Sermons by Rev. Jason S. Glombicki (Page 31)

“When [Jesus] had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22) Christ’s statement stands in sharp contrast to what we’ve heard this week. The world does not echo Christ’s vision, but rather, we heard the pleas, the gasps, and the belabored words saying, “I can’t breathe.” Parker J. Palmer reminds us that these words are the words that give voice to the terror that has haunted black Americans since the founding of this country. “I can’t breathe” were the dying words of George Floyd as a police officer kept a knee on his neck until his body lay lifeless. “I can’t breathe” might have been the dying words of over 100,000 victims of COVID-19 in America. Yet, into a gasping world, Jesus breathed on them and said “receive the Holy Spirit…”

There is a problem with today’s gospel reading. Where it starts doesn’t build the scene, and so, it’s easy for us to lose the meaning. So, let’s re-create the scene. It was the night before the Passover. Jesus had become like a servant and washed his followers’ feet. Gathered at the table, Jesus told his disciples that Judas would betray him and that Jesus would be leaving them. Jesus told the disciples that he loved them and that all his disciples should love one another. It is at that moment that Jesus consoled the disciples with a few promises. Last week, we were reminded that Jesus promised the disciples a place with him. And, today, we picked up where the conversation ended last week…

Jesus said to the Pharisees, “I am the gate.” It’s not an error in translation which we should interpret as Jesus being a gate keeper. Instead, this sentence is the key to understanding today’s gospel. Jesus as the gate in John’s gospel is similar to what brought comfort to the Psalmist in Psalm 23, namely the rod and the staff. Back in Psalm 23, the rod is the thing the shepherds use to fend off threats­­ and the staff is the longer stick with the hook at the end that can help redirect sheep or rescue them from, say, a ditch. The hook helps to bring sheep back into the community of the fold. So too, in John, the gate is a protection mechanism for the sheep by limiting or slowing outside threats while also giving access to pastures so as to be “saved.” Or, to translate “saved” in another way from the original Greek, the gate gives access to the pastures so that the sheep can be healed, made whole, or restored. You see, the gate, which in this metaphor is Jesus, is what protected and granted access to wholeness and healing…