+I AM THE GATE FOR THE SHEEP 30 April 2023
There is much to reflect on in this Sunday’s readings. I found myself amazed with Jesus using the relationship of shepherd and sheep to reveal authentic leadership among the people of God. How sheep relate to their shepherd speaks volumes about what our own relation to Christ is to be and how we can recognize Christ’s authentic presence in our world today.
Jesus came that we may have life and have it ever more abundantly. If we live our Christian lives in and through Christ we have found the true gate and may go in and out to find pasture. The true shepherd does not serve his or her own interests but an ever more abundant life for the sheep under his or her care. Those who serve their own interests do not enter through the gate but climb into the sheepfold only to steal and slaughter and destroy. As Dianne Bergant’s commentary on today’s scripture texts tells us:
“Authentic leadership is patterned after the leadership of Jesus. It is gentle and familiar, as is the voice of the true shepherd; it has won the confidence of those who follow, as did the true shepherd; it is committed to the enhancement of the lives of others, as was Jesus. Authentic leadership is willing to forgo its own needs and to deny its own interests in favor of the needs and interests of others.” (p. 177)
Christ’s whole life is a living example of this kind of leadership. Born into poverty we see him determined from his earliest years to do the will of his Father whatever it may cost him. As St Peter tells us in the second reading:
“When he was insulted, he returned no insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten; instead, he handed himself over to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness.”
In doing so Jesus became the true gate for the sheep, the one by whom we come in and go out to find pasture for the nourishing to the whole of our lives. It is to “know for certain that God has made both Lord and Christ” the one who was crucified. To enter by this gate is to allow our lives to become transformed into the loving persons we are destined to be.
It is to know the forgiveness of our sins and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For “he himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness.” In him we become like the bread that is consecrated at this altar, become living members of his sacred Body. So let us be ever grateful as our Br Frederic recently reminded us in community, for the countless gifts that are showered upon us each day. Amen
(Acts 2:14a, 36-41; 1 Peter 2:20b-25; John 10:1-10)