By Dr. Lani Wilson
Good Day, fasting and praying group!
We thank God for another week that was never promised to us. To hear the young Warriors say after Game 6 that they give God the credit and go to chapel after games is a joy. Go, Warriors! Oakland is overdue. “Can anything good come out of Oakland?” Yes, decidedly.
As we lift up our church and the church in the world, can we focus on a new word laid down for us as we fast and pray? Gate. Yup. Gate. Seems so obvious but as usual, it probably won’t be. The word “gate” is most notable for us who call ourselves “Christians” in John 10, specifically verses 2-5 (TMB). He is talking to Jews who were just not “getting” what He was trying to say. This entire passage, according to John, came about after Jesus had cured the blind man and heard that the Pharisees had driven the newly-sighted man out of the temple.
The shepherd walks right up to the gate. The gatekeeper opens the gate to him and the sheep recognize his voice.
He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he gets them all out, he leads them and they follow because
they are familiar with his voice. They won’t follow a stranger’s voice but will scatter because they aren’t used to the sound of it."
Of course, Jesus uses pastoral language because his audience is a simple, agrarian people. In these verses we have the shepherd, the gatekeeper, and the sheep; let’s call this “Version 1.” Apparently, they must have looked dumbfounded and thus, He tries to tell them for the second time who He is, His identity, place, and function in God’s new divine architecture. This time in verses 7-10 He is more concrete in his explanation (TMB).
So he tried again. "I’ll be explicit, then. I am the Gate for the sheep. All those others are up to no good-sheep stealers,
every one of them. But the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for-will
freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and
eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
In these abovementioned verses (7-10) we have the gate, the sheep, and the thief. Let’s call this “Version 2.”
For Jesus’ third, final, and extremely patient attempt at His self-revelation to His own incredulous people, He again lays out a scene that is familiar to descendants of the great King David, born the shepherd boy.
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary. A hired man is
not a real shepherd. The sheep mean nothing to him. He sees a wolf come and runs for it, leaving the sheep to be ravaged and
scattered by the wolf. He’s only in it for the money. The sheep don’t matter to him. I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own
sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me and I know the Father. I put the sheep before myself,
sacrificing myself if necessary.
John 10:11-15 (TMB)
Now we have the Good Shepherd, the hired man, the sheep, and for the first time in this teaching session, Jesus introduces us to the wolf. This last more detailed explanation is “Version 3.”
If we expend a little effort and dissect Jesus’ own words, something interesting emerges.
⦁ Of the three participants in this pastoral drama in Version 1 (verses 2-5), the shepherd, the gatekeeper, and the sheep, the gatekeeper is the active player. The gatekeeper controls access to the sheep for the shepherd. Only mentioned once, this party is quite literally the hinge upon which the entire scene revolves.
⦁ In Version 2 (verses 7-10) the focus is on the gate, a gate that allows the sheep to “freely go in and out.” The gate is an apparatus, supposedly just a minor structure but in Jesus’ depiction it is the protective centerpiece of safety for sheep, allowing them to find pasture on which to graze.
⦁ And in Version 3 (verses 11-15), the active party is the Good Shepherd who “puts the sheep before himself,” sacrificing himself if necessary. We might assume that for full and dramatic emphasis and to make sure that his audience relates emotionally to His self-revelation, Jesus introduces the wolf who would “ravage and scatter” the sheep.
If we know anything about Him, we know that Jesus was extraordinarily careful about His choice of words and even His choice of language when He was teaching.
It seems highly unlikely that Paul would simply choose to
give Peter an Aramaic name, so it can be safely assumed
that Paul knew that Peter was also called Κηφᾶς when he
wrote his epistle. This would indicate a very early use
of Κηφᾶς as a proper name, certainly prior to the composition
of Matthew. This too would lend credence to the arguments
that Jesus probably spoke to his disciples in both Aramaic and Greek.
Brittney C. Burnette, Th.M. “Upon This Rock: An Exegetical and Patristic Examination of Mathew 16:18.” In partial fulfillment of a Master’s Thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 2005. Published February 2, 2009.
If Jesus was trying to get us to focus on the multidimensionality of His purpose on earth, these three different “versions” and their different emphases might invite us to ask The Lord what He is “getting at” that we are not “getting” today. Just like Him, huh?
GATE, n. 1. A large door which gives entrance into a walled city, a castle, a temple, palace or other large edifice. It differs from door chiefly in being larger. Gate signifies both the opening or passage, and the frame of boards, planks or timber which closes the passage.
2. A frame of timber which opens or closes a passage into any court, garden or other inclosed ground; also, the passage.
3. The frame which shuts or stops the passage of water through a dam into a flume.
4. An avenue; an opening; a way.
In scripture, figuratively, power, dominion. ""Thy Seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;"" that is, towns and fortresses. Gen 22.
The gates of hell, are the power and dominion of the devil and his instruments. Mat 16 The gates of death, are the brink of the grave. Psa 9.
Webster’s Dictionary: bible.org/lumina
As made clear by this definition the word “gate“ obviously has many meanings and there is big-time debate about exactly where Golgotha was/is and outside of which gate in Jerusalem.
Golgotha Rediscovered, www.golgotha.eu
Some say that this was the site of Golgotha (“The Skull” or “Cranium”) outside the east wall, in part because of the claim by witnesses (e.g., the centurion and other Roman soldiers who watched Christ die on the cross) that they saw the veil of the temple rip.
And immediately the face of the door of the temple was rent
into two parts from top to bottom... And the officer of the foot-
soldiers, and they that were with him who were guarding Jesus,
when they saw the earthquake, and the things which came to
pass, feared greatly, and praised God, and said, This man was
righteous; and, Truly he was the Son of God. And all the multi-
tudes that were come together to the sight, when they saw what
came to pass, returned and smote upon their breasts. Diatessaron 52,2
www.golgotha.eu
The Diatessaron or the earliest “harmony” or synopsis, synthesis (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) of the gospel was a single text, written by the Assyrian Christian theologian Taitian around 150 AD (or CE). He attempted in this earliest gospel “harmony” (as did all harmonies”) to put the gospel reports into chronological order. It was read as one book in the Syriac Middle East until around 400 CE when it was separated into four distinct gospels or books (brittannica.com). There is debate whether the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (said to be established by Flavia Julia Helena Augusta, later canonized as St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine) is actually the true site of Golgotha. But one thing is agreed upon: Jesus entered Jerusalem through The Gate called Beautiful, the Golden Gate, the Sheep’s Gate on the eastern wall of the temple on what would become Palm Sunday. It is not far from the Temple Mount, assumed to be Mount Moriah where Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice and the original site of the two Jewish temples.
gate-Jerusalem.onetime.com
Below is a view of the eastern wall of the Gate Called Beautiful to the left of the gold-appearing Dome of the Mount from across the Kidron Valley.
http://www.generationword.com/jerusalem101/36-se-end-east-wall.html
Prophetically, Jesus had to enter through the eastern gate into Jerusalem because of the importance of the locus of “the east” in the Hebrew scripture. “And the glory of the LORD came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the east” (Ezekiel 43:4 KJV).
bible-history.com, “The Eastern Gate and Bible Prophecy
Just as prophetically, He will return through that eastern gate. This gate was sealed by Muslim conquerors (the Ottoman Turks) when they controlled Jerusalem in 692 CE, around the time Caliph Abdel-Malik built the Dome of the Rock on top of the Temple Mount and again in 1530 CE, both times to prevent the Messiah from returning to the Holy City. However, Ezekiel prophesied that the gate would be sealed shut thousands of years before it occurred.
Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east. And it was shut. And the LORD said to me,
“This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it, for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by
it. Therefore it shall remain shut. Only the prince may sit in it to eat bread before the LORD. He shall enter by way of the vestibule
of the gate, and shall go out by the same way.”
Ezekiel 44:1-3 (ESV)
As we look to the significance of the word “gate” in the Tanakh (or Hebrew Bible) and the New Testament, we see that the eastern gate, Sheep Gate (also “Beautiful” and “Golden”) is where the action was and is: The gate is still sealed shut and controlled by Muslims who consider it theirs exclusively (The Eastern Gate and Bible Prophecy – The Court of the Gentiles – Bible History Online).
⦁ In our perusal of the three passages in John 10 (2-5; 7-10; 11-15), the three active parties in each of Versions 1, 2, and 3 are the gatekeeper, the gate, and the Good Shepherd. In each version the focus changes, as if Jesus wanted us to get a 360 degree picture of the concept. In Version 1 we watch as the Gatekeeper (capitalization intended) opens the gate, as if S/He were waiting for the shepherd to come and get the sheep. In Version 2, our attention turns to the apparatus, or instrument that opens and closes allowing ingress or egress of the sheep. And finally in Version 3, the Good Shepherd protects the sheep. There are three entities mentioned in these three Versions upon whom we typically focus when we read this as if it were just one passage: The stranger, the thief, and the hired man. But notice that when we dissect John 10: 1-15 and break it down into these three “Versions,” they are not the central characters. Respectively, they are threats to the sheep by unfamiliarity, intent or neglect.
⦁ A stranger is not connected to and engaged in a relationship with the sheep and therefore does not care what happens to them.
⦁ A thief has ill intent toward the sheep; to steal them away.
⦁ The hired man has no ownership or investment in the sheep and would not defend property that is not his.
Yet lurking around in the dark in the wilderness, always at-the-ready to pounce is the wolf.
Stranger ----------------> Unfamiliarity
Thief ------------------> Intent
Hired Man ---------------> Neglect
In Version 1, is the identity of the Gatekeeper Jesus Himself or is Jesus the shepherd? TMB says that the shepherd “walks right up to the gate” and “calls his own sheep by name” (verse 3). If we had to bet on who the Gatekeeper is, we might lay odds that it is God. Clearly, Jesus said that He calls His own sheep to Himself and they recognize His voice. He leads them and they follow because they know He cares for them: He is not a stranger. Could Jesus have been introducing Himself as one with Mother/Father God? Was He making it clear that He Himself is under the authority of El Shaddai, the Almighty and yet was One with God? Was he talking about the reflexive identity He shares with God, the Great Other? The role of the shepherd is leader of the flock but the character of the Gatekeeper is of power: The Gatekeeper has the power to open the gate or not. In this Version 1, the shepherd approaches the gate but it is the Gatekeeper who opens it. Remember that Jesus was and is very deliberate in His usage of words in each language He spoke. By clarifying the roles of the shepherd and the Gatekeeper in this Version, He is trying to tell us something.
Jesus clearly states that He is the Gate in Version 2, the actual instrument of freedom, the bearer of choice. He even places Himself in time in verse 8. Listen to the NRSV translation of that verse: “All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them.” The sheep can choose to live freely in a verdant pasture when the Gate opens or starve inside the pen, if they don’t recognize the voice of the shepherd. Thus, it becomes a matter of life and death…but only for the sheep because the stranger runs no risk if s/he (the stranger can be male or female, right?) doesn’t call out to the sheep. Therefore, s/he can choose to risk exposure or not. The sheep can’t help themselves when they recognize the voice of their shepherd. Every herder knows his or her flock will dutifully come when summoned; they have no choice. So, not hearing one’s own shepherd is life threatening. One could say the attribute of the Gate is freedom; freedom to say “yes” or freedom to say “no.” In or out. Yes or no.
And finally in Version 3 Jesus has to blurt out definitively to make sure these hard-headed and hard-hearted people get the message. He declares that He is not just the shepherd but the Good shepherd. We are so used to this self-identification of The Christ that we can’t imagine what a bad shepherd would be like. In the extreme a bad shepherd would not lay down his life for the sheep: He would run. “The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away---and the wolf snatches them and scatters them” (John 10:12 NRSV). Now we’re talking about ownership. Ownership. The hired hand even sees the enemy or wolf coming and chooses to neglect them, takes off, leaving the sheep to fend for their dimwitted selves. And they scatter… lost to starve or be devoured…alone. What would we say is the character of a Good Shepherd? Selflessness. Selflessness. A Good Shepherd negates Himself to the point of death for His flock. Death? It becomes an issue of the shepherd or the sheep: Me or him; Her or me. Egos down; others up. “And I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15b NRSV). Are we even capable of thinking like that now; not just metaphorically but in hope-to-die real life?
Even more interesting is that the two parties that are the least powerful in Versions 1, 2, and 3 are the sheep and the wolf. Probably, most of us focus on the threatening wolf as the danger and the helplessness of the sheep. But Jesus made it clear in three different ways that He leads and protects the sheep and handles and defeats the wolf: That was the purpose of the cross. We sheep now have a Shepherd who is never derelict in His duties. In fact, he conquered the world. By His death and resurrection, the wolf is always thrown down; always defeated; always a stalking but irrelevant threat.
This week on June 15th, The Atlanta BlackStar posted an article, “Black Church Struggling to Adapt to New Generation of More Liberal, Less Religious Activists.” However one reacts to the article, it does strike a nerve.
Speaking to NPR, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, an Atlanta minister who used to preach in the Rev. Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, said if church members are not upsetting people in power, they are not doing their job. “If you are a church that’s never in ‘good’ trouble with the powers, then you’re probably in bed with the powers,” Warnock said. “We’re doing precious little to actually dismantle the American prison-industrial complex, which is the new Jim Crow.” There are several reasons why the Black church is not more vocal on social justice issues. The Rev. Melvin Russell, a Baltimore minister and lieutenant colonel in the local police department, said disintegration of a centralized Black community has diluted economic and political power. “When I was coming up,” said Russell in an interview with The Huffington Post, “the churches were community churches. We’re no longer community churches. We have devolved into commuter churches.” Also, to many, some Black churches seem to more concerned about material issues rather than social problems.
The Atlanta Blackstar, Thursday June 18, 2015
How much of a “commuter church” is Allen Temple? Are we more “concerned about material issues rather than social problems?” And a very interesting trend has emerged that may answer these questions for us.
People on the leading edge of the baby boom and those born during World War II — the 25 million Americans now between
the ages of 65 and 74 — have emerged as particularly well positioned in the nation’s economic timeline. While there are plenty of individual exceptions, as a group they are better off financially than past generations and may well enjoy a more successful old age than future ones, even those merely a decade younger.
“America’s Seniors Find Middle-Class ‘Sweet Spot’” Dionne Searcy and Robert Gebeloff NY Times, June 14, 2015
Uh oh…apparently, those of us who came of age during the 60’s are not just moving away but we’re blending in with the “Establishment” that we’ve become a part of and have come to represent. It’s one thing to talk about “the community” but when you’ve moved on to bigger and better pastures, that community becomes a choice. In or out. Yes or no. There is no doubt that African-Americans suffered the most during The Great Recession but obviously, some of us weathered the storm pretty well. You wouldn’t know it on Sunday mornings. The lack of footsteps marching to drop off tithes and money for the food box is deafening. It’s too easy to say that it’s because our numbers are down. So? We seem to think it’s something or someone “out there,” but it is clearly something or someone “right here.” Age does not give us a free pass. The gift of age gives us more tickets to punch.
For those of us sitting on the periphery saying that we’ve done our part and now it’s time to just recede into the pastures of ease and retirement, Jesus might just have a message for us. He is not a stranger, a thief or a hired man. He is the Gatekeeper, the Gate, and The Good Shepherd. He has chosen to give us life beyond our wildest dreams, a life that most of our parents could not even conceive of in their depression-era childhoods and youth. It ain’t over. But if we insist on acting like our work is done, El Shaddai might just act on that promise S/He made to bring us on Home (“Home” with a capital H). We’re just taking up space, breathing air, and drinking water in a world where our young see nothing but diminishing resources and zero-balance futures. Time is short and although the Gate Called Beautiful is still shut, awaiting The Messiah’s return, we know that gates swing in and out. Jesus the Christ has already come through that Gate. He’s just waiting to see if we’re going to follow Him out into that wilderness where our young lay fallow, dying, untouched, unmoved.
At that time, says the LORD, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. Thus says the LORD: The people
who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to him* (Note*Gk: Heb me) from
far away^ (Note^Or to him long ago). I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Jeremiah 31:-3 (NRSV)
If we substitute the words in the parentheses into the verses, they read as such:
The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when
Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to me, to him [or her] long ago.
If we think that we can crank on down, turn down the thermostat, and rest awhile, Jesus has news for us: HE’S JUST GETTING STARTED.
You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them, too. They’ll also recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock, one Shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life. And so I am free to take it up again. No one takes
it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down;
I also have the right to take it up again. I received this authority personally from my Father.
John 10:16-18 (NRSV)
It ain’t over. We’ve been given this extra time not because we earned it. We didn’t earn it! It’s a gift, straight up, a gift: Getting old is a gift. Now…we can throw that gift back in the face of the Living Christ who held our hands, saved us from ourselves, gave us abundance we didn’t know existed or we can stand up and be counted. Troop count is low; new recruits are fewer and farther between. Does God have to wither the Black Church to make us relevant again? We just might be the crew responsible for the foundation for this generation that is slinking away from the church. If anybody has the experience, expertise, and hopefully, a few drops of wisdom, it’s us. Are you ready? Wind up those arthritic, aching joints and jump back in. It’s good for you and it’s required because Jesus says, “It…….ain’t…….over.”
I can hear my Savior calling.
I can hear my Savior calling.
I can hear my Savior calling.
I’ll go with you…with you…all the way.
Jesus, how present and real and current and solid You are! How we feel Your hand moving through our lives! Give us energy that suits the pace You want for us to join the battle. Some of us mistake respite for receding when it’s really re-engagement. Give us wisdom to discern what and where You want us to go. Thank You for Your clear explanation of exactly Who You are in detail: Gatekeeper, Gate, and Good Shepherd. We need nothing more than to stand behind You as You plough through the wilderness. Thank You for grace and for this race we run. It’s really all we have. It’s all we have and You’re all we need. Remind us and remind us, again. There is everything to gain and nothing to lose because You already took care of it all. All of it. You took care of it ALL.
And oh how we love You for it…all, for it all.
Grace in the wilderness.
Amen.
