Not Content With Sheepfolds And Brick Walls

John 10:1-10  Acts2:42-47  Ezekiel 34:11-16

I have a soft spot for Ordnance Survey maps.

I can pour over them for hours.

I was once given one of the whole of West Sussex which took  the form of a Jigsaw puzzle and I was in my element.

It was a huge, great thing, the exact size of the map, and I was thoughtfully provided with a huge cardboard surface upon which to piece it together.

One rainy day I got it all out in our dining room and began to work on it.

All the calls from Alison that I should be doing other jobs around the house from a list she had thoughtfully provided fell on deaf ears and for six hours, I was totally immersed in the puzzle. I’d soon completed a sizeable chunk of Chichester, bits of Littlehampton and the whole of Hayling Island. Other bits were strategically scattered over the board – Billingshurst in the top right hand corner, Havant, bottom left and Arundel somewhere in the middle and about ten bits each with the words “Hill Farm” on that I hadn’t a clue what to do with.

I was finally, forceably reminded that people were coming to dinner that evening and the dining table would need to be cleared, and no, I couldn’t just put it on the floor and no, it couldn’t be left out as interesting talking point over the cheese. It had to be taken up the stairs and put under the bed.

That’s when my problem began, because the cardboard surface on which the puzzle was being put together would not fit through the dining room door.

“You’ll just have to tip it up” was Alison’s helpful suggestion.

The bits began sliding about all over the place as we tried to get the thing through the narrow door, and by the time we’d got it into the hallway Crawley had disappeared and Horsham was on its way into the English Channel.

Nearly all of my painstaking work had been ruined in a second, all because I had not thought about the need for it all to fit through the door.

Our Gospel reading describes Jesus as a gate or a door, depending on the translation of scripture you read.

The picture before us is that of an ancient sheepfold which would be a place of shelter and protection for the sheep during the night. A conscientious shepherd would lay down for the night in the doorway of this place to make sure that no unwelcome creatures crossed the threshold without him knowing. Jesus is using this picture to indicate the sort of protective relationship he wants to have with his followers.

The shepherd would go in through the door to call his sheep by name, a rather strange thought really, I wonder what sort of names they all had.

Then he would lead them out through the door so that they could find pasture.

As disciples today, I guess we are to think of our relationship with Jesus as being about the crossing of thresholds. Him coming in to our lives, to the places where we are, to know us so intimately that we are each known by name, and then us having the faith and trust  to follow where he leads – to a place of pasture, to a life giving place, where not only our needs are met by him, but others find strength for living there and others find themselves drawn to be part of the flock under His pastoral care.

Our Easter faith, as the crossing of thresholds.

One of the problems with this is that we make the entrance and exit too narrow.

We are wary of letting God come too close lest we fall short under his judgement.

Our tendency not to want to be still means that we do not hear him calling our name.

Then our Christian lives become so full on the encumbrances we put together inside church buildings that we literally cannot get our faith out through the door to apply it in the world outside, in the leading of ourselves and others to the pasture that lies in the great beyond.

The clue as to how we might make it fit is given in our reading from Acts and should be at the heart of a vision for any church.

It all seemed in those early days to centre around a common life.

The little phrase “and all who believed were together” is very telling.

The people were like an emerging jigsaw puzzle of different yet interlocking pieces.

Joined together piece by piece in the sharing of bread we have come to call Eucharist.

Forming little interlocking sections as they met together for teaching and prayers.

Knowing that each of them was one small piece in the big picture of the kingdom, so that the sharing of what you had with someone else became second nature.

They did it together because they knew that was the way to create something beautiful.

It is a calling really to make ourselves small and to let our position in the puzzle not be determined by our own preconceived personal needs, but open to the Spirit to place us where he will as we let it all slip and slide into the shape of a faith that will fit through the door.

A faith that is not built up for exclusive use within the sheepfolds nor yet of a church building – but to the place of pasture that lies beyond here – where we shall find ourselves nourished as we inspire others to those greener places that are fresh with his kingdom.

RH 13.4.08