'They broke bread... with glad and generous hearts, praising God.'
Tomorrow I've got a meeting of the Common Good network called together by the Cathedral, a loose group of people of all religious backgrounds and none, trying to work together for the good of the city. It's a fascinating group, and we're trying to encourage younger professionals to have a place and share their good work. But we have to keep asking ourselves the question: are we enabling new people to be part of it all? Or are we simply making a bid to be a new group of gatekeepers in the city?
“Gatekeepers” are a particular issue in Bradford, as elsewhere: the people who hold – or say they hold – the access to their communities, who are often self-appointed, and sometimes self-interested. Who are really the people with power in their community? And do they use power for themselves, or do they give it away to others?
In John ch.10, Jesus refers to himself as the gate – a claim surely to be a, or the, principal gatekeeper. To understand what he means you have to see this saying in its context as a continuation of what precedes it in chapter 9...
Jesus walks along the road with his disciples, sees a man born blind, and heals him. This infuriates the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the “gatekeepers” of their community. Not only is it done without their permission, but it's done on the sabbath, a day when work – and healing was defined by them as work – shouldn't be done. As far as the Pharisees are concerned, Jesus can't be from God or a proper Jew, because he didn't keep the law properly. And note the unspoken addition – HE doesn't keep the law, but WE do. It's a them-and-us statement – Jesus isn't one of us, and whatever good he may have done, it's not really good. We're right and he's wrong. We're the gatekeepers, and we say to you, Mr oh so clever ex-blind man, and to your Jesus, that you're out of this community.
The gatekeepers have spoken. The people who were meant to help and heal a blind man in the name of God have rejected him instead.
And so, the words of Jesus at the beginning of John 10 redefine what the true religious community is. The Pharisees said that they held the key to the gate of the community. Jesus was telling them, and also telling us, that /*he*/ is the gate – it's Jesus who defines who is in God's community, not the Pharisees – or the elders or the lawyers or the bishops or the Pope.
The heart of it is in verse 10, when Jesus says: 'I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly'. The Pharisees had shown that they weren't really concerned with giving life, but with having the keys to the gate. No glad and generous hearts for them, but controlling and crabby ones. Whereas Jesus comes to give us life in abundance – with healing and hope for the blind of body and spirit.
The reading from Acts 2 has all of that in it: the picture of a positive and transforming community, sharing material as well as spiritual things, and transforming lives through hope and in practice.
Today is the start of Christian Aid week. One of the stories that Christian Aid is telling this week is about the Soppexcca project in Nicaragua, which has transformed coffee-growing communities in the highlands of that country. As one example they quote a co-op in Jinotega, where before a co-operative was formed, there was poor-quality coffee, poverty and no school. Now, although the
community is still poor, there's good-quality coffee, there are credit facilities leading to better incomes, and a new school, offering new hope for the next generation – a school built through loans from the Soppexcca project.
A teenager called Martha Talavera says, ‘We used to have lessons in my uncle’s front yard. When it rained we used to get soaked. Now we have a school. Last year, young people, the sons and daughters of producers, received training on how to manage a cooperative; these skills will help us in the future.’
José Emilio Echavarría, president of the co-op, said: ‘The cooperative started like a young child who first begins to crawl, then attempts to walk and falls along the way. Then suddenly the child starts to run.’ Now they produce fair trade coffee which goes to America and Germany, and have a community which works together for the benefit of all. A final word from Fátima Ismael, director of the Sopexcca project: ‘We’re not just about bread for today, but also for tomorrow. But we don’t just want bread, we want bread and honey and milk. Christian Aid gave us a key, as if allowing us to enter a building.’
Here, Christian Aid is seen as a good gatekeeper: opening the door to empower people with the opportunity for change through becoming a community – and a community knowing the power of God. As one man put it: 'We are very thankful for your support. God gives us all the power to succeed.’
But for Christian Aid, and for us as a Cathedral and as a Diocese: our aspiration as followers of Jesus is not to be gatekeepers at all. We don't want to become the new Pharisees: we want to introduce people to the God who in Jesus is the gateway to abundant life – an abundance found, not in individual prosperity, but in being a thriving community of faith and love in a broken world. Jesus says he is the gate for the sheep: the way to community life in the presence of God which endures. Today at this Eucharist we eat together with glad and generous hearts, as we pledge ourselves, together with all God's people around the world, to open to others the gate of life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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