I AM The Door

"I AM...The Door"

John 10:9

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

Think with me about the doors you go through each day without thinking.  The door to your work.  I unlock the Genesis Center door, or Michelle is already there and has unlocked it, and I walk through the door.  I unlock my office and feel at ease—it’s a welcome place I spend most of my day.  But with those two doors now open, there is always the thought in the back of my mind: “Who will be coming through those doors today?

I think of people like Rex, who may go through several doors in a day as he makes sales calls for Stanion selling electrical equipment and lighting.  Each door he goes through he adjusts his persona and steels his confidence to talk with the people he has come to call on.  Though he may or may not recognize it, something happens to him as he walks through each door.

Or when you come to church, and you walk through the door, you may have conscious or unconscious expectations about what will happen in that next hour as you worship with others.  Maybe something is going on in your life and you hope to hear a word from the Lord as you sit in the pew.  All those expectations come to the surface as you walk through the church door.  And those expectations are evaluated, as you exit the church door following worship.

As a student (and maybe teachers as well), you walk into your school through the front door, or more particularly, when you walk through the door into each classroom, all kinds of anxieties may come to the surface of your psyche.  Will they like what I’m wearing?  Is someone going to make fun of my hair?  What if we have a pop quiz in algebra?  Will my lesson plans be adequate for the day?  Are the students going to behave today?  All that and more bubbles up in you, and all you’ve done is walk through a door.

Likewise, at the end of the school day, when you walk back through that door, an entirely different you is making their way out than the person who entered that same door in the morning.  Maybe, on the way out, you feel relief to be getting away from situations where you felt like you’ve been acting all day and you can just let go of that to be yourself.  And all you did was walk through a door.

Or maybe you have a shop or craft room at your home.  Tools and projects scattered about.  You may be thinking about a particular project you’ve been working on and all you have left to do, some silly shoe organizer—and you think about that with either excitement or dread.  Maybe your shop is a place where you can go at the end of your day, and no matter how bad the day was at work, once in your shop or craft room you relax and a sense of peace enters your mind, and stress begins to melt away.  All you did was walk through the door.

Some doors have the power to elevate our blood pressure.  Like at a medical clinic or hospital.  You're sitting in the waiting room, with cheery pictures on the wall, and medical brochures about diabetes or other medical conditions scattered about on end tables.  You look through them even though you never would normally, only because you are nervous and anxious.

Then the door to the inner exam rooms open and a nurse pokes through, calling your name.  (Or someone else’s name, and you have to wait some more.)  But when it's your turn, you walk through that door to the inner clinic and exam rooms your blood pressure rises, all because you walked through a certain door.

It’s hard for me to imagine being a firefighter and initially having to walk through the front door of a burning building.  My daughter, Kristin, put up an article on her Facebook page this week about how girls, growing up, are taught to be more fearful than boys are.  The article highlighted a young woman who has been a firefighter with the San Francisco Fire Department, in one of the scariest districts of that city.  In the article, she said,

When I worked as a firefighter, I was often scared. Of course I was. So were the men. But fear wasn’t a reason to quit. I put my fear where it belonged, behind my feelings of focus, confidence and courage. Then I headed, with my crew, into the burning building."  

As I said, imagine going through a door leading to a burning building with all that you are feeling, or having to force yourself to feel—or not feel—simply by walking through that initial smoke-filled door.

When I was in college, I knew, and was friends with, the chaplain at Swedish Hospital in downtown Seattle.  He was also the chaplain at the King County Jail, in that same downtown.  He asked me to preach for him at the jail on different occasions.

All the doors are made of steel bars in the King County Jail, and I had to go through four of them to get to the place where I lead worship and preached to a dozen or so inmates.  There was the characteristic ringing screech of the metallic hinge, as the doors opened, and the clang of the door as it was closed behind me.  I'll admit, it got to me at first, going through those doors, knowing that I was locked in with alleged felons.  All I did was walk through four doors made of steel bars, and all kinds of emotions and anxieties bubbled up.

Are you thinking about all the different doors you go through each day, and how each of those doors, once walked through, evoke different feelings and reactions within you?  And as I mentioned in the school door illustration, it’s not just a matter of going in, but also going out of that same door.  Entering and exiting.  You may feel something very different when you exit through a door you had used earlier as an entrance.  Especially if it’s a jail door.

Just approaching certain doors, without having walked through them yet, can evoke a wide range of feelings.  For example, in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic book, The Scarlet Letter, there is this description of a door:

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. A crowd of dreary-looking men and women stood outside of the heavy oak door...the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than any thing else in the new world. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.

Not a very approachable door in that scene from the book.  Some doors are like that.  They seem welcoming and approachable.  Other doors can create a sense of foreboding or fear to have to go up to that door and knock.

There are even psychological studies about doors and how we approach them or feel about walking through them.  In dream therapy, if there is an outward opening door, it is supposed to signify that you are feeling you need to be more accessible and welcoming to others.  And if there is an inward opening door in your dream, it represents your desire for self-discovery and an awakening need to get to know yourself better.  (Now you’re going to have to think about the doors in your dreams!)

Also, if you have no fears about walking through any kind of door it means you are more willing to try to make a difference in the world.  Actress Elizabeth Taylor once said, “I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to be opened, and I'm not afraid to look behind (any of) them.”  Whereas if you have a certain amount of anxiety walking up to and through doors, it demonstrates how you live in constant fear of what the world might do to you.

Mostly, doors have been used as symbols of beginnings, endings, transitions, gateways, time and opportunity.  Think of the phrases we use along those lines:

Being at death’s door.

Get your foot in the door.

Opening the door of your heart.

Telling someone, “My door is always open.”

Closing the door to your past.

Most of these doors we are either unconscious about, oblivious to, or take for granted.  We just don’t think about doors much.  Until someone like me points them out to you and you start to think about how much doors affect your life every day.

There is one door that mostly gets ignored.  Part of the reason is we don’t even think of this one as a door.  I would guess many of you are unfamiliar with this door—not the door itself, but that he is a door at all.  While reading the Gospel of John, most fly by this statement of Jesus and think not much or anything about it.  “I am the door,” said Jesus.  Jesus is the door.

If you were to close your eyes and imagine Jesus as the door, where would your imagination take you?  First, you might wonder in your closed eye imagination, Jesus is the door of what?  The door of a mansion?  The door of a home?  The door of a castle?  The door of a cave?  The door of heaven?

I want you to think of all the places I brought to your minds during this message.  Think of Jesus as the door to all those places.  The door of your place of business and where you work.  The door of other people’s places of work.  The door of this church.  The door of your school and classrooms.  The door of your shop, place of recreation, or hobby.  The door of a medical clinic or hospital room.  The door of a building on fire.  The door of a jail cell.  And all the places your mind takes you that have doors you go through each day.

Think of Jesus as the door to all those places and more.  How does Jesus as the door to those places transform those places?  How would going in and coming out of those places be different for you if Jesus were the door?  How would your feelings and emotions be different if you entered every one of those places through Jesus?

Secondly, Jesus is the door into what?  Jesus says that anyone who goes through him as the door will be saved.  This word “saved” is such a rich word.  It can be translated with the words, delivered, protected, healed, preserved, and made whole.  You should write all those words down.

Think of those words as you go in and out of all the doors you do each day, and imagine Jesus is the door to all those places.  Every time you go through the door of Jesus you will be delivered, protected, healed, preserved and made whole.  Keep that in mind as you go to school, as you go to the clinic or hospital, as you go to work each day, even if you get closed in by the jailhouse door.  With Jesus as that door, something good and healing and whole is going to happen to you no matter what the place or circumstance.

Also, Jesus uses the word “pasture” as the answer to our question, “Door into what?.”  Jesus is the door into pasture.  He is using, of course, a shepherding image.  Pasture would represent food and sustenance.  Basic needs taken care of.  So think of going through Jesus the door means that, as you go through him, you go in to some place, some experience, some situation where your basic needs will be taken care of no matter what.

But this word, pasture, in the Greek Jesus spoke, has a wider meaning than sustenance and food.  It is a word that can also mean growth and increase.  Let’s plug those two words into the verse:  “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find (growth and increase).”

When the Financial Stewardship Team sent out the Stewardship letter in January, a little card was included in that letter.  I hope you put up that card somewhere in your home where you see it everyday and pray that prayer:  The Prayer of Jabez for Pratt Presbyterian Church.  It starts out, “Bless the Pratt Presbyterian Church indeed, bless our church family immensely and enlarge our territory…”

“Enlarge our territory.”  That’s the same meaning of the word pasture that Jesus used when he said he is the door.  Enlarge.  Growth and increase.  It’s the assurance that as we go in through the door of Jesus, into every place, into every experience, we will come out through that same door, enlarged, having grown in some significant way, increased not decreased.  But the key to that enlarging, growth and increase is making sure we just don’t go through some door of our own making, but through the door who is Jesus.

Know that when you go through the door Jesus into a hospital room or clinic, into school, into your place of work, no matter what, no matter where, by going through Jesus, you have the promise of finding pasture, of growing, of being increased as a faithful disciple, of being enlarged as a person rather than shrunk and deflated.

When you leave this sanctuary this morning, go through Jesus the door.  When you go home, enter your home through Jesus the door.  If you go out to a restaurant after worship, enter the restaurant through Jesus the door.  Every place, every where, enter through Jesus the door.  See what happens.