"I am the Gate for the Sheep" (John 10): Going Where Jesus Has Gone

Where does Jesus go? In John 10, we get the promise (by way of analogy) that Jesus will lead us where we need to go. So an important question becomes... Where is Jesus going? Where has Jesus gone?

Ultimately, we know that the eternal Kingdom is that destination. Jesus has already gone ahead and made a place for us (John 14). But is that it? Do we just skip ahead to that part?

It doesn't seem so.

The shepherd daily leads the sheep out into the pasture. So where does Jesus lead us daily?

The answer is mission. Just as I mentioned yesterday, we were not meant for the pen- we were meant for the pasture. What I want to expand on today is that this is the road of Jesus. Jesus' road took Him to uncomfortable places. Just in John 9, Jesus is caught hanging out with and even defending a man forced out of the synagogue. Jesus finds company with the kinds of people that the right kinds of people didn't like. It got to the point where Jesus attended enough of the wrong kinds of parties that people just called Him a party animal (Luke 7:34).

It doesn't end with the Gospels, though. Hebrews 13:12-14 describes following Jesus like this: "The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come." Nobody invited me to follow Jesus by saying "let's bear disgrace together." But that's what we are called to do. The belief that Jesus has gone ahead of us and prepared a new place for us means that our fascination with status and the comforts of our current cities should end.

God's mission beyond the margins of comfort, therefore, is not an optional extra of faith for the super-saint. It is a core practice of Christianity, every bit as important as prayer and Scripture reading. For to engage in the mission of Christ is a central definition of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.