Belly Up to the Best Buffet

Photo of the Rev. Canon Sue Sommer by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

I’m probably in the minority when I say that I’m not a huge fan of buffets. Not that I don’t love good food, it’s just that the huge assortment that most restaurants present tends to overwhelm and confuse me, especially when I’m too hungry to use my critical culinary faculties to their best advantage.

And in much the same way, I tend to find myself overwhelmed and confused by this particular passage in John’s gospel. It is, to put it mildly, a Sunday buffet of metaphors. Jesus is in Jerusalem at the Temple. Chronologically, in John's gospel, Jesus has just given sight to the man born blind – the very long passage we heard about 6 weeks ago. You will recall that the priests and the Pharisees condemned Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, and drove out the formerly blind man for having the temerity to question their condemnation. Today's passage immediately follows that story. Using a wealth of metaphors, Jesus reveals (and of course, conceals) his purpose and identity to his followers. Elsewhere in the Gospel of John, Jesus is described as the light, the true bread, the vine, and of course the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. In today's passage, he is depicted as a shepherd, and as a gate.

Alrighty then. I'm full, how about you?

John's original audience probably would have caught nuances that are lost on us. They would have known that Hebrew Scripture routinely used the image of Shepherd to describe the rulers and leaders of Israel. By contrast, kings who led their people to disaster were described as false shepherds, thieves and bandits. By the time of Christ, the metaphor of shepherd was ascribed to the temple priests, the scribes, and the experts in the law, because it was with them that the spiritual well-being of the people of Judah resided.
What John's original audience also would have understood was the sacrificial system of the Temple. The undergirding theology of Temple Judaism was the offering of animal sacrifice to Yahweh. You and your neighbors would select the best sheep from your flocks, pool those sheep into one flock, and drive them to Jerusalem to be offered as sacrifice. The sheep would enter through the Sheep Gate into a holding area – a gate that was kept by the gatekeeper. The shepherd of course wouldn't go through the gate himself. He would abandon his sheep to the slaughter.

So what seems at first glance to be a lovely pastoral image is really Jesus taking a huge potshot at the religious system of the day. The priests, the scribes, and all the people associated with the sacrificial machinery of the temple were, as John depicts it, false shepherds, thieves, and bandits. Jesus, by contrast, is the kind of shepherd who will walk straight through the SheepGate, right into the place of impending death. He isn't just a shepherd who will protect his sheep from danger out in some Galilean pasture. As far as Jesus was concerned in John's gospel, the most dangerous place for literal and metaphoric sheep to be was in the Temple. Jesus refuses to abandon the sheep – the people –  to the sacrificial system because he believed that it completely missed the big picture of what God really desires.

In short, what Jesus is doing is equating the religious orthodoxy of the day with death and destruction. The way that Israel had "always done things" might give the impression that people were living obedient lives in covenant with God. But as far as God was concerned, maybe not so much. Maybe what they thought religious life was all about wasn't what it needed to be about.

Now this should get our attention.

Seems that what God desires is that God's people – all of us – have life and have it abundantly, being shepherded by the one who steps through the sheep gate into the place of death, and leads us out into eternal life.

Seems that living a covenantal relationship with God might not focus so much on the religious institution as the ongoing work of discernment, of going deep. That maybe abundant life is less about having an abundance of things and more about having a deep and lasting knowledge of God's unshakable love for us, and of God's desire for us to pass that love on. Seems that maybe the resurrected life isn't just about our own personal inner transformation from death to new life in Christ. Maybe resurrected life applies to religious systems as well – from the Episcopal Church sorting out its relationship with the Anglican Communion, to Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral pondering its own future.

Jesus said, "I came that they – meaning we – might have life and have it more abundantly. Christ invites us to belly up to the best buffet banquet going – the abundant love of God that makes all things new.