In John 10: 7-10, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the gate of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers…. I am the gate; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and 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.” 

At first glance, this phrase, “I am the gate,” may seem to be one of the odder “I am” statements. “I am the Good Shepherd” carries all kinds of comforting associations, not least as an echo of Psalm 23. And if we remember the cultural context of John 10, we will know that “I am the gate” is a reference to the shepherding practices of the time: Rather than being constructed with an opening closed by a structure of wooden bars, sheepfolds simply had gaps across which the shepherd slept at night so that the shepherd himself guarded the sheep – was the “gate” of the “gateway.” So in a sense, the statement, “I am the gate,” is simply an enhancement of the statement, “I am the Good Shepherd.”

But of course, like Christ’s other “I am” statements, this one holds many different aspects of meaning – one of them the association of “gap” or “opening” with silence. That association seems especially appropriate for this Fall’s special issue of the InSights Journal, which is dedicated to voices from trauma.

In speech or music, a silence is a break in ongoing sound, a pause in rhythm or melody, a stutter mid-sentence. In poetry, a gap in a line is called a caesura; it is meant to draw attention to the artistry of the line, perhaps to contrast what came in the first part of the line with what comes next, or perhaps to prepare the reader for a startling similarity between the first part of the line and the second. Whether in sound or in print, a silence – an opening – asks the listener or reader to stop, to reflect. In a familiar song, it can catch us off-guard; if someone is saying something we expect or think we know already, a pause can force us to return our attention and curiosity to what they are saying; if what has been played or sung or communicated has confused or overwhelmed us, a pause can give us a moment to recover ourselves. Even if we choose to rush onward, across or through the gap, we must flicker for an instant to make that choice.

So if Christ’s statement, “I am the gate,” connotes silence by suggesting an image of a contemplative pause, a break or a gap, then what does Christ as “silence” ask of us? 

To open this issue, I want to enlarge upon Taras Dyatlik’s suggestion that silence relates to suffering in particular in several ways. 

Negatively, silence in the presence of suffering may be the silence of complicity. Of course that is not the kind of silence that Christ exemplifies. Rather, as reproofs of this kind of silence, in this issue, Esther Atsen and Juliany González Nieves both review books that condemn injustice. The volume Atsen reviews points out and seeks to counteract the silence of theological educational leaders toward women. The volume that González Nieves reviews indicts silence toward the war in Gaza. In concert with both pieces, Kavitha Emmanuel’s article dealing with abuse of women sharpens the points about women’s suffering that emerge in Atsen’s review.

Though these articles speak against the silences of complicity, one might also practice silence for precisely the opposite reason: One might be silent in order to resist injustice. Dyatlik analyzes a few biblical examples of this kind of silence: “Daniel’s silence reveals obedience to divine truth at a time when the imperial apparatus demanded a renunciation of obedience to God”; similarly, “the silence of the three youths in the fiery furnace… demonstrates the refusal of dialogue or compromise with a system of violence.” In this same category, “Christ’s silence before Pilate reveals to us silence as a witness to divine truth. Christ’s silence during his trial implicitly condemned as lies the language of untruth.” Daniel, his three friends, and Christ himself all chose to be silent in order to reveal and to resist injustice; they incurred suffering as a result.

If silence may be complicity with evil, or may be condemnation of evil, a third kind of silence may be not the silence of rest but of exhaustion, the exhaustion that results from prolonged suffering – as Jean Musavuli reads in Lamentation 5:5. 

From that kind of silence may emerge a fourth kind, the silence that simply contemplates suffering, as Dyatlik writes of the Book of Job. In this stillness, we seek to “comprehend the depth of suffering,” perhaps our own or others’. In this silence, unlike Job’s friends, without explanation or consolation or advice, we may gaze at suffering and, by not trying to speak into it, acknowledge its magnitude.

Finally, taking a step toward hope, we may think of silence as the place in which we encounter God. In silence one might reflect on the experience of suffering and bring it to God. Laise Sindra Ribeiro describes one of the Karen leaders whom she serves as taking “refuge in silence” – a striking image because this leader is actually himself a refugee serving refugees, living in a camp in Thailand just across the border from his home in Myanmar. Just as one location has become his shelter from the violence unfolding in another location, so silence becomes his shelter from the trauma he experiences – a place from which to observe, remember, and make meaning of suffering.  

Pavani Paul’s meditation on Psalm 44 as lament unfolds a biblical text that is just such a kind of spiritual shelter – a poem that makes room for the kind of silence in which the love of God, “though it seems hidden, is never absent. It waits in the silence, ready to answer.” Thus, in the context of this issue, the title of this introduction emerges as a fruitful paradox. Silence can be where those who are suffering find renewal in the presence of God. From that renewal, they may speak about their experiences. And silence can be where we who may be more distant from extreme suffering can listen to those who are enduring it. Indeed, silence may be where these parts of Christ’s body meet, respect one another, and find comfort in one another’s presence. 

Although I might appear to be pushing this statement, “I am the gate,” too far, John 10 follows John 9, in which Jesus’s healing and subsequent absence are the gaps in which the blind man’s parents, the Pharisees, and the blind man himself meet one another and Jesus (whether they recognize him as Christ or not). Jesus’s silence gives space for the Pharisees to reveal themselves as the unjust authorities that they are, for the blind man to process what has happened to him – and for him to endure further suffering for Christ’s sake, that further suffering in which he finally encounters Christ not just as healer but as savior. 

Read in context, the final kind of silence I noted above, the silence of Psalm 44, of spiritual shelter, seems particularly appropriate for Jesus’s following “I am” statement, “I am the Good Shepherd” – the one who finds and carries us when we are suffering. Again, in this vein, the events of John 9 shimmer behind Christ’s statement here, as the blind man, excommunicated by the religious leaders as a consequence of his cocky response to Christ’s healing, meets and recognizes Jesus fully only after he has been “put out” of what is the apparent “sheepfold” of the religious community of his day. For him the silences of physical suffering and of exclusion open into the silence of fellowship with the Son of God.

So if we return to this “I am” statement, we can recognize Jesus as the “gate,” the “opening,” the “silence” in whom we can be still and through whom we can respond to trauma. He gives us strength and clarity through which to distinguish between lies and truth and to denounce injustice. He gives us rest from the exhaustion that suffering may create. He lets us contemplate the real presence of evil in our own and others’ lives and the steep cost of overcoming that evil. And he gives us shelter in which we may meet him and from which we may go in hope toward “life abundant.” 

We hope that the articles and reviews in this issue of the ISJ will help readers to encounter Jesus in the sufferings and traumas of other members of the global body of Christ.