Sermon for Sunday, April 26, 2026

April 26, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



John 10: 1-10



Today is church holiday commonly known as Good Shepherd Sunday. This Sunday in the season of Easter comes to us each year, with the readings focused on shepherds and the idea that Jesus is the shepherd. I’ve thought, written, and preached on this text, and I’ve always focused on the sheep and the shepherd. This year, though, it’s the idea of Jesus as gate that speaks to me.


In some ways, it’s a metaphor that feels dangerous, like it could be misused. Indeed, it has been. First century Christians who heard today’s text would see themselves as the chosen sheep. Through the centuries that have followed, the Jews who came before the time of Jesus were often painted as the ones in verse 8: “All who came before me are thieves and bandits.” But most modern scholars agree that Jesus is much more likely talking about all the other false messiahs that were roaming the country side, taking advantage of people in a time of extreme political and economic insecurity and danger. Let us always remember that Jesus said he did not come to replace the Law and the prophets, but as a fulfillment of them.


The other danger with this text is how it has been used to exclude—even to the extent of justifying public policy. Listen to that first verse again, with the ears of a person who is running for office and wants your vote: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.” Anyone who wants to keep people out is likely to advocate for high walls or a big fences—and politicians through the ages have known that one way to win votes is to make us afraid of the thieves and the bandits or to make us want to keep some people out and some people in.


Jesus, though, is not a politician.


Notice that Jesus doesn’t call himself the fence. That metaphor would be different, one of exclusion. Jesus is the gate, which is a much more welcoming metaphor. A gate can open. Is Jesus the only gate? We might talk ourselves into believing that our way of understanding Jesus is the only way, that those who don’t enter through the gate of Jesus are on their way to Hell. But that might not be what Jesus means.


In the book of John, Jesus uses several metaphors to explain himself as Messiah: food, drink, and light. Note that these metaphors show Jesus as essential to life; humans won’t last long without nourishment, hydration, and light. In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses another metaphor of something that is essential to life: safety, the safety that comes from inclusion.


Many people might have heard this Gospel preached as Jesus being necessary to keep us from eternal damnation. In this preaching, Jesus is the gate that allows people to escape Hell. We tend to think of salvation in terms of the afterlife—whether we’re going to Heaven or going to Hell. Where will we spend eternal life?


But Jesus offers us a bigger pasture: safety and protection in the life we’re living now. In the book of John, Jesus often circles back to the idea of what makes life-giving community. He often preaches this vision of life-giving community by using metaphors, and the symbol of the shepherd is one of the most vivid and judging by what images find their ways into churches, one of the most beloved and meaningful. It’s not hard to understand the appeal.


Jesus as a gate gives us a slightly different vision than Jesus as the shepherd. A beloved vision of Jesus as a shepherd is of the shepherd who goes after the one wandering sheep. I’ve preached at least one sermon that ponders the strangeness of this metaphor. If the shepherd goes after one sheep and leaves 99 sheep behind, those sheep are unprotected. A fence with a gate gives those sheep more protection.


It’s not just the shepherd and the fence with a gate that gives an individual sheep protection. The rest of the sheep give protection too. We don’t often hear sermons that preach about the value of sheep. Most of the sermons I’ve heard—or preached—talk about the stupidity of sheep, not the wisdom of being part of a herd. I am thinking of a Far Side cartoon, with one sheep standing on its hind legs saying, “Wait! We don’t have to be sheep!”


I first saw that cartoon on the office door of a professor who wanted students to stand out and be unique, to resist conformity. Although I first saw that cartoon over 30 years ago, not much has changed. We live in an individualistic culture, one that sneers at those who follow the crowd. Many of my students dream of becoming an influencer—maybe through social media, maybe through rising in the ranks of business, maybe by being an athlete. My students are not alone in this yearning. In the U.S., we aren’t raised to want to be someone who follows.


But Jesus comes to remind us that we belong to a different herd. Jesus is the one in charge, not the flashiest sheep who has learned to play the popularity game and rig the algorithms.


Being part of the herd frees us in many ways. We don’t have to analyze the trends. We don’t need to figure out the latest ways to attract the attention of the most powerful people, the ones who will give us a job promotion or money or attention of some other sort. We just need to remember to listen for the voice of the shepherd, the one who has our best interests in his heart, the one who knows our deepest yearnings, the one who wants our flourishing. We need to remember to listen to and for Jesus, and the right flock of sheep can be instrumental in keeping us focused and helping us listen. If we’re lucky, we can find a community like the one described in our reading from Acts.




When Jesus calls himself the gate, he reminds us of what’s inside the gate: a flock of sheep who will help us stay true to the abundant life that Jesus brings us. That life begins in our current life. We don’t have to wait until we’re dead. But it can be hard to remember that the Kingdom of God is inbreaking and ongoing, right here and now, not in some later time. It can be hard to remember when the uglier parts of life are also crashing in right here, right now. As we saw with the road to Emmaus story last week, even if we know the voice of the shepherd, the horrors of the world can plug up our ears.


Luckily, Jesus is the shepherd who walks beside us, teaching us, reminding us of the wisdom we once knew—his wisdom.


Jesus reminds us again and again that he offers us something that the world can’t: nourishment, the spiritual water that will never go dry, and the safety of community. Jesus is the gate that opens to the green pastures and still waters. With Jesus as our shepherd, we can walk through the valley of death, we can face down evil, and we don’t need to be afraid.


Jesus is the gate, not the fence. Walk through that gate. Claim your community. Let your soul be restored.

The Feast Day of Saint Mark

Today is the feast day of Saint Mark. Looking back through my blog posts, I'm surprised to find out that I haven't written much about this feast day. It does often fall in a part of the month where I'm more likely to be at the Create in Me retreat. But it's also because it's hard to know who the real Saint Mark was. So many Marks, so hard to know for sure who did what.

Was he the author of the Gospel of Mark? The one who brought water to the house where the last supper took place? That strange naked man in the Crucifixion narrative? It's hard to say.

We do give him credit for founding the church in Egypt, and that fact alone seems important enough for him to have a feast day. I think of all the church traditions that can be traced back to northern Africa, particularly the work of the desert fathers and mothers, which led to so many variations of monastic traditions.

I also think of Augustine, the important thinker, one of the earliest Christian philosophers, who lived in Hippo. Would we have had Augustine if Mark hadn't been an evangelist to Egypt? It's hard to know. If Mark hadn't gone to Egypt, would someone else? Probably--but the outcome might have been completely different.

Today is also a good day to turn our thoughts back to those early evangelists, those early disciples. I often say that if you were putting together a team, you would not have chosen those men. But God's ways are not our ways when visualizing success.

So for those of us who are feeling inadequate, take heart. God's plans are greater than our own. 

A Different Kind of Getting to Know You Exercise

Let me remember to record a really neat getting to know you exercise that we did the first night at the Create in Me retreat.  It's something that could be modified for non-retreat groups, and I'll give some ideas at the end of the post.

Advent

Our retreat theme was "Nature, Imagination, and Liturgy," so our opening exercise revolved around the liturgical seasons:  Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time.  

Epiphany

When we checked in, we had a nametag with a piece of colored paper in it--we sat at the table that had a larger sheet of colored paper that matched the color in the name tag.  It was a great way to make sure that we mingled new folks with returning folks.

Lent

The color of the paper matched the liturgical season (purple for Lent, for example).  We had a sheet of facts about the season, along with a small, blank banner.

Christmas

There was a table of all sorts of supplies.  Our project was to make a banner that matched the season, along with a song or prayer or poem.  We only had 20 minutes.

Ordinary Time

I admit that I was skeptical at first, as we sat there, every table staring blankly at the blank banner.  But it was a room of creative people, so soon we sprung into motion.  The energy level and discussion level rose.

Pentecost

When we were finished, we went around the room, explaining the banners and presenting our song or prayer or poem.  I was impressed with what we created--and impressed with how this exercise helped us get to know each other through a joint task and some friendly competition.

Easter

Could I create a non-religious variation for the first week in class?  I've used getting to know you Bingo, which is good.  The banner creating meant that people didn't have to move around the room and approach strangers, which is a plus for a lot of people.

Holy Week

I have a vision of this exercise, but with secular holidays and seasons, along with the holiday of Christmas, which is universal for my students.  Could non-creative students rise to the challenge?  I think they could.  Let me tuck this idea away.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, April 26, 2026:

First Reading: Acts 2:42-47

Psalm: Psalm 23

Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:19-25

Gospel: John 10:1-10


In this week's Gospel, Christ mixes metaphors a bit, talking about sheep and calling himself a doorway for the sheep to find pasture. He also warns of thieves and robbers, and we might ask ourselves who are modern day thieves and robbers? Who are the ones who would lead us astray?

Well, there are lots of contenders, aren't there? But the ones I'm finding most insidious these days are all the electronic activities which steal so much of our time away from us. I see more and more people bent over their phones, oblivious to the world around them.

You don’t believe me? Try an Internet fast and see what happens. Could you go for a day without logging on? Could you go for a week?  How long can you go without touching your phone?

These days, many of us rely on the Internet as we shift our work and education activities to be online so that we can work remotely. In some ways, it's a wonderful thing. In some ways, it robs us further of time and attention.

We might tell ourselves that we use our online time to stay connected to family and friends, and I will admit that it’s easier to stay in touch with some people via Facebook and/or texting than it was with e-mail or old-fashioned paper letters. Often, I find myself wondering how my friends and family are REALLY doing.

But do I take the time to ask?  Do I write to them or call?   No. I’m too busy racing off to the next Internet diversion.

We might tell ourselves that the Internet allows us to stay current with what’s happening in the world, and in some ways, it’s a wonderful thing. I can read newspapers from all over the world, often for the price of my Internet connection. Not only that, I can read the opinions of others about those articles. In some forums, I can trade ideas with people. But all of that staying current comes with a price: it takes time away from other activities. Some of those displaced activities might be trading ideas with real people in a real conversation.

Very few of us will find real community via the Internet. We often think we don't have time because we're all very busy these days. But what is really sucking away our time? For some of us, it is, indeed, our jobs. For some of us, we're taking classes.  For many of us, it’s our Internet lives: we’ve got a lot of stuff to read, videos to watch, plus games to play, plus status updates, and all the information we can Google now, and so we do (whereas before, if it required a trip to the library, many of us would have stayed ignorant). 

And if you’re like me, once you’ve spent so much of your day staring at screens, you may find it hard to reconnect to humans at the end of the day. You may feel your brain gone fuzzy. You may find yourself irritable at these humans who demand that you respond. You may withdraw before you ever have/take/make time to reconnect.

The Internet also takes time away from our relationship with God. I’ve found useful websites that allow me to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, but for the most part, I’m not noodling around the Internet looking for ways to enhance my relationship with God—or with anyone else, for that matter. I suspect that if I’m brutally honest, even my relationship with myself suffers when I spend too much time on the Internet.

Now the Internet is not the only tool and resource that allows us to sidestep the hard work of relationship. Some of us drug ourselves with television or with spending more hours at work than the work requires or with the relentless pace of the activities that our children do (and need us to drive them to) or any of the other countless activities that humans use in ways that aren’t healthy.

These activities can not only keep us from relationship with humans but can deafen our ears to the voice of that shepherd that goes out looking for us. Our Bible tells us over and over that God yearns to be in relationship with us. But if we’re too busy for our families and friends, we’re likely not making time for God either.

So, try an Internet/phone sabbath, even if it’s just for a few hours a week. Try doing it every week. Talk to a loved one.  Read a book. Play an old-fashioned board game. Listen for the voice of God who calls to you across space and time. Answer.

A Tale of Three Butterflies

 For most Create in Me retreats, we have a community art project, something we can work on together.  Some times, the work stays at Lutheridge, like the cross as tall as a human, made of clear plastic, filled with broken things.  One year, we knotted a quilt for Lutheran World Relief.  This year, we made a huge butterfly, decorated with bits of nature.  I brought it back to my house because Lutheridge didn't really have a place for it, and it had so much glue on it that I wasn't sure it was a good idea to leave it beside a trail to decompose, as we had once thought we would do:

Here's what it looked like at worship yesterday:

It began as a series of fan blades.  Here's what it looked like when my spouse and I first constructed it last week:

I felt a keen sense of failure and despair at this early stage.  My friend on the planning team had sent me this picture when describing what the group had in mind and asking if my spouse could build the base for it:

I wrote to my friend to tell her that we might not have created what she had in mind.  She wrote back the most perfect reply:  "It will look just as it should--a unique community effort."  I so needed those words, to know that I hadn't let the team down.

In the end, I like what we created better.  One friend used the leftover dried flowers that she created for her drop in station.  We used some of the leftover wood circles that had been cut for a prayer project.  We used interesting bits that people found during outdoor time.  

And in the end, yes, it looked just the way it needed to look--many good life lessons/reminders here.

Long Lasting Labyrinth Made of Braids

Yesterday, I posted this picture after we finished setting up the labyrinth at the chapel at Lutheridge:

Early on, the Create in Me retreat ended with closing worship and a labyrinth walk.  We have occasionally used the labyrinth that was created at the old tennis court, but it's not very accessible--and right now, it's still under downed trees.  So back in 2009, we created the braided strips that make the labyrinth.

How do I know that?  I went back to my blog and found this blog post that describes making the strips.  I also found this blog post which is a photo essay, and this post, which describes the experience of using the strips in words.

I have many reasons for why I continue to blog:  this ability to quickly find answers to the "what year was that?" or "how did this project go?" questions is one big reason why I keep blogging.

On the braided strips, we wrote prayers, along with gratitude and appreciation.  This morning, I thought about those prayers from 2009.  How many of them have been answered?  I thought about all of the people:  those of us we prayed for, those of us who did the praying.  Who is still alive?

I thought of all the ways we've used these long, braided strips:  for every Create in Me retreat since (almost 2 decades!).  Other retreats have used the braids, even non-Lutheridge retreats.  Other people have been inspired to try something similar.  I love that it's a budget friendly way to create a labyrinth.

It's a great metaphor for all the ways that our prayers and communities support us, even as the years and decades go on.  We braid our prayers together, in a variety of ways.  Those prayers braid us together, both immediately and through the years.  God, the master fabric artist, takes our offerings and weaves together our communities into an even more beautiful creation.

First Full Day of Create in Me

In some ways, the Create in Me retreat is the same from year to year:  Bible study in the morning, workshops, drop in stations with a wide variety of supplies and projects, worship and song, and of course, food and snacks (not all of which have this artist theme):

This retreat came with a coloring booklet and pencils on every table.  I haven't colored mine yet, because I might want to make copies.

Our theme is rooted in nature, so we've spent time in and with nature--including a nature walk yesterday.  We had 20 minutes to spend how we wanted, in nature, even if it was no further than steps from the door.  We had some questions to make us more intentional.

I went to my favorite tree, the maple between the Faith Center and the Dining Hall.  I spent time gazing and looking, looking close up, like I require my first year Composition students to do.  It was amazing.

I had a moment where I wanted to lie on the grass gazing up at the tree, but I decided it was unwise for many reasons.  I made an intentional decision not to take a camera or a notebook, to be fully present with the tree.

I love retreats for many reasons, but one reason is because it forces me to do what I say I want to do:  to be more present.

In the afternoon, we did worship planning.  I am always amazed how we come to the meeting at 3:30 with the barest bones of a worship service, and we have a fully-realized worship service prepared by the 6:45 start time.

We ended the day in the Faith Center, creating and talking.  It was a good day.  Of course, every Create in Me day is a good day--it's a foretaste of what could be.