Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
In this morning’s Gospel reading,
Jesus is speaking spiritual language, spiritual door language, spiritual entry
language. This is in answer to a man’s question, “Will those who are saved be
few?” St. Luke doesn’t give us anything about the mindset of the question-asker,
but I am reading it this way, as if the question were, “How many others will be
among the elite such as myself?” Jesus’ gives a non-answer answer: “Strive to
enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and
will not be able.”
Strive to enter through the
narrow door, Jesus says. I get it. I don’t like narrow doors, as you can
imagine. They’re not as common as they used to be, thanks to Americans with
Disabilities Act, but you find them in irplane lavatories, small closets, the
old San Antonio Missions. Narrow doors prevent me from entering. At the Seminary
in St. Louis, we had a carillon bell tower on campus. A friend of mine, Dien, could
play it, and he invited me to watch him play this magnificent instrument. The
catch was you had to go up a narrow spiral staircase to get to it. The door to
get to the staircase was about the size of the closet door by our offices, and
that doorway opened to an even narrower staircase. Even back in my salad days,
I could not fit through that walkway.
I guess I could have gone on a strict
diet regimen to lose a few pounds. Maybe that would have helped, eventually, but
it wouldn’t have helped me that afternoon. Besides, it wasn’t the waist that
was so much the problem. I’ve always been a big man and that was designed for
someone about the size of my son. Even my shoulders didn’t fit. I tried
twisting sideways, but that was terribly uncomfortable. I tried climb the
stairs by side-steping, but between my feet and my knees, that wasn’t going to happen,
either. Besides: I didn’t want to be the guy on the evening news “Fire
department called to Seminary to rescue student from bell tower staircase.” So, I stayed outside, out in the courtyard. I
could hear him play, I could imagine the joy in his face in making music that –
literally – the entire town could hear. But I could not watch Dien play the
carillon because of the narrow doorway, walkway, and staircase. It was just too
narrow.
“Strive to enter through the
narrow door,” Jesus says. Strive, struggle, endeavor, make every effort, do
your best – we like those kind of words. They’re American. Work hard, pull yourself
up by the bootstraps, “git-r-dun,” “just do it.” Obviously, Jesus isn’t talking
about physically entering a door. This is a spiritual door, and it sounds like
we best get busy doing some spiritual weight-lifting so we can get ourselves
into and through that doorway. We don’t want to miss out on the party Jesus
describes. Alternately, we don’t want to be the ones left out in the dark.
This is spiritual language, so it
sounds like we have some spiritual training to do. Perhaps we should read our
Bibles more, or go to church more often. Maybe we should pray harder or longer,
get on a couple of different groups or committees, maybe even teach Sunday
school. No…that’s not what Jesus means. Perhaps we should practice care for
others, we should spend Saturdays at Christ’s Kitchen, and weekdays at VCAM and
evenings at the YMCA helping with a kids’ reading program. Yes, those things
are important, but that’s not what He means here. Maybe we should be better Christians,
living moral lives so people can see our good deeds. Watch our mouths, don’t
watch members of the opposite sex, and keep our hands to ourselves, like our
parents taught us. Again, important work, but that’s not going to get us in the
door.
In fact, those very things can
make us stumble at the door step, at the stoop of the door. They can make us
trip over ourselves, thinking we can somehow slim ourselves down enough so we
can fit. Drop a couple pounds of our favorite sins here, clean up our act
there, and we’ll be in good shape shortly. Anything that makes us think we can
do something to make ourselves entry-worthy is, in fact, the very thing that
keeps us outside. We might change our behavior, the external things that people
see around us, but what about what’s inside? What about those things we keep
locked up behind closed doors? In Matthew 15: 19-20, Jesus says, “19 For out of
the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false
witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person.” We dare not stand in
front of Jesus’ door, thinking we’re all sparkly clean, arguing we should be
allowed in because we’ve somehow made ourselves presentable. That’s not the
case at all. There are things we simply cannot fix.
Don’t hear Jesus’ word to “strive”
as though He is giving you a prescription for what you must do. Rather, He is
speaking of what the struggle is: repentance. Repentance is God at work in the
sinner. The light of God’s word opens the doors we would rather keep closed and
it shines into the nooks and crannies of our lives, our minds, and our hearts
and it sees and identifies our sins. All those things we want to keep behind
closed doors, locked away in the closets, God calls out into the light. The
world calls it efficiency; God calls it laziness. Friends call it truth-telling;
God calls it gossip. The media calls it unbiased reporting; God calls it
slander. Society calls it freedom; God calls it lust. Self-help gurus call it self-worth;
God calls it arrogant pride. Advertising implies you have to take care of good
ol’ number one; God calls it idolatry. Shining into the darkness of our hearts,
God reveals our sins for what they are and that they separate us from God and
they divide us from one another.
And repentance is God exposing it
for what it is. Repentance calls evil, evil; sin, sin; and leaves no room for
excuses or for our half-hearted, self-righteous attempts to fix ourselves.
Repentance surrenders ourselves, with our sinful thoughts, words, and actions,
and lays them at the foot of Jesus.
Jesus is going to Jerusalem.
There before Him is the door of the city gates. Soon after this, He will be met
by welcoming crowds, but only a few days later, He will be hauled through the
door of Pilate’s chambers where Jesus will be judged innocent, yet condemned to
die. He will be drug back through the door, down the streets, and out the door
of the gates that He once entered in triumph, but this time in shame, taken
outside the gates and nailed to the cross for all to see. And, when He finally
breathes His last, His body will be carried through the narrow door of the tomb
where He will be laid to rest, and the door blocked by a massive stone. Jesus
says, “I am the door.” Neither stone nor death stops this door from opening and
on Easter, the doorway of the tomb is open so that Jesus, who is the door,
stands open so all can see: Christ is risen indeed! In His death, He paid the
full price for all those sins which serve to keep the door closed, that would
otherwise keep us locked in the darkness of sin, death and damnation. In His
resurrection, He opens the door to the Father’s mercy.
Enter through the door! Know,
believe, trust and rely that the door is Jesus (John 10:9). Strive to enter
through the door. Or, repent to enter through Christ. Through Christ, you are
welcomed to the feast. Through Christ, you are ushered into the presence of the
eternal banquet. Through Christ, you are declared righteous. Through Christ, you
will be in the presence of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all of the prophets
of old. Through Christ, you will be joined with others, from east and west,
from north and south, who likewise entered through the door.
There is one aspect of striving
that we know full well. We are striving, struggling, making every effort on this
journey of faith in life. To us, Jesus encourages us to strive. But, how? And
for what? The answer is the opposite is what we might normally think. Our world
says strive to be the best and the first. Jesus instead says, strive to be last;
strive to be least. Strive to be nothing. Jesus said there are last ones who
will be first, and first ones who will be last. Striving to enter is because of
God’s working and saving in us. God’s journey is inverse of what we would
normally do. So, we strive, not to be good Christians, but to be repentant and
faithful Christians. Jesus will teach us how, how to be last. He will make us,
in and of ourselves, to be nothing – nothing about which to brag or boast. If
there is wisdom and learning to be done in this life, it will be done in us
according to His will and in His mercy. He will enable us to strive to be last.
Strive to be last and let God make you first. Strive to do nothing. God has done
it all. It is what He has done and continues to do with us. “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” How
Jesus delights to stand and welcome you through that narrow door. In His
resurrection, He has opened the door of eternal paradise for you and for me, and
says, “Welcome, you who are blessed by my Father. Enter.”
No comments:
Post a Comment