Is your gate open or closed?
This sermon invites listeners into the Emmaus story not as observers, but as companions on the road. Inspired by the Ignatian Examen, it explores how Christ meets us not in certainty but in brokenness and quiet recognition. In the breaking of bread and turning back toward life, we discover that even in what we had hoped would be different, God is still drawing near.
The Glimpses of Grace podcast is a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. We are passionate about supporting the spiritual growth of souls, and we hope these sermons and conversations meet you where you are and enrich your soul as we all continue to make meaning in the world today.
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Transcript
Give us eyes to see,
give us ears to hear you,
O God, and give us hearts that can stretch large enough to live into your dream for this world.
Amen.
Just a few thoughts on today’s readings. Sometimes biblical texts can be tricky things. They really can. Growing up the way that I grew up, they were often simplified down and you were told that there was just a very clear understanding or meaning to them and if you just figured out what that was, you had all that you needed to know. But what we know, the deep truth of it is that they’re often very complex, often very confusing, and sometimes they even contradict with each other. And so we wrestle with trying to make sense of them and engage with them.
This morning’s texts give us a wonderful example of that dynamic, I think. So if you look in your bulletin at the first text, this is a tricky text. It is linked in many ways, we think, with a story of Jesus telling the rich man who comes to him in the gospel account. So if you think back to that story, that story, that encounter predates this text, if you will. Remember the rich man comes and asks Jesus, what must I do? And Jesus says what? “Sell all you have, give it to the poor, and you will experience the kingdom of heaven.” And then we have this text from Acts when the apostles are gathered and launching out into these first resurrected life steps, if you will. And they have this moment where this text describes them as selling all they had and sharing their possessions and giving out to all who had need.
Here’s what is tricky about that text. These two texts are my standbys anytime anyone says that they believe in a literal interpretation of the scripture. I said, “no, you don’t. You don’t actually believe in a literal interpretation. You literally wish that everyone agreed with the verses that already reinforce your agendas.” So that’s what is literally going on, but you no one has a literal approach to the text and you can bring them this and these two texts are the most excellent examples to watch a staunch literalist suddenly become so imaginative. Because all that we’re left with is to say, “well, I mean, that’s the way that they understood it in their own time.”
So, a tricky text, right? Tricky text. We wrestle with how do we engage with this text? How can we live up to the standard that this text seems to offer us?
The second text, if you look at it, also a tricky text. The trickiness, if you will, about this text has to do with how we understand suffering. So if you engage with this text, if you approach it a certain way, you can see how a certain layout or framework might be that if you are suffering, you should do so quietly and even give thanks for it. Because somehow your suffering is in a sense how your salvation, your own sense of self-worth and wholeness is being worked out. All well and good on a theoretical level. But for someone who is actually experiencing trauma, you can see how this text could be misused.
Someone comes and says, “all of this is going on in my life” and about the worst thing that you can say is, “well, the Bible says you should just suffer quietly for the sake of the Lord.” Difficult. Tricky texts. So we have this lingering question, if you will, of how we actually engage with them in a way that is transforming in our own lives, in a way that we feel is very authentic, in a way that takes seriously our own human context, our own life stories, all of that. In a way that I would say is robust and has some legs on it that can actually hold, as we have said, the true and full context of who we are as humans.
So looking at the gospel text now, I invite us to step into this text and actually maybe use some of those spiritual muscles that we talk about, stretch them in a little bit. So if you look at this gospel text on this Good Shepherd Sunday, it gives us an opportunity to actually engage with the text on an imaginative way that actually nurtures our own hearts being transformed, a transformation of our consciousness.
So, the image right from the outset is the image of a voice. So when we hear this text, when we hear this story and Jesus describing that the sheep know the shepherd’s voice. They will follow the shepherd where the shepherd leads because they know the sound of the shepherd’s voice and they will not follow the voice of strangers because they don’t know them. And they run from the strangers because their voices are foreign to them, are unusual to them.
Here’s how we can engage with this. We can ask ourselves, whose voices are we listening to? In our everyday lives, to put a fine point on it, with how we spend our time, the endless cycles of news commentaries, politicians, all the people who take up way too much head space and not pay rent for it. Whose voices are we listening to? Whose voices do we deem worthy of our attention? How do we spend our time? What are the first things that we do in the morning? Is it to turn on the news, to listen to the commentaries, to listen to those particular voices? Or is it to listen to the voices of birds? Or to spend time in silence with a cup of coffee or tea and listen to our own inner voice, to the voice of the spirit in our hearts.
Whose voices are we listening to? And why do we listen to the voices of the ones that we do? What benefit are we getting? How is it actually affecting our lives? How is it shaping the way that we see the world? How does it shape the way that we treat other people? How does it shape the way that we treat ourselves? Knowing that this is how we spend the time that we’ve been given by listening to the voices that we listen to, deeming them worthy.
So you see the shift. Approaching the text this way asks a lot of us other than just memorizing it for rote and thinking that somehow there’s an easy answer out there. Stepping into the text this way and imagining ourselves engaged in that story, seeing ourselves in that story, in that dynamic, in that context and asking ourselves these vulnerable, difficult questions. Whose voice are we listening to and why?
That’s one way with this gospel text. It actually offers us a fascinating second image, I think, and it’s the image of a gate. So I want to invite you to do a practice, to take on a practice to go into this text in an imaginative way and see what might actually be there for us.
So I invite you to close your eyes. This is a practice that you can use with any text, with an image from a text, a line, a sentence. So Jesus tells them, offers them this image of a gate of sheep coming in and out of a gate. And then he goes a step further and he tells them this. Jesus says, “I am the gate.” I am the gate.
So I invite you to image, envision in your mind a gate. When you hear that phrase, Jesus saying, “I am the gate,” picture in your mind a gate. See what rises up within you. It may be an ornate gate, it may be a simple wooden gate. What rises up in you in your imagination? And then open your eyes.
Now I’ll ask you, when you envisioned a gate, was it open or was it closed? We’re going to do a show of hands and go stand on opposite sides. It tells us something.
That’s a much deeper way to engage with a text, to go into it and let something rise up within us that might just be telling us something about ourselves that we need to pay attention to. So when you envisioned a gate, was it open or was it closed? And then what we do, we can engage with that. We can dialogue with ourselves, with our own imaginations and we can be curious and wonder. And from the outset, we can tell ourselves there is no right or wrong answer to this. It’s not right to have either an open or closed gate.
The point is that you envisioned it, which means something in you, in your soul had bubbled up at that moment that might be telling you something about yourself, your own inner work, what you’re being called to do. It might sound like this.
If you envision your gate as closed, perhaps you’re at a point in your life where things feel so uncertain. We wouldn’t know anything about that in the world that we all live in right now. There might be something going on in your life that feels so unsure that your psyche, your soul raised up within you this image of a closed gate because maybe you need just an added sense of safety. Maybe. Maybe for the first time in your life, you felt like you were inside the fold and not outside the fold and you’re grateful for that. Maybe. Maybe there’s someone in your life who has traumatized you in some way and nothing seems more comforting than for them to be on the other side of a closed gate. Maybe.
So you can see how that works. If your gate was open, maybe you felt so confined and locked within a sheep fold for so many years of your life, you can think of nothing better than to have the gate open up where you can run out and be free. Maybe. Maybe you’ve been outside the gate, outside the fence for so long and never felt like you could find your way in that for the first time in your life the gate appeared open and you realized you could actually step into the fold in a way that you never have. Maybe.
Those are the muscles that we don’t often use. That’s the space that we don’t often step into to be curious about what our own motivations are, what the own inner dynamics are that we are living by and through.
This image of a gate and whether it’s open or closed may actually be directly linked to the question of the voice that we’re listening to. Maybe we have so much in our lives that feels so uncertain that we need someone outside of ourselves who stands up for whatever reason, God only knows what their motivations are to stand up and say, “I have the answers to all the questions that you have. And if you just listen to me, all of your questions will be answered and that sense of certainty that you crave, I alone can give you.” Maybe.
Friends, this is what it means on a deeper level to step more fully into this Easter season, into this question of what it looks like to live and to participate in the resurrected life of Christ. These aren’t just rote stories. They’re not just shallow words on a page. But we see when we encounter them in this way and step into them that the spirit is alive and at work within them, within us and that the encounter between these actually opens up a much deeper space to us for us to wonder. Why is it that we live the way that we live? And is there a more transformed way to live and what would that look like to actively participate with that, to step into that space, to take that imaginative risk.
So the good news is that we not only have the rest of this Easter season, but the rest of our lives to do this work. And this is the work that we’re called to do.
Let us pray.
We give you thanks, oh God, for this Easter season, for the deep truths which your spirit continually reminds us of. And we give you thanks that it is indeed a season. A season when we encounter things about ourselves, the deep reality of, that there is no easy answers, but always the opportunity to engage in deep spiritual work. To become aware of how you are continuing to transform our lives so that we may live more fully in the world today. Be with us, give us courage and strength in all the days to come and it’s through Christ we pray. Amen.