January 3, 2005

Door

Of all the names for Jesus — Light, Water, Word, Bread — Door intrigues me a lot at this new year’s onset. “I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture” (Jn 10.9).

This front month of the year gets its name from the Latin word Janus, the Roman god of doorways and gateways. As doors can be passed in either direction, Janus came to represent both the past and the future, his image, that of a person with two faces looking away from each other, the one forward, the other, backward.

Jesus, the Door, also represents past and future. One can go either way with Jesus. Ignore him or embrace him, dwell securely on the Bible’s and the church’s defining of him, or walk with him, open to the risks he took, the challenge and the future, with all that uncertain kind of confidence that faith allows.

We churchers seem always standing at some door or another, looking back to comfort, looking forward to (shudder) change. But if the door is Jesus, entering it makes us whole and we can come and go knowing there’s plenty of pasture out there for whatever.

And, oh yes, Janus’s two-faced image has also, on occasion, been a symbol of deceit. This faithfulness business, it’s sometimes a lot like walking on eggshells. But after all, it’s January again. Let’s go for it.

No Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.