21st Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle C 21-22
TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Isaiah 66:18-21 | Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13 | Luke 13:22-30
Oh God who caused the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise that, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed in that place where true gladness is found. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
This is such a rich, clear set of readings that have touched my heart, and every time I read these readings, they awaken something in me that feels like this amazing sense of strength and peace. I love the way the gospel ends. It’s a phrase Jesus used over and over again in the scriptures, and it goes — you’ve heard it — “The last shall be first. The first shall be last.” It had to be one of those phrases people used all the time, and what it would be, maybe in the simplest, most direct way, most of us get it backwards. What you think is, is not always what is, and what you are, you are basing your life and your work with God in an area or with a goal that is not it. And one of the most common ways in which one can have a relationship with God, because it’s so much about the God of the Old Testament, is the God of the Old Testament made it clear. “I’m calling all my people together. I want them to know me. I want people, and I want them to see something about me.” It’s almost like God is saying, “Look, I’m a good God. I’m not like the other gods that you know. I want people to understand my nature. I am not there to punish you and whip you into shape and make you make all kinds of sacrifices for me. No, I’m there because I want a relationship with you, and I want you to flourish. My glory, that I want you to feel and see, is my deepest longing, why I created the world. I did it because I wanted you to fall in love with me, and I wanted you to feel my love for you. That’s what I want, because when I created you, I knew you could not do the work that you’re here on this planet to do without me.”
I remember a wonderful quote from, I want to say Bonaventure, who was a great doctor of the church. He lived at the same time, in the Middle Ages, as St. Thomas Aquinas, and these were great doctors of the church who gave us wisdom. Bonaventure is a Franciscan, and he’s very different from Thomas Aquinas. They’re both incredibly gifted people and gave us insight after insight, but the one thing about Bonaventure that he said that struck me so powerfully, he said, “When you ask God, ‘why did you create human beings? You create everything else first, and it’s all there. It’s pretty clear. You created this world for them, but then why humans? What do you want? You gave them one thing that nothing else in creation has: free will. They can say no to you. They can say, ‘I don’t want anything to do with you.’ They can live among the people you love and do the most horrific, damaging, frightful, painful things, and you don’t stop them. What is that all about?’” And Bonaventure’s image is you can’t be loved by someone unless they freely choose to love you. If you are looking to God to be the one that keeps you out of hell and you’ll do anything he wants you to do in order to not go to hell, and you’re in a tension with that, and you’re forcing your will and your mind to obey all the rules and laws, and then you’re calling that your relationship with God, you’ve missed the whole point. God doesn’t need people to follow him blindly, like plants and animals don’t have to decide whether they’re going to be who they are. No, we have the ability to control who we are, and we have the ability to love or not to love. And what I know has been said over and over again, when we look at theology and you look at morality, and there is no real, true moral decision unless it’s freely given. And the most important moral decision we have is how do we feel about this God. Do we really love him? And so he said, “I want you to see my glory.” So that first reading, “I want you to get all the people together. I want you to see who I am. I demand a lot, but I love a lot.”
So you get into the next reading. God’s gathered people in the first reading together. We’re going to see his glory, and then he’s going to say, “One thing about my glory is that I am not going to be easy on you necessarily. It’s not the kind of thing where I love you and give you everything you want, and you’re spoiled children. No, I want you to know that I’m here to do something that’s difficult, and you can’t do it on your own, and it’s not easy. It’s called the narrow gate.” So what’s fascinating is the question that is in the gospel is a question I guarantee you’ve asked it of yourself on two levels. “I wonder if a lot — do a lot of people go to heaven? Is there a lot of people in hell? Or am I going to go to heaven, or am I going to go to hell?” This image of having this weight of responsibility for your own self, saving yourself by your actions, saving yourself by the things you will promise to do, because God said, “If you do this, I won’t destroy you. I won’t allow you to be destroyed in Gehenna,” which is an interesting word. He uses that word often. Gehenna is right outside of Jerusalem. It’s a dump. It’s where they burn trash and put things that are valueless. When he said, “You’re going to end up in Gehenna,” he’s meaning your life is going to not have any meaning. You’ll be like trash, and that’s a kind of accusation he can use to motivate people. It’s a discipline form, to yell at your children and tell them they’d better stop what they’re doing or they’ll be punished. That’s one way to do it, but that’s not best. But it’s interesting that this God said, “I want you to go through a process and experience my glory, and it’s going to be hard. And it’s called the narrow gate.”
Let me give you two images of these two gates. One of the things about sticking to an image that I love — it makes my work as a homilist so fun and exciting — there’s a million ways to look at these two things. There’s not just one meaning, but let’s say the wide gate is the people that were living at the time of Jesus following the rules and regulations of the temple. They did it perfectly, and they were blessed, and they felt confident, and they were on their way to paradise, whatever that was going to be in their mind. They were saved. Why? Because they had the strong will and the discipline and the motive of fear. “I will do everything I’m asked to do, and I’ll be saved.” That’s what the wide gate is, and it leads to destruction. Wait a minute. How can it lead to destruction if you’ve done everything you need to get into heaven? Well, that image of doing everything you’re told in order to get into heaven is not anything that is close to what God has prepared for you and for me when we talk about this narrow gate. What’s the difference? Well, you get a really good clue of what the difference is when you listen to what Jesus says to the one who asks, “Who can be saved?” He said, “It’s hard.” That’s the first thing he says. The narrow gate — there actually is a narrow gate in Jerusalem. Maybe people know that, and it’s called — you can get into the city, but you can’t get into it with a camel. So you go in alone. Only one — only you can pass through it, no Range Rover or anything else would go through it. But think about it. This thing, the narrow gate, has something to do with you alone passing through a narrow passage, and he wants to give you an image of what is going to happen in that narrow passage by this next story that you just listened to. A man comes to his master’s house. That’s you at the end of life, to say, coming to God, and you knock on the door. Let’s just amplify a little. He opens the door. He looks at you, and he goes, “Don Fischer. You don’t look like — I don't know you. I know a Don Fischer that I made, but you’re not him. I don't know who you are.” “No, no. I was here. I listened to you. I went to mass. I said mass. I’m a priest. I did all this work. Of course you know me. You know me. I’m Don Fischer.” “I don’t know you. I’m sorry.” And the door closes. What is it? What’s the image in the Old Testament of sin? Sin is missing the mark so far, so off-center that you can’t find the peace and the gift that God wants to give you. It’s leprosy. Why would he use leprosy as the symbol of sin? What does leprosy do to your body? It affects your skin. It’s a skin infection, and things begin to — your skin swells at different places, and it turns color. And what it can actually do is be so severe that your fingers fall off, and your nose is not distinguishable from any other part of your face. You’re completely, in a sense, not looking like you, and I’m wondering if that isn’t what Jesus is trying to say. “My journey with you is for you to come into this narrow way, the way you don’t expect. It’s not about you doing what I’m telling you. It’s being with me, letting me love you, letting me enter into you and you enter into me. And in that intimate relationship, you’re going to tell me and share with me who you are, and if you don’t, I’ll strip you and bare your mistakes in front of you to where it’s so painful. And I’ll name it as evil as it is, and then I’ll tell you I love you. But I’ll tell you, if you don’t look at that, if you don’t see that’s who you are, you can’t enter the kingdom of God. You’ve got to face everything in your life that you are doing and also discover the person I made,” is often hidden under our shame, our fear, our anger or trying to be somebody we’re not. And it’s like could this discipline of the narrow gate be nothing more than an intimate relationship? And the word that is used to describe the pain that’s in that is — it’s a groaning. It’s an agony. The narrow way is agonizingly painful. What else has sounded, in Jesus’ life, that he went through, which is the agony? It’s the agony of the cross.
So what I’m trying to open your eyes to is that the narrow way is that you participate in some way in the work of crucifixion, and the crucifixion is dying to every single thing your ego wants you to achieve, everything that you look at yourself and say, “I am — this is my — this is what makes me special. This is why I’m better than everybody else,” or whatever it is. Or worse, “This is why I can’t look at who I really am, because I have to think of myself as much better than I am.” All of that has to be crucified, and in the crucifixion, what you’re seeing is Jesus accepting every single thing in his life as it is written, as it was meant to be. Jesus was a man. Did he do everything right at the end of this period of life that he’s in right now going back to Jerusalem? Does he ever sit back and wonder, “If I did the right thing, the way I treated the Pharisees? Should I have been better?” I don't know. If he’s human he had to have doubts about how well he did. He has to have fear that he might have disappointed his father. Otherwise he’s just a God acting like a human. He was fully human, and the fact that at the end of his life, when he had a desire for something to be different than the end and went through the agony of accepting that, that has everything to do, in my mind, with the absolute terrifying experience of self-disclosure, 100 percent self-disclosure between you and God, which is another way of saying seeing it exactly as it is. Can you do that? If you say that’s a piece of cake, then I don’t think you understand what I’m talking about. It’s one of the most difficult things. It’s why I love talking about spirituality as not some little part of your life. Like the wide gate is, “Well, I go to mass. I do sacraments. I do all that, but my real life is with my family. The things I worry about are with my business and what’s going on in the world. And oh, yeah, then Sunday we go to church.” It’s like that’s — and if you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, you think, “Well, I’m not committing any major sins.” No, you’re not murdering people or hurting people, but if you’re ignoring this intimacy with God, that might be the worst, most frightening sin we can get caught up in and not even know it. That’s why everybody’s going in this direction.
If you were walking along and saw two entrances to an auditorium or something, and 99 percent of the people are going through these doors, and over there, there’s another little door, would you ever just instinctively say, “I bet they’re not going to the right place,” or, “I bet that little door is better.” I don't know. You would just naturally go with the herd. That’s what we do. We go with what everybody else is doing, but there’s a growing, growing number of more consciously-evolved people who are looking not for rules and regulations to guide their life, but they’re looking for an experience, and an experience that’s personal. And the personal experience is the intimacy of love, and if you’re in love with someone and you hide things from them in order to improve the relationship, if you’re old enough, you know that that’s a form of leprosy, disfiguring who you are. You’re not being yourself. So go back to that beautiful image, end of your life, knocking on the door. The door opens, and God looks and says, “Wow. That’s what I created. You look fabulous. You look great. You are Don Fischer, and you did the work.” That’s what he’s asked. That’s the promise, and that’s his glory, because you could sit down and try to do it on your own. You could never do it. If you’re in him and he’s in you, it’s not only possible, but it will happen. Amen.
Father, your promise exceeds our most ambitious of desires, and that is to come to some intimate awareness of you and have you in our lives and have you transforming and joining us in everything we do. It seems beyond my imagination that you have that power to be so intimately connected to each and every one of us, but I believe it. I’ll preach it till I die, and I pray everyone can experience that wonderful warmth of your presence but especially its transformative power. Amen.