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Scripture |
John 10:1-1010 “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. 7 So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
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Devotional |
The central image in John 10:1-10 is the gate and the gatekeeper. The possibilities of both positive and negative images of the gate are present. The positive image of the gate that opens to new information and experience of God that awaits as we enter that gate. The gate may also become a combination of hardware that limits one’s entrance such as doctrine and beliefs. In our neck of the woods this week, we have been confronted with a negative image. The news reports continue to show the entrance to the YFZ ranch at Eldorado, where law enforcement personal block the entrance to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints compound. The gate has always been there to keep the public out but also keep some inside. Did Jesus ever consider that his name would be connected with an event like this? The gate can be a barrier for entrance, but I think of the gate as an entrance into a new experience in Christian spirituality and a closer relationship with Jesus Christ. Sitting in the chair by the book shelf, I am looking at sixty or seventy volumes of The Classics of Western Spirituality. What gate will these Christian writers open for me? What can I learn from this early Christian community that will contribute to the nurture of my spirituality? I reached for one and selected Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection. Walter Hilton died March 24, 1396 . “The first book is addressed to an anchoress and describes the renewal or “reforming” of the image of God in man, defaced by sin, to the “likeness” of God in Christ. The second book takes up points made in Book 1, but leads the reader considerably further along the road to contemplative union with God. Here Hilton deals carefully with the sacraments of baptism and confession, and then takes up at greater length the point already made in Book 1, that the way to union with God entails the costly taking up the cross-that there are no short cuts to perfection. In this second book he gives careful attention to the theology of grace.” 1 Is this a gate that Jesus offers to me? The encouragement comes from these words from Hilton. “The contemplative Christian life is now no longer seen as an ‘extra,’ available to a few chosen souls in the vowed religious life, but as something that may and should be sought by all Christians, because it represents the proper development of the baptismal life, in which ‘those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God’ (Romans 8:14).” There are so many gates open to me that I do not consider the ones that are closed. Not enough time to worry about those who are gathering the hardware to build obstacles to prevent entrance into the sheepfold. Close at hand, I have many gates which open to God. Today 159 children and 60 adults are being housed at Fort Concho . The fort built 141 years ago to protect settlers from Indian raids, today protects another group from harm. Two thousand years ago Jesus warns against thieves and bandits and today we find they are present. I suppose we will always need the Good Shepherd to protect us from the thieves and bandits.
1 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfecton. Translated by John P.H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1991. p. xi |