You will need to read Sunday’s Gospel reading before these thoughts: John 10: 1 - 10.
“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
Here is a picture of the gate to our temporary garden near Sutton Bridge. I only go out of it for a daily walk, no other reason. We are safe inside while the lockdown for us goes on, soon to enter a seventh week. For most of the time, the gate remains shut.
A gate can open for you to go out into the world or it can shut keeping you secure where you know you are alright. When it is shut and bolted, that which we want to keep out cannot get in. Many years ago I heard a true story of a church member who used to come through the gate of the manse and cut down foliage and pick flowers for the harvest display. Even though it was not her garden! The minister was new and didn’t know this happened and kept the gate unbolted. The day the dear steward came round, unannounced, his wife was in the kitchen in a state of undress! The gate was never left unbolted again much to the dear steward’s dismay.
I want to suggest that the image of Jesus being the gate is a good one as we plod on in lockdown together. Most sermons you might hear on line on Sunday may well focus on Jesus, the Good Shepherd leading us out to find green pastures. But for now, we need to be safe in the fold and we need to know we are held and known in its safety. “Stay home” we are still being told. Quite rightly. I’m listening more to the man on the left of this picture than to the one on the right, aren’t you? Isn’t Chris Whitty a bit of a icon for these times?
Why is being inside the gate a place we need to be at the moment?
One, because we need comfort. Some of you will know I’m putting on my Facebook page a weekly plodge down the road as I think aloud for about fifteen minutes and say some prayers. I’m deeply moved that this thing is watched by over a hundred people and that I get messages urging for more after each one. People are finding my words a comfort. That’s what we want at the moment. Comfort. We are mostly eating more badly, comfort food is satisfying us, we order a large bar of Dairy Milk in the shopping when we can get a delivery, and eat it in one go. Comfort. I love this which was sent me earlier:
H V Morton wrote a classic book after visiting the Holy Land called “In the Footsteps of the Master.” He describes seeing sheep and shepherds.
“Early one morning I saw an extraordinary sight not far from Bethlehem. Two shepherds had evidently spent the night with their flocks in a cave. The sheep were all mixed together and the time had come for the shepherds to go in different directions. One of the shepherds stood some distance from the sheep and began to call. First one then another, then four or five animals ran towards him, and so on until he had counted his whole flock. More interesting than the sight of this was the knowledge that Jesus must have seen exactly the same sight and described it in his own words. “He calls his own sheep by name.” Jesus leads us back into the safety of the fold with the gate firmly shut until the danger has passed. We need the comfort of security. The world outside is too dangerous.
Then we are frightened. There are signs the lockdown may be lifted soon. We are promised a road map. But maybe we fear restrictions will be lifted too soon. How will those of us who are vulnerable suddenly be safe mixing with others even at a safe social distance? How on earth do you get children back to school safely?
I understand the need to get the economy moving but I fear queues in the few Macdonalds that are opening for takeaway. Don’t get me wrong. I get the urge for a Filet O Fish but I also fear too many people going out bringing on a second wave of this virus.
It’s scary venturing out again into uncertainty. We need to know we are not alone in the waiting. Perhaps the Psalm for this Sunday helps. The marvellous words of Psalm 23 include “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me.” I often say at funerals we need to know the words don’t say we die in the valley, we walk through it. And aren’t we now in that valley with that shadow? But there is a promise which is my third point...
We are behind the gate, safe in our homes, protected from the wolf and the robber but while inside we need some hope that one day even with a “new normal” we can run out of the gate and enjoy green pastures again for longer than one bit of exercise a day. We yearn for holidays on a beach, we yearn to go out for a curry, we yearn to hug our grandchildren, we yearn for so much.
I was interested that the Prime Minister used the word “pasture” the other day as he led a press briefing. He said, “ We have come through the peak, or rather, we have come under what could have been a vast peak, as though we have been going through some huge alpine tunnel. And we can now see the sunlight and the pasture ahead of us and so it is vital that we do not now lose control and run slap into a second and even bigger mountain.’ The time to go out the gate into green pastures WILL come.
But not yet. Please!
I wonder what is happening to us as we stay safe in the fold with the gates shut?
Are we finding our spirituality is deepening in this time while we are forced to stay in? Are we knowing that God is here with us in it? Are we becoming kinder?
I read a blog the other day which suggested Jesus recognised that some of the most important ministry happens in the moments that seem like interruptions. He ministers to a woman with haemorrhages in his way to heal Jairus’s daughter, and the parable of Good Samaritan is a story of whether we want to be interrupted on our road and help where there is need. This time is an interruption to us all. I got a fit for work note a fortnight before lockdown. I was due to take my last services in the Fens Circuit this Sunday at Emneth and Upwell and have a bit of a farewell do; we were due to move to another temporary home this month. No services are happening and certainly no moves! Life has been interrupted. But maybe in the interruption we have found God’s love anew.
I was sent this in an e mail the other day and posted it as a status and it got a huge reaction.
“The Christian faith is not about whether the quality of our own believing is secure – rather it asserts that the thing in which we believe is secure. Easter confirms God’s dependability in the world’s wobbliness.”
Someone reminded me about the weebles! They wobble but they don’t fall down. We wobble in the circumstances of life all the time, not just in an unwanted global pandemic. We have hope because we are accompanied through the darkest valley and the Good Shepherd does not rest until we are safely behind the gates of the fold, and we don’t go out again until it is the right time to be free.
In this time we perhaps have days we don’t think we will ever be sorted again. We are binge watching “Normal People” - it’s a story of teenage love and angst. It’s quite painful to watch. There’s a lot of crying in the bedroom when they fall out and we are only on episode three. (!) We need to hold on in our painful times and times this all feels overwhelming. Perhaps let’s try not to worry too much about the future, although that’s not easy, and let’s take comfort for now we are safe.
And let’s hold on to hope. We need to be ministered to in this time. We need caring for! Here is the Gospel I believe as we rest, binge watch television, eat, drive those we live with mad, eat, enjoy our local walking routes, read, write, eat, crochet, listen to radio, eat, call friends, eat, appreciate the bird song and the colours of the trees outside. Jesus not only leads us through the gate, he stays with us where we find ourselves.
He will enter if we unbar the gate. “I am the gate for the sheep.” He comes to give comfort, peace and hope and he will again bring life into all the world’s places of death, despair and destruction. I really believe as I write this, two things:
1. We are meant to stay in still. Macdonalds can wait! By being safe for a bit longer we will have a more straight forward future. I hope! Yes we fret. But in how church is being and even people with no faith are being, we are seeing an explosion of grace and an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and an assurance of the presence of the divine in the muddle as we try together to test and trace and keep the R down below one (whatever that means!) I’ll defer to Professor Powis to answer that one with a graph!
2. As we stay in, we hold on to a vision that one day we will open the gate and go. Jesus wants to lead us out, but now is not the right time. But we look forward to the day when it is. This will pass. The valley of the shadow of death leads to a banquet (yay - my curry house open!) and an eternity of delight with God.
I have a copy of Julian of Norwich’s “Revelations of Divine Love” next to me where I sit. I wonder what a fourteenth century anchorite woman in a cell has to say to us as we enter a seventh week of lockdown on Monday? One day the gate will open. Our call is to be safe inside it until we are told otherwise and confident enough to venture out.
Two bits of what is a spiritual classic are worth pondering. I’ll leave you to ponder them as we keep going and wait to see where this mad time is going...
“Your God would never punish you for being a human being: this life itself is your penance...But it is also more than that: it is a crucible for transformation. Each trial, every loss, is an opportunity for you to meet suffering with love and make of it an offering, a prayer. The minute you lift your pain like a candle the darkness vanishes, and mercy comes rushing in to heal you.”
And my favourite:
“He said not 'Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased'; but he said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome.”
I believe that’s God’s word for us right now. No matter what happens, we are safe in him.
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