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The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Grant, we beseech thee, merciful God, that thy Church, being gathered together in unity by thy Holy Spirit, may manifest thy power among all peoples, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen. (Proper 16)
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The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-29; Luke 13:22-30
A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
on
Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-29; Luke 13:22-30
✛
The Narrow Door
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In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
The question about who is going to be saved – and, especially, about who isn’t – is a perennial favorite among Christians. I don’t mean just talk about the judgment of God; we exist under God’s judgment all the time and it’s important and valuable to keep that at the forefront of our minds. But I mean talk about who it is, specifically, that is going to be saved, and who, specifically, is going to face eternal damnation. This is a hot topic, if you’ll pardon the pun. I bet, that if all the recriminations and condemnations were to be added up and accounted for, there would be no one left standing unaccused; a pox would be on all of our houses of worship. And no one damns Christians quite as enthusiastically as other Christians; it is the founding act of some church institutions, and the primary mission of many others. After gossiping about each other, damning each other has to be one of the Church’s most besetting sins.
Scripture shows us that this is not a new development. Since those early days, arguments have raged over the number to be saved – whether it’s only 144,000; or only the pre-determined elect; or only the baptized – numbers justified in various ways. And in the Gospel of Luke, the questioner we hear from today goes straight to the source, and asks Jesus baldly: “So, how many?” How many will be saved?
Now, what kind of person asks Jesus how many? And why? I figure it could come from one of two places: the first would be the humble and contrite sinner, nervous, stammering out, “Will it only be a few?”, and keeping his fingers crossed for the answer, hoping it will be no. Or, it could come from a place of boastful self-regard, more along the lines of “So, is it just going to be us, or will others be joining us later?”
We can’t know which of these it is from the text itself, but from the tone of Jesus’ response, it sounds like the latter, and the next half dozen verses are along the lines of: questioner, don’t get ahead of yourself. It’s going to be a very narrow door up ahead, in Jerusalem, on Calvary. And “Many…will seek to enter and will not be able.”
But that’s not all. Note the shift in subject, too, when Jesus moves into his parable about the householder who keeps his door locked. At first he had said that some impersonal, anonymous “many” will seek to enter, and some impersonal, anonymous, “many” will not be able to. But then he gets very personal, indeed: after the householder has shut the door, “you” will stand outside (“you” plural), and “you will begin to say,” and “you will weep and gnash your teeth.” If I’m reading this correctly, and the tone of the question was, “Are others going to join us?”, then Jesus puts a stop to it right there.
It’s also clearly not a generalized condemnation about the whole world, either, as if nobody is going to be saved; on the contrary, Jesus names just about everybody else: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be there at the banquet table with the householder, he says; the Hebrew prophets, too; people from the east and from the west; from up north and down south – all kinds of people are going to be there, he says, but, maybe, not you. Don’t get ahead of yourself. It’s a narrow door. Who is going to be saved, and who isn’t, remains hidden within the mystery and freedom of God, quite independent of our opinions on the matter.
Jesus is speaking, of course, of judgment, and the idea of God’s judgment can be terrifying, because it’s a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. “Our God is a consuming fire,” the epistle says [1], and when we come into the presence of that consuming fire, we come without the safety of the pretensions that usually get us through the day, the easy dissembling and self-justifications that usually keep us safe. The consuming fire burns those away, and all that is left is us, as we truly are.
So no wonder we approach judgment with fear and trembling. Is there anything more terrifying than the idea of someone who truly knows you, knows all about you, knows you better than you know yourself? A God who has “searched [us] out and known [us]”?[2] This is a not a question of our opinions about others. This is about us: it is immediate and real and intimate. It is personal: as Karl Barth wrote, “Within the four walls of the house of sin dwells but one man…” “And I, and not some other, am that man.”[3]
This is, partially, right. Inside the house of sin dwells one man, but it’s not me. It should be; by all accounts, it should be – I have certainly earned my place there. And it would be, it definitely would be, except for one event, one occurrence, one incarnation of the Word of God, a Word that two millennia ago “was made sin” though he “knew no sin.”[4] Inside that house of sin is the one who made a “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice… for the sins of the whole world,”[5] the whole world, even us. The living God into whose hands we fall, however terrifying it is, is the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ: “We fall into his hands, and not the hands of another.”[6]
After all, this is what it means to have a Savior, not just a great teacher, or a spiritual leader, but a Savior, who saves: he is the householder who brings us inside, who goes through the narrow door for us, in our place, because there is no other way for us to get through. It simply isn’t possible any other way: not for those among us who are paragons of virtue; not for those of us whose “manifold sins and wickedness” show up a little more frequently than just from “time to time.”[7] The narrow door is very narrow, and, let’s face it: we can’t fit.
And yet – each day, and every day, the Lord is our shepherd. Today’s psalm says “the Lord is our hope and our strength, a very present help in trouble… therefore we will not fear.”[8] If every day that’s the case, how much more so at that moment of crisis, that moment of judgment when we stand at the householder’s door and plead for entry? When we justify our entry not on our own account – that would be disastrous – but on the account of the one who died for us, and rose again? God who became incarnate “for us…and for our salvation,” we say in the Creed, and we don’t say for any other reason. The God of judgment is the God of grace; so, John says, “we may have confidence for the day of judgment.”[9]
Yes, it is terrifying, the consuming fire. Our failures are real, not imaginary, and certainly not inconsequential; they are real, but they are not final.[10] Through the narrow door proceeds, and can proceed, only one man: Jesus, the Christ.
Every day, we stand at the seat of God’s judgment. But we never stand there alone.
In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
__________
[1] Hebrews 12:29.
[2] Psalm 139:1.
[3] The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn Howkyns, 6th ed. (London ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 266.
[4] 1 Corinthians 5:12.
[5] Eucharistic Prayer: Rite I, Prayer I. Book of Common Prayer (1979), 334.
[6] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2 (London ; New York: T. & T. Clark International, 2004), 609.
[7] Confession of Sin, Book of Common Prayer (1979), 331.
[8] Psalm 46:1.
[9] 1 John 4:17.
[10] From Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 273.
