The Fourth Sunday of Easter, 30 April 2023, Clapham
There were always tensions at the Sheep Gate when Jesus was around. With his very different outlook, he couldn't help but confront the people who controlled the way things worked. Whilst those most damaged by this usual way of things, couldn't help but find hope in the promises he conveyed by the new things he taught them, and the loving ways he treated them.
Jerusalem’s Sheep Gate was where the country farmers herded in the creatures to be sacrificed at the Temple. For these animals the Sheep Gate was a point of no return.
And it was to the pool near the Sheep Gate that the city sent the incurable, the paralysed and the lame. With only the condemned livestock passing by, right on the edge of the city, out of sight and out of mind of the upright citizens going about their business, the Sheep Gate was the place of no return for those people Jerusalem didn't want or need. Their freedom sacrificed for society’s sake.
And so, to the Sheep Gate, here comes Jesus, turning things over for close inspection, turning things round in his revolution of boundless love.
When he said, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep,’ he indicated that with his arrival, things were going to be different; that he was about to begin something new here.
When he said, ‘Whoever enters by me will be saved,’ he offered hope of a very tangible form of salvation to the ones who the city abandoned.
When he said, ‘All who came before me are thieves and bandits,’ he criminalised the rule-makers and law enforcers of this society built on the sacrifice of innocent victims.
When he said, ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that [my sheep] may have life, and have it abundantly,’ he elevated the abandoned ones from their place of rejection, promising them a fulfilled life. [2]
The sheep being taken to the temple altar, and the paralysed people at the pool, had this fundamental thing in common: society had determined that they would be sacrificed for the sake of everybody else.
The virtuous people of that society held onto their respectability by atoning for their sins by sacrificing animals on the altar to a God they believed would forgive them through this trade-off.
And to keep their community respectable they purged it of all those who made it impure in their eyes, by sending to the edge all those who upset their equilibrium, relocating the sick, the lost and the lame to the pool by the Sheep Gate, thus removing those shameful people well away from the heart of things. Out of sight, out of mind; their well-being had to be sacrificed for the comfort of all.
The Sheep Gate of Jerusalem symbolised a society which functioned with sacrifice at its centre. And so, standing there saying that he was the gate for the sheep, Jesus broke this powerful symbol, and announced that he’d come to offer salvation to the ones society treated as disposable. He was giving the victims of the sacrificial system something which society denied them: the freedom to ‘come and go’ 'and find pasture', and live abundant lives.
Now, if you think this is a story some ways removed from our lives today, please think again. For we know that animal sacrifice and the trade around it plays its part in our multi-faith society; it is practiced in our neighbouring towns and cities, and some of our Dales farmers will have received income from the sale of animals sacrificed during last week’s festival of Eid.
And what of the idea that our culture ‘sacrifices’ those who are deemed disposable: the sick, the lost and the lame, the unproductive, the unemployed, the foreigner? We know how these are always the first to be abandoned in a society which prioritises private gain over public well-being. Isn’t it a theme of our times that those who are struggling the most, are repeatedly told that they must sacrifice even more, for the greater good of all?
We hear privileged economists telling struggling workers ‘to accept that they’re worse off’ and to stop demanding pay rises, hypocritically preaching that ‘we all have to take our share’. And we find ourselves complicit in this system where those we undervalue are forced into punishing sacrifices for the sake of our comfort and ease - like Bangladeshi workers producing clothes in squalid factories for less than a dollar a day, so that we can buy them at bargain prices. [3]
If we accept that the economists are today’s High Priests, we can see how universal was Jesus’ message at the Sheep Gate. Wherever a society’s victims are told by its gatekeepers, ’There is no alternative’, ’There is only one way’, ‘There is only one gate’, here comes Jesus, saying, no, there are other ways to live. For ’I am the gate for the sheep. ... Whoever enters by me will be saved'. [4]
You may recall that Jesus once healed a paralysed man at the pool by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. He had been there, in pain, for thirty-eight years. Jesus' healing restored the man’s muscular functions and released him from the power of the sacrificial system, which had bound him to stay outside Jerusalem, for all that time. When the restored man re-entered the city the authorities who had abandoned him couldn’t stop him carrying his mat through the streets with joy. For he was no longer subject to them, but to Jesus, the open gate, the generous gate, the loving gate. Now he could enjoy freedom to roam, to come and go at will, to find the pasture which pleased him. [5]
Jesus, universally, releases every victim from the bondage of our systems of sacrifice - by becoming the Good Shepherd who goes through the sacrificial gate with the sheep. They hear his voice; they know he is there with them. Wherever someone is being sent for sacrifice, Jesus makes that journey with them. Jesus went to the cross to be sacrificed for the sin of men and women. Jesus actually gave himself to be a sacrificial lamb: ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.' The sin, notice. The one sin. Which is society’s sin of saving ourselves by sacrificing innocent victims.
The human instinct is to cause others to make sacrifices to save us. But on the cross Jesus sacrificed himself for the sake of others. This is the basis of ‘the abundant life’: that we can find new ways to open our hearts in generosity towards others, with Jesus the Shepherd beside us. There is no ‘out of sight and out of mind’ in Christ: where, resurrected into a new way of human flourishing, we embrace each other and seek the common good.
In the Acts of the Apostles we hear how, after the resurrection ‘All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Spending time together in the temple, daily, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.’ [6]
What a wonderful transformation in these people's lives, now a community united in self-sacrificial care for each other.
This is how the Christian life continues to be lived, whether in intentional communities of faith or informally, by the generous, self-giving acts of those who have grasped the wonderful realisation that Jesus' offer of new life to us, truly does mean life in all its abundance.
Notes
[1] A rewrite of John 10 - At the Sheep Gate - Saved from Sacrifice, preached in Devon, 2011.
[2] Gil Bailie on John 10: "I am the Good Shepherd" quoted in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Resources: Easter 4a.
[3] Graeme Wearden, Britons ‘need to accept’ they’re poorer, says Bank of England economist. Guardian, 25 April 2023; Reza Mazumder, ’Made in Bangladesh’ – ‘Made with injustice’: Sweatshops in Bangladesh. The Monsoon Project, 20 September 2016.
[4] There is no alternative: Wikipedia
[5] John 5.1-18.
[6] Acts 2.42-47.
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