The Door of the Cross
Sermon
To The Cross and Beyond
Cycle A Gospel Sermons for Lent and Easter
Object:
Last summer my wife and I enjoyed visiting our friends Dick and Mary in Montana. They have about 45 quarter horses and they were thrilled to show us the herd and take us along one evening to feed them. That evening we also helped get a three-month-old filly into the barn in order to medicate a cut on her face. The filly was a little skittish, but we got her into the barn and into a large stall and then Dick tried to get a halter on her head to hold her still in order to clean and medicate the cut. She, however, would have none of it and even in the confinement of the stall was more than a handful.
Then a horse trainer friend of theirs popped in and asked if she could help. It took her about twenty minutes to calm the animal, and slowly she was able to clean its wound and to medicate it. She then led the quiet filly out of the stall and it returned to its mother.
Sometimes, even when we're trying to help, our way of leading doesn't work. Jesus in John 10 is explaining himself: Who he is and how he leads people. He doesn't talk about a quarter horse in the stall but about sheep into the sheepfold. The word for "sheepfold" in the original language of the New Testament basically means a courtyard, and thus any outside enclosure. Jesus says he doesn't wrestle or force people to God, but leads us there, and we know it's Jesus when he speaks to us.
Now, whenever someone tells you they've been hearing voices, unless they're talking about hearing neighbors through thin apartment walls, you need to worry. Hearing voices is almost always a sign of a mental health problem. When Jesus says that his sheep know his voice, he means his followers can tell that Jesus is communicating with them. He says he calls us by name, which was very important in biblical times.
I grew up with a neighbor named Donna. Of all my childhood friends she's the only one whose middle name I know; because, when her mom was mad at her, she'd yell, "Donna Marie!" Sure, her mother knew her name! But in the biblical world one's name usually said something essential about you, who you really were. Jesus means that he knows our name in the best way, not to shout at us or threaten us, but to help us realize that he really knows us. He knows the true us that others don't know -- like those things that shake us with fear. He knows our secret hopes that bubble within us, our painful regrets that nag our conscience, our deepest wounds that invisibly bleed, and our unfulfilled aspirations that still nudge us to be better than we are. He knows all such things about us and loves us anyway. Jesus, who knows us best, loves us most. We discern when Jesus speaks to us, because he wants what's best for us.
Darlene Deibler Rose had been a missionary in New Guinea for four years when the Imperial Japanese army and WWII ended her marriage and she began four years in a military prison. She endured incredible hardship and brutality, as did her other missionary associates, half of them dying. When the war ended, she was evacuated by ship to Seattle and was finally able to telephone her parents. We can understand how emotional that phone call was.
She later wrote about her faith in Christ and that first phone call in the US to her parents: "Many have asked me how I know it is the Lord speaking to me. What had just happened was the best illustration I know. I hadn't heard my mother's voice for over eight years, but when the receiver went up in Oakland, California, and I heard someone say, 'Hello, Darlene,' I knew it was Mother. No one ever spoke my name as she did. So it is, that when I hear deep within the recesses of my spirit someone say, 'My child,' I know it is my Lord. No one else calls me as he does. That is his promise to all his children.... The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out."1
Even though later believers like Darlene Diebler Rose understand what Jesus meant, in his own time what he says doesn't make sense to the people he's talking to. Verse 6: "Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them." Jesus uses comparisons to explain how he cares for us and leads us. When it comes to talking about the heavenly realm, all we have are comparisons. Jesus uses these word pictures about himself in order to engage the minds of people at his time. So, living in a rural area, Jesus often talks about agriculture. Today, since few of us have sheep or a sheepfold behind the house, when we explain Jesus, we could make comparisons with machines, democracy, marketing, or computers, and always with the ways of human love. Yet, when we compare Jesus to anything, the comparison is always incomplete. No comparison to any fragment of this world is adequate to fully explain Jesus. And none of our comparisons can be literal. Think of it. Jesus says, "I am the vine. You are the branches." That doesn't mean that his skin feels like bark or his hair is green.
Jesus tries another comparison, "I am the gate for the sheep." Or, as older translations had it, "I am the door." The word "door" also means "gate, doorway, or gateway." Artists have a field day painting Jesus as the shepherd. But, how do you paint Jesus as a door? Easy enough to paint a gentle shepherd carrying a fragile lamb. Alot harder to show a gaping doorway or a swinging hunk of wood as a personal welcome to God.
The Santa Maria church sits on a hill in the city of Estepona, Spain. Two faces stare out from the arch over its beautifully carved main door: One face a male with his tongue sticking out at you and the other a female looking hopping mad. I photographed them and then printed those faces as postcards and sent them to my friends!
Maybe such artistry made some sense over a church door in 1772 when the place was built, but it's not exactly inviting today. When Jesus calls himself a door, he's not warning us or shooing us away from God. Jesus' naming himself the door is good news.
John le Carré writes spy novels in which you never know exactly what's true. In The Little Drummer Girl a daughter relates, supposedly, a description of her father after he's recently returned from prison and won't open doors. "He couldn't open them. He'd go up to them, stop, stand at attention with his feet together and his head down, and wait for the warder to come and unlock them...
"First time it happened, I couldn't believe it. I screamed at him. 'Open the bloody door!' His hand literally refused."2
For many people there seems a barrier as solid as a door between them and God; and, they won't face it, let alone move toward it. God and anything you say to portray God seems unwelcoming to them. That door seems forbidding. I'm a convert to the Christian faith. A few years into my ministry I heard the Sunday school ditty, "One door and only one and yet its sides are two. I'm on the inside, on which side are you?" I was livid. I know little kids and how they can taunt the outsider. I'd been outside the Christian faith. I could hear little kids singing that song and then see them stick their tongues out.
Jesus'calling himself the door isn't to frighten or belittle us, but to attract us. Our Lord Jesus is a completely open door, not one that only swings open with an arrogant, patronizing glee. And no one else controls that door.
In the middle ages when trade guilds passed on the knowledge of craftsmen, carpenters adopted the motto: "I am the door." When they made doors, they deliberately created the door's two small upper panels and the larger lower panels to form raised crosses. Most people have a door somewhere in the house with the sign of the cross on it. Think of Jesus' cross as a door that invites us to enter. As a way to be reminded of our Christian faith, we can remember Jesus' cross every time we open a door with a cross on it.
Jesus wants us to see him as an open door because he isn't a roadblock to God but an entryway. He's an open door to God's open heart. He not only shows us the way but is the way to God and the way to live for God. He's not an exit door out of life but in to true life, the kind we were created to live. Even Jesus' expression in verse 9 about allowing the sheep to come in and go out is an expression from the Old Testament that means moving about freely. The courtyard Jesus leads us into isn't a prison, but a temple. He brings us abundant life and true freedom, not cramped, half-way, someday-in-the-future life.
Sometimes the faith that the Bible tells us about is the faith to hang on to and endure. It's what I call the "getting-by-faith," as Darlene Diebler Rose clung to in a WWII Japanese military prison. Jesus tells us here in John 10 about a different aspect of faith. He's not offering us a faith so we can escape from life, as do some religions. He's also not granting a faith that always keeps us safe from the bad things in the world. Read the New Testament and see what happens to Jesus' closest followers!
Contrary to the popular understanding of eternal life, he's not only giving us long-lasting life. He promises, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (v. 10). Jesus changes the quality of our lives, not just the duration. The life he infuses within us helps us live in this world as he does -- that's eternal, abundant life, and that's what's most important in this passage. Jesus' life here is "abundant."
Maybe our Sunday school teacher or some evangelist taught us to concentrate on getting to heaven; but Jesus didn't traipse around Galilee telling people, "think about getting into heaven." He told them to live within God's realm now, the God who's here right now in Jesus' invitation to life, who summons us through Jesus to live in a heavenly manner on earth. Jesus gives us that life now, more life than we expect or anticipate now, more than enough now. Also, by the way, we'll keep living beyond death. That's better news than just sometime after death being in heaven. Why wait? Jesus offers us life now.
Walter de la Mare's poem "The Listeners" pictures a horseman who's arrived at night and knocks on a door. The poem is mysterious as to who the horseman is and what's so important about his coming and knocking, but no one answers the door. Finally,
he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
"Tell them I came, and no one answer'd,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.3
Jesus' voice drifts through the door of the cross speaking our name. We don't have to fear him or fear when he comes and knocks at our door and summons us. He'll calm us with faith and strengthen us with hope. He'll lead us in love to true life here in the vast courtyard of God's creation. Eternal, abundant life starts here, trusting God and serving God joyfully as did our Lord Jesus whose entire life is pictured for us upon the open door of the cross.
Communion
Our Lord Jesus is the good shepherd who knows our name. He doesn't always lead us where we want to go, but where we need to go. Above all he leads us to the door of the cross, opens it, and invites us in to his true life. Let us now follow our Lord Jesus to his table and receive present evidence of abundant life. Amen.
__________
1. Darlene Diebler Rose, Evidence Not Seen (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), pp. 218-219.
2. John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984), p. 154.
3. Walter de la Mare, Selected Poems (New York: Holt, 1927), pp. 108-109.
Then a horse trainer friend of theirs popped in and asked if she could help. It took her about twenty minutes to calm the animal, and slowly she was able to clean its wound and to medicate it. She then led the quiet filly out of the stall and it returned to its mother.
Sometimes, even when we're trying to help, our way of leading doesn't work. Jesus in John 10 is explaining himself: Who he is and how he leads people. He doesn't talk about a quarter horse in the stall but about sheep into the sheepfold. The word for "sheepfold" in the original language of the New Testament basically means a courtyard, and thus any outside enclosure. Jesus says he doesn't wrestle or force people to God, but leads us there, and we know it's Jesus when he speaks to us.
Now, whenever someone tells you they've been hearing voices, unless they're talking about hearing neighbors through thin apartment walls, you need to worry. Hearing voices is almost always a sign of a mental health problem. When Jesus says that his sheep know his voice, he means his followers can tell that Jesus is communicating with them. He says he calls us by name, which was very important in biblical times.
I grew up with a neighbor named Donna. Of all my childhood friends she's the only one whose middle name I know; because, when her mom was mad at her, she'd yell, "Donna Marie!" Sure, her mother knew her name! But in the biblical world one's name usually said something essential about you, who you really were. Jesus means that he knows our name in the best way, not to shout at us or threaten us, but to help us realize that he really knows us. He knows the true us that others don't know -- like those things that shake us with fear. He knows our secret hopes that bubble within us, our painful regrets that nag our conscience, our deepest wounds that invisibly bleed, and our unfulfilled aspirations that still nudge us to be better than we are. He knows all such things about us and loves us anyway. Jesus, who knows us best, loves us most. We discern when Jesus speaks to us, because he wants what's best for us.
Darlene Deibler Rose had been a missionary in New Guinea for four years when the Imperial Japanese army and WWII ended her marriage and she began four years in a military prison. She endured incredible hardship and brutality, as did her other missionary associates, half of them dying. When the war ended, she was evacuated by ship to Seattle and was finally able to telephone her parents. We can understand how emotional that phone call was.
She later wrote about her faith in Christ and that first phone call in the US to her parents: "Many have asked me how I know it is the Lord speaking to me. What had just happened was the best illustration I know. I hadn't heard my mother's voice for over eight years, but when the receiver went up in Oakland, California, and I heard someone say, 'Hello, Darlene,' I knew it was Mother. No one ever spoke my name as she did. So it is, that when I hear deep within the recesses of my spirit someone say, 'My child,' I know it is my Lord. No one else calls me as he does. That is his promise to all his children.... The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out."1
Even though later believers like Darlene Diebler Rose understand what Jesus meant, in his own time what he says doesn't make sense to the people he's talking to. Verse 6: "Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them." Jesus uses comparisons to explain how he cares for us and leads us. When it comes to talking about the heavenly realm, all we have are comparisons. Jesus uses these word pictures about himself in order to engage the minds of people at his time. So, living in a rural area, Jesus often talks about agriculture. Today, since few of us have sheep or a sheepfold behind the house, when we explain Jesus, we could make comparisons with machines, democracy, marketing, or computers, and always with the ways of human love. Yet, when we compare Jesus to anything, the comparison is always incomplete. No comparison to any fragment of this world is adequate to fully explain Jesus. And none of our comparisons can be literal. Think of it. Jesus says, "I am the vine. You are the branches." That doesn't mean that his skin feels like bark or his hair is green.
Jesus tries another comparison, "I am the gate for the sheep." Or, as older translations had it, "I am the door." The word "door" also means "gate, doorway, or gateway." Artists have a field day painting Jesus as the shepherd. But, how do you paint Jesus as a door? Easy enough to paint a gentle shepherd carrying a fragile lamb. Alot harder to show a gaping doorway or a swinging hunk of wood as a personal welcome to God.
The Santa Maria church sits on a hill in the city of Estepona, Spain. Two faces stare out from the arch over its beautifully carved main door: One face a male with his tongue sticking out at you and the other a female looking hopping mad. I photographed them and then printed those faces as postcards and sent them to my friends!
Maybe such artistry made some sense over a church door in 1772 when the place was built, but it's not exactly inviting today. When Jesus calls himself a door, he's not warning us or shooing us away from God. Jesus' naming himself the door is good news.
John le Carré writes spy novels in which you never know exactly what's true. In The Little Drummer Girl a daughter relates, supposedly, a description of her father after he's recently returned from prison and won't open doors. "He couldn't open them. He'd go up to them, stop, stand at attention with his feet together and his head down, and wait for the warder to come and unlock them...
"First time it happened, I couldn't believe it. I screamed at him. 'Open the bloody door!' His hand literally refused."2
For many people there seems a barrier as solid as a door between them and God; and, they won't face it, let alone move toward it. God and anything you say to portray God seems unwelcoming to them. That door seems forbidding. I'm a convert to the Christian faith. A few years into my ministry I heard the Sunday school ditty, "One door and only one and yet its sides are two. I'm on the inside, on which side are you?" I was livid. I know little kids and how they can taunt the outsider. I'd been outside the Christian faith. I could hear little kids singing that song and then see them stick their tongues out.
Jesus'calling himself the door isn't to frighten or belittle us, but to attract us. Our Lord Jesus is a completely open door, not one that only swings open with an arrogant, patronizing glee. And no one else controls that door.
In the middle ages when trade guilds passed on the knowledge of craftsmen, carpenters adopted the motto: "I am the door." When they made doors, they deliberately created the door's two small upper panels and the larger lower panels to form raised crosses. Most people have a door somewhere in the house with the sign of the cross on it. Think of Jesus' cross as a door that invites us to enter. As a way to be reminded of our Christian faith, we can remember Jesus' cross every time we open a door with a cross on it.
Jesus wants us to see him as an open door because he isn't a roadblock to God but an entryway. He's an open door to God's open heart. He not only shows us the way but is the way to God and the way to live for God. He's not an exit door out of life but in to true life, the kind we were created to live. Even Jesus' expression in verse 9 about allowing the sheep to come in and go out is an expression from the Old Testament that means moving about freely. The courtyard Jesus leads us into isn't a prison, but a temple. He brings us abundant life and true freedom, not cramped, half-way, someday-in-the-future life.
Sometimes the faith that the Bible tells us about is the faith to hang on to and endure. It's what I call the "getting-by-faith," as Darlene Diebler Rose clung to in a WWII Japanese military prison. Jesus tells us here in John 10 about a different aspect of faith. He's not offering us a faith so we can escape from life, as do some religions. He's also not granting a faith that always keeps us safe from the bad things in the world. Read the New Testament and see what happens to Jesus' closest followers!
Contrary to the popular understanding of eternal life, he's not only giving us long-lasting life. He promises, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (v. 10). Jesus changes the quality of our lives, not just the duration. The life he infuses within us helps us live in this world as he does -- that's eternal, abundant life, and that's what's most important in this passage. Jesus' life here is "abundant."
Maybe our Sunday school teacher or some evangelist taught us to concentrate on getting to heaven; but Jesus didn't traipse around Galilee telling people, "think about getting into heaven." He told them to live within God's realm now, the God who's here right now in Jesus' invitation to life, who summons us through Jesus to live in a heavenly manner on earth. Jesus gives us that life now, more life than we expect or anticipate now, more than enough now. Also, by the way, we'll keep living beyond death. That's better news than just sometime after death being in heaven. Why wait? Jesus offers us life now.
Walter de la Mare's poem "The Listeners" pictures a horseman who's arrived at night and knocks on a door. The poem is mysterious as to who the horseman is and what's so important about his coming and knocking, but no one answers the door. Finally,
he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
"Tell them I came, and no one answer'd,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.3
Jesus' voice drifts through the door of the cross speaking our name. We don't have to fear him or fear when he comes and knocks at our door and summons us. He'll calm us with faith and strengthen us with hope. He'll lead us in love to true life here in the vast courtyard of God's creation. Eternal, abundant life starts here, trusting God and serving God joyfully as did our Lord Jesus whose entire life is pictured for us upon the open door of the cross.
Communion
Our Lord Jesus is the good shepherd who knows our name. He doesn't always lead us where we want to go, but where we need to go. Above all he leads us to the door of the cross, opens it, and invites us in to his true life. Let us now follow our Lord Jesus to his table and receive present evidence of abundant life. Amen.
__________
1. Darlene Diebler Rose, Evidence Not Seen (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), pp. 218-219.
2. John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984), p. 154.
3. Walter de la Mare, Selected Poems (New York: Holt, 1927), pp. 108-109.
