21st Sunday of Ordinary Time (25.08.13)
WHAT WILL MAKE US RECOGNISABLE TO JESUS?Jesus’ teaching is forthright. The Gospel of Luke for the 21st Sunday of the Year is brief and to the point. Jesus’ descriptive phrase – ‘the narrow door’ – more than arrests our attention, it may make us uncomfortable. Why? Is it because we focus more on the negative than the positive aspects of the words?A ‘narrow door’ implies restricted access. Perhaps we fear that we will not be admitted, that we may not have the right credentials or that our ‘past’ may tell against us. If those or similar thoughts are playing in our heads then it’s time to ask who is spinning them? It surely isn’t God our heavenly Father. He sent us his only begotten Son to teach us how to approach the ‘narrow door’. His teaching makes it clear that our personal contribution of love and willpower, appropriate to our age and understanding, is indispensible.More often than not we’re content to be, as it were, just one of the crowd. Celebrities and ‘A’ list people may seek the limelight but most of us prefer an incognito status. Narrow doors make that impossible. There comes the moment when we stand alone at the threshold. What will make us recognizable to Jesus? He has described himself not just as the gate keeper of the narrow door, but as that narrow door itself: ‘So Jesus spoke to them (the Pharisees and wilfully blind) again: “In all truth I tell you, I am the gate of the sheepfold.”’ (John 10:7)
Perhaps an old Hasidic tale will help us answer the question of how we make ourselves recognizable to Jesus. A rabbi asked his students how they would determine the hour of dawn when night ends and day begins. One student answered, “When, from a distance, you can distinguish a dog from a sheep.” “No,” the rabbi answered. Another student volunteered, “When you can distinguish between a fig tree and a grapevine.” Again, the rabbi said, “No.” The students then said, “You tell us.” “You’ll know the sun has risen,” said the rabbi, “when you can look into the faces of human beings and you have enough light to recognise them as your brothers and sisters. Up to then, it is night; and that darkness is still with us.”
Some might fight shy of the ‘narrow door’ because they believe they don’t have the means to look their best. They consider their clothes, general appearance, abysmal credit rating and historical misdemeanours let them down. Isn’t it interesting that the only person whom Scripture records as being guaranteed immediate passage through that ‘narrow door’ hung on a cross alongside Jesus on Calvary. Scripture records him as ‘the good thief’ who defended Jesus from the verbal attack of the other crucified criminal.
“Then he (the good thief) said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him:“In truth I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43)
When we stand at that ‘narrow door’ what does Jesus see – our mask or our heart? We are stripped of all our accidentals – clothing, academic qualifications, status and such like. He looks into our deepest heart. There’s some indication of what the ‘narrow door’ experience may be like for some in Luke 11:37-52 when Jesus offers a critical but not condemnatory appraisal to the Pharisees and lawyers.
Too easily we criticize the ‘Pharisees and lawyers etc’ as if we were some separate species. Jesus was not seeking their annihilation them but their conversion. An invitation which, at that time, they resented and rejected. This Sunday’s Second Reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (12:5-7,11-13) has advice for those willing to prepare for their ‘narrow door’ experience:
“Brothers and sisters,
You have forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children:
“My child, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every child he acknowledges.”
Endure your trials as “discipline”; God treats you as children. For what “child” is there whom their father does not discipline? At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.
So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed.”
We need to be ‘clothed’ in genuine, not affected, humility and contrition when we are called to that ‘narrow door’. It needs to have been our daily wearing apparel, our daily wardrobe, in season and out. We know, by heart, the words needed to accompany the apparel but are they truly expressive of what is in our heart or just rote learned and rote spoken?
“Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,
but only say the word and I shall be healed.”
Someone asks Jesus: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Jesus’ response includes a description of a great cavalcade of nations being welcomed into the kingdom of God for there are no boundaries or limits to God’s loving mercy. All are welcome to gather to God who forgives and saves. The proviso is that, for each, there is that individual ‘narrow gate’ experience.