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SERMONS

Proper 16
August 26, 2007

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

Luke 13:22-30. The Narrow Gate.

We all know the old saying, that before you judge another person, you must walk a mile in their shoes. In order to know them, to know their struggles, perhaps to know their heart, at least enough to judge them, you must walk a mile in their shoes. You must live some of what they are living.

As Jesus makes his journey to Jerusalem, awakening to the fate that is awaiting him there, Jesus tries over and over to explain to his friends what it is like to walk a mile in His shoes; what the world looks like for those who would follow Him. As Jesus draws closer to his fate in Jerusalem, Jesus teaches multitudes and he teaches his friends what happens when this world comes into contact with God’s kingdom. We begin to see that where Jesus is present, there is reversal, there is change, there is transformation.

After Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem,” that is when we hear about how the dead must bury their own dead; about how anyone who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. Walking a mile in the shoes of Jesus means that those who wear his shoes are transformed. Jesus walks on a path where we are told to empty our purses, to give alms, so that we might receive purses that do not wear out. It is because where our treasures are, THERE our hearts will be also.

Jesus walks a path that does not guarantee a superficial peace and wholeness, but rather a path that brings division, so that houses are divided, so that there will be a sorting of priorities.

When Jesus is present, all things are cast into motion. Nothing remains the same. In the Gospels, when Jesus is present, the pretense of “business as usual” is uncovered as a kind of fairy tale. The “status quo” is yet to be established, because the true “status quo” comes with a Kingdom for which we are waiting, and toward which we are moving.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”

That is the kind of message we hear in the Gospel today.

The great thing in this life of faith is not so much WHO and HOW MANY will be saved, not so much where we and others stand in salvation, but rather in what direction we are moving.

“Lord, will only a few be saved?” . . .

“Who, How Many?”

“Strive, strive to enter the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.” {agonizomai Fight, Compete, labor, engage earnestly}

Jesus turns this question upon its head. Rather than share the guest list of the Kingdom with this one, Jesus answers in such a way as to indicate that this person is actually asking the wrong sort of question. It is agony for the goal, not curiosity about ourselves or others, that will mark the disciples who find salvation, and who enter the narrow door. {A struggle, a contest, the straining of every nerve}

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion.
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report.
You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.
- T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

There is a saying among the desert fathers and mothers of the early church that while the body has two eyes, the soul must have but one. This is the calling that Jesus shares in today’s Gospel. It is actually an invitation to a new kind of freedom. Jesus is inviting us to be done with distractions, to waste no more energy worrying about who is in and who is out. Jesus is asking us to focus the eye of our souls in one direction.

The whole point of God sending his son to live and die as one of us, is that God means for us to enter through that narrow gate. In fact, God desires this so much, that God sent a messenger and guide leading us to that narrow gate whom we can recognize, whom we can know, and whom we can love. God means for us to walk through the narrow gate to the extent that we can love the messenger, and He can love us. Jesus would have us put down the burden of casting our eyes about and sizing up one another’s salvation, sizing up another’s worth in God’s eyes, and accept the freedom that comes with giving up ourselves to his servcice. An Argentinian pastor, Juan Ortiz, puts it well, “Discipleship is more than getting to know what the teacher knows. It is getting to be what the teacher is.” Walking a mile in the shoes of Jesus, not only gives us a real and intimate knowledge of him; it gives him a real and intimate knowledge of us - so that when we stand outside and knock, the owner of the house will open to us.