Sermon

April 17, 2005

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on April 17, 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

        At the little country church that sent me to Seminary in the 70’s, the person who made the most impact on my life was Carter Baker. Carter wasn’t the pastor of the church or a high elected official like the Churchwarden. Carter didn’t teach the adult Bible class or lead the choir. Carter was the unofficial, unelected, and self-appointed door keeper of the church. Carter stood at the glass door to the main entryway each Sunday before the service and watched for people coming up the sidewalk toward the church. Just as each would reach the door, Carter would open it, say a warm hello to the adults and slip a piece of contraband chewing gum to each child. Carter’s welcome made quite an impression on me when I was a young high school teacher just trying to make my way back into church after a ten year absence. His actions, more than anything he said, told me I was welcome. And now, over thirty years later I recognize that Carter was quite literally the person who got me into the church—and incidentally into the predicament I’m in today.

I remember Carter today because in our Gospel reading, Jesus explains his parable of the sheepfold not by telling us that he is the good shepherd, but by the surprising announcement that he is the gate of the sheepfold—the door by which people get into the community of the faithful. All of us who have somehow found ourselves in the church, must recognize that someone brought us here. Someone’s act of kindness and welcome reflected the acceptance of Jesus and helped us believe that we would be safe here—and helped us believe that we might just find something here that would change our lives. That person might have been a complete stranger like Carter Baker. That person might even have been a baby we came to see baptized. Whoever that person was, for a moment, that person was Christ for us.

Today, I want to point out that the door goes both ways, both in and out—and Christ is the door in both directions. Our baptismal covenant is full of images that let us know how important it is for us to be led into this fellowship. It begins with our beliefs, then mentions the attendance at church that strengthens us and talks about how important it is that we keep coming back for renewal and forgiveness. But then the baptismal covenant ends with asking us to promise to take our faith out of this building: to proclaim the good news to the people in our neighborhoods and workplaces, to do loving service to our neighbors, and to work for peace and justice. In other words, Christ serves as the door out of this place into the world around us, too, because we are expected to go out from this community to continue to do Christ’s work in the world. What we do out there in our everyday lives is judged by the Jesus standard.

There is a sense of difficulty about using the door in Jesus’ parable. He speaks of people who try to climb in another way—and we might wonder if there are also people who try to get out another way. In a society that is not particularly religious and which values self-reliance, it is tough to enter the sheepfold of a religious institution: you have to admit to yourself that you have a need to belong and a need to be cared for and that your life needs strengthening. It is, however, just as tough once you’ve found yourself in the church to go out by the door of doing Christ’s work in the world. In a world that enjoys the good life, it is hard to live out Christ’s values.

I read recently of a talk that was given in England during the cold war by the chief pastor of the Church in East Berlin . Under the Communist regime in that country, his church was persecuted and had to struggle desperately to survive, but the pastor chose to talk to his western audience about THEIR struggles, not HIS. “Almost every time I come to the West,” he said, “ I am asked, ‘How are you able to be a Christian in a communist society, with so many pressures and impositions from the state:’ My usual response is to ask, ‘How are you able to be a Christian in a CAPITALIST society? With every pressure to self-centered consumption and self-gratifying indulgence?’” I think the chief pastor was on to something. The good life is hard. It doesn’t teach us to care for one another. It gives us no way of determining when we have enough and leaves us prey to never-ending greed. It can’t teach us how to share. We learn those things from the Jesus door out from the church into the community around us—and they are hard lessons to learn.

Looking back, I also learned from Carter Baker a little about what it meant to follow the Jesus door OUT of the church as well. Carter was not a great philanthropist or doer of great deeds. He was a simple restaurant owner who made ends meet by running the television concession at the local hospital, as well. But he lived out the values of his baptismal covenant by doing some simple things in his everyday life. His oldest friend Jesse, was the cook in his restaurant and he was black and gay—and therefore not acceptable in our small southern town. But Carter was always loyal to Jesse, even when it cost him business and status in town, and when he retired, he gave the business away to Jesse. In his rounds installing televisions in the local hospital, Carter often found lonely and frightened people that nobody visited. Carter invented excuses to come back to their rooms again and again. Not, as I say, big and dramatic things, but examples of the way one simple person can live out the values of Christ in the world.

My friends, I believe that the Gospel today encourages us all to be doors. We are supposed to reflect Christ’s acceptance of all people and so to become doors to help others enter into the life of the church. And then we are supposed to reflect Christ’s sacrificial love in the world and so to become doors to help our fellow Christians go out into the world to serve others. We could all do a lot worse than to be one who opens the church door to others and gives treats to kids. We could all do a lot worse than to be one who stands for the dignity of every human being. Let us be doors that lead people in and doors that open out into the wider world. AMEN