Sermon: Proper 8, Year C, June 27 2010
Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, "Lord, will only a few be saved?" He said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able."
I remember a phone call my father received one night. It was from a friend of his who had driven through our small town of Bristol, New York, on his way to Rochester and had stopped to see our church, a beautiful old congregational church set on the main road. "It was late," the friend said, "so I stood on tiptoe and looked through the windows. I couldn’t see much but it sure was beautiful. Next time I’ll call ahead so you can show me the inside." This friend knew my father was the sexton or caretaker of the church.
"Did you try the door?" my father asked.
"No," he said. "I just assumed it was locked."
"It’s never locked," my father said, "We lost the key about a hundred years ago. You can get inside whenever you want."
He could not believe it, and small wonder. Unfortunately, it still does not make any sense to leave a church wide open but we did. Whenever we got a new pastor for that small church of my childhood, he (it was always "he" back then), he would never get presented with a church key, but a doorstop, with a little brass plaque on it that said, "Let the doors of this place be open to all people." So all it took was little tug and anyone could walk into that church, day or night, to say hello to God.
I love that, but according to the thirteenth chapter of Luke, the doors to the kingdom are not like that. There is only one door, which is narrow and can most certainly be locked. No one wanders through it by accident. No one comes in for a casual look around. Getting through it is so hard that many will try and fail, Jesus says. They will find they are not strong enough, and after it has been locked they will knock until their knuckles are raw.
They can shout through the door all they want. They can remind the Lord standing behind it that they ate supper with him (doesn’t he remember?), that they heard him teaching in their streets, but none of that information will open the door for them. It is not enough that they know what he looks like. It is not enough that they can quote some things that he said, because the sad fact is that their lives bear no evidence of relationship with him. They may know him but he does not know them. The acquaintance was too slight to register in his memory, and he tells them to go away.
This is not the Lord most of us are looking for. We are counting on the "Come to me all who labor and have heavy burdens" Lord, the one who takes little children in his lap and prefers the company of sinners. We are counting on him to hold the door open for us, to wedge his body in it if necessary so that we can squeeze through, only that is not who Luke gives us this time. Instead, he gives us the Lord who knows from his own painful experience that life comes with limits.
Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, Luke tells us, and you know what that means. Time is limited, choices are limited. Shallow acquaintance with God will not do. There is no time for it. Those who want to follow Jesus through the door cannot afford to stand way back in the crowd and listen to him teach. It is time for them to elbow their way to the front and present themselves to him. "Here I am. I want you to know me. Put me to work."
So this is at least partly a lesson about limits, I think. As much as we chafe against them, they are great motivators. I remember a professor of mine who used to lock the door when class started. If you were late, you were out of luck. It only took about a week for all of us to become very, very punctual. And I will tell you, it made a real difference in the class. When he came in, we were all ready to begin. There was no drain on our energy like there is when latecomers come dribbling in one after the other, each of them trying to be unobtrusive although they might as well be riding elephants. There was none of that, and while some members of the class accused our teacher of being rigid, the overall effect was one of great mutual respect. He took us seriously and we returned the favor. We found out what we could do when we tried, and he never expected less of us.
Which is fine as far as it goes, but I want to take it a step further because I do not think this passage is simply about trying hard and being on time. You have to remember whom Jesus was talking to. He was on his way to Jerusalem and he was talking to people who were sure God’s door would always be pen to them. They knew the rules and they played by them. There were not sinners and they were not tax collectors and fully expected reserved seats in the kingdom, a special section like box seats set aside for chosen people living in the promised land.
When Jesus told them no, that they would have to struggle like everyone else and that many of them would not make it, it was like a door slammed shut in their faces. That was one of the reasons they killed him – because he took their security away. He undermined their faith in themselves by suggesting that God’s ideas about goodness and badness were different from their, so different that people they thought were beneath them might well get into the kingdom ahead of them, and that scared them. If Jesus was right, then they were wrong about a lot of things, but all in all it was easier to get rid of him than it was to change their whole way of life, so that is what they did. They let their fear turn to anger and Jesus was a goner.
All kinds of people say this is a passage about the Jews, but please let us not make that mistake. It is about any and all of us who are sure we know the mind of God, who are sure we are on God’s side and are sure what God’s priorities are. It is about any and all of us who calculate our chances of getting into the kingdom by focusing on the sins of other people, as if we could free up more seats for ourselves by eliminating the competition.
That is not how it works, Jesus says. We cannot assume the door is open any more than we can assume it is closed. There is nothing automatic about it, because the kingdom belongs to God and no amount of human conniving can figure it out. Nor, I think, can any amount of human despair seal it off. That is almost as big a problem as the other, you know. Along with people who believe it is their job to guard the door on God’s behalf, there are others who will not go anywhere near it. They never even try the handle because they are so sure it is locked.
We will all be surprised, Jesus says. Some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last, but that does not excuse any of us from trying the door. It is important that we strive to go through it, even though our striving itself will not wins us anything. It will simply teach us what we need to know. Some who are used to walking through open doors may find that this one requires more of them. And some who have spent their lives peering through darkened windows on tiptoe may find that the door has been open all along. God alone knows what we need. So I am glad it is God who is in charge of the door, the God who knows us all by heart.
Meanwhile, let’s keep the doors of the church open by getting everyone inside that we can, and leave the decisions about the other door, the narrow one, to God. I think we can trust God to sort us all out, and to love us better than we love ourselves.
Amen.
