“We are Jesus’s Sheep and Gospel Gatekeepers” -- Sermon for 4th of Easter,4-26-26

† I have been a gatekeeper for as long as I can remember. Growing up on a farm and raising sheep, I learned from my dad when to open and close the gates between pasture-fields to keep our flock where we wanted them. Child-raising was all about gatekeeping. I made parenting decisions on what was best for my family multiple times a day. When I worked as a buyer in a clothing store, I was a gatekeeper. I chose what was in and what was out.

The “On Language” column in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday was about gatekeeping and how that word has shifted from describing a necessary, even welcome practice of filtering and admittance, to one that is a suspicious and dirty word: “gatekeeping” – the withholding of opportunity or information to exercise power. Transparency and full disclosure are the watchwords these days. We look sideways at anyone we accuse of or who admits to keeping gates. What aren’t you telling us? And why?

Gatekeeping such as this was one of the sticking points of the Protestant Reformation. No longer were the Roman Church and its clergy to be the filters and interpreters of the Bible. Everyone should have direct access to God’s Word and be able for themselves to decide what it means, even when it leads to malignant Hegsethian misreadings, or the hubris and pomposity of presidential proportions when scolding the bishops of Washington and Rome. When it comes to scripture, apparently we still need gatekeepers. At least Jesus thinks so.

Gospel gatekeeping is practiced in the Goldilocks via media of Anglicanism, a product of the English reformation that recovered its roots in the early, undivided Church. The genius of our moveable, malleable middle recognizes that too much gatekeeping can be just as vexing as too little. At our best, we exercise humility and grace, allowing that one person’s just-right isn’t too far from another’s.

The gatekeeper opens the gate for the shepherd, Jesus says. In biblical times multiple flocks may have been held together in one enclosure. The sheep of one flock would recognize and follow the voice of their shepherd, going through the gate and out to green pastures, while the other flocks stayed behind.

Many of us are familiar with the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, but Jesus begins this discourse calling himself not the shepherd – that comes a few verses later – but rather the gate. The gate that serves its purpose only when the gatekeeper is trustworthy, opening and closing it for the shepherd at the right time, all the while being on the lookout for thieving fence-climbers and bandits.

It is important to recall the context of this discourse: Jesus had just finished scolding some Pharisees, the leaders who expelled from the synagogue the man born blind whom Jesus healed. Spiritually-blind sinners, he called these false-shepherds. Still in their presence and speaking to them, Jesus proposes something new.

Dual-natured Jesus is at once the gate and the shepherd. Jesus is the gateway to salvation and the true shepherd to lead us to abundant life, if we listen for him and follow his voice.

Jesus entrusts his Church with being the gatekeeper. There are many deceptive voices of false shepherds, wishing to lead us sheep astray, enticing us to follow them not to verdant pastures and still waters, but into the valley of the shadow of death, only to abandon us to its ravenous and roaring lions and snarling wolves.

As a priest of the Church, I am a gatekeeper still, entrusted and occupied with listening for the voice of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and opening for you his good and merciful gate. But the Church is us, which makes us all gatekeepers, ministers of gate and gospel by the grace of our baptism. We fortify and rededicate ourselves to do this well and faithfully every time we celebrate Mass together, by keeping the first of our Baptismal Covenant promises – when we devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers.

We are not dual-natured, but we are dual-purposed: we are both the gatekeepers for each other and the sheep of Jesus’s flock. May we serve him well, and follow him. †

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

Fourth after Easter A – April 26, 2026

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“We are Jesus’s Sheep and Gospel Gatekeepers”