A Magical Gate

A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California.

One of the things you can do at The Bishop’s Ranch (our diocesan retreat center in Sonoma County) is hike out to a Peace Pole set on a hill. Peace Poles, which are inscribed with the words “May Peace Prevail On Earth” in many languages, have become an international symbol of hope and unity in the world. And this one is surrounded by rows of hanging strips of multi-colored fabric, each representing a prayer. It’s a powerful thing to see.

But I have a confession: every time I walk up there, it’s something else that really catches my attention, and my imagination. Because just before you reach the Peace Pole you come upon a gate.

It’s a bit of a surprise to me every time. A fence made of uneven slats of wood standing parallel to one another, held together by strands of weather-beaten wire, is interrupted by a small, rustic red gate; the shape and color of a traditional church door. The gate gives way easily; a gentle entry. And charming though it is, the gate feels… out of place. Not because it is ugly or imposing. But because it feels almost otherworldly … magical, even.

You’re walking along, through those open California hills on a meandering hiking trail, and there, suddenly, is a gate standing in the middle of all that openness; a threshold in a landscape that already feels nearly boundless.

Jesus says, “I am the gate.”

When we hear those words in the Gospel of John, our modern ears — informed  by centuries of religious gatekeeping — might hear the click of a lock. Might imagine this sheepfold as an exclusive club and the gatekeeper as some kind of pastoral bouncer. Many have paired this passage with John 14:6 (“No one comes to the Father except through me”) and heard a deadbolt slide into place; dividing the so-called worthy from the unworthy.

And those interpretations that would lock people out of God’s love have caused much harm over centuries of Christendom.[i] Have justified exclusion. Have confused a garden gate with a checkpoint. Pastoral fencing with national borders. A church door with a paid private entrance.

So it is worth emphasizing that Jesus Does. Not. Say, “I am the gatekeeper.”

He says, “I am the gate.”

And I wonder if we’ve forgotten that gates don’t have to be barriers that cut us off. That gates are thresholds that hold nothing but possibility. That gates open to a new reality just within our reach. A reality we don’t always see as we walk along the daily path.

Think about how often, in the tales we love – particularly those from childhood -- a gate or doorway signals this kind of revelation.

The hidden garden door to The Secret Garden opens into healing and connection. The wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia reveals truth beyond a war-ravaged reality. Alice’s tiny door opens to a Wonderland of discovery. Platform 9¾[ii] leads to magic at work in the world. Bilbo’s round hobbit-hole door opens to adventure and change. Those are the ones that come to my mind. How about you?

Gates and doors (which, the word here in John’s gospel can just as easily translate to) show up all over folklore and mythology. Forest doors and hidden gates in hillsides.[iii]

Great cathedral doors—like the so-called “Doors of Paradise” at Grace Cathedral—are designed to be experienced as thresholds. Passing through them, you step into another way of seeing the world; a sacred dimension.

And in Japanese tradition, torii gates—two examples of which we have right here in Oakland—also mark entrances into sacred space. Often there is no wall attached at all. Just the gate itself standing in openness. The gate is not there to keep people out. It exists to help people notice that they are crossing a threshold into something new.

Maybe that is why the little rustic red gate at The Bishop’s Ranch feels so strangely holy to me. Because it doesn’t interrupt the openness of the hills. It reveals it. It gives me an almost child-like moment to pause, and step consciously into the vastness that was there all along.

Jesus says, “I am the gate.”

Not the one who restricts access to God, or to the upside-down all-things-made-new Realm God promises. But the one who helps us see the “wideness in God’s mercy” was right there … all along, through an open gate.

And those thieves and bandits Jesus mentions? Maybe they’re not people standing outside the reach of God’s love. Maybe they are the forces that try to convince us the gate is closed.[iv] The voices that tell us: there is not enough welcome to go around, not enough belonging, not enough grace. The systems that thrive by turning thresholds into checkpoints. The fear that insists some people are forever outside the fence.

But Jesus tells us this morning: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Not barely survive. Not earn their place. Not scramble desperately for access. Life abundant. Life spacious enough to “go in and go out and find pasture.”

Jesus says, “I am the gate.”

Not a wall keeping the world divided, but an open doorway, reminding us that God’s love is boundless.

I wonder: what are the magic gates you remember? The thresholds (figurative or literal) that opened your life wider than it had been before? The moments that revealed the world has more dimensions than meets the eye – revealed the world to be deeper, or stranger, or more beautiful than you knew?

Maybe each one of those gates has been preparing you (preparing me) for the truth Jesus reveals to us today: That the gate to God’s abundant life was never locked; never chained.

But has stood before us as Jesus all along; calling each of us by name, and revealing a new reality just within our reach.

[i] Karoline Lewis’s entry on this reading in Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries: John (p. 137) was incredibly helpful to me in (re)interpreting this reading and also, by the way, convincing me the Revised Common Lectionary really did a disservice to us in cleaving it from the Healing of the Blind Man story, which really serves to contextualize what Jesus is doing here.

[ii] I recognize the irony in citing the work of J.K. Rowling, who wrote cherished books that taught children about belonging, but has now become something of a gatekeeper. I will use this opportunity to say this church and this world are better, richer, and made complete only with the existence and full inclusion of transgender children of God.

[iii] Oaklanders may be particularly interested to know that the Celtic word for Oak is daur, which is the origin of the word “door.” See here “Duir is also the source of the word ‘door’, suggesting that the oak tree is doorway into deeper knowledge, or perhaps, to some, a gateway into the ‘otherworld’. Whether this ‘otherworld’ is an altered state of perception – a different way seeing – or a science confounding literal other world, we will leave for you to decide” and here “This reinforces the Celtic idea that native Irish trees were doorways to other worlds. Some believed that if you fell asleep under an Oak tree, you might awake in another world” and many other sources. Also I’ll take any excuse to quote Richard Powers’ wonderful book The Overstory: “The oaks swear him in as temporary deputy in their fight against the human monster. Good Macduff hides behind their cut branches (Many living things were harmed in the making of this production), hoping he’ll remember his next lines, praying he’ll defeat the usurper again tonight, and marveling at the strange, irregular, lobed shapes fleshing out his camouflage like the letters of an alphabet from outer space, each glyph shaped by something that looks for all the world like deliberation. He can’t read the text on his banner. It’s written by a thing with five hundred million root tips. It says, Oak and door come from the same ancient word.” (page 66)

[iv] This piece by Herb Montgomery helped me get to this wondering.