On the second Sunday of 2017, we were about to start the 9.30am service, when one of our welcomers came and found me urgently. ‘Come outside, you’ll want to see this,’ they said. So, I hustled out and watched one of the more unusual sights I’ve seen in my years here. Running along the road, and just passing the churchyard gate, were about fifty sheep. We had no idea where they had come from or where they were going. I don’t think they had any idea where they were going either!
There was great excitement – and, for lack of a better idea, we decided to corral them in the school car park over the road from the church, and try and find out who the farmer was. A few willing souls stood on sentry duty. It actually took about 2 or 3 hours to get hold of someone, by which time the grass verges around the car park had certainly had a good trim from fifty grazing sheep, and the ‘hired hands’ were very cold. By lunchtime, the sheep were safely back in a nearby field.
What’s the moral of this story? Sheep need a shepherd. Look what happens when a large flock is left to its own devices. Alongside this, ‘never leave your gate open,’ would certainly be another! As we edge closer to Jesus’ famous saying, ‘I Am the Good Shepherd’, today we think about the much less well-known counterpart in this passage: ‘I Am the Gate’. And the most important thing to observe is that, in the farming culture of the day, Jesus is basically talking about the same thing, or rather the same person – the shepherd is the gate for the sheep. And here’s how….
In those days sheep lived mostly out on the hills by day, and then at night in the sheepfold, which was not a covered barn, but more like a fortified pen. It would be built with loose stones piled to form a rough, walled enclosure – just high enough to keep the sheep in and wild animals out. There was no gate as such, but when the sheep were in the pen the shepherd himself (or a colleague) would literally be the gate. They would sit in the gap and protect the sheep directly. No dogs or locked metal gates – just one brave shepherd. This is why Jesus calls himself both the Gate and the Good Shepherd: in first century Israel, that was two ways of saying the same thing.
It also explains why Jesus makes the link with salvation: (v9) ‘Whoever enters through me will be saved.’ He is literally the way in to the sheepfold, the entry point to all God’s promises. Those who come in via His gate will ‘find pasture’ – all they need to live.
As we spend the today and tomorrow delighting in this rich biblical image of the shepherd, today let’s give thanks that Jesus is our ‘way in’: our Gate. He is the Saviour, not just of the world, but of each of us. We have all found our way into his sheepfold. Simply put, the key to life is found in Him; and, as we claim this beautiful truth, may we go out and find pasture – all that we need to live – today.