April 26, 2026 – The Fourth Sunday of Easter
CHIMING OF THE HOUR
WELCOME
PRAYER
God our Shepherd,
you are our safe place, our shelter,
our ground, our breath.
We turn to you in hope and trust,
knowing we have come this far by faith,
and you will guide us all the way.
Mold our daily patterns for your purposes
so that we may live as one heart and mind
with you and our neighbors,
rejoicing together and praising your holy name,
through Jesus the Christ. Amen.
PRELUDE
CALL TO WORSHIP
Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates!
Behold! The Savior of the world is risen!
Fling wide the portals of your hearts:
Let us feel the presence of the God’s grace and love!
O Holy spirit, lead us on in worship;
Call us each by name, that we may give God glory!
*HYMN No. 234 “Come, You Faithful, Raise the Strain”
1 Come, you faithful, raise the strain
of triumphant gladness!
God has brought forth Israel
into joy from sadness,
loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke
Jacob’s sons and daughters;
led them with unmoistened foot
through the Red Sea waters.
2 ’Tis the spring of souls today:
Christ has burst his prison,
and from three days’ sleep in death
as a sun has risen.
All the winter of our sins,
long and dark, is flying
from the Light, to whom we give
laud and praise undying.
3 Now the queen of seasons, bright
with the day of splendor,
with the royal feast of feasts
comes its joy to render;
comes to glad Jerusalem,
who with true affection
welcomes in unwearied strains
Jesus’ resurrection!
4 Neither could the gates of death,
nor the tomb’s dark portal,
nor the watchers, nor the seal
hold you as a mortal:
but today, among your own,
you appear, bestowing
your deep peace, which evermore
passes human knowing.
CALL TO CONFESSION
Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own, and my own know me” (John 10:14). In confession, we trust God to know us fully: the good and the bad, the faithful and the sinful. But we also know God’s faithfulness, God’s mercy, and God’s power to redeem us and lead us into new life. Trusting in this promise, let us confess our sins together.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Gracious God, from before the foundation of the world, you called us by name and pledged your steadfast love. But like ornery sheep, we stray from the fold. You offer to lead us, but we prefer to lead ourselves. Christ laid down his life, yet we refuse to lay down our phones, our plans, our pride. Forgive us, O God. Call us back to the open gate of Christ’s redeeming love that we may enter your Beloved Community and find restoration for our souls, reconciliation with our enemies and the glory of abiding with you forevermore. Amen.
Silence is observed
*ASSURANCE OF PARDON
The proof God’s amazing love is this: while we were yet sinners, Christ came to us; Christ died for us; and Christ rose from the dead so that the gates of hell and heaven may be thrown open wide and all of creation renewed. So believe the good news: in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven and restored to new, abundant life.
Alleluia! Amen!
*RESPONSE NO. 258, v. 5 “A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing”
5 O risen Christ, ascended Lord,
all praise to you let earth accord.
You are, while endless ages run,
with Father and with Spirit one.
*PASSING OF THE PEACE OF CHRIST
Before the foundation of the world Christ forgave us, and forgives us still today.
Let us forgive as we have been forgiven and share the peace of Christ.
May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
And also with you.
Worshippers are invited to briefly “pass the peace” of Christ to those directly seated around them thus keeping our worship time “decent and in order” with a focus upon being part of God’s community.
ANTHEM “Joy Fills the Morning” Antonio Lotti
THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM & THE CHILDREN’S MESSAGE
SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM
__________ and __________, you stand here now, a mother and a father into whose keeping God has dared to entrust a human soul, who is precious to you, but infinitely more precious to Him.
When your little child was born __________ came not into a cold and unregarding world, but into your home, where warmth and love awaited __________, and where many things had been thought out and prepared in advance of __________ coming. This sacrament means that in a far deeper sense preparation even more wonderful than yours have been made for your very child by the very hand of God. It means that God’s love, in addition to yours, has waited down the centuries for this particular child, and will gladly spend itself in __________behalf.
You come now, having previously declared your own faith in Christ as Lord and Savior, to receive your child from God’s very hand, and to hear Him say to you: “This is your child, yes! But in a deeper sense, this child is mine, entrust for a time to your keeping.”
And the answer you make to God now is that, though you have great dreams for this little __________ and are prepared to deny yourselves for year in order that __________ may have __________ chance, yet what you really choose above all else for the little child is that all __________ days __________ may know Jesus Christ, and may love and serve Him.
In presenting your child for baptism, do you confess your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior; and do you promise, in dependence on the grace of God, to bring up your child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? WE DO.
ELDER LITANY
Do you, the members of this congregation, in the name of the whole Church of Christ, undertake with these parents, the Christian nurture of this child, so that in due time __________ may confess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? WE DO.
Will you endeavor by your examples and fellowship to strengthen their family ties with the household of God? WE WILL.
PRAYER OVER THE WATER
Most merciful and loving Father, we thank you for the church of your dear Son, the ministry of you Word, and the sacraments of grace. We praise you that you have given us such gracious promises concerning our children, and that in mercy you call them to you, marking them with this sacrament as a singular token and pledge of your love. Set apart this water from a common to a sacred use, and grant that what we now do on earth may be confirmed in heaven. As in humble faith, we present this child to you, we ask you to receive __________, to endue __________ with your Holy Spirit, and to keep __________ ever as your own; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
BAPTISM
__________, child of the covenant, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
WALK DOWN THE AISLE
CLOSING PRAYER
Our Father, when we give you our children, we give ourselves, since they are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When we give them to you, we keep them forever. When we offer them your bondage, it is perfect freedom. When we bid them love you best, they also love us the more.
Bless this father, we pray. May he continue to make his life the window through which his child shall better see and understand you as heavenly Father.
Bless this mother, O God, may she without pageantry mold this clay quietly into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Not just for __________ and __________, but for all parents in our midst.
And, O God, bless this little __________. Give __________ what __________ shall need most tomorrow; enough tears to keep __________ tender; enough hurts to keep __________ human; enough failure to keep __________ hands clenched to yours; and enough success to make __________ sure __________ walks with you. May __________ never be ashamed of you. May __________ never depart from you. And after a life of love and service to __________ Master, take __________ to be with yourself in your heavenly kingdom. Not just for __________, but for all the children in our midst, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
UNISON PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION
O God, give us the listening ear. Give us the listening ear that will not shrink from a word that corrects and admonishes; a word that challenges us to deeper consecration and higher resolve; a word that lays bare the needs that make our days uneasy; a word that seizes upon everything decent in our nature and channels it into paths of healing in the lives of others. Give us, O Lord, the listening ear. Amen.
SCRIPTURE John 10:1-10
10“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. 7So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Pause…
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!!
SERMON “The Door”
Picture the scene. Jesus was walking along in Jerusalem with his disciples, and came across a man who had been blind from birth. Jesus healed the man by spreading mud mixed with spittle on his eyes, and telling him to wash them in a rock pool outside the city walls. Word of this miracle soon got to the religious authorities, the Pharisees. They didn’t like it a bit. It was the Sabbath. By healing a man, Jesus broke the prohibition to work. He induced the healed man to do the same by telling him to go and wash in a faraway place. Moreover, this upstart rabbi Jesus was not even one of them: ‘We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ In party-political terms, Jesus was an independent!
Not being able to find Jesus, the Pharisees hauled in the man who was blind until recently. They questioned the man about his healing and his healer. The man gave an excellent answer, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’
The Pharisees didn’t like this a bit either, They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
In that deeply religious society, to be driven out of the synagogue was no symbolic punishment. It meant becoming a social outcast. Once you were excommunicated, all doors shut on you. Jesus went out of his way to find this poor fellow in order to tell him that one door remained open: [Jesus] said to [the man], “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. None of that was in our reading today; you can read it for yourselves in John Chapter 9. So why am I telling you about it? Because it is in this context that, at the beginning of Chapter 10, we find Jesus telling a parable about sheep, sheepfolds, and shepherds: … truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. Apparently, none of his audience understood what he was going on about: Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
This was perhaps not surprising. Jesus was switching rapidly between two metaphors in his little parable – talking about himself alternately as the gate to the sheepfold, and as the shepherd. So, in what follows, he disentangles the two metaphors. The rest of our passage today is about Jesus as the gate: I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
There our reading stops, just before Jesus went on to the second metaphor, ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ Jesus the good shepherd is, of course, the famous metaphor. Artists paint it; congregations name their churches after it, preachers preach on it; composers write songs and arias about it. But no one ever pays any attention to Jesus the gate to the sheepfold. Yet, here it is, in our passage today, twice: ‘I am the gate.’ Or, as some versions say, ‘I am the door.’
This is one of the seven very ardent ‘I am’ statements found on the lips of Jesus in this Gospel. Each one of them tells us something vital about Jesus and our relationship with him. What, then, should we make of this metaphor of the door? To answer this question, we need to recall the context. This passage comes immediately after the cured blind man was booted out of the synagogue by the religious leaders. ‘We are followers of Moses,’ they said to the man. To them, it simply was inconceivable that anyone who didn’t ‘do Moses’ as they did could possibly be from God. To them, ‘doing Moses ‘includes not healing and not walking more than strictly necessary. Anyone who did those things got the door shut in their faces. The contrast with Jesus the open door could not have been more stark: I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.
‘Whoever’ – no one is barred, all who want to enter by Jesus the door may enter, and find salvation. We’ve just seen a worked example – the blind man entered by that door, and was saved. That is the kind of door Jesus is. That is good news indeed.
Quite rightly, the sheepfold that Jesus talked about has long been taken as a metaphor for the church. Our passage today therefore prompts us to reflect on the church as door. What kind of door do we make? To answer that rather abstract question, Archbishop William Temple suggests that we should think in these concrete terms: as we seek to draw men and women into the Kingdom of God, do we end up calling them ‘to adopt our traditions and to follow our manner of life’? If we do, then we are not pointing to the door that is Jesus; rather we are behaving like, in Jesus’ own words, ‘thieves and bandits’.
Jesus was clearly accusing the Pharisees of behaving like thieves and bandits. They kept people out by their legal minutiae. Their legal codes eventually came to define in detail 39 categories of work on the Sabbath. We don’t do that. But what we do quite literally at our front door should make us pause for thought.
As each person comes through our door, we hand them this much [SHOW!] paperwork. Where else in modern living does this happen? Where else are men and women, or boys and girls, required to follow closely typed text to participate in an hour-long event? And the text doesn’t come from one place; it comes from, typically, three – the GLORY TO GOD hymn book, the liturgy, and the BIBLE. The fact is, no one can become part of our sheepfold unless they ‘adopt our traditions and to follow our manner of life’ in this matter. Whoever enters and becomes an expert paper shuffler will be saved.
Can we do things another way? Almost certainly. Of course, it is very hard to conceive of doing things any other way. But we are in the Easter season, and there is no better season for thinking the inconceivable. If we do thing another way, it may mean that THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AT WOODBURY as we know it – will be no more. But John is the gospel in which we read: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
For years, St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in San Francisco has served meals to people in need. Over the doorway to its dining room, there is a sign that says: Caritate Dei. One day a young man newly released from jail came through the door and sat down for a meal. A woman was busy cleaning the adjoining table.
“When do we get on our knees and do the chores, lady?” he asked.
“You don’t,” she replied.
“Then when’s the sermon comin’?” he inquired.
“Aren’t any,” she said.
“How ’bout the lecture on life, huh?”
“Not here,” she said.
The young man became suspicious. “Then what’s the gimmick?”
The woman pointed to the inscription over the door. He squinted at the sign.
“What’s it mean, lady?”
“Out of love for God,” she said with a smile, and moved on to another table.
Who do we want to come through our front door? As they do so, what would they think is written on top of it? Do we love enough to become a Jesus-shaped door?
*AFFIRMATION OF FAITH
The Apostles’ Creed
I believe in God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.
*HYMN No. 250 “In a Bulb There is a Flower”
1 In the bulb there is a flower;
in the seed, an apple tree;
in cocoons, a hidden promise:
butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter
there’s a spring that waits to be,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.
2 There’s a song in every silence,
seeking word and melody;
there’s a dawn in every darkness,
bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future;
what it holds, a mystery,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.
3 In our end is our beginning;
in our time, infinity;
in our doubt there is believing;
in our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection;
at the last, a victory,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.
THE PASTORAL PRAYER & THE LORD’S PRAYER
Gracious and Loving God, through your son and our savior Jesus Christ you have removed every barrier between our deep needs and your abundant providence. Fling wide heaven’s gates, and allow the prayers and intentions of your people to be received.
You have promised us steadfast love and abiding presence; make us more aware of this divine reality. As we journey through this life, walk along with us. Abide with us in every season, every place along the way. Protect us in the valleys when we are afraid, wounded or grieved. Join us in celebration and wonder in the mountaintop moments too.
Holy Jesus, you know us by name; hear us now as we lift up by name those who need your tender care.
(Here, the worship leader may name specific prayer concerns and joys from the community.)
Even as we concentrate on the road you have laid before us, lift our eyes to see the sheep who are not of this fold. Teach us, like Christ, to look around, and see those on the margins whom you love. Help us to see your shared likeness in those across the table, whom we consider our enemies. Enable us to be repairers of the breach, opening gates, building bridges, and extending hospitality around Christ’s table, so that all God’s children may gather and be fed.
Assure us, once again, that your goodness and your mercy go ahead of us, move with us, and follow behind us, urging us onwards in the path of righteousness to greener pastures, still waters, and the restoration of all creation. In the name of the Good Shepherd, we pray, and join our voices in the prayer he taught his sheep: “Our Father…”
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
PASSING OF FELLOWSHIP PADS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
TITHES & OFFERINGS
Our savior, as the Good Shepherd, leads us to what nourishes, comforts and secures our living. When we reflect upon all that God provides, we see that our cup indeed runs over. In gratitude and in faith, may we practice Christlike generosity to support the living body of Christ that is this church. With joy and thanksgiving, let us offer what is precious to us to God.
OFFERTORY ANTHEM
*RESPONSE N0. 248, v.3 “Christ Is Risen! Shout Hosanna”
Christ is risen! Earth and heaven
nevermore shall be the same.
Break the bread of new creation
where the world is still in pain.
Tell its grim, demonic chorus:
“Christ is risen! Get you gone!”‘
God the First and Last is with us.
Sing Hosanna everyone!
*PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
Shepherding God, you lead us, guard us, prepare us and preserve us. We have responded by giving back to you what has come from your hand. Bless these gifts, and multiply them in the life of your church, so that the gates of salvation may be flung wide, and all your Beloved Community may know the love and the peace that is ours in Christ Jesus. Amen.
*HYMN No. 233 “The Day of Resurrection!”
1 The day of resurrection!
Earth, tell it out abroad,
the Passover of gladness,
the Passover of God.
From death to life eternal,
from sin’s dominion free,
our Christ has brought us over
with hymns of victory.
2 Let hearts be purged of evil
that we may see aright
the Lord in rays eternal
of resurrection light,
and listening to his accents,
may hear, so calm and plain,
his own “All hail!” and hearing,
may raise the victor strain.
3 Now let the heavens be joyful;
let earth its song begin;
the round world keep high triumph
and all that is therein.
Let all things seen and unseen
their notes of gladness blend,
for Christ the Lord has risen,
our joy that has no end.
*BENEDICTION
Christ has called you by name to gather here for worship; now he sends you out as sheep among wolves, to do the courageous, faith-filled work of seeking common ground, and building up God’s Beloved Community here on earth. May you possess all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ, the empowering Spirit of courage to persevere in the face of resistance, and the undying hope promised in Christ’s resurrection that we shall all, in the end, come to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Now may the Lord bless you and keep you; May God make God’s face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of their countenance upon those whom you love, both this day and forevermore. Alleluia! Amen.
*POSTLUDE