April 17, 2005

The Door to Life

Revelation 3:7-8, 20
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-11

Jokes or funny stories about doors have always been popular. We all have our favorite "Knock, knock - who's there?" joke, don't we? I'm not going to go there, but a door joke that I do like concerns two people who are walking along the sidewalk downtown, and they come to a big department store, you know, one of those with large revolving doors. As they enter, the first says to the second, "Look out for the revolving door!" And the other replies, "What door, door, door, door?"

There's another humorous story I'll bet the children will like. It's not about doors, but one is mentioned in the story. A mother goes into her son's room and says, "Come on, Johnny, it's 7:00 and time to get up and go to school." He just moans and turns over in bed. "Come on," she yells louder, "it's time to get out of bed, and get out that door." (There's the reference to the door). "Mom, I don't want to go to school," he says. "All the kids pick on me." His mother answers him, "Listen, Johnny, that's ridiculous. You're forty years old, and you're the principal. Now get up and get out that door!"

Most of us enjoy jokes or funny stories because the punch line is usually not expected, and our sense of humor is tickled by the unexpected. Doors, like jokes, often have hidden behind them the unexpected, the unknown - not always funny. Sometimes doors can be rather mysterious, like those at the end of long dark hallways. Doors, as I noted once in another sermon, can be exits or entrances, closed or open, barriers or passageways. They can symbolize for us important events, milestones, or opportunities in our lives. It's this symbolic aspect of doors that we see in two of our Scripture lessons today in Revelation and John.

Symbols are those things that stand for something else; they represent something beyond what we see. For example, the American flag symbolizes for many of us freedom, patriotism, and America itself. A lion sometimes is the symbol for courage or bravery. The cross symbolizes Christ's crucifixion and also the victory of his resurrection. Doors can also be symbols. Jesus refers to himself as a door in our lesson today. Other translations say "gate" which is okay too. He says, "I am the door. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture." It's not that he is literally a door; he's just a symbolic door. Jesus is telling his followers a story with symbolic meaning about sheep in sheepfolds, and that those who enter the sheepfolds by ways other than the main entrance, are bad guys, thieves, bandits, and that sheep know and follow the voice of the shepherd, and won't follow the others. Well, his followers don't get it, so Jesus tries again, "I am the door for the sheep, he says." Let's see what this means. It will probably help us to understand if we can picture what a sheepfold looked like in Bible times. During the warm seasons of the year, when the sheep were put out on the hillsides, they were not herded back into the villages and towns at night, but rather, were gathered by the shepherd into enclosures, sort of like corrals, out there on the hillsides. These sheepfolds were enclosed by a wall or a fence, and there was only one opening through which the sheep came in and went out. But there was no door - just an opening. When all the sheep had been herded into the sheepfold for the night, the shepherd himself laid down across the opening, so that none of the sheep could get out, or any wolf or thief get in - except over the shepherd's body, and if they tried, he'd wake up. The shepherd was literally the door to the sheepfold.

It's this image Jesus has in mind when he says, "I am the door." Through Jesus we have access to abundant life, to God, and to life eternal. Let me use an analogy. When we're thinking about buying a house, we like to see the inside of the house before we buy it, right? Let's say we're driving in a new development and come across an empty house that looks interesting. So we stop and walk around the outside, try the front door - usually locked - and maybe peer in a couple of windows. But we still don't really know what the house is like, do we? So, we get a real estate person, hopefully one of the many fine realtors here at Pilgrim Church, and get him or her to open the front door that leads into the house, and then we can walk around inside and see everything. Leslie Weatherhead, a theologian of a generation ago, says this is like the meaning of the "house of life." He says, "So many doors are shut [in the house of life], so many windows fastened. We peep in and get glimpses of it ... but until we go through the door and enter in, we can never get the full picture. Our perspective will always be that of peeking in until we enter the house through the door." (i)

Jesus says, "I am the door," and through him we can more fully understand the meaning of life and all its fullness and joy. Through Jesus we can find the way to know God better, to enter into fellowship with God, and to receive the power that only God can give. Jesus is the passageway into the kingdom, the way to God, the way to abundant life, the means whereby we get to God, or perhaps we could say, the way God gets to us. (ii)

But sometimes those of us who are grown-ups have the mistaken idea that this relationship with God that is ours through Jesus Christ is only for those of us who are mature enough or old enough to fully understand it. But we're wrong. Jesus is the door for everyone, children and adults alike. I read a story about the great scientist, Sir Isaac Newton. He's the one who discovered gravity when an apple fell out of a tree and clunked him on the head. Well, so the story goes, Sir Isaac had a favorite cat, and he liked the cat to keep him company in his study. By and by this mother cat had a kitten. When he was busy with his work and the door to his study was closed with the two cats on the other side, their meowing and scratching used to drive him cuckoo. So, one day he asked a carpenter to make two holes in the door, a larger one for the mother cat, and a smaller one for the kitten, so they could both go in and out as they pleased. Do you know what was wrong with this? He only needed one hole, since the kitten could easily go through the bigger hole for the mother cat! The moral of this story for our sermon this morning, besides reassuring us that even brilliant people like Sir Isaac Newton can be fuzzy-headed at times, is to remind us that there are not two doors to God's kingdom, one for grown-ups and one for young people. There is only one door. Jesus is the door for all of us. (iii)

Jesus Christ is an open door, never locked shut, always open, inviting, beckoning people to come in. But sometimes our own closed doors - doors like stubbornness, pride, jealousy, hostility, etc. - these doors prevent us from seeing the open door of Jesus. Back to houses again. Many of us have a screen door at the back and maybe at the front of our house in the summer, don't we, in addition to a solid door that gets shut at night? From inside the house all we can see is the solid door, and only when we open that solid door can we see and feel the sunlight, smell the flowers, and catch the warm breezes. Life in its fullness is only possible if we will open the doors that close us in. God helps us in this. Ours is a seeking God who keeping knocking on our closed doors, asking us to open up. God never gives up on us, but is always there, calling us to respond.

But we have to respond. When we hear Jesus knocking on the doorway of our hearts, when we hear God's call, we can answer or refuse to answer. Christ will not break down the door, and will only come in if we open the door and invite him in. We have to take the positive action of inviting God into our hearts. Unfortunately, sometimes our sinfulness or whatever prevents us from seeing the obvious and doing what would be best for us to do. There's another rather far-fetched tale about a man who is told to enter a particular kingdom by a certain gate, but when he arrives there, he sees a sentinel guarding the entrance. So, he sits down and waits for the sentinel to give him instructions or grant him permission to enter. But the guard does nothing and says nothing. And neither does the man. He just sits there and continues to wait for something to happen or for the guard to say something. He sits there his whole lifetime! Then the guard closes the door and says to the man, "The door was made for you and you alone. And because you chose not to enter it, it is being closed forever." (iv) The open door is there, but we must take the first step to pass through it.

Finally, if there is something preventing us from getting closer to God, something that makes it hard for us to pass through that open door, we need to get to the root cause of that something, always remembering that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus; and we need to ask for God's help in enabling us to overcome it. The difficulty some of us have in entering the doorway to the kingdom is like the boy who gets his hand caught inside an expensive vase. His parents, of course, are very upset, and they use soap suds and then cooking oil to help him slide his hand out of the vase, but with no success. Finally, when they are ready to break the valuable vase, figuring this is the only way to release the boy's hand, the frightened lad says, "Would it help if I let go of the quarter I'm holding?" (v) To get through the door to life, we have to let go and put ourselves in God's loving care.

Jesus said, "I am the door. Whoever enters by me will be saved. ... I came that [all] may have life, and have it abundantly." May each of us find this door and pass through it to a life of abundance and grace. Amen.

The Pilgrim Church of Duxbury
Rev. Kenneth C. Landall

i Pulpit Resource, 4/16/78.
ii William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Vol. 33, No. 2, 4/17/05.
iii 1041 Illustrations, p. 94.
iv Kafka, "The Trial," cited by Mark Trotter, Dorans '79, p. 248.
v Pulpit Resource, 4/16/78, op. cit.