Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16C)

August 21, 2022

Text: Luke 13-22-30

            “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” (Luke 13:23; ESV).  Jesus doesn’t answer the question, does He?  And isn’t that just like Jesus!  You ask Him one question, and He answers a different one.  We ask Him, “Lord, how many people will be saved,” and He counters by asking, “What about you?  Will you be saved?”  “Strive to enter through the narrow door,” He says,   “For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (v. 24).  And this leads us to ask a whole host of additional questions. 

            First of all, what is the narrow door?  Well, it’s not so much a “what,” as it is a “Who.”  Jesus Christ is the narrow Door.  The Jesus who died on the cross for our sins.  The Jesus who is risen from the dead for our life and salvation.  And the point is, there is no salvation, no entering into eternal life, except through Him.  Jesus Himself asserts this very thing in a verse you know and love: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).  This is what St. Peter preaches to the Jewish Sanhedrin: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  This is the scandal of exclusivity, that Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the Savior, and you can only be saved in and through Him.  Needless to say, this teaching is not politically correct.  This is to say that Christianity is the only true religion, and that the God revealed in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the only true God. 

            But it is also pure Gospel.  We enter life and salvation, we enter the Father’s House and the Father’s Family in and through Jesus.  Yes, even us, poor miserable sinners that we are.  Because Christ has made atonement for our sins, and therefore we are forgiven.  “I am the door,” Jesus says.  “I am the door of the sheep.  All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.  I am the door.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:7-10).  We enter by means of His Word.  We enter by means of Holy Baptism.  He feeds us here with His true body and blood.  And He protects us from thieves and robbers and predators that would steal us from the sheepfold, injure us, and kill us.  In Jesus, we are safe, and our Good Shepherd provides for our every need. 

            But now there is another question.  What does it mean that the Door is narrow?  Well, it doesn’t mean that the Door is hidden.  Jesus commands that His Gospel be proclaimed to the ends of the earth.  “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.  Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:15-16).  “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem’” (Luke 24:45-47).  “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20).  The whole world is to know the identity of the narrow Door, and how to enter through it.  And that is the joyful task of the Church as she proclaims Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, as Savior and Lord of all. 

            But that the Door is narrow is to say that there are infinite doors that promise life and salvation, but lead only to death and damnation.  There is only one Door that can deliver on His Promise, and that is Jesus Christ.  Jesus says in another place, similar to our text, “Enter by the narrow gate.  For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:13-14).  The way is hard precisely because the great masses of people are stampeding to all the other gates, and they are sneering at you, and even seeking to impede your way to that one little narrow Gate, the narrow Door, Jesus.  There is a quote attributed to C. S. Lewis, probably erroneously, unfortunately, but wonderful nonetheless: “When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”  So when the whole world is running toward all the wide and easy doors, and you are insisting that the only way to salvation is to go through the Door that is Christ crucified and risen, well, that appears to be insane!  Or sinister.  Certainly intolerant and hateful of other ways.  And so the world mocks and marginalizes, pesters and persecutes Christ’s Christians.  The world makes it difficult, hard, even agonizing to go the way of Jesus Christ. 

            And that brings us to the question of what it means to strive.  “Strive to enter through the narrow door.”  The Lutherans don’t like that word, “strive.”  But it doesn’t mean what you think it means.  This is not salvation by works, or a salvation that depends in any way upon you, as opposed to Christ.  The verse is not against grace alone, faith alone, or Christ alone, and Jesus is not urging you toward works of self-righteousness, self-justification.  The word “strive” could, perhaps, better be translated as “struggle.”  The Greek word is Ἀγωνίζεσθε, from which we get the English word “agony,” or “agonize.”  “Strive… struggle… agonize to enter through the narrow door.”  In spite of the world’s opposition.  In spite of the devil’s temptations and accusations.  In spite of your own sinful flesh’s lack of stamina, and earnest desire to run with the crowd to the doors that are wide and easy.  To strive in this way, to struggle, to agonize, is to live by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God, ears focused on the Good Shepherd’s voice, over against all the other voices clamoring for your attention.  It is to live by the Spirit of the Lord in daily repentance, crucifying the sinful flesh, returning continually to the waters of your Baptism where you were crucified with Christ in His agony, and raised to new life in Him.  It is to live by faith in spite of all appearances, in cross and suffering, to agonize over this present darkness, even as the light is within you, and is overtaking the darkness, and you know the darkness will never overcome it.  St. Paul says, “For to this end we toil and strive,” ἀγωνιζόμεθα, agonize, “because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe” (1 Tim. 4:10). 

            In a related thought from our Epistle, the writer to the Hebrews says, “In your struggle,” ἀνταγωνιζόμενοι, another derivative of the word for agony, your antagonism “against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb. 12:4).  You have “not yet.”  But you may.  Such antagonism against the wide and easy way will certainly bring the agony of suffering, and perhaps even a martyr’s death.  The Christian must always be ready for that, though it is a struggle, it is a striving.  Because the only way to enter through the narrow Door that is Jesus Christ is death and resurrection.  His for you.  Yours in Him.  The death part always hurts.  But we know that Easter always follows Good Friday.  That is the baptismal life of daily repentance and faith.  And we confess “the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting” (Apostle’s Creed).  So we live in hope and go to our death with confidence, and, even in spite of whatever agony, with joy. 

            Now, there are many driving toward the wide and easy doors who nevertheless give a nod to Christ.  They think He is a pretty good guy, but they do not accept that He is the only Door to salvation, or that His Word is entirely true.  “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets” (Luke 13:26), they will object, when they find out too late that the Door is now shut and they are locked in the outer darkness.  That is to say, when they have died, or when Jesus has come again to Judge.  And it is true, as far as it goes.  The Pharisees and teachers of the Law literally had Rabbi Jesus over to dinner, and we know they were present for His teaching… to oppose Him!  We can think, here, of Judas, with whom our Lord dipped the bread in the sop, and who very well may have been present to receive the Last Supper.  To this day, there are those who come to Church regularly, who nod and smile at the preaching, and belly up to the altar for the Lord’s Supper, but who do not hear in faith, or eat and drink in faith.  They may flirt with the narrow Door, but keep their options open, keep one foot aimed toward other doors they find more appealing.  But they will not be able to enter that way.  To them, on that Day, Jesus will say, "I do not know where you come from” (vv. 25, 27).  On that Day, it will be too late.  They will have to depart from Him, to the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Now is the time for repentance.  Now is the time to enter through Christ, to hear His Word, and believe it.

            Others will enter, and we will be surprised to see them there.  Oh, we won’t be surprised to see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets, feasting with Jesus in the Kingdom.  Of course, they’ll be there.  But we will be surprised at the many from east and west, north and south, tax collectors and sinners, Jews and Gentiles, ex-cons and politicians, and even that jerk from fifth grade who bullied you when you walked home from school, none of whom would you have considered “good Christian folk,” reclining at Table in the Kingdom of God.  They won’t be there because they were such great people.  They will be there because they believed in Christ.  By grace alone.  Because they entered through the narrow Door.  They believed the preaching.  And so they live. 

            Some are last who will be first.  That’s these guys who are reclining at Table.  Some are first who will be last.  You may be somebody in this world, but it makes no difference if you don’t enter through the narrow Door.  And that is Jesus.

            So, will those who are saved be few?  That’s not the right question.  The question is, will you be saved?  And you know the answer.  He is hanging on the crucifix, and He has burst forth from the tomb.  As a result, whoever you are…  Whatever you’ve done…  Wherever you’ve been…  Christ bids you enter the Kingdom of our Father through Him.  He journeyed toward Jerusalem (v. 22) for this very purpose, to die and rise again for your salvation.  “God so loved the world,” and that means you, “that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.