ESPN Tale Gate
4th Sunday Easter – ESPN Tale Gate
It was a sweet moment rarely seen on a cable network dedicated to the rough-and-tumble world of professional sports. ESPN was celebrating World Autism Day, and in so doing, sports-anchor Dan Orlovsky invited his teenaged son, Madden, to join him in the studio that afternoon for NFL Live. Madden is autistic and a wonderful artist – a gentle soul who loves the Philadelphia Eagles, hot dogs and his Mom. “And I tolerate my sister,” he said when given the opportunity to address the viewing audience about all the people and things he likes. It was, in many ways, a window into innocence and purity alive and at work in a 14-year-old with special needs, and Madden’s Dad was clearly moved by it all.
As his son spoke to the camera and an unseen worldwide fan-base, Dan wept visible tears of love for a boy that clearly captured his fatherly heart – tears that convey both a willingness to sacrifice everything for Madden as well as tears that indicate that his gentle, kind son will have to face a world that won’t always respond to him in kind. In the testosterone-driven world of ESPN, it was powerful to watch such pure love on display. Dan said everything by having to say nothing in that moment of gazing upon his boy, the one who held tightly to his heart.
That same type of love is on display in the very words Jesus uses in today’s Gospel to declare His Love to the world, a world that often stumbles in the darkness of sin and death. It is a love that is both protective and sacrificial; a love that defends and dies-to-self in order to save us and set us free.
It really is a fascinating passage when one takes the time to absorb the imagery that Christ is using here to describe his love for us. By his very words, he calls himself both the sheep-gate and the shepherd, which to our modern ears might sound a bit strange: how can one be both a gate and a shepherd at the same time?
As I pray with this, I think it all comes down to one word: the Cross. (Okay, that’s two words, but you get the point). The Cross is what makes Jesus both gate and shepherd, and by extension, we are called to both follow the Crucified One and be willing to carry the Cross with him.
Jesus is bold: He is the Gate, and there is no other way into the Kingdom than by entering through Him. We can’t skirt by him or pretend that his teachings have no bearing on our lives. We also can’t ignore his Bride, the Church. Where the Groom is, so goes the Bride. Are we listening to that Voice?
It is, by all accounts, a Voice that challenges – always from a place of love and freedom. Christ calls out to us: Forgive 70 times 7 times; love your enemy; repent and believe in the Gospel; serve the least; feed, shelter and clothe; go the extra mile; wash feet; lay down your life for a friend. That Shepherd’s Voice couldn’t be any clearer, as is evidenced in Peter’s letter (our second reading). How are we doing with these requests/demands?
If I were honest, I often try to take the easy way out. But that easy way is not the way of the Cross, which is, I believe, the very shape of the Gate itself. We can’t pass through unless we follow the path of the One who carried it for us. In other words: if you want in to the Sheepfold, you must be willing to stretch your arms out and carry on all the way to Calvary.
No doubt, the tears of love that Dan Orlovsky shed that day on live-TV were ones that came from nights of worry and days filled with concern for a boy who will always need someone to look after him. Loving someone in this way – so sacrificially and with compassion – is often formed by the Cross that comes from an outpouring of self for another. Such love is not always easy; such love comes with much stumbling and heartache and second-guessing one’s efforts and motives. But make no mistake: it does come when we keep walking that Calvary road.
Whatever it is that you or a loved one are carrying at the moment – an illness; grief; fear about the future; insecurities of all kinds – let these be the crosses offered back to Christ’s in order for Him to use them in His Way to unite our wills to His and to transform the world in and through His Mercy. Offering our cross, in whatever way it comes to us, opens up the SheepGate and allows us to enter more fully into the Lord’s Divine Will and into His Sacred Heart.
One of the Church’s mystics whose name has been lost to me once offered words which I have never forgotten: When our souls return to the Father, they should be washed in the Blood of Christ and bear the marks of the Cross Christ bore, so much so that God Himself will say to us on that day: “You look so much like my Son, I couldn’t tell the difference.”
All of this, undoubtedly, will cost us, and if we choose to follow and enter the Gate in the way Christ asked, the Evil One will be fast on our heels. He doesn’t want us to be willing Cross-carriers. He doesn’t want us to listen to the Voice of the Shepherd. Satan instead will whisper words of ease and apathy. He will tell us that sins aren’t mortal or don’t really matter. He becomes a shepherd of darkness, ushering our hearts into a pit of selfishness and self-destruction; a pit where I only care about myself. The voice of Satan is one that shames and, at the same time, tells us that we don’t have to listen to God’s commands or His Church. “Just stay as you are, in your sin,” he whispers. “It doesn’t matter.”
But it does – it is a matter of life or death, literally. And that is why the Gate also becomes the Good and True Shepherd.
Beautifully, here is the other image of profound love that shows us just how far God will go to save us and set us free. Shepherds in the time of Christ, when they would gather their flock into a grassy area to be both fed and to rest, would use a call (a tone of voice) that only his sheep would know, and they would respond. Even should they be mixed among other flocks or hear competing shepherd’s voices, they knew their Master’s voice and they allowed themselves to be led by him.
Picture, then, the imagery of a hillside covered in sheep, all interspersed with one another: flocks jumbled and bleating, hungry and facing the nighttime that is coming upon them. From the top of the hill comes a voice – recognizable and strong – that calls out: “Follow. Come after me.” Will you? Will you even recognize that voice?
For should you obey and be led, the place where the sheep were taken for the night would be surrounded by a gate of protection, and most tellingly: the shepherd himself would physically lay at the gate so that no thief or wild creature or evil force could snatch them from their Master. He laid down his life for them.
That is, in the end, the love of Christ for us. As Shepherd and as Gate, He leads the way and gives us the courage to follow after him, our own lives formed by the Cross-Gate of His Sacrifice. There is no greater love than this. And somehow, in watching Dan Orlovsky love his son Madden all the way to Calvary, I think we all caught a glimpse of such incredible shepherd-gate love, all thanks to ESPN.