The Narrow Gate

To understand the curious question that is asked of Jesus in today's reading, we must step back just a few verses.  Just before the passage we heard this morning, Jesus had been describing the kingdom of God with the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast.  Both parables suggest that the kingdom will grow to enormous proportions from very small beginnings. 

This must have sounded odd to the disciple who asks Jesus if only a few people would be saved. (Lk 13:23) Presumably, he thought of the kingdom more narrowly, possibly restricted just to the Chosen People or, even more limited, just to those who ate and drank with Jesus himself.  To our questioner's anticipated delight, this exclusive group was one to which he happened to belong.

In a way, this jibes with our own experience and expectations.  We lock the doors at night once we are safely inside.  We close the membership to our clubs once we are safely admitted.  It wouldn't make any sense to do otherwise.  We build gated communities to assure that only those who belong can enter.  Similarly, we create boundaries or limits on God's mercy only when we are certain that we fall within those limits.

But this very complacency, this sense that we are right to belong, to be insiders, keeps us outside the very door we feel we have already entered.  Jesus tells us that the true way into the kingdom is a hard one, though it is open to everyone.  The Greek word we translate as "strive" in "Strive to enter through the narrow gate" is the root word of our English word "agony."  Apparently, this striving is not easy – it is an agonizing struggle.

In ancient walled cities, the narrow gate was a gate only one person wide.  It was easily defended as only one person could pass through at a time.  This makes it an apt analogy for our entry to paradise, for our narrow gate is, in fact, one person wide, - Jesus.  But where is the struggle, the striving?  Being with Jesus can actually be pleasant.  For example, consider our celebration this morning at Eucharist.  The singing, the praying, the camaraderie are all pleasant things.  We pray for the troubles of the world, but they generally don't intrude on our Mass.  And we even get graces and the real presence of Jesus!  What’s so hard or difficult about that?

But Jesus wants more as Luke reminds us at the very beginning of today’s reading.  Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, to the cross.  And if we are to struggle to enter paradise through Jesus, we must not only eat and drink in his presence, we must also carry his cross with him.

And Jesus' cross is one of constant, universal love: love of family, love of friends, love of neighbors, and most importantly, love of enemies.  For without loving our enemies, our love becomes simply what the pagans do.  Christian love is much more.  And the cross we bear is that this Christian love is not always – in fact, is not usually – requited love.  It may even provoke division and animosity.   However, as fellow cross bearers with Christ, we are measured by how we love, not by how we are loved.

How can we show this love every day, to everyone?  That is where we struggle and strive.  Many times, it seems unfair to love others unconditionally.   Take our nation’s struggle with the issue of undocumented immigrants.  How do we balance our right to private property with Jesus’ command to share with those who have less?  How do we balance our love for others with our need to provide for ourselves?  How do we know when enough is enough?  For Jesus, there is no balance, just more love – eternal, unconditional love, the same love that God shows us in the gift of his only Son.  This world offers no guarantees.  All of our property and all of our money cannot guarantee our happiness, no matter how jealously we guard it.  All of our love will not guarantee that others will love us in the same way.

Yet in uncertainly, we keep struggling, we keep praying, we keep proclaiming and sharing God's love as best we can.  For if we stop struggling, if we stop loving, one of two things must be true.  Either we have ignored Jesus completely or we are certain of that which we cannot be certain – that we have done enough.  In either case, Jesus tells us, we will have placed ourselves outside the door, outside the kingdom, despite God's constant invitation for us to enter.

Struggle and strive, give thanks for our occasional successes, ask forgiveness for our frequent failures, and pray for the strength to keep striving.  Only by doing so can we hope to be counted among those from the north and the south, those from the east and the west, those that take their place at the feast in the kingdom of God.