Well it’s Good Shepherd Sunday, and I don’t know a lot about sheep, but I do have a lot of experience with ducks. My father, despite being born and raised in Los Angeles, has always considered himself a bit of a gentleman farmer, so I grew up around poultry. Strongest in my memory are our two pet Peking ducks, Lucky and Suzie. We got the pair as ducklings when I was about six, so most of my formative years were spent sharing the backyard with these feathered companions.
When we first got them we kept them in a birdcage in the kitchen, occasionally taking them out for romps in the bathtub. Peking ducks get rather large though, so it wasn’t long before they outgrew the birdcage. During the day they had range of the backyard. For the nighttime, Dad built them a little enclosed pen. And here’s the part of the story that these Good Shepherd readings reminded me of. To help him get the ducks into their pen, Dad trained our miniature schnauzer to herd ducks. That’s right, we didn’t have a sheep dog, we had a duck dog. Every evening Dad would call her, and our purebred show dog would come tearing out of the house to herd the ducks. Dad would walk on one side of the backyard, and the dog would take the other, and the two of them would corral the two ducks across the yard and down the drawbridge into the pen. Dad would then raise the drawbridge and tie it off, and the ducks were safe for the evening. In the morning, he would release the drawbridge and the ducks would waddle up for another day of eating bugs and playing in their wading pool. With this relaxed life, it is may be no surprise that the ducks lived to be about seven, which is a really long life for a duck.
In our Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus described himself as both the good shepherd and the gate for the sheep. The good shepherd imagery I think we’re pretty familiar and comfortable with; after all, everyone likes the famous Sunday school pictures of Jesus in flowing robes holding cute, fluffy sheep. Now, a whole sermon series could be preached on the reality of First Century shepherding, and how sheep are never actually as cuddly and clean as Sunday school art depicts them, but that wasn’t the part that caught my attention this week. What caught my attention this week was the gate.
“I am the gate for the sheep,” Jesus said. “Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” “I am the gate.” When we talk about Jesus as a gate, there is, I think, this tendency to think about Jesus as the gatekeeper, standing guard over the entrance deciding who can go in and come out. But Jesus didn’t say he was the gatekeeper, he said he was the gate. So then I think we have to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of gates?
The Peking ducks Lucky and Suzie were not my family’s first foray into poultry. Our first duck was a Mallard, also named Lucky, though it turns out he was not particularly aptly named. We got Lucky when I was about three and once he got big enough, Dad set him loose in the backyard. I don’t think he even had a house, just a wading pool. One morning, I woke up to discover that Lucky was gone. We lived on a creek, and my parents told me that Lucky had escaped through the fence and gone to live with the other ducks on the creek downtown. Whenever we went downtown, we would stop and see the ducks and I would look to see Lucky among the mix. I was in my mid-twenties before my parents finally told me that Lucky had not run away, he had in fact been eaten by a bobcat, and my father had hurried to clean up the remains of the family pet before his small children woke up. Thus the fully enclosed pen and the herding ritual for our next set feathered friends. The pen wasn’t about a cute habit; it was about keeping them safe from the thieves and bandits that saw our well-fed ducks as an easy and delicious meal. So the purpose of the gate was to let the ducks in and out of the pen, so that they would have the right mix of freedom and security, of law and Gospel, if you will, for a long, healthy and fulfilling life. The gate didn’t have an opinion on the ducks, there was no duck test they had to pass in order to get into the pen, the gate just opened and closed, open to give the ducks freedom, closed to keep them safe.
Jesus said that he came that they, that we, may have life, and have it abundantly. Sometimes I think we have a tendency to confuse abundant life with getting whatever we want. But Jesus as the gate reminds us that true abundant life means a life with some rules. The ducks probably would have preferred to have free range of the backyard all night and not be chased by a dog every evening, but this would more than likely have ended in them getting eaten. And being eaten, at least in my book, does not constitute abundant life. For the ducks to truly have abundant life, abundant life being defined as a life free of being eaten by bobcats, their life had to include some limits.
These limits did not just bring abundant life for the ducks; it also brought abundant life for the rest of the family. The evening enclosure was not the ducks’ only barrier. When the ducks first moved from the birdcage to the backyard Dad let the ducks roam wherever they pleased. But my brother and I were four and seven at the time, and Peking ducks are big and a bit territorial. My brother especially was always a smaller kid, and when the male duck stretched himself out, he was pretty similar in size to David. Dad had built us a play structure in the backyard, which he soon discovered we were never using, because we were both terrified of being chased by the ducks. So Dad built a fence dividing the backyard in two, half for the kids and half for the ducks. Nobody got everything they wanted, but everyone got enough, and kids and ducks were able to coexist happily for many years.
Jesus delivered this teaching about the shepherd and the gate to the Pharisees who had just finished kicking the man born blind whom Jesus had healed out of the community. Remember when we read that story in Lent? This is the teaching that directly follows it. Reading this text during the Easter season allows us to look back on this teaching through the lens of resurrection and understand more fully the promise he was trying to convey. When Jesus told the Pharisees he was the gate for the sheep, so that the sheep could go out and come in and have abundant life, Jesus wasn’t telling them that everything was great and they would have whatever they wanted. Unlike the Pharisees, with their strict rules for determining who was in and who was out, Jesus wasn’t setting himself up as a gatekeeper who, if you could get past him, was a ticket to some sort of free-for-all. Jesus the gate means life has limits. But those limits are good, those limits bring abundant life. Abundant life is about living within the pasture Jesus marked off for us, allowing us to come and go as we need in that necessary balance of law and Gospel. The other thing that this teaching tells us is that abundant life only extends so far that it doesn’t impinge on someone else’s abundant life. For the Pharisees, abundant life meant a strict observation of the Sabbath. Which was all well and good for them until, if you remember, their strict interpretation would have kept the man born blind from being healed on the Sabbath. At which point, Jesus seemed to be saying, their views could no longer extend that far, because they would be preventing the abundant life of another. Like the backyard was divided for ducks and kids, so too must our own freedom have limits, so that all of Jesus’ sheep can live lives rich with abundance.
This is the abundant life Jesus promises us, the abundant life he died and rose again to give us. Not, like the Pharisees believed, a free-for-all where they got everything they wanted and everyone else got nothing. But a life that was rich and full and well-lived for all, where we all live within the limits of protection, so that we may experience the fullness of abundance. And protecting us, guarding us, watching over us, and yes even restraining us, is Jesus the Good Shepherd, Jesus the gate, who leads us to pastures abundant. Thanks be to God. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment