In our gospel
reading someone gets straight to the point with Jesus and clearly asks the
ultimate question of salvation and our existence: “Lord, will only a few be
saved?” We wait for Jesus’ answer with
baited breath. How hard will it be? If Jesus answers few, then it will be very
hard indeed. If he answers many, then maybe
it won’t be so hard and we can sit back and relax a bit.
Of course typical
to Jesus’ style he doesn’t give a straightforward answer. In fact, we wonder if he answers at all. He says the door is narrow and many will try
to enter but not be able. Then he says
the door will be shut period. Then he
says people from all over: from east and west, from north and south, and will
eat in the kingdom of God. That suggests
many, perhaps even an infinite number.
But what does it
actually mean? He’s talking like a
politician!
Jewish teachings
at the time gave different answers. In
some places it seems like God makes a great banquet and welcomes many. In other places it seems like it will be very
few. And two important issues are coming
into play. What gave a person
status? Was it their heritage/bloodline? Or - was it their work and
accomplishments? Different schools of
thought had different answers.
Many Jews felt that being biological descendants
of Abraham automatically gave them privileged status before God. Their scriptures, the Old Testament, said
over and over again that they were God’s chosen nation. And indeed their incredible ability to
survive century after century being ruled by every major empire of the Middle
East was amazing. Other cultures and
religions did not have their resilience.
The superior status because of
bloodline however, is denounced; although not by Jesus. It is by John the Baptist who says to the
crowds, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’;
for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.’”
So being chosen
by God has nothing to do with heritage.
But then does it mean it relies on work and accomplishments? Is that what Jesus is teaching? It sounds tempting actually but then we
quickly run into problems. What about
faith? What about grace – that unearned
favor of God? This is Reformation Sunday
after all!
We want solid
answers. We want to know things for
certain. We want things on terms we can
understand. Or perhaps I should say we
want things on our terms. I don’t mean
that in a selfish way – I just mean in things and categories that fit our
understanding of life.
Imagine that
you’re looking for an apartment to rent.
You find one advertised. It lists
the price, the location, and some limits like ‘aquarium pets only’. You figure that you can bring your fish bowl
with your gold fish but you can’t have a dog.
You go and check out the apartment.
You like it. You make a deposit
and sign the lease. You figure that as
long as you stick to your end of the bargain the landlord has to keep up the
landlord’s end. If something breaks or
needs maintenance the landlord will take care of it. And from your end, as long as you pay the
rent, don’t wreck the place, and keep to having just your goldfish in an
aquarium you’re fine. If you don’t pay
the rent you could be evicted. If you
bring in a dog you could be in trouble.
It’s a simple two-way set of expectations.
People
inadvertently think the same thing about their relationship with God. They do their part – they act the way God
wants them to act, or act in a way that will keep God happy, and then God will
do his part – letting people into heaven.
The question then is, what is the threshold of behavior that God wants
to see? And as I said at the beginning, depending
on whether there will be many saved or few people can figure out whether that
threshold is high or low. But on this
Reformation Sunday we remember that this whole way of thinking is totally
wrong.
I did a lot of
driving last week. And as I’m going from
place to place I often listen to the radio.
Sometimes when I get too sick of listening to political stuff on the
radio I switch to Christian stations.
And sometimes it doesn’t take too long until I get sick of that
too.
What I hear all
too much of drives me nuts. That is
advice about how to live in a way that God likes. Some pastor or theologian takes a Bible
passage verse by verse and explains how it teaches us to live. Christians then should to live that way in
order to please God. The advice isn’t
bad advice, it’s just that I think the whole basis is misguided.
Too many people
think that life is about living in a way that pleases God. And you’ll also remember me saying this so
often that you’re probably sick of it: too many people think that God has an
individual plan for their life and they have to figure it out, or they have to
endure something because they’re sure God is teaching them something they need
to have for the future.
Not so! While these are all good hearted ideas, they
miss the point. Underneath the premise
is the idea that life is a test to see if we can be good enough; and to see if
we can please God. But that is not the
purpose of life. Life is not a test.
Being saved by
grace through faith puts us into a completely different relationship with God,
and it completely reorients the way we understand our lives.
Don’t be driven
by the idea that you have to live in a way that pleases God. And don’t think God has an individual purpose
and plan for your life that you have to follow.
That’s just not how it works.
God delights in
the creation he has made. And God made
you and delights in you. Yes, we all
have fallen short of the goodness that God made us for, but God forgives us and
still wants to work with us. God has a plan,
but that is not an individual plan for each of us. God has a plan for the whole creation. And God invites us to participate in it. What God really wants is to work with
us, alongside us.
Do you see the
difference? It’s not God challenging us
to get it right. Instead it’s God
inviting us, valuing us, wanting to work with us, to do something big.
A good parent
wants to work with his or her children; do things together, grow together,
learn together, play together. That’s
the way God wants to be with us.
The world changes
all the time. And so working in God’s
kingdom changes all the time too. God
did not make us for one and only one set purpose. God made us able to learn and grow and adapt.
One of my
favorite movies of all time is Apollo 13. You may remember that the Apollo 13 mission
was to continue exploration on the moon’s surface. But along the way to the moon something went
wrong. The command module was damaged to
an unknown degree. The mission to the
moon was scrapped and the goal became just getting the three astronauts back to
earth alive. But how to do it? Lots of stuff was going wrong. There wasn’t enough energy. There wasn’t a way to keep breathable air for
the astronauts. The computer guidance
systems necessary to get them back weren’t working. The whole thing became shooting from the hip.
Tempers in the
Houston control center were running high. There was lots of finger pointing and hand
wringing. At one point the mission
commander bellows to the flight leaders, “I don’t care what it was designed to
do. I want to know what it can do!” It took a lot of creativity, and
skills, and some luck but ultimately the astronauts made it back to earth
safely.
I don’t think
life doing God’s work is about living as if you have some preset design and
skills. If it was that way then if you
see you have the skills to do something then you do it, and if you don’t have
the skills then you figure it’s for someone else.
That’s not how life works. There is a task to be done. Skilled or not, we creatively engage it.
Remember, God is
about love. Love doesn’t follow preset
rules. Love is dynamic. It knows no bounds. It has no limits.
“Lord, will the
those who are saved be few?”
Wrong
question. Wrong way of understanding
life. Don’t think that way.
Jesus’ response
seems self-contradictory, but it is not.
He is moving
people beyond thinking about pleasing God and instead moving them into how
God’s love works.
Will you go to
heaven? I know that’s a big question for
many. But don’t worry about it. God loves you. Focus on that. When you mess up totally and feel like a
shame-filled failure, God still loves you.
God still wants you. God still
intends to work with you. God is pleased
with you. God still sees and intends to
work with the possibilities within you.
So we care about God’s work because God cares about us.
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