O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. (BCP 100)

In the Gospel reading appointed for today (John 10:1-18), Jesus first tries to use the metaphor of the sheepfold to describe his relation to the disciples. “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.”

Blank stares. As John wryly observes, “Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.”

So he tries again. “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and they will come in and go out and find pasture.” The disciples scratch their heads. Which is it, the shepherd or the gate?

One more time. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). Now, at least those of us reading the Gospel get it, even if the disciples at the time didn’t. “Lays down his life” — we know what that means. We have trusted in Jesus’ death and resurrection, and we know what it means for him to be the Good Shepherd. We even painted some of our earliest churches with that very image of Jesus bearing a lamb in his arms.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say that “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16).

Now he goes right over our heads, too. We’re the sheep, right? We came in through the gate, didn’t we? What about that other parable, the one with the goats — all the others are goats, right?

But what if the Good Shepherd has many flocks? What if the Gate himself opens in many directions — the one we came through and many more besides? What if we are not the flock, but rather simply a flock? I think about this image when I look around at the many branches and denominations that make up the Christian world.

“Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold,” we pray today.

It’s Jesus’ sheepfold, not ours. We know that we have found the gate we needed to enter. Others may not enter by the same gate we did, but if the Good Shepherd “brings them also,” then they too “will come in and go out and find pasture.”

Lord God, the light of the minds that know you, the life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the hearts that serve you: Help us, following the example of your servant Augustine of Hippo, so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

So to know God that we may truly love … so to love God that we may fully serve.

At St. Thomas, the parish I serve as deacon, the rector gives a children’s sermon at the 10 am Eucharist before he preaches to the congregation. Because Fr. Ralph was out of town last Sunday, I took a turn.

The children come up to the altar and we all sit on the steps together. They bring up a hatbox with a surprise in it, usually some kind of toy, and the game is that the preacher has to improvise a sermon on the spot.

This week the toy surprise was a dollar coin with Lady Liberty on the front, so we spoke for a minute or two about liberty and freedom and the symbols of our country that remind us of that truth. We also spoke about Jesus, who shows us an example of perfect freedom and loving service.

Augustine represents for the church the too-often competing strains of devotion and intellectual pursuit. He yearned both to know (that is, to intellectually comprehend) God and to serve the Lord Jesus. He also served the church in Hippo in northern Africa during a particularly difficult time in its early history when it was undergoing persecution and dealing with the problem of believers, particularly bishops and priests, who had turned away from the faith under duress and were seeking to return.

The love of God, Augustine understood, could not be diminished by the failings of people. The quaint language of our Thirty-Nine Articles reminds us “Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacraments” (BCP 873).

“Faith seeking understanding” is a motto often attributed to Augustine, and our prayer today reminds us that using our minds to study both the Scriptures and the world around us can deepen our love for God, that learning to love God and to understand the world will lead us to serve others more than to judge them, and that in loving service we will find our freedom.

The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6:51)

In the Collect for Proper 15, which we have been praying all week, we thank God that he gave his “only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life” (BCP 232).

Jesus himself outlines the terms of that sacrifice in his discourse on bread (John 6). The crowd has trouble overcoming their revulsion at his message about eating flesh and cannot understand his meaning.

Saul, too, is revolted by the message. His distaste for the early followers of the Way leads him to persecute them, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1).

Even after he is struck down by a vision and brought to Damascus, Saul still has a lot to learn. Jesus tells Ananias in a vision, “I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).

When our thoughts are consumed by the wrongs of others, when we wish ill upon those we dislike, we are like Saul and still have a lot to learn. We still have to learn to be thankful rather than angry. We still have to learn to follow Jesus in the way of the cross, “the way of life and peace” (BCP 99), laying down our lives for the sake of others.

If we let Jesus show us the way, then perhaps “something like scales” will fall from our eyes, too. With Saul, we will see how much we must suffer — how much we must set aside our own anger and self-will — for the sake of Jesus’ name.

Within that suffering, however, we trust that we will be granted “grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life” (BCP 232).

Now those who were scattered went from place to place, preaching the word. (Acts 8:4)

Would there even be a Church if Saul hadn’t started persecuting the followers of the Way?

Jesus had complained earlier to his disciples and to the people listening to him that “you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they who testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40).

It may not have been exactly comfortable for the early apostles after Jesus’ death and resurrection, but at least they were all together in the temple, praising God and sharing everything with each other.

Saul’s persecution changed everything, however, and scattered the apostles out into the world. Without that push they may never have discovered that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. They might never have discovered that Jesus was also with “those who are far off” as well as “those who are near.” What happened after the persecution? “The apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God” (Acts 8:14).

We can always stand to learn the lesson again. Our study of the Scriptures and the life we share in Christ is not about comfort, but about preparation. We want to be sure that when we meet Jesus where he already is, we will recognize him. As he said himself, we can’t do that if our nose is stuck in a book, even if it is the Good Book.

Jesus is waiting to give life to everyone, if we will come to him. Whether we come from far off or from near, Lord, “open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us” (BCP 372).