(details)

(First in a Series  of Sermons which  Focus on the  Scriptural Texts  Contained in the  Stained Glass  Windows of the  Canberra Baptist Church)

Jesus Christ -  the gate to life Psalm 118:19-29,  John 10:1-10

Space

We all know the importance of space. Some are more sensitive than others, but there are probably spaces that each one of us associates with meaning and inspiration. I knew a minister, who would prepare his sermons always in the same place, and, in addition, would light candles all around him, when he began to prepare his sermon. The atmosphere, the space, became important for alertness, reflection and inspiration.

On the other hand, space can become an idol. Our church would not have fared too well in the early 16^th century, during the Reformation. Some reformers felt that worship of God had been replaced with worship of space; that people, and especially the clergy, had become more interested in statues and pictures and liturgies and altars and organs, than in God and Christ and the Spirit. One aspect of the Reformation was to purify their worship space. To re-direct peoples attention away from pictures and statues, to Christ, as he is witnessed to and becomes present through the Bible, the sermon, the Eucharist, the gathered community. They painted over the pictures, smashed stained glass windows, and even threw out organs. They did not want their worship space to interfere with their conviction that "there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all . (1 Tim 2:5f.).

Worship space is there to help concentrating on God, and on God's coming to God's people in Christ and in the Spirit.

This room, this church, is our worship space. We spend an hour a week here. We try to gather up our life, with all its promises and failures, its achievements and disappointments, and we present it to God for inspiration, forgiveness and insight. We celebrate our commitment to each other, and we seek empowerment to meet our responsibilities in our families and in our places of work and in society general.

I want to invite you to reclaim our worship space. The table at the centre symbolises our commitment to God and to each other, celebrated regularly in the Lord's Supper. The rostrum with the Bible on it manifests our need to hear the word of God as it comes to us through the reading of the Scriptures. The Pulpit is not high so that I can better see you or so that you can better see me, but to emphasise our need for the Word of God to interpret our life. We select people from our midst whom we entrust with the noble but frightening task to interpret the Scriptures to us, and at the same time to interpret our life in light of the biblical message.

An important part of our worship space are the Stained Glass Windows that surround us. They have been donated in honour of persons mentioned on the windows. But it was the intention of both the donors and of the persons honoured, to point away from themselves to Christ.

In a series of sermons I will focus on the different windows, keeping in mind the important reminder from the Reformation, that we are not here to worship people, but to worship God.

I will therefore focus my attention on the Scriptural texts that each window contains. These texts were obviously carefully chosen. The oldest window, unveiled in 1929, pictures Christ saying "I am the door."

The scene is familiar to us. There is fold with a herd of sheep in it. The fold has a door; today we would probably say, a gate. The sheep go in and out through that door - in the picture you can see how some sheep walk past Christ into the fold. At the same time, all legitimate persons enter by that door. And then there is a shepherd whose authority is known and obeyed by the sheep.

Now, the fact that Jesus is named the "good shepherd" who knows his sheep and who is prepared to lay his life down for his sheep, will be the theme on another day. Today we want to try to understand what it means that Jesus is pictured as a "door" or a "gate".

With great emphasis - double "amen, amen"; and e)gw¯ ei¹mi, literally: "I, I am" - the exclusivity and intolerance of truth is emphasised:

. Jesus said to them, "Very truly (amen, amen), I tell you, I am (I, I am) the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. (John 10:7f.)

That is difficult for us today. We don't like words like "exclusive", "absolute" and "intolerant". We are too aware of the imperialism associated with these words. We know how in the name of truth and of God and of Christ great injustices have been dealt to people and to nations. People have been tortured, burned on the stake and drowned in rivers in the name of truth. Nations have been subjected and exploited, with the oppressors having a Papal Bull in their baggage. We have become frightened of people who claim to have the truth. We have known of Jim Jones, and of the Waco community where people followed a so-called Christian leader and prophet into suicide, violence and death.

But that very fact also reminds us that truth is a sensitive matter. Not everything is true. Would you entrust your heart, your conscience - the greatest treasure you have! - to any and every one?

When Jesus in the Gospel of John says: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (14:6); when we read, that in Jesus Christ "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily", and that therefore "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." (1 Timothy 2:5; Col 2:9; Acts 4:12), then this exclusivity, this absoluteness, this claim that not everyone who seeks entry to our conscience is true, wants to protects us. It wants to make sure that our relationship to God is a good and liberating one.

As a German I am especially sensitive at this point. When I was young, there was a German leader and a German system that wanted to claim peoples' conscience. Hitler considered himself elected by providence, and many people, including many Christians, including many Baptists, followed him and saw in him God's man who would restore the national pride that had been taken away with the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War. But there were some Christians and pastors and theologians who read the signs of the times. They met in Barmen, near Cologne, and issued a theological statement, the so-called Barmen Declaration (1934), in which they denied that any government had an absolute claim on peoples' conscience. They confessed that Jesus Christ is the "one Word of God" that we are to hear, trust and obey. This "Jesus Christ" is not the projection of our religious experience, he is not the impersonation of our cultural and ideological interests. He is the one "attested for us in Holy Scripture". Besides this one and only source, the church must reject all other sources for its proclamation. It does not say that there are no other sources. But it denies that they can receive independent theological dignity besides the one word that counts. No persons, no racial theories, no cultural visions, no political or economic ideologies can serve as the source of the church's proclamation.

In that sense truth is exclusive and intolerant. It wants to protect the dignity and freedom of our conscience. And, at the same time it wants give shape to our understanding of God.

That does not mean that we are to be exclusive and intolerant. Indeed, quite the opposite. By confessing that the truth is exclusive and intolerant, because we don't just want anyone to mess with our conscience, and we don't just want anything to give content to the word "God", we affirm our difference between Christ and us. He is divine, not we! We are sinners, seekers, dreamers. We confess Christ to be the truth, but at the same time we are open and tolerant because none of us quite knows what we are saying! And we know of too many examples of people and institutions, who have arrogated truth status for themselves, rather than confessing Christ to be the truth.

That is the first point that we have to remember: the exclusivity, the absoluteness, the intolerance of God's word is related to the dignity and importance of our conscience. That is further underlined, when we hear Jesus saying:

I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.

We are not talking here about truth as such. We are not talking about 3+4=7, or whether the earth is flat or round, whether Einstein's theory of relativity is correct, or whether the creationists or the evolutionists are right. You can discuss and argue about those matters, have different opinions, and not worry.

But when we deal with matters of the conscience, we are talking about our salvation and about our spirituality, we are talking about our standing before God and our walk with God.

Salvation. "Whoever enters by me will be saved." The promise is that Jesus brings us into contact with God. And the God, whom Jesus brings us into relation with, can and does deal with the challenges of life. It is a God who makes a difference. It is a God whose making a difference is always in our favour. Life may go well for you. That is a reason to be thankful. On the other hand, you may be struggling with difficulties: anxieties, guilt, unfulfilled dreams, uncertainties, fear of life and fear of death; estrangement from God, from friends, from neighbours. Please listen to this:

. there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all - this was attested at the right time. (1 Tim 2:5f.)

Jesus Christ is the door into the rich presence of a God who cares! And when we hear about a "ransom" that has been paid, then this is a picture that God has done something for us that we could not do for ourselves. God has built a bridge in our direction, between God and ourselves. God has reconciled us with God. All we need to do, is to accept it; to accept that we are accepted! When we do accept it, then our journey with God will begin. And for that journey we shall need nourishment.

Spirituality. "Whoever enters by me, will come in and go out and find pasture." We all need wells to drink from! A motor needs gas or petrol to run, a ship needs wind in its sails in order to move. We need to follow Jesus and let him to lead us to find pasture. I said last Sunday that spirituality is too easy a word. Too convenient. Too comfortable. It may miss a Jesus centred spirituality.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus warns against "false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves." He said:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-15)

The difference between the alluring wide gate and the narrow gate, between the false and true prophets, is, whether you seek meaning and fulfilment by turning in upon the self, or whether you seek to discover the self in relationships. That is what Jesus meant when he

. called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? (Mark 8:34-36)

The false prophets, the wolves in sheep's clothing, are those with easy answers. But where conscience is involved, there are no easy answers. They are always answers concerning life or death. The person who is honoured with this window, George Whitehouse Griffith, was a conscientious objector during the First World War, and "he held his views against considerable opposition." Following his conscience was not a cop out for him. He went to the front as a Red Cross worker.

Christian spirituality includes the inward journey of prayer, study and meditation, and the outward journey of service. Christian spirituality does not seek comfort and ease; it seeks to follow Jesus!

And then there is the question of verification. How can I know that I am in the truth, that I am not following a false prophet? John the Baptist must have had a moment of uncertainty when he was incarcerated. Was it worthwhile to be in prison? So he sent some of his friends to Jesus with the question: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" To which Jesus replied:

"Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them" (Matthew 11:2-6).

We have a similar word in the Sermon of the Mount:

You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. (Matthew 7:16-20)

That is what our text means:

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

"Abundant life", freedom, love, joy are the ingredients of faith in Christ. So my friends, when you look at the window, Jesus probably looked different than he is pictured there, but the saying is true. He is the gateway to abundant life.

In our worship space, it is important that we are surrounded by pictures that speaks to us, not only of God, but of a good God.

God has created us. God is concerned with the dignity of our life, with the freedom of our conscience. God therefore wants to share God's abundant life with us.

For that to happen it is very important which way we seek and find God. The promise for today is that God has provided a way.

Jesus Christ is the door into the life giving presence of God. You are invited to believe in Christ and be baptised into his name.