A royal priesthood

Saturday

1 Peter 2

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Do words like this get stale? Have they been used so often they lose their power to stir the soul? Do we not understand the grant of honor they contain? Perhaps to people who have much, who have education and income and social standing, who feel in some sense already as if they were people of significance, perhaps to such these words have never echoed with power. But they were not spoken to the elite. They were spoken to the spiritual descendants of that strange collection of Galilean fishermen, tax collectors and women who were not people of significance.

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.

Except for Paul, we know of none who were citizens of Rome. Luke, the companion of Paul was a physician. Lydia was a wealthy woman, dealing in purple dyes – but to be in service of the elites of society doesn’t make her one of the elite. The Philippian jailor was a jailor. The Ethiopian Eunuch, for all his high position, was a eunuch, marred in his flesh and ritually unclean for the temple. Samaritans. Gentiles. These were by no means a royal priesthood. But now they are children of God, members of the most noble of all families. Their dishonor had been lifted. Those who were far from God’s holiness had been washed, cleansed, forgiven. They had become a holy people, a people belonging to God.

And they had become a priesthood – a people chosen to represent God in the world.

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.

Say it to a member of the urban poor and see if you cannot discover its power. Say it to the old woman in a nursing home. Say it to any of her caretakers dealing with bedpans and bibs. Say it to those weakened by disease or pain. Say it to any with a painful history of addiction. Say it to the castoff family. Say it to the shamed, the discarded, to any whom our society devalues because they are not thin or beautiful or successful.

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.

Speak it in the favelas, the Mumbai slums. Say it among the migrant workers. Say it among the sweatshops or on the streets where trafficked children are drugged into despair.

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.

Then you will taste the power of the baptismal words that sins have been washed away and you have become a child of God. Then you will feel the shaking earth as the name is given that is above every name. Then you will see the significance of Jesus cradling peasant children and blessing them in the name of the Most High. Then you will understand Mary’s song and the song of Zechariah and the song of Simeon.

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.

And then you will understand why the rest of this sentence hardly needs be spoken, for who would fail to share such a treasure?

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

In order that you may proclaim… The honor of heaven is bestowed for a purpose, to carry the word of grace into all creation until all the earth is gathered into the everlasting light of a perfect and holy love.

A place for me

Friday

John 14

Mother and Child (A Goodnight Hug), Mary Cassatt, 1880

²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

There are no periods or question marks in the ancient Greek texts – and this is one of the places where it matters. Does Jesus say, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Or “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you…”

There are no great doctrinal consequences to the two possible translations, but personally I like the latter. The first one sounds a little snotty to me; the second calm and firm.

I don’t like it when people ask me ambiguous or loaded questions like “Would I have done that?” I like the clear assurance of “I wouldn’t have done that.” The truth is uncertain in the first, but not in the second.

I never liked it when Mother asked, “What were you thinking?” It wasn’t really a question; it was an accusation. There was no point in explaining what I was thinking – it was obviously wrong or stupid or (and this is what I think she really meant) I wasn’t thinking at all.

A friend carried into adulthood the shame from being accused of trying to take money out of that little plastic receptacle for Muscular Dystrophy donations that used to stand by the cash register hoping for your change. She wasn’t trying to get the money; she was just curious if she could touch it. How deep was that thing? How full was it? It was a pretty natural thought for a small child. But no one was really interested in what she was thinking – they all thought they knew. It was a sad scar to carry. A scar like those many of us carry.

Jesus has no problems being blunt. I don’t think he has to resort to being snide. So, for me, this text will always be a simple declaration. “I would have told you.”

With those little words I hear him say to me “I don’t play games with you. I wouldn’t mislead you. I would have told you.” With those little words he reminds me once again that everything he says to me can be trusted – including, that he has prepared a place for me in the heart of the father.

And a place in me for the Father.

 

Like Living Stones

Thursday

1 Peter 2

Cathedral of St. Mary of Toledo, Spain

⁵Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

I love the passive tense in this verse: “let yourselves be built.” We are not given a great task of building a cathedral. God is the builder; we need only let it happen.

Tuesday would have been my daughter’s 33^rd birthday. Words don’t come easily this week. Sentences start, but can’t find their ending. Thoughts flit by, but don’t linger, don’t focus. I can’t find those strong threads that weave themselves into coherent messages. I read a blog entitled “I had a boy,” from a woman who had lost a child, and all I could respond was, “I had a girl…”

Grief is a strange thing. Did C.G., our cat, remember all her kittens that were given away? Was there some ache in her soul? Some remembrance? Some emptiness? If she did, I saw no days of lethargy and tears.

We are beings meant to connect. Meant to connect with others. Meant to connect with that heart of existence we call God. And when those connections are sundered, we are like amputees whose minds still envision their missing limbs and are at a loss to find them gone.

Simon and Garfunkel sang, “I am a rock. I am an island.” But, in the words of John Donne, “No man is an island.” We are living stones, meant to be built together into a living temple.

After setting the first human into a garden in the creation story of Genesis 2, God says, “It is not good that this human should be alone.”   It’s not just about marriage and family, it is about friendship and community. It is about our humanity.

Those ties between us are so constantly ruptured. Riven by thoughts, words and deeds. The hunger for connection is so primal, but the reality so difficult to achieve. This is the first portrait of sin: Adam and Eve hiding from each other and from God behind fig leaves.

It will not be long before the years Anna has been gone will surpass the years she was here. But the torn threads of the rent human fabric linger. To them comes only the promise that God is building a living temple…and the exhortation to let ourselves be joined, bit by bit, into that crowning achievement where God and humanity dwell together.

Cathedral of Saint Sava, Belgrade, Serbia.

 

Into your hands

Wednesday

Psalm 31

Stoning of Saint Stephen from Sant Joan de Boí, circa 1100

“Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.”

When Jesus quotes this psalm from the cross (Luke 24:46) the verse doesn’t stand alone. Those who hear the story hear the whole psalm, in the same way that someone might say, “A bird in the hand” without needing to complete the proverb, or the way “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” evokes the entire Declaration of Independence and the vision at the heart of the American experiment.

Psalm 31 is a lament. The author cries out in anguish,

¹¹ I am the scorn of all my adversaries,
a horror to my neighbors,
an object of dread to my acquaintances;
those who see me in the street flee from me.
¹² I have passed out of mind like one who is dead;
I have become like a broken vessel.
¹³ For I hear the whispering of many–
terror all around!–
as they scheme together against me,
as they plot to take my life.
¹⁴ But I trust in you, O Lord;
I say, “You are my God.”

“Into your hands I commend my spirit” is not an expression of pious faith; it is a confession wrought in struggle and agony.

It is not a simple thing to trust God. We confess that “God is love.” We see that Jesus is a healing presence in the world: opening blind eyes, driving out demons, feeding the hungry, giving life to the perishing. We know the Biblical story of slaves set free, of the Red Sea opened, of manna from heaven, of angels entertained unawares.

But this is a faith hard won. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, unjustly sentenced to rot in the dungeon, forgotten by those he helped. Israel was 430 years in Egypt. Abraham was 100 when the promise of a son was fulfilled.

The path God bids us walk often trails across stony ground. Our journey travels the wilderness. Jesus is 40 days in the barrens of Judah assaulted by the evil one. There are days of precious sweetness in life, for some even years of goodness – though too often they go untreasured, envied by those whose path is more challenging.

When Jesus expresses this profound trust in God from the cross, it is with the words of one who has been broken by life. There is no minimizing the physical torment of the cross – or the spiritual torment of his apparent abandonment.

But Jesus remains faithful.

This psalm that cries out in despair begins and ends in deep and enduring trust. Whatever that middle path may be, it begins and ends in the faithfulness of God.

And so the psalmist concludes with an exhortation to others:

²³ Love the Lord, all you his saints…
²⁴ Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the Lord.

This is the abiding exhortation of the crucified one, the faithful son, who bids us – even from the cross – take courage and trust in God. In that strange and wonderful duality of scripture, Jesus declares that though some of us are martyred, “not a hair of your head will perish.” Our destiny is life. God’s work is resurrection. God shall reign. Easter is God’s ultimate word.

And so Stephen, as the stones rain down, sees the living, reigning Christ and – like Jesus before him – declares his trust: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Stephen is not quoting the psalm; he is following Jesus. Christ is living in him. He is living the faithfulness of Jesus. This is the witness of the martyrs. This is why we hold them ever in memory. They did not lose faith. They were Christ to the world. They are Christ for us. And they become our encouragement.

The psalmist may say, “my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away.” But these are not his last words. Nor will they be ours.

Bearing Christ into the world

Watching for the morning of May 18

Year A

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Daniel de la Cruz with his sculpture Hari ng mga Hari (king of kings) from his exhibit Parangal: A Tribute to Christ Our Savior

Past the midpoint of the Easter season, our attention begins to turn from the resurrection appearances towards Pentecost. The one who was raised is the one who abides with us, who gives us his Spirit, who manifests himself to the world through us.

In the first reading this Sunday we hear Stephen’s last words as Luke (the author of Luke-Acts) brings Paul on stage as a participant in the outbreak of communal violence against the incipient Christian movement. The book of Acts – volume 2 of Luke’s narrative about Jesus – shows the ongoing words and deeds of Jesus through the Christian community. In his death, Stephen embodies Christ. He prays for his murderers and, as the crucified Jesus remained faithful to the end entrusting himself into the hands of God using the words of Psalm 31, so Stephen entrusts himself to God. The crucified and risen one is present in his followers.

This theme of Jesus present to the world through the community is seen also in the reading from 1 Peter. The author reminds us that we are a part of God’s holy temple, the place of God’s encounter with the world. We are a “chosen race” sent to proclaim the wondrous work of God.

Sunday’s Gospel takes us to the “farewell discourses” in John where, in light of his impending death, Jesus makes provision for his followers and tells them what is to come. Jesus will continue to be present with them. They will have the same access to the Father as Jesus – indeed the community will do what Jesus has done, bearing into the world the bountiful gifts of God.

(Click here for images from Parangal)

The Prayer for May 18, 2014

Let not our hearts be troubled, O God;
teach us to put our hope and trust in you.
Guide us in your way;
keep us in your truth;
enfold us in your life
that your works of love, justice and mercy
may be done in us and through us;
through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.

 The Texts for May 18, 2014

First Reading: Acts 7:55-60
“While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’” – Stephen becomes a victim of communal violence for his preaching and teaching about Jesus, and in his dying embodies the faith and love Jesus modeled.

Psalmody: Psalm 31:1-5
“Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” – A prayer of lament. The trust in God embodied in the psalm is reflected in Stephen and quoted by Jesus on the cross.

Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10
“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” – Expounding on baptism, the author urges the believers to “grow into salvation” as living stones in a “spiritual house” (a spiritual temple).

Gospel: John 14:1-14
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” – Jesus makes provision for his followers in lieu of his impending death, urging them to remain faithful and assuring them that God’s resources are more than adequate to provide all their needs.

Endurance

Saturday

1 Peter 2

²³When he was abused, he did not return abuse

¹⁹It is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly.

This section of 1 Peter must be listened to with great care. There is a deeply important difference between the heroic suffering modeled by Jesus and the abuse suffered in families and schools and churches. I write this as carefully as I can; if I have it wrong, if I haven’t said it well, I apologize.

The whole passage is this:

¹⁹It is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. ²⁰If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. ²¹For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

²²“He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

²³When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

I have heard frightful stories over the years. I have seen some abuse close at hand. I recognize that it is complicated. It is confusing. It is an experience where it is hard to keep track of reality. Thinking gets twisted. Fears are both real and imagined and it is hard to know which is which. And the invisible scars can be debilitating.

When I read of Jesus casting out demons, these are the situations I think about, wishing that Jesus could stand before them and with a word cast out these destructive corruptions of the human spirit that so distort and devastate lives.

There is no counsel in this text for a spouse to endure an abusing partner. There is no counsel here for a child to endure an abusing adult. There is no counsel here for keeping secrets. What there is, is the presence of the one who has faced violence without being destroyed by it, the one who has walked the darkness and comes to us now as our light.

Violence did not beget violence in Jesus. He did not respond in kind. Nor did violence get internalized in Jesus. He wasn’t trapped in the violence around him. He wasn’t deceived or manipulated or confused or controlled by his abusers. He was Gandhi and his followers before the batons; he was King and his followers before the fire hoses. He acted from strength. He took the blows without being broken by them. He was Nelson Mandela in Robben Island.

Jesus is not a model of enduring abuse, he is a model of dignity in the face of injustice when dignity in the face of injustice is the only way to fight the injustice. He is a model of courage in the face of cruelty, courage that denies cruelty the power to destroy.

We must not allow this text to get twisted around so that it perpetuates patterns of abuse by counseling endurance.   Rather we should look for Christ to meet us here so that we could begin to “follow in his steps”. In his strength is strength for us. In his clarity is clarity for us. In his courage is courage for us. In his dignity is hope for us.

Where the text says “he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly” we should recognize it does not mean that Jesus surrendered to his fate hoping for a miracle – or hoping in heaven to come. Rather he found dignity, power and courage in the knowledge that there is “one who judges justly.” Cruelty, abuse, manipulation, lies, deceptions – these do not rule. They do not endure. The cross of Jesus is more than sympathy for the suffering; it is power. For Jesus is not broken; and he is not abandoned to the grave. And he comes now to the broken to lead us in that journey through the wilderness into the light of God’s complete and perfect love.

In praise of confusion

Friday

John 10

Map of Jericho in 14c Farhi Bible by Elisha ben Avraham Crescas

⁶Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

Jesus doesn’t very often say things plainly. We should take warning that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was talking about. It’s not only John that utilizes this narrative element – the disciples come off poorly in all the gospels. Part of this, of course, is that we cannot understand Jesus until we have seen the cross and resurrection. The crucifixion is the interpretive center of everything Jesus says and does. Words like redemption, which generally meant throwing the Romans out, gain an entirely new meaning in light of Jesus’ death. The meaning of loving our enemies is missed if it’s only seen as a method of getting rid of them or living peaceably with them.

We should not imagine that we understand. Too often we laugh at the thick-headed disciples as if we were clear-headed. Jesus is and should be a puzzle. What he asks of us isn’t naturally obvious. Loving our enemies is widely acknowledged but rarely accepted. And we have substituted one false notion of salvation for another: we think salvation is a prize waiting for us beyond death rather than living now under the reign of God.

People sometimes complain that they don’t understand the Bible – and I want to say, “Good.” The Bible isn’t meant to be understood; it’s meant to change us. Confronted with the puzzle of Jesus’ words, in the struggle to understand, we are changed.

So Jesus talks in parables and metaphors and allusions. He makes us wrestle with who are the thieves and robbers and whether we are sheep and to whose voice we listen. Whose voice do I follow? Does it lead me “in and out”? Does it lead me to good pasture? Does it lead me to life? Does it shape my daily going forth? What is good pasture? What is the pasture to which Jesus leads me? Does he lead me to happiness? Service? Religious ecstasy? Assurance? Peace? Communion with God? A spirit of compassion and mercy? Do I recognize his voice or am I listening to robbers? Am I a robber, plundering other sheep?

Listening to Jesus is not a simple process. He is not transmitting facts. Knowing that the earth is the third rock from the Sun is a different thing than seeing that image of the earthrise on the moon and recognizing what it means that we all inhabit that one small blue marble in a sea of darkness.

Believing the notion that God created the world in six days is far easier than seeing and understanding what it means that I and everything around me arises from the hand of God. I was startled by a spider yesterday and immediately crushed it. My primal instincts asserted themselves – fear and revulsion lead to violence. But I did apologize to the to spider as I tossed the tissue bearing his crushed carcass into the toilet; I am still struggling with the notion that all life is from God.

But these words with which I struggle lead to good pasture. They lead to Life.

Glad and generous hearts

Thursday

Acts 2

Friendship in Uzbekistan

⁴⁶Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,

Every now and then I find myself struggling to understand a translator’s choice. It happens especially with unusual words – like the one translated here as ‘generous’. It’s the only time this Greek word is used in the New Testament – or, for that matter, in the Greek version of the Old Testament.

Various translations have it as singleness of heart, simplicity of heart, sincerity of heart. The brilliant scholar Jerome chose ‘simplicitas’ (simplicity, honesty) for his Latin translation at the end of the 4^th century.

The root word is apparently the negative of rocky land. If this root is correct, I love the idea that these first believers formed a community whose hearts were like a rich, beautiful farmland free of stones. Digging and plowing stony ground is exhausting and frustrating work. And to be honest most my congregations have had their fair share of stones. My own heart is not easy plowing.

Or maybe the image is a smooth path rather than a stony one – and from this idea of smooth you get plain, simple, honest. The English translation of Ernst Haenchen’s old commentary on Acts translates the two words ‘glad and generous’ together: “they shared their meals with unaffected joy.”

Certainly such hearts, whether ‘smooth’ and unaffected or rich farmland free of stones, would be generous. But how did the translators get there? Does it come from the fact of shared bread? Does it come from the fact that they provided for everyone in the fellowship “as any had need”?

Are we just guessing about the use of this rare word? Has some scholar written a monograph of which I am unaware to explain this word? I don’t know. But for me I’m going to hold on to this vision of a moment in time when God’s people were good soil, eager for the seed of the word, bearing fruit in every good deed. I know such moments come. I have seen them. In parishes. In myself. A sudden springtime of the soul when I cannot get enough of the word or worship, when I am filled with the wonder and joy, when faith is simple and joyful. Such springtimes do come. Even after long and hard winters. Good Friday always yields to Easter.

He goes ahead

Wednesday

John 10

A Shepherd in Israel, 1965

⁴When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

Palestinian shepherds are different than most shepherds worldwide. Most places in the world the shepherds come behind, driving their flock. In Palestine they walk ahead and the sheep follow.

This contrast alone makes this chapter of John priceless. How much religion consists of people being driven? Driven by guilt, by rules, by demands, by self-righteousness, by the psychological needs of the leadership, by history, by desire. Most of life is driven. Driven by our need to provide, our need to succeed, our need to feel safe. Driven by our fears, our wants, our restless sense that we are missing something. Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden in their shame. The prodigal son is driven home by his desperate hunger – but the prodigal father runs to welcome his son with open arms.

Jesus leads his flock. He goes before. He goes ahead. And though that often results with us running to catch up, it means we are not going anywhere that Jesus has not already been. Every sorrow he has tasted first. Even the grave. But also the resurrection.

He is our elder brother. He goes ahead. He paves the way. He opens the door. He does not ask us to wash feet before he has washed our feet. He does not ask us to take up the cross before he has taken up his cross. He does not ask us to give what he has not given. He does not ask us to walk where he has not walked. He does not ask us to love anyone he has not loved or forgive anyone he has not forgiven.

There is all the difference in the world between the command to go and the invitation to “come with me.”

My brother got me to do all kinds of things by doing them first. I learned to swim because my brother went first. I learned to ski because he went first. I learned to hold a pigeon, I walked the streets of Brussels, I picked up a live crab, I left home for college. And there were some things I didn’t have to do because he did them, battles he fought I didn’t have to fight.

God does not sit on a throne spouting orders; he has come as our elder brother, leading the way. There are commands in the scripture, to be sure. We know of the ten, even if we can’t name them all. Jesus himself gave a new commandment – and tightened the others. He talked about forgiving seventy-seven times. But he went first. He goes ahead. He calls our name and bids us walk with him.

Good pasture

Watching for the morning of May 11

Year A

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

© Copyright Maurice Pullin and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Sunday is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. Each year on the fourth Sunday of Easter the texts direct us to John 10 and the images there of shepherd, sheep and sheepfold.

It’s worth noting that his hearers did not understand what Jesus was talking about when he begins his discourse about the Good Shepherd. This is a persistent literary motif of John’s Gospel – earthbound confusion (“Why is Jesus talking about sheep?”) versus spiritual insight. Just as Nicodemus can’t understand what it means to be born a second time when Jesus is talking about being born from above, the people don’t understand that Jesus is the one to call them by name and lead them to “good pasture,” to the life of God.

This is not a sweet pastoral image of a shepherd’s care for his sheep. Indeed the language about Shepherds is deeply ironic since shepherds were regarded as thieves and without honor. But the key is ‘good pasture’. Jesus is talking about access to the father. This is not about divine providence and care but entering into the divine life.

It is not the temple leadership who enter by the gate. It is not the scribes and Pharisees. They are thieves and bandits. They rob and plunder the sheep, as Ezekiel declares. They do not protect the sheep. They do not care for the sheep. They do not go ahead of the sheep leading them to life. But all this eludes his hearers – so Jesus tries again: he is the gate for the sheep; through him they go out to find good pasture. Through him they go out to abundant life. Through him they enter into the life of God. But Jesus’ words only divide the crowd. Some conclude he has a demon. Others wonder whether a man possessed is able to open the eyes of a person born blind.

The true shepherd, the noble shepherd, the way to the Father is in their midst, but they are like sheep without a shepherd. They cannot see.

The Prayer for May 11, 2014

Gracious God,
guardian and shepherd of our souls,
keep us in your Word
that, hearing and following your voice,
we may know your abundant life;
through your son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever,

The Texts for May 11, 2014

First Reading: Acts 2:42-47
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” – Luke presents one of his summary descriptions of the early Christian community, an ever expanding community manifesting God’s.

Psalmody: Psalm 23
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” – a song of trust born of reflection upon God’s gracious care and providence through the challenges and trials of life. In the midst of the dangerous intrigues of the royal court, God is the true shepherd who has guarded and guided the poet’s way.

Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:19-25
“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” – this section of 1 Peter is presumably appointed for Good Shepherd Sunday for its line: “you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls,” but this section of the homily speaks to the pattern of enduring suffering given by Jesus.

Gospel: John 10:1-10
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.” – Several metaphors from the world of shepherding are taken up as parables of the access to ‘Life’ found in Jesus.