4th Sunday in Easter, Year A
April 26, 2026
John 10:1-10
Good morning and welcome to Good Gate Sunday, otherwise known as Good Shepherd Sunday. Maybe you have been coming to an Episcopal church (or any other mainline denomination) long enough to know that the 4th Sunday of Easter is Good Shepherd Sunday! But in this year’s scripture Jesus clearly says, “I am the gate!” I guess Good Gate Sunday just didn’t have the same ring to it. We still have a shepherd, though, and Jesus is both shepherd and gate. People often mistake this passage about the Good Shepherd and the Gate as a parable but there are no parables in the Gospel of John. Jesus’ main mode of speech here is imagery, metaphor, and discourse, but not parable.
There’s a whole cast of characters here: shepherds, sheep, thieves, bandits, gatekeeper, strangers, and, yes, a gate. Pixar could have had fun with this story. We have to back up to Chapter 9 in John’s Gospel to realize that here in Chapter 10, Jesus is still talking about the man who was born blind and this whole section about sheep is in response to the question from the Pharisees, “Surely we aren’t blind, too, are we?” But the disciples are also listening, as are others gathered around, and even the blind man. John is also writing with the awareness that the hearers of this Gospel are to pay attention.
Jesus starts off with a warning about thieves and bandits, infiltrators who want to harm the sheep or steal them away. Sheep pens were often placed right beside a home with high walls and brambles to keep thieves away. Sheep stealing was a common problem and it would have had devastating financial consequences for a family as the sheep they raised were a main income source.
But the true protector, the real shepherd, is known and welcomed by the gatekeeper who opens the door, or the gate, for the shepherd. The shepherd talks to the sheep and they know that voice, and they respond to it. The man born blind had heard the voice of Jesus and listened to what he had to say before he ever saw him. He didn’t know it, but he was one of those lost sheep Jesus went to find. Jesus knew him by name, and was willing to risk his reputation for the well-being of that one.
There was no religious or moral test the man had to pass in order for Jesus to heal him. The only thing necessary was that the blind man listened to Jesus’ voice and responded to it. As Jesus speaks to all his disciples, then and now, he spoke to the blind man, “Follow me.”
I had four children and it got to the point that when we were out at the grocery store or on some other outing in public, I had just grown numb to hearing “Mom, mom, mom!” all the time. Besides there were fourteen other voices in the store also calling, “Mom! Mom!” So, my children eventually figured out that if they needed me to turn around and listen to them, they would have to call me by name, “Alyssa Claire!” And it worked! I heard their voices then! One recognizes a familiar voice when they are called by name. We may only know him as the man born blind, but Jesus knew his name.
Verse 6 tells us that those listening did not understand his “figure of speech.” Not until his very last conversation with his disciples does it say that Jesus “spoke plainly.” Throughout the Gospel Jesus is misunderstood. I think we could say that still happens today. But the point of his words wasn’t to lecture everyone so they could take notes and pass the Jesus test, he was inviting people into a conversation, using imagery to think more deeply and engage in a deeper level of understanding, to come together and build relationships with him and each other, and discuss these things, let them unfold like the conversation on the way to Emmaus last week. The imagery of shepherds, gates, etc, was to evolve by talking together, spending time to build community.
The image highlighted in today’s reading is of the gate, really a door, which often gets overlooked with all the shepherd talk. This is the second “I AM” statement from Jesus–I AM is who Jesus claims to be– “I AM the gate.” Not, “I am the wall, the barrier, the enclosure, the dividing line.” Not, “I am that which separates, isolates, segregates, and incarcerates.” I am the gate. The door. The opening. The passageway. The place where freedom begins.1 (Side note, Jesus is the gate. We’re not. Gate-keeping is not our job.)
Jesus is offering his followers the Way. In fact the early disciples were known in communities as People of the Way. This passage has been too often misinterpreted as justifying a Christian community that wants to be exclusionary, using the gate to keep people out or by which to exclude them from coming in. That is completely missing the point–the gate is for all who want to enter into the community and the shepherd is there to protect and make sure they can come in and go out without harm. Only those who seek to destroy try to enter a different way. Jesus is saying, “Use the gate, my sheep!”
A lot of folks think of gates that are locked and bar people from entering. We imagine toddler gates, maybe, or puppy training gates. Prison gates and “gated communities.” But what if Jesus is a different kind of gate? A gate that opens out instead of closing in? Not the barrier itself, but a place of release and liberty?2 “I am the gate,” he says. “Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
I AM the gate is an invitation to the blind man, and honestly to everyone that was listening. The man born blind had been healed–yet the authorities could not accept this new vision, a vision that began with hearing the voice of Jesus. It’s a long story of blaming the man and his parents for his blindness–somebody had to have sinned! And then not believing that he really had been born blind since birth, they called his parents. Now the parents knew that if they mentioned Jesus, they would get expelled from the Temple so they were like, our son’s an adult ask him!
The authorities turned to the son to say, “We know this man was a sinner–how did he heal your eyes?” And the blind man responded with, “I don’t know if he’s a sinner, that’s none of my business, but I do know I couldn’t see and now I can–all because he put his spit and mud on me!” And the formerly blind man schools the temple authorities on God and how only God can restore true sight and the authorities didn’t like taking a theological lesson from a nobody who was once blind so they…threw him out of the Temple. He’s ousted from the Temple community which was an expulsion from society. Which is bonkers, but his claim that Jesus healed him was a threat to their power.
So Jesus used this confounding “figure of speech” to paint an image for them that he is the gate for those who are on the outside, those who have been cast away, that he’s the gate into safety, belonging, he’s the door to abundant life. The once blind man is being saved from those who wished him harm, and he will now be able to go in and out through this gate, with others from this community that Jesus has gathered, under the protective eyes and voice of a shepherd.
The gate is the door to still waters and green pastures. The gate is the way to a shepherd who revives the soul after a lifetime of disability and ostracization, who is the guide along the pathway. The shepherd walks with you through the valley of the shadow of death so that you will fear no evil and so you can return through the gate into the fold where you are protected from those that would come to steal your life and your dignity.
The man born blind is saved from isolation and marginalization. He has spent a lifetime in need of healing, thirty-eight years, which in ancient times was a person’s lifespan, and he finds healing in Jesus who saves him from the everlasting darkness he has been living in. That is the salve of salvation. That is the kind of redemption Jesus offers, here and now, not just some futuristic hope of eternity. The promise of pasture and protection (in and out of the sheep pen) suggests that the man born blind will know sustenance and security. Even if the authorities shun him, the one with true authority welcomes him with open arms and offers him abundant life.3
Life that pushes across formidable boundaries. Life that flourishes in precarious places. Life that never denies the real threat of thieves, bandits, and strangers — and yet holds out the possibility of pasture, nourishment, protection, and rest. Life that Dperseveres and maybe even thrives in the valley of the shadow of death.
For the disciples overhearing Jesus’ words, what is offered the blind man is for every disciple, every believer, all of us–the need for shelter, belonging, community, and the intimacy Jesus affords, the tangible grace at the bosom of God. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” Jesus says. My friends, hear the voice of Christ, and may we who have known that the gate was open for us, tell others the good news that it is open for them, too.
- Debie Thomas. JourneywithJesus.net, “I Am the Gate.” April 26, 2020. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Karoline M. Lewis. John, Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries, 2014. ↩︎
Magdalena's Musings 