Jesus said, "I am the gate."
What?
It is a very strange Gospel lesson for Sunday. Our Collect (prayer) for the day talks about Jesus as the good shepherd, but the lesson stops before he claims it for himself. Instead we hear Jesus claiming his authority as the gate. I suppose that the Easter message is that in Christ the gate has been opened, but it is just a very strange lesson. I'd love to hear ideas from y'all on how to preach it.
I think that I will instead preach on Acts 2.42, "Those who were baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers."
It was the theme of our Lenten series, it plays well alongside Keith's sermon yesterday as well as mine from two weeks ago. What does it look like to be devoted to teaching, fellowship, bread breaking, and prayers? How were the lives of those baptized different by the time chapter 2 verse 42 rolled around? How does "the apostles' teaching" get unpacked; what were they teaching? How do we find a balance between these four keys to the life of the Church? Are we too devoted to bread breaking? Or perhaps fellowship? And where does doing the work of Christ come into play? Social Justice, if you will, doesn't seem to appear on this list.
Keith led a 5 week series on Acts 2.42. If I go this route, please pray that my sermon is slightly shorter than that.
1 comment:
"I am the gate," okay...not as strange as "I am the Walrus," but seriously....
I was reading a commentary (yes...I finally went to one of those) that talked about how a Shepherd, when he had his sheep ready for a good night's sleep...perhaps in a gave...would but himself at the mouth of the cave...lying down to protect them from predators (wolves, etc.) I am assuming the wolves were wary of human backsides and would thus stay away. Either way, this helps make some sense and ties together the "good Shepherd" and "gate" as one...which was probably understood by the original hearers of this story.
I am going to preach on Psalm 23 and "good Shepherd" arguing that although Jesus IS the GS we can still emulate him. I am going to tell a story of one who led others through the "valley of the shadow of death" and hopefully show us all that God still works through us and we can hear the "voice" of the GS if we will only make the effort to tune into it.
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