The shepherd who doesn't check credentials

Last Sunday, I started my sermon at Community Church in Nevada City with this confession: "I once got locked out of my own church." It was early Sunday morning in Izmir, Turkey, and I was the base chaplain – which, in theory, should have carried some spiritual authority over the building. But the facilities manager changed the door code over the weekend, and apparently nobody felt the need to inform the man of God. So, there I stood in my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, tugging on a locked door, Bible under my arm, zero access to the building where we talked about a God who leaves no one outside. I thought about that moment this week when I sat down with John chapter 10. You know the passage. Jesus is talking about sheep. Now, given my Texas farming roots, I'll be straight with you – sheep are not the most flattering comparison. They're not the golden retrievers of the animal kingdom. They wander. They panic. They'll bolt from a plastic bag blowing in the wind. And yet Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd, and that his sheep know his voice. That stopped me cold. I spent four months in a combat hospital in Balad, Iraq. The noise in that place was extraordinary – helicopters, generators, trauma bays running at 3 in the morning. I watched soldiers lying there, eyes closed, somewhere between conscious and not. And I noticed something. A buddy would walk in and say a guy's name – just his name – and the patient would turn his head. Not toward the noise. Toward the voice he recognized. I've seen it in every Sacramento hospital since. A mother speaks her child's name in a hallway and the kid stops crying. A spouse walks in after surgery and something in the patient just … settles. That's what Jesus is describing. Not a religious program. Not a doctrinal checklist recited at the door like some heavenly bouncer checking credentials. He says the shepherd calls his sheep by name. By name. Not by membership number. Here's where I'll ruffle a few feathers – and if you've read this column before, you know I can't help myself. There are a lot of gatekeepers in religion. I've met them in every denomination. They stand at the entrance with their theological clipboards, checking your orthodoxy, your attendance record, your stance on issues Jesus never once mentioned. They've already decided who the sheep are. But in this same chapter, Jesus says something that made the religious crowd of his day want to stone him: "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen." Other sheep. Sheep that don't look like the ones already inside. I once sat with a man in a hospital – tattoos up his neck, more skepticism about organized religion than I had coffee cups. He didn't pray like a bumper sticker. But through a very dark night, he told me things about love and sacrifice and showing up for people that would have passed any theological test I know. Was he a sheep? I've stopped trying to answer that. It's above my pay grade, and I'm retired, so my Air Force pay grade isn't what it used to be. What I do know is this: Jesus doesn't say the sheep find the gate through religious performance. He says he is the gate. Whoever enters through him will find pasture. Find pasture. Rest. For a chaplain who has sat with people in ICUs and foxholes and hospice rooms, those are not small words. The thief, Jesus says, comes to steal and kill and destroy – and and he had people in mind when he said that. People who use religion as a weapon. People who change the door code and don't tell you. The Good Shepherd came so we might have life abundantly. That's the voice the sheep recognize. Not the voice condemning them from the gate. His is the voice that keeps the gates open for all. Join me for Sunday worship at Community Church in Nevada City at 10:30 a.m. on 300 Main St. Read all my columns at www.thechaplain.net Send comments to comment@thechaplain.net or 10566 Combie Road, Suite 6643, Auburn, CA 95602. Contact Chaplain Norris at comment@thechaplain.net or voicemail 843-608-9715.