John 10:1-10

Jottings on John…Easter 4…Revised 2020

When I was a child, our local paper ran a weekly page for kids. One feature was a riddle column. One riddle it took me a long time to work out was, ‘When is a door not a door?’ A: ‘When it’s ajar!’ Victor Golyavkin¹ poses a different kind of door riddle; a poem by him called, ‘The Door’ runs, ‘This door had no hinges. And it had no handle. And it had no keyhole. And it wasn’t entirely a door…..’ That door was in fact serving as a bier for his dead father! 

The Easter stories make much of a locked tomb & locked doors. Perhaps we could see our passage as a riddle: ‘When is a door not a door?’ A: ‘When it’s a Good Shepherd!’ Jesus, the Raised Christ, refers to Himself as both Gate & Shepherd. He can only be both because He is resurrected! He is the Gate through whom we enter into the resurrected life of Christ’s flock, & be lovingly cared for in the course of our new raised life in that flock. Are His words also a warning to us that we will exclude ourselves from both if we persist in remaining on the wrong side of a locked door, & shunning the arms of the Good Shepherd? It is Christ’s being raised from the dead that raises us from the dead, too! It’s now & forever. Now or never!

 Whatever the answer, it has to be applicable now. Not in some future. The Essence of God, the Eternal “I AM”, is that God is always the God of Now. We’re to live as God’s people Now, or there’s no tomorrow! So, live in the Raised Christ / Good Shepherd now!

Human sheep stray. Like little Bo Peep’s. When that infamous shepherdess eventually goes looking for her lost sheep, ‘She spied their tails side by side, all hung on a tree to dry’. ‘She tried what she could, as a shepherdess should, to tack each tail back on its lambkin!’ Dare I add a verse that’s not LBP’s? ‘She tried super-glue, & blue-tack too, some wall-paper paste & then Clag, She tried tying & drilling but results were not thrilling, So her sheep still have nothing to wag!’

Christ’s Resurrection makes our own possible! In Him we have a Shepherd raised from death who’s also our door so let’s avail ourselves of the scope He offers! If we have a Door who’s also our shepherd, & the Good Shepherd at that, let’s take full advantage of the nurture He provides. Stray, & we have a lot more than our tails to lose! Stay, & we have a lot more than our tails to wag! 

Brian

Afterthought: Resurrection, Christ’s & through His, Ours, ties all the ends together. Without it religion can quickly become a series of loose ends leading off in all directions! To all sorts of destinations, many of them not helpful at all! Some of them dangerous, & in the end, extremely so!