, the front doors of the church were always closed and locked except for about three hours on Sunday morning. This place was dark and sealed most other times.

As you leave today, make note of the massive carved doors that shutter our space at night. As you walk out of the sanctuary you’ll notice the glass doors. These replaced another set of massively thick wooden doors that provided a double barrier to entering this space. These were also beautiful in their way. Still, two sets of massive doors kept the glittering interior sanctuary safe from humans. At least, that’s how I interpreted the effect in my early years here.

But one fine day when various alignments occurred within a congregation that was stirring into life we chose to fling the doors wide with only a transparent screen shielding the sidewalk from sanctuary. So from then on, for many hours every day, people come to sit and pray, light a candle. Once in a while the metal money box gets stolen. The last time that happened one of our staff members found it in the subway stairwell at 60th and Lex, across from Bloomingdales.

While irritating, this doesn’t concern us overmuch – we sort of see it as the price attached to offering the city our hospitality. We think the consolation and prayer that has filled this space has more than made up for the few dollars that have wandered off over the last eight or so years. And dynamic hospitality is one of our four core values. Shuttered and locked didn’t square with the gospel that was invading our consciousness.

As if to punctuate this point, I have a vivid memory from the Friday following 9/11. You may remember that the President called on the nation to gather for prayer at twelve noon. As usual, our doors were open. There had been a lot of praying going on in this space during the intervening three days. But on that Friday, standing in the center of the chancel, with a standing-room only crowd, I could see out to the street.

As the noon hour struck, I saw a sanitation truck screech to a halt right in front as four guys leapt off and ran through our portal. I’m not entirely certain why that image has stayed with me. Part of it was the heightened emotional state. Part of it though, had to do with the doorway – the sanctuary inside, fully disclosed and open to the world on the street. I knew hardly anyone who passed through the doors and filled the pews that day. Nearly everyone a stranger. Then again, not really. Not in here.

Architects are very concerned with how spaces are entered. The best ones will take very great care with proportionality and light. They like to control the experience of passing through the portal to interior space. Clearly a space like this is meant to dramatically differ from the sidewalk. Walking through the portal people are supposed to feel as though they have stepped from one reality into another. The low ceiling of the narthex or foyer sets up the drama of walking into the five-story barrel vault with sparkling mosaics. The portal, or doorway is the threshold experience – one cannot be in here without passing through, thus the no-brainer decision to get our doors open.

I tell you, once we did that, our congregational life changed. Perhaps not obviously so to everyone, but, as you might expect, psychologically and spiritually it made an enormous difference. We were open for business, disclosed to the world and seeming vulnerable for the sake of anyone who chose to pass through the doorway, just a few steps from the hustle/bustle of everyday life.

Though an obvious concept, it came to mind as I considered what Jesus might mean when he said he was the gate for the sheep. The gate; the doorway; the portal; the point or entry; the transition from sanctuary to pasture and back again. Actually, as I did a bit of reading about shepherding this week – all the commentaries are full of it – I learned that sometimes when it was not possible to bring sheep back to the village fold, shepherds would lead their flock into narrow canyons with only one small egress in which the shepherd would lay down during the night. In this way he was literally the gate – sheep on one side, potential threats on the other; the shepherd was the doorway.

Now Jesus also said he was the shepherd, that he had an intimate relationship with his flock – they knew his voice and he knew their names. A few verses later he will say, “I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep….I know my own and my own know me…I lay down my life for the sheep…I lay it down of my own accord and I have power to take it up again….”

With this, he’s describing in part what it means for him to be the gate. As we’ve already said, a gate is a passageway, a portal. It implies movement. Doors and gates are transitional experiences. We opened up our entrance on Park Avenue so many could pass through to the sanctuary and back out again onto the street. We intend for that portal to serve as a pathway to something people will hopefully find worthwhile.

At the very least I suppose we want to share the beauty of this space. But more importantly, we hope that it will provide something they may not have expected – momentary respite perhaps, or better, something like true sanctuary, maybe even the sensation that someone really does know their authentic name, actually has their best interests at heart, someone trustworthy, holy and profoundly close at hand. In this way, when they step back through the portal onto the sidewalk they will know this trustworthy friend continues to accompany them wherever they happen to be headed.

I’m guessing that’s what those sanitation workers were looking for when they ran into the space just in time for prayer on that September Friday in 2001. They probably didn’t think of it like that, but running in they found the place chock full of friends whose faces they did not recognize, but whose relationship to themselves was in that moment undeniable. And the shared yearning for a reliable shepherd, palpable.

The early Christians called themselves people of the way. Which way was that? Well, the way of Jesus, the gate, the portal. And what did that mean? If you were here during the final days of Lent you will remember that Jesus said he came to give a new commandment, that we were to love one another as he loved us. Remember the foot-washing during the last meal he shared with his friends, also found in John’s gospel, where Jesus, the gate, the portal, the way, kneels at the feet of his disciples with towel and basin and humbly washes the dust from their soles. He then says to them, “Now, you go and do likewise.”

He was then summarily executed. But remarkably, just a few days later, all that he had ever said took on astonishing meaning and power. As I mentioned last Sunday, in just a few short weeks the ragtag cohort of fisher-folk and their hangers-on were transformed from a crushed and cowardly band into a ferociously powerful network of friends who found their way into a brand new life with God through the portal of Jesus, who was evidently very much present and potent in their midst.

The way of Jesus, the gate, was the way of laying down one’s life for one’s friends. How did that work out? Well, initially we learn that the church that abruptly formed in Jerusalem established an extraordinarily robust and generous community. You heard about that in our first reading. According to Luke, the author of Acts, this new community began to form within a few months of the resurrection.

As you heard Kaye read a few minutes ago, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need.” That’s pretty powerful isn’t it? That’s what happened to those who found their way through the portal of Jesus in those first days. Why? Because that was an immediate expression of the selfless love Jesus taught and now revealed. How was it revealed? In the content of their own newly empowered lives spilled out in loving generosity for one another.

When I sit with all of this, I find it really compelling. This describes why I’m in this business and suit up in this outfit. Compelling, challenging, demanding, profoundly hopeful. The most hopeful message I know. Jesus, the gate, the shepherd, opens up relationship with God with a flurry of transformative possibility born from deep loving intimacy – we recognize his voice and he knows us by name. We are held, saved, from all that would threaten to undo us and called into community of astonishing abundance. Our sole task is to claim it as our own birthright.

This is powerful imagery – among the most potent in all human expression.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside still waters
He restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil,
For you are with me;
Your rod and your staff – they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life,
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.

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