Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:(22-30)31-35

Mark Twain once wrote: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

I’ll bet a lot of us were like that at that age, when we thought we knew it all. I certainly was like that, but it was even worse because I was a religious teenager. I not only thought I knew everything there was to know about things in this world, I thought I knew everything about heaven and hell and God and who was going where. There were no real gray areas: if you were saved you were headed upstairs; if you weren’t you were going down; and there was nothing in the middle.

And being saved was very difficult.  It didn’t just mean saying the right things or going to church.  You had to believe very specific things, and believe them with your whole heart, without even a sliver of doubt.  Only then would you be saved, and I knew that because I was.

It’s interesting, isn’t it?  Whenever anyone talks about how hard it is to be saved, you can bet your bottom dollar that they’re sure they’re saved.  No matter how narrow the door, they’re certain they’ll be walking through it when the time comes. It’s perilous and dangerous, just not for them.

That’s exactly the way I was, but my beliefs didn’t all hold together. And it took a priest friend of mine to show me how inconsistent I was. This is basically the conversation we had many a time during my teenage years.

“You believe in a God of love, don’t you?” he would ask.

“Of course,” I’d respond.

“And you think it’s very difficult to get to heaven.”

“Very difficult.”

“So what percentage of people will go to heaven, do you think?”

“A very small fraction,” I’d reply.

“Maybe 5%?”

“Maybe.”

“So if there are four billion people in the world” – as there were back then – “that means that the God of love is going to condemn 3.8 billion of them to eternal torment.  And that’s not even counting the billions who’ve come before, and the billions yet to be born.”

And I was forced to answer yes, even though even I could see that that didn’t make any sense.  How could a God of love do such a thing?

But that’s exactly what Jesus seems to say in this morning’s gospel reading. “For many, I tell you, will try to enter [through the narrow door] and will not be able.”  They’ll tell God that they’re old friends of His, but He won’t listen. They’ll remind of the times they went out to dinner and the movies together, but He’ll still tell them to get lost. And “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” Jesus says.

So that would seem to confirm my old fire-and-brimstone view of the world. But let’s look a little more closely at who Jesus is talking to here. Luke only tells us that some guy asked Jesus, “Lord, will only a few be saved?”  We’re left to wonder what he wanted the answer to that question to be.  Was he an outsider, a sinner extraordinaire who was hoping Jesus would throw the door wide open even for people to walk through, even people like him?  Or was he a righteous man – a Pharisee perhaps – who was looking for confirmation that this was an exclusive party he’d been invited to, this heavenly celebration. Perhaps he wanted to make sure that the riff-raff were going to be kept out.

It’s much more likely that the person who asked the question was like that – a righteous man – because Jesus always seems to be turning the tables on people. When sinners ask Him about the kingdom of God, it seems within even their reach.  When Pharisees ask Him about it, it’s so difficult to reach it’d take a miracle for anybody to get there.

And assuming that this was an upstanding citizen Jesus is talking with, He turns the tables on him, too.  Up to a point the man gets what he wants: a description of the narrow door with lots of people outside clamoring to get in. The “weeping and gnashing of teeth” bit is a nice addition, especially when Jesus talks about “Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God,” which would have been music to a faithful Jew’s ears.  So far Jesus is basically telling him that he’s one of the chosen.

But then Jesus flips everything on its ear.  “People will come from east and west,” He says, “from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.”  This may not sound revolutionary to us, but it would have to the man who asked the question in the first place. Because Jesus isn’t talking about Jews here; He’s talking about people from far-off lands. The Greek word He uses for “people” is ethnikos, from which we get our word “ethnic.”  These are foreigners, non-Jews, Gentiles. 

So the other guy has just been taken down a peg, because this exclusive party he thought he was going to just turned out to be a lot more inclusive, and inclusive of people he doesn’t particularly care for, at that.  And Jesus isn’t finished, either. “Indeed,” He says, “some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

The other guy isn’t stupid; he can read between the lines. Jesus isn’t just saying that Gentiles are invited to the party; Jesus is saying that some Jews might not be. So now the guy has to worry about whether he’s getting in at all, which is the purpose of this whole exchange. He came to Jesus looking for confirmation that he already knew everything there was to know; and instead Jesus basically said he didn’t know a darn thing.  And he’d better watch his back, too, because nothing in life is certain.

So where does that leave us this morning?  Do we read these words of Jesus literally?  If so, how do we hold on to our image of a God of love? Or do we swing to the other side, where everybody gets into heaven?  If we do that, was Jesus lying in today’s reading? Was He just playing a mean joke on some guy who asked Him an honest question?

Thankfully, it’s not up to us. It’s not our job to proclaim that this person is saved and that person is damned; which is a good thing, because I think we’d be terrible at it. I often find myself saying that the only I know for sure about heaven is that it’s going to be full of surprises. In the end, it’s up to God, and the best we can do is tread fearfully on this holy ground, where the stakes are the highest they can be, and all we can do is trust in the mercy of God.

And so how do we live in the world?  Do we withhold judgment, in order to avoid being judgmental? In our desire to not appear closed-minded, do we just adopt an “anything goes” attitude?  I think a lot of people look at the Episcopal Church that way, because we don’t tend to look at the world in black-and-white terms. That’s one of our strengths, but also one of our weaknesses.  It’s a strength because it allows for divine grace to overflow, and it’s a weakness because it falls so far short of who God has called us to be. 

Jesus came to save the world, and along the way He made it very clear that certain things are right and other things are wrong.  And while we might disagree with other denominations and even amongst ourselves about what some of those things are, there are some things that are undeniable and that we all agree on. People being told that God doesn’t love them is wrong. People going to bed hungry or cold is wrong. Governments that are more concerned with the rich and powerful than with the poor and vulnerable are wrong. As Christians, we’re called to name the evils in the world for what they are.

But at the same time, we always have to be willing to see the same evils in ourselves as we are in others, and in the world at large.  And that’s precisely what the guy who asked Jesus the question this morning wasn’t willing to do, and it’s what I wasn’t willing to do back when I was a teenager.  We were both happy to accept that it was going to be pretty darn hard to get into the kingdom of heaven, but we never thought that applied to us.

So perhaps a good starting point, when it comes to heaven and hell, is simply to include ourselves in whatever system we adopt. If I think that 95% of people are going to hell, I’ll just have to accept the fact that because of all this last-shall-be-first-and-first-shall-be-last stuff, that means that there’s a 95% chance of my going to hell. And if I want to increase my own shot at paradise, I’ll have to widen the doorway enough to let some folks in that maybe I’m not to happy about spending all of eternity with.

Either way, there’s a lesson to be learned.  The higher our standards, the more likely we are to fall short of them ourselves.  And if we cast God’s net of love far and wide, we end up with a bunch of souls that are much more diverse, and surprising, and annoying, and troublesome than any group we’d have put together, if it were up to us.  And thank God it’s not, because God loves them just as much as He loves us, even if we don’t.  At least for right now.

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