Given at St. Stephen’s Church, Harrisburg, Illinois; Sunday, March 4th, 2007
“Strive to enter by the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able….”
Can you hear the alarm in those words of Jesus?
Let’s begin with a story about alarms…
Just after Christmas, my younger daughter, Julie, and I went to the Fire Museum of Maryland, located a little north of Baltimore. I’ve wanted to visit this museum for quite sometime, since a large part of it is dedicated to the Great Baltimore Fire, which occurred in February, 1904.
A good portion of the display of 100 year old equipment (which was used to fight the fire) was dedicated to that event, and particularly to the actions of a horse named Goliath who saved the lives of the firemen who were first on the scene of the fire.
The story is told that Goliath pulled his crew and equipment to the scene, and instinctively turned around and headed away from the scene, just as the wall of the five story building collapsed. Without his instantaneous action, all of the firemen would have been buried in an avalanche of bricks and burning debris. The horse suffered burns in the process, and was honored at the parade which took place a few years later, once the rebuilding of the one square mile of downtown Baltimore that was destroyed was complete.
Now, let’s use Goliath as an example to get into our Gospel reading for today…
Goliath’s life in the firehouse was probably a combination of routine and boredom, maybe consisting of relishing the bucket of oats he was fed, or enjoying the grooming the firemen would lavish on him, mixed with the sound of the alarm bell and the rush of adrenalin that accompanied the firemen’s response to a fire.
But what if Goliath got used to the routine, and refused to answer the alarm? What if he remembered what happened in February, 1904, when he got burned answering the alarm, and decided to hunker down in the firehouse?
Both responses: getting used to the routine, and hunkering down, might well characterize the responses of original hearers of Jesus’ words, the church to whom Luke was writing, and to the church (that’s you and me) today.
And, since this is a good way to look at Holy Scripture, let’s look at today’s Gospel from these three perspectives:
- What did Jesus’ message say to the original hearers?
- What did it mean to the readers who read the Scripture in the early Church?
- What does it mean to us today?
1. We begin by looking at Jesus’ original audience:
If ever a group of people were trying to “hunker down”, it was the Jewish people of the first century… Oppressed by the Romans, their entire system of beliefs, centered around the Torah (the Law of Moses), was under threat. A puppet king (Herod) ruled by Roman permission in Jerusalem, but the Temple priests and the ruling elders were corrupted by their collaboration and collusion with the Romans (remember their collusion with the Romans that led to Jesus’ death).
As a result, focus on the Torah increased, leading to detailed studies by the rabbis about exactly how the provisions of the Law should be applied to every aspect of life. Temple worship gained more and more importance, both as a sign of national identity for the Jewish people, but also as the focal point of the physical presence of God among His chosen people.
Most likely, their religious routines provided comfort and protection from the dangers of Roman occupation.
So Jesus’ words must’ve struck them hard, that day….”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 people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.”
“What do you mean by addressing us as “you”? Do you mean that we will be cast out from God’s presence? “Surely not”, they must have said, “for we are children of Abraham. We are comfortable in our Temple routines, and we’ve seen quite enough of the abuse and harm the Romans can inflict. Leave us alone, and don’t bother us with your cries of alarm.” (My estimation of what they might have said and thought.)
2. By the time Luke was writing to the early Church (many scholars think the date of Luke’s writing was c. 85 – 90 AD), much of what Jesus had predicted was now coming true…
The Temple had been destroyed in 70 AD, near the conclusion of the Jewish – Roman War (66 – 70 AD). God’s chosen people were defeated, demoralized, had been partially scattered as a result.
Meanwhile, the early Church was growing, gaining members who were not Jewish, and who did not follow the Torah’s ritual requirements (though the moral imperatives were still in place).
But, if one of my New Testament scholars is right in their estimation of Luke’s perspective on Jesus’ life and message, then Luke is writing to a church that’s gotten used to being around, operating in the world for awhile….Perhaps Luke’s church has gotten used to the routine of being outsiders, followers of Jesus, in the pagan Greco-Roman world of the First Century. Maybe the sense of alarm was getting lost, with the growing realization that Jesus’ return in the clouds with power and great glory might not happen as quickly as was originally thought by many Christians.
But something else was also beginning to happen: Roman persecution, which began in earnest under the Emperor Nero in 64 AD, with the great fire that destroyed much of Rome. Both Saints Peter and Paul were martyred, tradition tells us, during this first persecution. Many Christians died horrible deaths as a result.
Maybe many of those who survived wanted to simply hunker down, to ignore the dangers that they faced daily. Maybe Jesus’ cries of alarm, “strive to enter by the narrow door” were simply more than they could bear.
Maybe they’d gotten used to the routine of Christian life, and the urgency of following Christ, particularly of being different from the pagan world they lived in, had worn off. Maybe they didn’t want to attract any attention, so private religious practices behind the closed doors of the houses where they met was becoming more and more attractive all the time.
3. Fast forward now to the 21st Century….
There’s wonderful saying: “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.
The temptations that faced the First Century Jews, and the early Christians, are same temptations we face….
We might be tempted to get used to our routines, to try to blend into the world we live in, to adopt their ways of life and manner of believing. After all, we’re going to be around for awhile, so “what’s the urgency?”, we might ask ourselves.
We might well get used to our religious routines (a particularly dangerous thing for a church that values its rich traditions of worship like Anglicans do). We might even adopt the attitude that the first century Jews did: that the Church is the place were God lives, and once we’ve left the church premises, we’ve left His presence and His influence behind.
But, we might well be aware of the growing disparity in our culture between genuine Christian living and the world around us…for the world around us is beginning to look more and more like the pagan Greco-Roman world of the first century….Our world’s moral behavior is quite similar to theirs, the idolatry in which they engaged has morphed from the pagan temples to Aphrodite, Zeus, or Minerva of the first century into the worship of material goods, sports, or other more subtle forms of worship of today. The growing disparity between rich and poor of the Greco-Roman world, which was populated with large numbers of displaced peoples, looks remarkably similar to ours.
In the face of these similarities, it’s quite tempting to simply “hunker down”, not be different, not attract attention.
The radical claims of Jesus Christ get muted....we adopt the mindset and the values of the pagan culture we live in….No alarm bells for us, we say!
We adopt the comfortable routines of our Christian lives, content to munch away on the bucket of religious oats we’ve gotten used to.
But Jesus’ words still call out to us: “strive to enter by the narrow door”….And despite our claims of familiarity with Him, “we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets”, He might well reply, “I do not know where you come from.”
Today’s Gospel sounds the alarm! It calls us to awaken from the slumber of our familiar routines, and to see Jesus Christ and His radical claims for holiness of life clearly. It calls us to be willing to head out the door of the comfortable life we enjoy, to engage the world around us as Jesus leads us in redeeming the world for which He died and rose again.
Will we answer that alarm?
