PENTECOST 12

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST 12
PROPER: 16C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: August 26,2001

TEXT: Luke 13:2-30 – When once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord open to us,’ then in reply he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!’ . . . . . . Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.

ISSUE: The passage from Luke is a very daring and abrupt passage. It is frightening when we think of Jesus as the great forgiver, and a man of great compassion. Fact of the matter is that Jesus probably did not make such sweeping condemnation of so many. The passage is greatly influenced by the early church. But it still confronts us with the fact of our mortality, and that there is a final time of reckoning, when we must embrace Jesus Christ, in a very distracting world, if we are to be in partnership with him, and legitimate insiders with Christ at the Messianic Banquet.
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We are faced with one of those rather difficult texts from the Gospel of Luke today. Someone comes to Jesus asking, ‘Will only a few be saved?” We get a feeling from Jesus’ response that indeed the entrance is narrow, and a significant number of people may well be left out side in the cold. It is frightening to be left out, left behind, or forgotten. Most of us from the time we are very young can be quite devastated if we are left out, or don’t get an invitation to a birthday party, or don’t get picked to be a cheer leader or a member of the varsity team. Being a part of certain social groups and organizations is important to us. I remember well being forgotten by an old college buddy with whom I had been close in school. It was a real put down when I ran into him re-introduced myself to him. “David who?” he said.
In Jesus’ time there were two schools of thought concerning the Kingdom of God. There was the overall Palestinian view that the Messianic Banquet of God, when the Messiah would come and end of time was imminent that all Jews, by virtue of their status as the chosen race, would be worthy of the Kingdom of God. The Pharisaic party held a much narrower concept of participation in the Kingdom. They believed that only a remnant of Israel would remain worthy to enter the Messianic Kingdom of God. So, someone puts the question or issue before Jesus, “Lord, will only a few be saved.” Jesus does not give a direct answer, but as usual proposes several parables. The entrance to the Kingdom is through a very narrow door, and there is likely to quite a traffic jam on the day of reckoning. Some will make it others will not. Finally, the door will be closed. Some who are standing outside will demand entry. And the master of the house will say, “I don’t know where you come from.” And they will reply, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” You see the belief was that if you ate and drank at table fellowship with someone, you were an insider with them, and they feel worthy to enter. But still, the master will say, “I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evil doers.” This scene and parable is much like the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Five of whom on waiting for the bridegroom are not prepared for his arrival, and must go in search of oil for their lamps, and get locked out of the wedding reception. (From Matthew’s Gospel.)
Most biblical scholars are in agreement that such a sweeping statement of condemnation is not typical of the kind of thing that Jesus would have said. By the time Luke and Matthew were writing their accounts of the Gospel, the Judean religious sect was separating itself from the Christian sect of Jews. The Christians lay a real insult on the Judean sect saying, “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you se Abraham and Issac and Jacob and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.” They see their fellow Jews as evildoers by their injustice and their involvement with the Romans, and their refusal to accept Jesus as Lord.
Today we must be very very careful about our interpretations of these passages. They can come across as anti-Semitic, condemning our Jewish brothers and sisters for not accepting Christ and seeing them as evildoers. Adolph Hitler had a hay day with these kinds of racial slurs and interpretations. These passages in Luke and Matthew were written at a time of great crisis of the Jewish people. Their land was conquered by the Romans, and they were oppressed and the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. People in stress cling fast to their ancient beliefs. The early Christians being thrown out of the synagogues for their belief in Jesus as Christ, and separated from their families created enormous stress for them. As a result you have these conflicts reflected in the Scripture. We have to sort out what was basically the point for Jesus who proclaimed and looked forward to the day of the realization of the Kingdom of God.
Basically, Jesus says that the door to the Kingdom is narrow. Salvation, belonging to God and being with God in a very distracting, corrupt, noisy world, requires careful aim. There’s a lot of pushing and shoving that goes on. You must take careful aim. The bull’s eye on the target is small compared to the overall target. When you want to see the moon or the stars through a telescope; you have to focus in on the object to see it clearly, otherwise everything is blurred. To view the sights through binoculars, you must focus and bring in the object carefully in focus. Without careful aim and clear focus you will miss the bull’s eye, you will not see clearly what you are longing for. Another way of understanding what Jesus was talking about is the fact that if you have too much baggage you can’t get through the narrow door in the crowd. When Moses and the Jewish community left Egypt to go to the Promised Land, they girded up their loins, but they didn’t take the pyramids with them! The Promised Land was sufficient unto itself.
We must eradicate the anti-Semitic aspects of this passage and focus on its meaning for us as the church in the world today. The passage declares that the way to the Kingdom of God, the Realm of God is to be close and intimate with Jesus Christ as our Lord. We are called upon to have more than a mere acquaintance with Jesus Christ. The people in the parable claim to have eaten with Jesus and listened to him teach in the streets. Even today many people believe there was a Jesus and have heard of him, but the issue is not mere acquaintance; it is in knowing him, and trusting in the ways and teachings of our Lord. It is in doing the Word, and not being passive listeners only. The issue is a matter of being transformed in our being as compassionate, merciful, loving and caring people.
The way to Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God today is difficult because we do carry so much baggage with us. We have the idea that wealth and possessions are a matter of and the measure of our success. That American, Western, obsession can keep us from hitting the target of what is truly meaningful in life. An obsession with working to have so many benefits, a world of addicts to success, can play havoc with our family life as well as our time for spiritual life and reflection on what is really important.
In many of our Christian and Episcopal Churches today, we become very comfortable with our forms of worship, our traditions, and our relationship with the church buildings. We see our churches as holy places. But what is so important is that the liturgies and the beauty and comfort of the church buildings, and our emotional attachments to them don’t become an end in them selves. Instead of the liturgy and the church building, and our traditions becoming the means of proclaiming the Christ and the Kingdom of God, the tradition becomes the end in itself. We saw that happen some years ago when we changed the Prayer Book. The Book became the idol for many of us. Archbishop Cramner was probably turning over in his grave at all the commotion. In its time the Prayer Book met the needs of the reformed church in 1549, putting the worship, liturgies, scriptures into the language of the people that was manageable for the time. The Book was never intended to be the eternal expression of the church’s worship. Nothing is eternal and everything changes. Today we have to find new ways to know Jesus Christ and to express that message of love, forgiveness, transformation, resurrection and new hope.
Unfortunately many who are terrorists excuse their actions on the basis of and in the name of religion: Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Intensely fixed and unbending morality can lead the way to vicious self-righteousness. We were all once slaves and sinners who come to know the forgiveness and love of God.
The church building becomes an idol. A kind of sentimental attachment gives us a false sense of well-being. We become connected with the Christian faith in a vicarious way. If great grandfather worshipped here, or was baptized in the font, then we feel a sense of Christian belonging, or if our great Aunt was the organist here for 40 years, that gives a false sense of privilege as a Christian. Becoming attached to these kinds of things, without union with Jesus Christ we drastically miss the point. We, as Christians, are not a chosen people by virtue of our heritage. Our Christianity is not based upon mere acquaintance with Jesus’ teachings or with participation in prescribed liturgical forms. Neither are we Christians worthy of the Kingdom of God in terms of what we did in the past. I was an acolyte when I was a kid, or I used to teach Sunday School was a fine contribution to the church, but we live in the present. Jesus Christ lives now, and we must continue to live in him.
We are living in a world in crisis today, and we must be careful about what we embrace. Not too unlike the time of Jesus and the old Roman world, paganism is a reality. Virtuous living, common decency, and civility are not exactly the concerns of our world. There are many things that distract us from what God in Christ calls us to be and do as partners in the Kingdom. Consumerism, busyness, a whole host of demanding events would consume us, but the gate to the Kingdom, the Realm of God, is narrow. On the other side of the gate is the feasting of love, of compassion, mercy that imposes new hope for the world. We might be truly astonished at who is there from the east, west, north, and south, but finding ourselves missing the mark.

Eugene Peterson’s translation of this passage is worth hearing: