On the Gate

[Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona, The Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2026. The propers for the Mass are found at https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/easter-4a/]

✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.

Good morning, dear family in Christ and Children of the Living God. Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, a day when many of the faithful turn their minds to peaceful images of a benevolent shepherd gently guiding flocks of fluffy, adorable sheep through lush and verdant pastures providing both abundant food and soft comfort.

Oh, please, spare me.

As a farm kid who grew up in VERY close proximity to a flock of sheep (my aunt and uncle’s), and much like Our Lord’s listeners, the reality of sheep husbandry was anything but clean, comfortable, and bucolic. Sheep can be very dirty. They eliminate where they eat. They are colossally stupid. Anyone keeping sheep are often short on sleep because lambing season is very high risk (how these creatures survived in the wild is in itself a demonstration of Divine Providence), they wander off and either have to be hunted down and retrieved from remote, inconvenient, and often dangerous locations, or they have to be fenced in, and that fence requires constant maintenance. Sheep also strip their pastures bare of every resource and have to be taken to a different pasture if they are not to starve. Did I mention that they are stupid? They make cows seem like particle physicists, and cows are no brighter than they need to be. As a result, sheep are also incredibly vulnerable.

Yet they are not unrelieved burdens. They provide wool to clothe us, a very useful textile that keeps us warm, whether wet or dry, and insulated, whether the climate is cold or hot. While stupid and sometimes belligerent, many are of sweet disposition and even affectionate. However, this too makes them vulnerable, not only to predation but to theft and over-exploitation.

Look at human history and all of a sudden, the parallels just roll in like a mudslide mixed with dirty wool.

So, when Our Lord says, “I am the Good Shepherd,”[1] this is more than just a nice little platitude demonstrating His leadership. This statement is a declaration of the level of commitment that God has made to His people, a total, selfless commitment willingly taking on the difficulty and risk associated with taking responsibility over human souls.

Yet Our Lord is more than Shepherd. Today you heard an account from St. John’s Gospel[2] where He says, “I am the gate for the sheep.”[3] This is not exactly an easy metaphor to process, a perception borne out by the Evangelist telling us, “…they did not understand what He was saying to them.”[4] This was fairly common with His parables, because even though He used images drawn from His listeners’ daily lives, sometimes the parallels did not quite sink in, like this particular passage.

The key to the passage is to understand who the characters in the narrative happen to be. We have sheep, a shepherd, a gatekeeper, the gate itself, and thieves and bandits. Keep in mind, for those of us who look at this story and say, “But isn’t it obvious?” we hear this story with the weight of two millennia of exegesis, art, and tradition explaining it to us. For His listeners, this was fresh material.

First, let us look at the sheep. These are creatures that are incredibly vulnerable, and often victims of the malevolence of others. When Jesus uses the figure of sheep, He is pointing to his listeners, to the people of Israel, to all the souls God loves and for whom He cares. He is pointing also to us. As sheep, we have innate value, but we are unable to care adequately for ourselves. We are vulnerable to those who would exploit us and do us harm.

Second, we have a gatekeeper. Well, who can that be? This gatekeeper is the one who recognizes the shepherd and allows the shepherd access to the sheep to bring them in at night for their protection and out by day for their sustenance. This was probably part of the metaphor that confused Our Lord’s listeners, but this character is the one who determines whether the one approaching is truly the shepherd or someone with darker designs.

Third, we have the shepherd. This is the one who legitimately cares for the sheep, who is interested in providing for them food, water, shelter, care, and safekeeping. This is someone that the gatekeeper recognizes and validates is the true shepherd. This is the one that would willingly get dirty and risk his life for the sheep.

Fourth, we have the gate. Yes, the gate actually is a character. This is also a part of the metaphor that confused our Lord’s listeners. The gate is the embodiment of the characteristics and the essence of the qualities both providing access to the sheep and protection for the sheep. This character is the standard by which the gatekeeper recognizes the shepherd and shows those who should not be trusted.

Fifth, we have the bandits and robbers. These are those who bear the sheep no good will at all, who seek to exploit and raven and consume those held dear by God. This group does not meet the standards of the gate, does not pass the inspection of the gatekeeper, and therefore must resort to breaking and entering to run amok among the sheep for their own selfish ends to the detriment and destruction of the sheep. This is each and every human and other intelligence bent on preying on God’s people, oppressing, robbing, killing, and destroying them. Spoiler alert, this group includes some theoretically respectable people whose modus operandi is to look as much like the legitimate shepherd as possible.

The dramatis personae are introduced. The stage is set. The play has begun.

We already know the sheep are God’s people, valued and vulnerable, easy prey.

The gate is Our Lord, but not just His physical presence but His word, His teaching, which time and again He has stated is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.

As Our Lord is the gate, then the gatekeeper is the Law and the Prophets, the witness of Moses and every other Prophet of Israel up to and including John the Forerunner. These are the ones who know well the standards of the gate, knowledge of the gate being given to them by the Holy Spirit who knows the gate as well as the Spirit’s own self, sharing both Being and Nature and Will with the gate.[5]

The shepherd then, is again Our Lord, the one who lays down His life for the sheep, who leads God’s People to safety and to sustenance, as well as those who serve Him and assist Him in that task.

The bandits and robbers here are any that prey upon God’s people. They are the Principalities, Powers, Rulers of Darkness in high places, false leaders ignoring the words of the Law and the Prophets. They are the ones that forget or ignore the fact that minute attention to behavioural detail cannot be kept without the greater imperatives of justice, and mercy, and walking humbly before God.

Suddenly the parable comes into sharp focus. Our Lord is not only declaring His leadership, all that He does for the People of God, the witness of the Law and the Prophets, but is also shining light upon the bandits and the robbers who bear the People of God ill-will. The light reveals Jewish leaders more interested in lining their pockets and perpetuating oppression, keeping everyone in line with detailed prescriptions of ritualized behaviour, and ignoring the gross injustice and lack of mercy around them, or even worse, contributing to it. The light reveals foreign oppressors whose only goal is to wring money, resources, and conscripted labour from God’s people via taxes, robbery, and human trafficking. Then light reveals demonic hosts of the Kingdom of Hell who guide these human oppressors, who wallow in human misery, and who even directly cause said misery, not only to damage us materially, but also to lead us to eternal death and the destruction of our souls through despondency and despair.

Our Lord here is saying, look around! You know the dictates of the Law and the Prophets, to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself. You know the way of God to be love, and mercy, and care for each other, and not the use and abuse of each other in any way. You know God’s desire for reconciliation with and restoration of His children. Anything that drives a wedge between His children and Himself, or drives wedges among themselves, that glorifies power and subjugation over mercy and care, that dehumanizes and despoils is not of God but instead is of the Evil One.

Our Lord is saying not to follow the spiritual advice of those whose Gospel is exploitation and fear and ruthlessness. They glorify a person, nation, or ideal ahead of God; the Lord tells us that we worship only the LORD our God and Him only do we serve.[6] They dehumanize and despoil, whose motto is, “Might makes right,” and who tell us to fear and to hate our neighbour; Our Lord tells us, “Blessed are the meek,”[7] and that we are to love our neighbours as ourselves.[8] They, while wearing legitimate authority, use it illegitimately; Our Lord is the Way and the Truth and the Life[9] and to Him has all authority been given in Heaven and on Earth.[10] They wish to deceive us, to make us in their own image; we bear the Image of God, restored in the Person of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.[11] We have our teaching in the Law and the Prophets and in the Person of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He is our true shepherd, He is our gate, He is our protection from the Darkness.

As then, even so today, many of are leaders are those whom Our Lord calls robbers and thieves, whose only goal is to rob, and to kill, and to steal. These leaders do not enter in by the gate, that is, their ideals, preaching, and actions do not conform with the life and example given, the standard set by Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Let us not follow their example, but that of Our Lord. He is the Gate, and those whose teaching or example is counter to His are the imposters. Their goal is our destruction, but His is to give us Life, and that Life most abundantly.[12]

✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.

[1] Jn. 10.11

[2] Jn. 10.1-10

[3] Jn. 10.9

[4] Jn. 10.6b

[5] There is some debate among the ancient commentaries. St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on the Gospel of John, 59.3) and Origen (Letter to Gregory, 4) both point to the Scriptures, particularly the prophets, while Augustine (Tractates on the Gospel of John, 46.2-4) and Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on the Gospel of John, 6.1) point to a Divine Gatekeeper, either Our Lord or the Holy Spirit (see these quotes together in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IV a, John 1-10, Elowski, Joel C. and Oden, Thomas C. edd., IVP Academic, Downers Grove, IL (2006), “The Parable of the Sheepfold Entrance”, p. 337

[6] Mt. 4.10, cf. Dt. 6.13

[7] Mt. 5.5

[8] Mt. 22.39

[9] Jn. 14.6

[10] Mt. 28.18

[11] Col. 1.15-22

[12] Jn. 10.10