Isaiah 66.18-21
‘They shall bring all your brothers from all the nations’
Hebrews 12.5-7,11-13
‘The Lord disciplines the one he loves’
Luke 13.22-30 ‘People
will come from east and west, and recline at table in the kingdom of God.’
‘Strive
to enter by the narrow door’. (Luke 13.24)
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The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is a very
big church and holds lots of people: it makes this one look quite modest in
size.
At its heart is the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
It is one of those places where there is a palpable
sense of a meeting point between things earthly and heavenly: and, of course,
heaven and earth met, in Bethlehem, at the Incarnation of Jesus.
Heaven and earth meet here, in our lives, when we
open our hearts, minds and bodies to his transforming and converting grace,
especially when we stretch out our hands to receive him in the Eucharist.
So, back in Bethlehem, is this large, capacious
church, that can hold all-comers, pilgrims from all around the globe.
But at the same time its entrance is tiny, about
four feet high by two feet wide; in metric, that’s 120 centimetres by 60
centimetres: enter by the narrow door, indeed!
Some say it’s that size for practical reasons: the
door was made so small to prevent armed horsemen from entering the basilica during
the Ottoman period.
Others say it’s for spiritual reasons: the tiny door
causes everyone who enters to stoop before they come in, as a check to our own
pride and egos.
Either way anyone entering the church must disarm,
and humbly lower themselves to enter.
It’s easiest, of course, for little children to get
in.
So that ancient church is a parable, in stone, of
the invitation, demands and promise of entering the Kingdom of God.
“Strive to
enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and
will not be able.” (Luke 13.24)
In the Kingdom of God there is room for everyone;
but entry is by ‘the narrow door’.
Strive
to enter, says Jesus.
The original Greek of the Gospel says, Ἀγωνίζεσθε, (agōnizesthe) which means to strive, to struggle,
to agonise.
We don’t just walk into the Kingdom of God upright
carrying all our personal baggage.
That’s why he continues, ‘Many will seek to enter and
will not be able’.
What chastening words these are for those who would
enter on their own terms; and encouraging words for those who wrestle with
faith and salvation: entry is promised, but not without cost.
We need to seek the narrow door, and knock on it:
God’s will is that it is opened; but it is narrow.
There is a live, and sometimes antagonistic, debate across
the Church in the West today about the language and practice of inclusion in
the Church.
On one hand there are those who argue that God’s
welcome is so expansive that anyone can enter the Kingdom of God; there are no significant
boundaries or barriers.
On the other hand, there is the narrow
interpretation that God only calls certain people, the ‘elect’, into his
Kingdom.
Reflecting the Gospel, the Church is neither wholly
inclusive nor wholly exclusive: rather the Church proclaims the abundant love
of God for everyone in such a way that also makes clear that to be a follower
of Jesus Christ is a demanding and costly way, a way that means we are shaped
in his image, not making him in our own.
‘[Jesus] opened wide his arms for us on the cross’
(Common Worship: Eucharistic Prayer B).
It’s an embracing welcome, but on a cross.
No one is beyond Jesus’ call and his mercy: throughout
the Gospels he sits down and eats with sinners; he calls the excluded of
society; he prioritises the nobodies, which is how society of his day saw
children; and he counted women as his disciples, unheard of before his time.
After all, ‘some are last who
will be first, and some are first who will be last.’ (Luke 13.30)
So, what of striving to enter by the narrow door?
The narrow door is our turning away from sin and
turning to Christ, as being baptised commits us to.
Our liturgy does the same thing: we confess our sins
as our worship begins, not to be miserable or downbeat, but to say that we are
taking off the baggage of sin, so that we can ‘enter his courts with praise’.
To enter through the narrow door is a struggle,
something to strive for: we have to take off the things that we become all too
comfortable with, they’re named in the Litany as, ‘pride, vanity and hypocrisy…
envy, hatred and malice… hardness of heart and contempt for [God’s] word and
[his] laws’ (Common Worship: The Litany).
But, cast off all that and we enter through the
narrow door into the abundance of God’s kingdom.
To strive for something means we really want it;
really desire it.
The free gift of grace costs everything.
The great Lutheran theologian and Christian martyr, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, knew this, wrote about it and lived and died it.
He went through the narrow door, such that it led to
his execution by the Nazis.
And he rooted that in his conviction of ‘The Cost of
Discipleship’ (the title of one of his books).
In it he speaks of ‘cheap grace’, the way we reduce
the demands of the Gospel to make it attractive or acceptable to those who want
to enter through a wider door:
Cheap grace is the
preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church
discipline, communion without confession … Cheap grace is grace without
discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and
incarnate. (Part I, Chapter 1)
That narrow door – through which we strive, struggle,
agonise to enter - opens onto a limitless vision of God, so that:
Christ may dwell in
your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have
strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and
height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that
you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3.17b-19)
May we enter by that narrow door and never lose hope
in God’s mercy. Amen.
