“I am the gate.” Jesus says in today’s Gospel. “Whoever enters by me will be saved.” Powerful words. And yet over the centuries they’ve raised many questions. If there’s a gate, are some people in, some out? If Jesus is the gate, how do we enter? What does it mean to be saved? These questions sound complex and yet the answers are, I believe, actually quite simple. They also go to the very heart of the Gospel. Let me explain with a story.
February 2, 1943. WWII. It’s night. A troopship, the USS Dorchester, is working its way through the North Atlantic. On board are 902 servicemen on their way to the war in Europe. With them are four chaplains: two Protestant ministers, a RC priest, and a Jewish Rabbi. The Rabbi’s name is Lt. Alex Goode. Rabbi Goode is 32 years old.
Also on board is a 21 year old Petty Officer named John Mahoney. All are tense, but John has special reason to worry. Earlier that day the Dorchester entered a part of the ocean known as “torpedo junction,” named for the high number of Allied ships sunk there by German submarines — about 100 a month. What John Mahoney knows but most others do not, is that several hours ago their sonar detected evidence that one of those subs was lurking nearby. John had been on the bridge when the word came in. Now, sleep impossible, John lay on his bunk and listened to the sounds of the ship. I know those sounds. I spent a summer in the merchant marine sailing the Atlantic in a converted WWII troopship. I know the eerie screech of stressed steel such ships make as they pitch and roll in choppy seas. Listening to this, John kept imaging that he heard the whine of torpedoes. He told himself that it was all in his head, but his heart just kept pounding, pounding. All he can do was finger his rosary and pray: “Help us, God. Please God, don’t let them find us.”
The first torpedo struck just after midnight. It hit midship, below the waterline. The shock hurled John Mahoney from his bunk, leaving him unconscious so that he didn’t hear the second explosion, the one that blew up the engine room, sending the ship into darkness. When John Mahoney awoke he found his cabin completely black, the deck listing dangerously to the starboard. His head throbbing, John staggered to his feet. Stunned and disoriented, he felt his way to the door. There, he was instantly swept into a bedlam of flailing arms and panicked cries as frightened men pushed through a maze of lightless hallways, desperate to get topside and escape the icy water filling the decks below.
Above deck at last, John found himself suddenly under starlit skies, facing an Artic wind. That was when it occurred first to him that he had no gloves. Years later, John Mahoney would have a hard time explaining why, in the midst of a sinking ship, not having gloves suddenly became so important to him. He could only say that, feeling the night’s sub-zero chill, all his terror somehow became focused on this one fact. Badly disoriented, his head throbbing, gloves appeared to him to be quite simply a matter of life or death. That was when he decided to go back to his cabin to look for them. For him, there was no choice. Without gloves, he would die. He was sure of it.
Instead, he found Rabbi Goode blocking his way. “Where’re you going, son?” the Rabbi asked. “Below,” John muttered. “Got to get below.”
“Can’t let you do that,” Rabbi Goode said. “Men are dying down there. The decks are flooding. You need to get in line for a lifeboat.
“Can’t,” John said. He held up his bare hands. “No gloves.”
Something in the wildness of the young man’s eyes must have told the Rabbi what was really at stake here. He gazed at him a moment then took a long, deep breath. Slowly he exhaled.
“Never mind,” the Rabbi said at last. He took off his glove. “Here, take these.”
John stared at him.
“Go on,” the Rabbi said. “Take them. I’ve… another pair.”
John slipped them on. With that, Rabbi Goode passed him a lifejacket. “Now get in a lifeboat,” he said.
Only later, safe in his lifeboat did John Mahoney hear the rest of the story. He heard how Rabbi Goode and the other chaplains handed out lifejackets. He also heard how they continued to hand them out until all were gone and still men waited for more. At that point, he heard how each chaplain took off his own lifejacket and handed that out too. Hearing this, John looked down at the gloves that he now wore. Rabbi Goode had told him there was another pair. In that moment John knew that it wasn’t true. The Rabbi had given him the only gloves he had.
By then, those in the lifeboats could only watch in silence as waves began to sweep the sinking ship’s upper decks. John stared with the rest, his gloved hands pressed between his knees. Huddled on those decks were men for whom there was now no hope of survival. Also present, though, were four individuals who had willingly given up their own chance for life so that others might live — two Protestants, one RC, and the Rabbi, Alex Goode. As the waters rose, these men of different faiths locked their arms together and began to pray. In the lifeboats, no one moved, no one spoke. All listened as the voices became indistinguishable: four men, two religions, one prayer… then silence.… Then silence.
You know, two things Jesus proclaimed above all else. The first is that God loves everyone. Gentile or Jew, rich or poor, man or woman, straight or gay, liberal or conservative — these are boxes that we create. Around God’s love there are…no… fences. There shouldn’t be fences around our love either. That’s the second thing that Jesus proclaimed: We need to tear down our fences to love.…That’s the key to salvation. It’s also what it means to enter Jesus’ gate. “Whatever you do for the least of your brothers and sisters,” Jesus said, “that you do for me.” So Jesus is a gate. He’s the gate to a love without fences. Does that seem a contradiction — to have a gate where there is no fence? It isn’t. And you know why? Because most of us need that gate in order to believe that we’re inside.… We’ve been inside all along.
On Dec. 19, 1944, the four chaplains of the Dorchester were posthumously awarded both the Purple Heart and Distinguished Service Cross. I can’t help believing that their true honors began much earlier, however, with their entry into paradise. I picture them approaching heaven exactly as they died, with their arms linked together, as one by one God welcomes them. To three, God comes as Jesus. To Rabbi Goode, however, God appears in the form of Abraham. “Welcome, my son,” Abraham says, and he embraces the Rabbi. He begins to leads him into heaven when suddenly he stops. “Just a minute,” Abraham says. He reaches into his pockets and hands something to the Rabbi. “I almost forgot,” he says. “Thanks for the gloves.”