Pastor Dan Mangler's Sunday Sermon

Doors, Doors, Doors

John 10: 1-10

April 13, 2008

Doors, Doors, Doors

Doors, doors, doors! Everywhere we go we see doors. Everything we do we encounter doors. There are locked doors and unlocked doors, hinged doors, swinging doors, and sliding doors. There are automatic doors and manual doors, entrance doors and exit doors. There are house doors, car doors, office doors, garage doors, and barn doors. There are inviting doors like a See's Candy store door (I love See's Candy), and there are frightening doors like the doors to the dentist office (My wife's least favorite door). We describe our location as being either in-doors or out-doors and we remind our children when it is appropriate to use their outdoor voices or their indoor voices. Doors can also be metaphorical as in the example "Well, that door is closed to me", or "The door of my heart is always open to you."

With doors so ubiquitous, with doors at every turn, can the image of Jesus as "the door" be at all meaningful? The Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates John 10:7 as, "So Jesus again said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door'...", and John 10:9 as, "I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved..." We have so many doors from which to choose. What kind of door is Jesus?

Jan Esther Boyd Fullenwieder invites us to imagine:

"You are an astronaut out in space, umbilically attached to the craft. Out before you, the earth spins in beauty. Your space mission is completed and the air reserve for the "walk" is almost gone. You reach for the hatch lever. There is nothing there. The door you came out is gone. You scour and claw the bolted surfaces of the craft. The way in is gone and you are lost. Suddenly, from within, a new and unseen door is thrown open and you are pulled through it to escape into life. The one who threw open the unseen entry becomes for you the door of life.

Or imagine: "You are a miner, a mile or so under the earth. The shaft collapses. The dust of the earth becomes poison becomes the air you breathe in. Time passes and there is no escape. Air diminishes, your flesh is parched. Far off a voice cries out your name saying, "A door will be carved out of the rock." Time passes and you cling to the echo of the voice. Suddenly making the night of your death as bright as day, there is a door. A way out splits open above you, hands are laid upon you, and you are carried home.

Or imagine: "You are a full-term baby, trapped inside a mother whose labors are unable to birth you. What was your life water becomes slowly a flooding threat. Your heart beats harder under the stress, then weakly. Into your hiding place pierces a cutting blade. A blaze of light, and a leaping up out of the darkness, and you are lifted out of death through the door in the flesh. You gaze upon the company who delivered you.

Again, imagine: “You are a secretary descending in an elevator from the 106th; floor, long after hours. The car jolts and jerks and bounces to a stop. The phone fails. There is a blackout. The guard does not know you are there. The building is deserted for a three-day weekend. Hours pass. Panic envelops you as the walls of the elevator seem to shrink. Your thirst and craving for light overtake you. Then unimaginably, the ceiling of the compartment is thrown back. Hands gr

And finally, imagine: “You are a Jewish adolescent girl with 700 others you have trudged from a cattle train into showers for what the soldiers have called disinfection. From the shower heads the sickly gas clouds the locked chamber. In trampling panic the naked hordes beat upon the barricaded doors. There is no way out. In the midst of this fear-filled company, despite the barred doors, there appears another Jew. This Holy One of the people of the promise shows you and your dying company the wound in his side. With pierced hands, the Jew points to the wound in his side and invites you all through it. You are shepherded through, a flock fleeing to life."¹

These are stark and graphic images of what Jesus means when he says, "I am the door." Like the miraculously appearing hatch into the space vehicle, Jesus is the door through which we enter into a life-sustaining environment rescued from alien and life-threatening surroundings.

Like a door carved out of rock bringing rescue to a miner endangered by fierce heat and fouled air, Jesus is the door that offers us escape from an oppressive life, a door that changes darkness to light, stench to sweetness, foul to fair.

Like the surgeon's knife that opens a door in the womb to rescue a baby from drowning in what was its life water, Jesus cuts through the walls that would keep us from knowing a life far better and greater than our limited present experience.

Like the ceiling of the disabled elevator thrown back and the hands reaching down to rescue the secretary from the darkness and fear and panic of her office prison, Jesus is the door thrown back through which the hands of God reach to you and me to lift us out of the fears and panic that can settle on all trapped in the doom and gloom of tragic circumstances.

Jesus is the Holy One who, with nail-pierced hands, points to the wound in his side and invites us through that holy and sacrificial door out of death into his life.

John Masefield concludes his drama "The Trial of Jesus" with a dialogue between Pilate's wife and the centurion at the cross, followed by the appearance of Jesus himself.

Pilate's wife: "Do you think he is dead?"

Centurion: "No, lady, I don’t."

Pilate's wife: "Then, where is he?"

Centurion: "Let loose in the world, lady, where neither Roman nor Jew can stop His truth."

The Easter message says that Jesus is loose in the world offering himself as the door through every barrier in life. He is the door from darkness into light, the door from danger to security, the door from despair to hope, the door from sadness to joy, the door from death to life.

Winston Churchill planned his own funeral and filled it with the promise of Easter. After the benediction, he directed that a bugler high up in the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral would play "Taps". Churchill then directed that immediately after the playing of "Taps", a second bugler, also in the dome, would play "Reveille," a call to get up in the morning.

Because Jesus said, "I am the door, if any one enters by me, he will be saved...", for every "Taps" there is a "Reveille". For every fear there is courage. For every tear that is a smile. For every danger there is a rescue, and for every death there is a resurrection. Amen.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.

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