Christ the door
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on 12th October 2008 by Rt Rev Dom. Aldhelm Cameron-Brown
Readings: Psalm 23 and John 10: 1 - 10
Sermon
A university brings together Christians of various Churches, and today people of various Faiths. I imagine that all Christians accept as the basic faith of our religion that Jesus Christ is the Son of God made man, who suffered death for our sins, and rose from the dead to give us new life. That truth is contained in our various Creeds.
There is one ancient Creed, however, which adds that after death 'he descended into Hell.' Hell here did not mean the region of the damned. Rather it meant that until Christ had died to open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers, there had to be somewhere for the righteous who died before Christ to await his coming. This teaching was applied to people like Abraham and King David (and I would include righteous Gentiles, like Socrates and the Lord Buddha, who tried to live by what truth had been granted to them). This region of the dead is usually called Limbo - Dante has something to say about it.
In the early Church, however, Limbo was seen as an outpost of Hell. One 2nd century author wrote a poem about it, in which he makes Christ speak about his experience, after his return. In one section Christ says:
I opened doors that were closed,
and I broke in pieces the bars of iron,
and the iron became red-hot and melted before me;
nothing anymore appeared closed to me,
because I was the door to everything.
That is not inspired scripture, but it is a powerful piece of writing. For us too Christ is the door to everything. As he says in the Gospel, 'I am the door for the sheep.' When we see life through eyes opened by Christ we see it with new meaning. Indeed, it is Christ who gives us a reason for living. Of course, we do not need a reason for living - we just live and enjoy life, most of us, for most of the time. But there are times when we are really up against it and it all seems meaningless, and sometimes intolerable.
But Jesus himself has endured the intolerable, and found a meaning in it. Or may we say that he has enabled us to find a meaning in it. Jesus too was up against it. 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass me by.' The Son of God, pushed into praying like that! Of course, he knew it was not possible if God's will for our salvation was to be carried out. The agony in the Garden shows that Our Lord himself shared our fear in the face of great pain. That fear was itself part of the price of our salvation. The Gospel tells us that in his fear, Christ's sweat became like drops of blood - I have sometimes been afraid, but not to that extent. Jesus endured it all, for you, for me.
Jesus in his Passion and then his Resurrection is the door to everything, he is the door to our salvation. And salvation is not just a matter of continuing to live, but of being raised up into the life of Christ. And also of bearing witness by our lives to the life and love of Christ, of allowing him to transform our lives, to transform our view of life.
In Christ we know ourselves as sons and daughters of God, sons and daughters of the Father. Through the Holy Spirit, by the gift of faith and baptism, we were lifted up above a merely mundane life and called to share in the life of God, as far as it is possible for a created being to do so.
We all know the Psalm, 'The Lord is my Shepherd,' which is part of this service. And the Gospel is about you and me, as his sheep. And Jesus says in the Gospel, 'I am the door; anyone who comes into the fold through me will be safe. He will go in and out and find pasture.' He compares us to a flock of sheep, and of course in some churches the minister is called the Pastor, the shepherd. We go through that door by a profession of faith. Perhaps it is unfortunate that modern translations usually say 'gate' rather than 'door': after all, sheep go out into the field through a gate rather than a door. But 'door' has a more intimate feel to it, and the King James Bible and the modern Revised English Bible, on the Protestant side, and the modern Knox translation on the Roman Catholic side all say 'door,' so let it stand! The Greek word is 'thuras' - but I don't know Greek!
But having made that profession of faith we are called to live it in our daily lives. We go in and out - there are times when we make contact with God, with Jesus, through our prayer, whether alone in our inner chamber, or here together in church. And when we are alone with God, there we are called to be most ourselves, not putting on a false show of piety, but coming before God as we really are. And if what we are is not very pretty, we may be able to put on a false show before our friends and the neighbours, but we cannot put on a false show before God, because he sees us as we really are. But in seeing us as we really are, he also calls us to repentance, for he who sees the mess we have made of our hearts, our conscience, also has the power to wash us clean, to forgive us. And in forgiving us he is also calling us to do better. And in calling us to do better, he is calling us into a deeper and deeper share in his own life, so that our life has God at the centre.
To have another man or woman at the centre of my life can become slavery, but to have God at the centre is to find a richer life, because our life comes from God.
Jesus also says in this Gospel, 'I am the door, or gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.' I suspect that 'more abundantly' is bad grammar, yet it is so true.
The divisions between the Christian churches are very real, but there I think we are all agreed: that Christ came that we might have abundant life. We have only to open our hearts to him, so that we might live ever more by his life-giving will.
Jesus himself liked to see us as sheep, as when he said 'I am the door; anyone who comes into the fold through me will be safe. He will go in and out and find pasture.' He compares us to a flock of sheep, and we go through that door by a profession of faith.
But having made that profession we are called to live it in our daily lives. We go in and out - there are times when we make contact with God, with Jesus, through our prayer, whether alone in our inner chamber, or here together in church. And when we are alone with God, there we are called to be most ourselves, not putting on a false show of piety but coming before God as we really are. And if what we really are is not very pretty, we may be able to put on a false show before our friends and the neighbours, but we cannot put on a false show before God, because he sees us as we really are. But in seeing us as we really are,, he also calls us to repentance, for he who sees the mess we have made of our hearts, our conscience, also has the power to wash us clean, to forgive us. And in forgiving us, he is also calling us to do better. But in calling us to do better, he is calling us into a deeper and deeper share in his own life, so that our life has God at the centre.
To have another man or woman at the centre of my life can become slavery, but to have God at the centre is to find a richer life, because our life comes from God.
The whole universe comes from God, of course, and to God it returns. One can see, these days, fantastic photos of the outer reaches of space, with all the galaxies and clouds of gas and whatever. A spacecraft launched from the earth today would never get to the end of it (if indeed there is an end and not just space curving round endlessly), yet God holds it all in the palm of his hand, as it were. Yes, God holds you and me in the palm of his hand and, as it were, yearns over us
And as Jesus has said, 'My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What the Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. The Father and I are one.'
We are called to be one with the Father and with Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit. That is what Heaven will be all about. Here and now we share already in their love, and we are called to share that love with those around us.