Why Do I Preach and Teach
Or, Why I am Not a Gatekeeper
Someone asked me why I preach and teach this week. It wasn’t part of an interview or any formal discussion. It wasn’t even a question of inquiry. It was a question that wondered why preach if not to be a gatekeeper. It was a troubling conversation, because the impulse to be a gatekeeper drives enmity. That thinking makes the Gospel insignificant. When I encounter gatekeeping, I wonder what the Gospel is to the respondent. Instead of a transforming relationship with God, the Gospel becomes a presentation of conflict or a get out of hell free. That discourages me to no end because this is an attitude which makes God into a capricious being that demands fealty rather than a God who is with us even before we can imagine that reality.
What led to the question? It was in a larger discussion of us versus them. In that discussion, God is not for “us” and against “them.” That is a poor understanding of God. There was some pushback on that idea, and a discussion ensued. I made a comment similar to the following idea. Jesus is the gate and does not need us to identify those who pass through that gate. Jesus needs no keepers of the gates. We are all us and we are all them. That is when the question dropped. “Why do you even pastor or preach, then? What you’re positing is really universalism in disguise. Anything goes.”
Full access on Sunday 2-24-2024
Maybe you see the disconnect, or maybe you agree with the question. But why would we want to be the gatekeepers of Jesus? The key in Matthew chapter twenty-five is that the sheep and the goats did not know who are sheep and who are goats. In Jesus' story, the people before him did not know they were sheep or goats. How in the world can we, as clergy, know with certainty who is a sheep and who is a goat? We can’t even recognize the actual wolves most of the time, much less the sheep and goats. Yes, we can see the marks of each, but at the core, we cannot truly know. But that does not change why we or I preach and teach.
Rather than my comment being about the assumed universalism, it is about the reality that we all face. We can know people, but we cannot know their inner hearts. Only God can do that. We can share our innermost hearts, but even when we share what we think is the fullest, we are most likely holding something back. We may not even realize some of our own inner struggles. But that does not change why we preach and teach. Gatekeepers believe they can both determine who is in and who is out, but they also believe they can set the rules for who is in and who is out. Jesus has some things to say about that, and I don’t have the authority to overrule Jesus. I am not a gatekeeper to the gate who needs no keepers.
Why do I preach and teach? The answer I gave in an annual interview during my journey to ordination was that God has called me to this and I have realized that when I am not doing that, I can be miserable. But it goes much deeper. I preach and I teach because I have encountered a God who invites us into relational transformation. I preach to invite people into that transformative relationship of Jesus. I preach to proclaim who Jesus is and the work of God in the lives of those who respond to Jesus. But I preach to all without regard to who they are (other than the local context). Because I don’t know hearts - none of us do. Only God truly knows each heart. It is the height of hubris to place ourselves as keeper of the gate that is the King of Kings.
Gatekeepers generally think in terms of transaction. That is the place from which the question to me came. If it isn’t about gatekeeping, if I can’t be the one who identifies the sheep and the goats, then why preach? Why teach? The reason to preach and teach is precisely because I am not the gatekeeper. Instead, I am tasked with pointing other human beings to the gate. I have no interest in being the keeper of that gate; I have enough trouble remembering to bring my towel and years of reading, listening, and watching the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy should have drilled that into my head. Jesus is a gate who needs no keepers, but he has asked us to show people who he is through our actions, communications, and preaching/teaching. So I choose to do the latter, as I know in my heart that is my calling.
How can we see the path to seeing humanity as us? It is hard, but it is also what Jesus calls disciples to do. The point of loving neighbor, or loving enemy, is that we are to love all as God loves. Through that love, God is there with us, wanting us to respond to the transformation available in relationship with God and with others. There is a reason that Paul says that the entire Law is summed up in the single command to love your neighbor as yourself in both Romans and Galatians. If we love our neighbor as our self, we will be less likely to be the gatekeeper to our neighbor and live into being the one who shows them the gate.