I Am the Gate, John 10:9

“I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” Jesus is the gate into the joy, the peace, and the promised eternal life that we seek to enter. We know by experience, and by the Word of God, that the gate into the Lord’s sheepfold is a narrow one, and it is cut in the shape of the cross. Jesus is our true Shepherd. He is the one we seek to follow as disciples. And we must do this with our whole heart, our whole mind, and our whole strength. Only he can, and will, lead us through the dangers of this life into the pasture that he has prepared for us.

Matthew gives us another way of looking at this: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few” (Mt. 7: 13-14). That last sentence should give us reason to pause and to contemplate deeply. We are given two powerful and challenging ideas in these verses. First, both the road and the gate into the longed-for pasture prepared for us by Jesus are narrow; second, the gate is cut in the shape of the cross.

Life is difficult. We know this by experience. Suffering is common to all of us. We all encounter it in one way or another by reason of our own choices, or the choices of others, by illness, and ultimately by the reality of death. Because we live in a post-Edenic reality, the world can often seem like a maze, or a rabbit warren with countless twists and turns, many leading to nowhere. God has given us a road map to follow in the scriptures, but most clearly in and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That road is narrow, indeed, and it runs right straight through this Vanity Fair world, and the gate we must go through to enter the heavenly kingdom is the cross.

The American poet Robert Frost gives us a similar image that relates to the difficult problem of choosing a path, and the potential blessings of choosing the right one in his poem, “The Road Not Taken”. His first line says, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” alluding to the fact that one cannot take both; one must choose and take one or the other. This is a great image of the fact that we are always confronted with choices in life, and some of them have serious consequences for our lives, or for the life of our eternal souls. This is why life is difficult.

As Christian believers, we need to pray constantly for the strength, courage, and wisdom to always keep our eyes on Jesus to help us choose the very difficult and narrow path that leads to the narrow gate that opens onto the beautiful, green pastures of eternal life. The last lines of Frost’s poem are: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I/, I took the one less traveled by/, And that has made all the difference.” This is why Jesus tells us that those who choose to take the narrow path through the narrow Gate are few, but the rewards are greater than we can presently imagine.

Our call as disciples is to know God, to love God, and to serve God and our neighbors through our daily lives. That is the narrow path. In a world that makes self-love and the seeking of immediate gratification in all of its forms the highest of ideals, the narrow road that we are to follow as disciples of Jesus is difficult indeed. It is so because of the reality of our common human sinfulness. To pass through the gate, we must love and serve all others with all that we have and are, just as Jesus did, and continues to do for us. To choose to live this way in a world that distrusts, denies, and often defies anything that demands so much of us can be fraught with pain and suffering. This is the Way of Jesus. That is why the Gate is cut in the shape of the cross.

We pray, Lord, that you give us the courage to follow you, to keep us on the narrow path that leads to the green pastures you have prepared for us. We ask you to travel with us on our earthly journey and to help us carry the weight of the crosses that will come our way for following your narrow path in this wide and broken world. In Your most Holy Name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.