Let me in! Or Come on out? A reflection on a reflection, 27 April 2025


You don’t know John Mercer or Robert Detheridge or Barry Cooper. Not the particular people of that name who feature in this ramble, anyway. They were among my playmates of almost 70 years ago. Why do they come to mind now? Well, a more recent and cyber playmate, Bob Chapman, a mate in the playgrounds of Facebook and Ship of Fools, in Real Life(™) far away in Washington State, USA, has posted about a reflection which then Archbishop Bergoglio offered at the last Papal Election Conclave, on Revelation 3:30, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.”

We’re familiar with Holman Hunt’s representation of that scene. Some of us are familiar with a jokey caption accompanying it:

Jesus: Let me in!

Householder: Why?

Jesus: I want to save you!

Householder: What from?


Jesus: From what I’ll do to you if you don’t let me in.

A theology (if you can call it that) of soteriology to which I don’t subscribe, btw.

In Revelation 3, St John has Jesus saying that he wants the door to open so that he can come in and have dinner with the householder, a metaphor for allowing God into our lives and decision-making processes. Those are the plain words of scripture, and the invitation allegory is appropriate. But Bergoglio speculates, wonders aloud if you like, whether we might be missing another way of looking at the passage. What if Jesus is saying to the householder, Open the door and come out to join me in the world, with all of its needs and despair, away from your comfortable hearth, join me in my mission?

Enter my playmates of all those decades ago. I knocked, or rang the doorbell, or walked in (doors weren’t locked in that dawn when it was very heaven to be young), but I didn’t ask “Mrs Detheridge, Mrs Cooper, may I come in to play with Robert or Barry?” No, I asked, “Can Robert come out to play?” Because there was so much more to be enjoyed outside, cricket with rudimentary kit, train-spotting, swimming in the river, riding our bikes, recreating WWII with its accompanying arguments about who was going to be British and who German, or who cowboys and who Indians.

By God’s grace, we’ve had the dinner party which St John and Holman Hunt envisaged. Now the knock at the door is for us to come out into God’s world to bring that dinner to the hungry, in practical ways to empty stomachs and in presenting Christ to eternal souls.

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