Lent 2: The Narrow Door and the Fundamentals of Following Jesus
TranscriptioN
Good morning again everybody. It is great to see you. As I mentioned before, if you're new or visiting, I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church and it is a joy to be with you this morning on the second Sunday of Lent, this season of 40 days where we follow the path of Jesus to the cross and then into Easter and to his resurrection.
Today's passage is a really interesting one. It comes from the Gospel of St. Luke, which we are in this year, and it's an example of Jesus helping people ask the right questions. In our household right now, if you were to ask our son what was good this week, he would say, we started baseball.
This is baseball season in the Reed household. And one of the things that I was experiencing this week reminded me of the passage. You know, as the kids jump on the field, you know, they want to, they are wondering, and they might even say, like, when am I gonna be like CJ Abrams or whoever their favorite player is? They jump on, like, when am I gonna be that good where everyone's gonna watch me in the stadium, you know? And so part of my job as the coach is to bless the good desire they have and to say, “I love that you want to do that. And also, let's start with the fundamentals. How do you hold a ball? Because that's where we're at. How do you hold a ball? How do you throw a ball? Which foot do you step with? How do you hold a bat? How do you swing a bat? You know, all of these sorts of things.”
What is a run? What is an out? How do I score points in baseball? And so don't focus on what you are eventually gonna look like. Start today in learning the fundamentals. And that's a bit of what this passage feels like to me from the Gospel. Jesus reframes a question that the disciples have about the kingdom of God and what it's gonna look like. The question shouldn't be about who is going to be in the kingdom or how many people are gonna be there. The question should be, how do you enter the kingdom of God right now? What are the fundamentals of God's kingdom and life in Christ? And so the kingdom of God comes through following Jesus, which is often more difficult than we would like to think, and it encompasses more than we often imagine.
But these are the fundamentals following Jesus. And so Jesus in this passage is going to take down a few misconceptions about what the kingdom of God and what that's going to look like, and he's gonna fill their imaginations for what the kingdom of God will become, and maybe perhaps the not-so-intuitive way one enters it. As we look at this passage from St. Luke's Gospel, let me pray for us, “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.
Proximity to Jesus is not enough
The first idea that Jesus is going to dismantle this morning is that proximity and ethnicity connects people meaningfully to the kingdom of God. Proximity and ethnicity connect people meaningfully to the kingdom of God.
This is the first thing Jesus will deconstruct. Jesus has been going from village to village in the northern region of Galilee, teaching about the kingdom of God through parables. It's like a mustard seed. It's like finding a coin, etc. And as people hear him teach, it's easy to imagine that they're wondering, well, what is the kingdom going to look like? How is it going to go from going from village to village, whipping up excitement about the Messiah being here in these little Galilean towns, to something big enough to overthrow the Roman occupation? How are we going to get there? This is what's on people's minds. And how does, when Jesus is teaching things like loving your neighbor, forgiving other people, repenting of your sins, giving towards the poor, learning from them, how do those sort of ethical demands in the New Covenant contribute to the expansion of the kingdom of God? This is sort of baffling because they're expecting something militaristic, something to overthrow the pagan Gentiles who are lording it over them.
This isn't what people expected. And so somebody, as Jesus is going along teaching, they raise the question, Lord, is it the case that only a few people are going to be saved? Like, are only a few people going to make it into this kingdom? And the problem with that question is that it's focusing on people's perceptions of what the kingdom of God is going to look like, and it's not focusing on the fundamentals, on the process of how to enter the kingdom. And so Jesus tells this parable to get their mind off of, what's it going to look like? Into, why don't you worry about how to get there first? And his parable is about a rich man who is throwing this banquet.
All are invited. Eventually, though, the door is going to be shut. And after the door is shut, those who are on the outside are going to be banging on the door, and they're going to be asking to be let into this banquet, and the reply is going to be, I don't know where you come from.
And then notice that their response to this is, well, you ate and you drank with us. We know you. We listened to you as you taught in our streets. And so in other words, they've opened up their homes to the ministry of Jesus. They've potentially eaten with him and drank with him. They've listened to him as he's been preaching.
But then it says that they're going to be cast out as evildoers and look on as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the prophets are all present at the banquet in the kingdom of God. This is a parable about the kingdom. For them, what this means is that being a Galilean Jew is a privilege, but that is not a guaranteed entrance into the kingdom.
They can't rely on being a Galilean Jew to enter the messianic kingdom. Hearing and dining with Jesus is a privilege, but hearing and dining with Jesus is not a guaranteed entrance into the kingdom of God. In other words, being Jesus' disciple adjacent is not the same as being a follower of Jesus.
And so similarly, we can't just set the kingdom of God to the side and say, I'll get to that in the future. Eventually, we'll look at that. Right now, I need to chase these personal dreams and aspirations, a certain vision of life.
And then eventually, once that stuff is settled, then I have time for following Jesus in the kingdom. Instead, our aspirations, our hopes, even our contentments, our longings, all these things need to be framed first by entry into the kingdom of God and following Jesus. And we can see the kingdom right now.
This is one of the amazing things that comes out of this parable. The kingdom of heaven is not something far out there eventually that will come. It is something that we can participate in right now. So the kingdom of God is in your midst. This is what Jesus comes to bring. And every day, the everyday stuff of life then becomes an invitation to participate in the kingdom or to run from the kingdom, no matter how small or significant.
And so I do want to do a quick aside here because of my own background and I would imagine some people in the room too. If you've grown up in certain evangelical circles, you would probably think of the kingdom of God in terms of a future heaven or hell, right? And so if you're thinking that, you're hearing that, then this can sound scary because it's like, well, does that mean that I have to do a lot of good things in order to get to heaven? And that's not what Jesus is addressing. He's not talking about the kingdom in terms of a future heaven and future hell here.
The kingdom of God, as he's presenting it, is this present reality. The kingdom of God is here. It's now.
It was inaugurated at his baptism and it will be made certain in his resurrection. And so, you know, I can affirm and actually I should say there what he's getting at in this parable is the urgency with which we pursue the kingdom. The urgency.
It's not something we put off till later and I would say that whenever we read parables, we always have to be careful not to try and make a one-to-one correspondence with every single detail of the parable. There's a main thrust of the parable and in this parable, it's the urgency by which you see the everyday stuff as the materials of the kingdom of God. So I can affirm Jesus's words when he says, strive to enter through the narrow gate.
And he's not suggesting that your moral and your ethical actions are the determining factors of whether you are in or out with regards to eternal fellowship with God or eternal separation from God. Instead, the kingdom of God, especially when we're in the Gospels. Again, the Jews then are thinking of heaven as God's domain, earth as human domain, but God's domain can overlap and intersect with the human's domain.
This is why we can pray, Lord may your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, not will be in heaven. And so, strive to enter the narrow gate. And instead, we're thinking of the kingdom of God here as a new creation reality that Jesus inaugurated at his baptism and then he brings to reality, realizes it in his resurrection and his ascension where he reigns as king.
And so, we await for the fullness of that to come again. There's a word for that they use in CGS a lot called parousia. And we await the fullness of Jesus coming back to bring the full reality of the kingdom.
But the reality is that the kingdom is present now and we get to see glimpses of it in this earthly life. And so, Jesus's parable might be framed in really extreme terms and that's because it's a parable. And so, we've got to be careful not to limit the one-to-one correspondence to each aspect of the parable.
The main thrust is the urgency by which we are longing to see God's kingdom come in our world right now. His point is that today is the day to prepare your life to encounter God's presence. Today is the day, not tomorrow, not next month. Today is the day to prepare your heart to encounter Jesus's presence. To trust him and follow him as your Lord. And so, here's why I think entering the kingdom of God can be so difficult.
There's a couple of reasons and this isn't an exhaustive list. But it involves carving out time to ask for God's help. To realize that we're actually dependent on God's help. It involves cultivating rhythms of recognizing the little moments of the everyday stuff of life. To bless God for the things that he brings. To bless him for his presence among us.
To bless the good desires of other people, even when they're ugly towards us. It involves blessing our own good desires, even when we find something disordered in our own heart and in our own life. So, it's not enough to just know a bunch about Jesus.
That would be to be Jesus follower adjacent. It's not enough to just know a bunch of things about Jesus. We have to respond with trust in Jesus.
And it's really hard work to trust that Jesus is Lord and that I'm not. That's hard work. And to accept his love and grace. To be transformed by it. To humbly seek to repent of the things that have gone wrong. And to actually expect that God will show up with mercy and grace.
Because I'd rather beat myself up over it and take that into my own hands. To reflect on the goodness of the kingdom. These are good things and they're really hard things. Because it involves Jesus being Lord and not me. And so, it's way more than just a future heaven or hell. This is learning to trust in Jesus right now.
And to practice the fundamentals of the kingdom. Don't worry about how many are going to be there. What shape it's going to look like. What oppositional powers are going to be overthrown. Focus on the fundamentals right now.
Jews and Gentiles will comprise the banquet
So, Jesus has deconstructed this idea that proximity and ethnicity are meaningfully connecting people to the kingdom of God.
Now, he's going to open their hearts and their minds to how great the kingdom of God will be. Because it's often more than we can imagine. Those who heard Jesus thought that the kingdom was just for the Jews.
As the children of Abraham. We had read this passage of the promise to Abraham this morning. And this is how they're interpreting the kingdom through that grid of Genesis 15.
And even within that group of Jews who will enter the kingdom, they're expecting a subgroup. Which the Old Testament prophets would call the remnant leader. So, they're wondering how big this remnant is going to be.
And in the parable, it's interesting, Jesus says, actually as those who are outside the door and are knocking, the reality is there will be people coming into this final banquet who come from the north, the south, the east, and the west. And this is the prefiguring of God bringing in all kinds of peoples and nations into the people of God. To make them a holy nation.
A kingdom of priests to serve the Lord. And so, the kingdom of God starts really small in the earthly ministry of Jesus. He's just going from village to village.
Telling people about the kingdom of God in these little towns in Galilee. But, there's an overarching picture. As people's hearts are turned towards Jesus, as Lord, as they're doing the hard work of repentance, God is saving a people from every tongue, tribe, and nation to the ends of the earth.
One household, one village at a time. And so, each one of us in our neighborhoods, in our households, our workplaces, the cities in which we live, we're all called to be these outposts of the kingdom of God in this life. Where we are just sojourning together as pilgrims, making our way home to the presence of the Lord.
The kingdom of God doesn't move forward through billboards, through Bible tracts, through political posturing, or social media platforms. Although God can use the worst kinds of missionaries. It becomes realized in our lives first. And then, as we seek to live this life in dependence on God, under the Lordship of Christ, that is what makes Jesus's Lordship compelling to other people. It's like the collect today that we prayed. “Lord, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves. Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls.” We are in need of God's help. We are dependent on the God who loves us.
And as the grace of God comes to you, and God's presence as your good shepherd and loving King comes to you and transforms your heart in the daily work of repentance and transformation, then in relationships, and as we learn to love God in community, we join more deeply in the loving life of our Creator. And then, as that happens, these are the fundamentals, as that happens, people are compelled by the goodness, the truth, and the beauty of the kingdom of God, so that the gospel becomes good news. Because it needs to be transformative first in the lives of those who are proclaiming this good news that Jesus is King.
And so, the kingdom of God, it moves one life at a time, one household at a time, and then you and I are part of that larger story that God is telling and will be telling of bringing people in from the north, the south, the east, and the west. But it's not by major movements, it is one life at a time, one household at a time, one neighborhood at a time.
Jesus’ road to Jerusalem is the roadmap for how to enter this banquet.
So, Jesus has first deconstructed the idea that proximity and ethnicity meaningfully connect people to the kingdom of God, and now he's filling their imaginations for the greatness of the kingdom and what it will be in a way that is surprising to them.
And then finally, in our passage today, Jesus is going to connect his death in Jerusalem to being the means by which one attains the kingdom of God. And this is where we leave the parable. We get into something else here.
There are some concerned Pharisees who come to Jesus while he's preaching in Galilee, and they give him this news that Herod Antipas wants to kill him. Herod would rather silence any political uprising or threat of instability than to come with curiosity to find out what Jesus is about. And so this sets up a clash between the kingdom of God and his Messiah and the kingdoms of the earth, which is here mitigated through a Roman puppet, Herod, as he is keeping several of the Jewish leaders in his back pocket to make sure that he's procuring peace through violence and power.
And so this isn't going to be the way of Jesus, as these two kingdoms are set against one another. And Jesus's comment is incredibly ironic. He tells the Pharisees, don't worry about it, because of something that you should know.
You know, he says, I can't be killed outside Jerusalem, as you should know, which is, again, in their minds, Jerusalem is the center of political and religious power, because Jerusalem is the place where prophets are killed. Jerusalem is the place where prophets are killed. It's incredibly ironic.
And what's interesting, then, is this frames the growth of the kingdom. The kingdom of God grows not by circumventing the suffering, but going straight into it. There is a meaningful suffering that he will go through on behalf of all those who will follow God's kingdom.
And this is the way of the kingdom that he's setting an example of. And we're called to victory by the same means. Jesus isn't going to rule an earthly kingdom through violence like Herod.
He's going to conquer and have victory over death itself by means of the cross. And so he sets us an example to follow that any growth we can talk about in the kingdom is done by this means, not by the means of people like Herod. So we take up our cross daily, and we follow Jesus.
And those who will lose their life for the sake of the gospel will discover the true life of the kingdom of God, life in God's presence. Those who, like our New Testament passage this morning was talking about, allow their appetites and lusts for power, their aspirations to guide their life, and never discover life in the kingdom of God. And so this Lent, this is an invitation to do the hard work of seeking the kingdom first and foremost.
This means recognizing and discerning what bits of our networking or our aspirations, our strategizing, come from worldly appetites or lusts for power versus a desire to discover the goodness and love of Jesus as Lord, and as Lord over the lives of others in his goodness. It requires examining how you and I spend our time throughout the week, looking at our calendars with intention, examining how we spend our time, examining how we spend our money and give of our resources. Are we in constant survival mode, or is there intention, thoughtfulness with the ability to edit the things that won't facilitate rhythms of God's presence.
Lent is an invitation. It's not a condemnation, so don't hear me say this is a condemnation, but it's an invitation to ask God for his help, because without God's help, I should say, we were reminded in the collect, we need God's help, and so it's good to start by asking for God's help to do these things. This season invites us into a prayerful intentionality with how we pursue God with the everyday stuff of life in his kingdom, and so today is the day, as the parable says, not tomorrow, not next week, sometime later in life.
Conclusion
Today is the day to follow Jesus and to ask for his help in discovering the kingdom of God where new life begins, and the everyday stuff that you put your hands to, that you put your mind to. It's more difficult than we would like to think to follow Jesus and to accept his lordship and not my own, and it encompasses far more than we would imagine, but following Jesus fills our everyday moments with the goodness and the purposes of the kingdom of God, and it invites the interweaving of our stories with the story of the redeemed people of God that God's been telling from this promise of Abraham that we read to now, and so this Lent, let's recognize and discern the disordered aspirations that we have, or attachments, or appetites, and learn to no longer be led by them. Let's carve out time to cultivate rhythms where we're seeking God's presence in our everyday stuff, where we can learn and join with God and discover his presence where he is Lord in all of these things, and then discover the goodness of God's love in our new life in him one moment at a time.
Let me pray for us. “Go before us, O Lord, in all of our doings, with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help, that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy name, and finally, through your mercy, obtain everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.