April 26, 2026
Let’s pretend for a minute that we are all in a jail cell. We have thick concrete walls on three sides, and on the back wall, a tiny window with bars. It’s too high for us to see out, but at least a little light gets into the cell. The fourth wall, the front wall, is concrete too, but there’s a big dull-grey metal door in it. It has a slot at the top where someone can slide a piece of metal open and look in at us. Then they slam it back shut. There’s another slot at the bottom, where they can slide in a tray of food.
We are not getting out of this cell unless we go through that door. Now, someone might come and say, “Hey, I’ll pull these bars off the window in the back wall, and you can escape that way.” But what we don’t know is that if we go out the window, we’ll plummet to our death off a mountain. Another voice might say to dig through the side wall. It might take twenty years, but maybe we could do it. What we don’t know is that on the other side of either wall is lava that would melt us in a second. The only way out is this one big metal door in the front.
Now, let’s take a little chalk and write “Jesus” on the door. Why do that? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because Jesus is the only way we’re getting out. And when we write “Jesus” on the door, it swings open, and we go outside in the nice warm sun with all of our family and friends.
In our Gospel this morning, Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep” (Jn 10:7). Jesus is our door. How can that be? How does Jesus open the door for us? It’s our sin that puts us in prison, that locks the door—that keeps us from being with God, from receiving His blessings, from getting to go to heaven someday. But when Jesus died on the cross, He took away our sin. God forgives us our sins because Jesus died for them. So now they don’t keep us locked in prison anymore. That’s how Jesus is the door. He opens the door. We go through Jesus into heaven. We go through Jesus to be set free from the bad things we’ve done. We go through Jesus to live forever.
Lots of voices want us to follow them. They might even seem like good ideas for a while, but they do not go to good places. We listen to Jesus’ voice. We go through Him into the place He’s prepared just for us to live forever.
My dear Shepherd, thank You for being the door through which to enter eternal life! Amen.