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Here is a sampling of some of the messages that have made a special impact at CCiPH, and that have been transcribed or written in manuscript. Most weeks in our equipping assembly, at least one man has been asked to prepare a message that will build up believers. Often, the message is taken from the liturgical Gospel reading of the day, or it is a life message that God has been working into the fabric of that man. It is included here to build you up. |
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The Narrow Door: Hard Sayings of Jesus Message from Ben Gregory on August 22, 2004
Luke 13:22-30
I have a friend, for example, who’s so mad at God that he’s an atheist, which is one thing. But he’s also baffled that I’m not. And even after all these conversations and all this time spent together, he still doesn’t quite get that 90% of what he means when he says, "Christian," doesn’t apply to me. And while I can agree with his disdain for the institution of organized religion, and for the kitsch, power struggles and easy answers he’s found there, I’ve had a hard time helping him to see that Jesus himself was about something else, and calls his followers to something else. That’s a hard thing to explain to someone. Everyone observes with assumptions and presuppositions and only Real relationships overcome those handicaps. And Real relationships take time. Lots of time. Since I’m not trying to sell my friend anything, I’m able to be patient and enjoy the mutual exploration of each other’s worlds that we’re doing, but there’s a Life that he’s missing, and I ache for him. Even more painful for me, though, is that so much of what we would identify as "the church" seems to be missing it too. So many churches are places where manipulation and emotional violence reign that we might do well to let Luke remind us that Jesus said that the door was narrow, and that he spends chapter thirteen insisting and illustrating that the people who look like they’ve got it all together don’t, and that having solid arguments to prove that you’re right doesn’t necessarily mean that you are. And that there are people enjoying the feast in the Kingdom of God who don’t seem like they ought to be there. People whom Dallas Willard calls "spiritual zeroes," and, "the spiritually destitute," whom conventional religious wisdom would see as last, who are in fact, in first place. He’s already said as much in Luke’s gospel, and in Matthew’s as well. Blessed, he says, are the poor in spirit – those who don’t have their spiritual stuff together – because the Kingdom is here. Blessed are those who mourn, who make peace, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The merciful. The pure in heart. Blessed are those who are persecuted -- the Kingdom is available. The Kingdom is here, and, (Luke’s Jesus would remind us,) it doesn’t always look like you’d expect it too. So what is it, when you strip everything else away, that Jesus calls us to? What’s on the other side of that door that make the Way such a narrow one? Is it really rules and rituals and power struggles, or is there more? What is it about the Life that Jesus calls us to that seems so unattractive from the outside (even to those who think they’re on the inside) and yet is of such an eternal quality for those committed to pursuing it? I don’t expect to answer that definitively this morning -- that won’t surprise you -- but it seems at least worth considering together. If you start with the idea that Jesus didn’t teach what he taught so that his followers could convince God to like them, but because there is a Way that Life is best lived -- if you can get past the concept of Life in Christ as a series of propositions and behavioral codes – and if you can recognize that Jesus never addressed two situations or people as identical, (he was as likely to tell a person who wanted to come with him to go away as to bring him along,) then you can begin to get at the heart of the kind of Life the Jesus modeled for us. My friend Ted says that the Way of Jesus is the way of the cross, and that, "The way of the cross is a path of nonviolently and non-coercively (meaning that it does not employ nonviolence as just another way of manipulatively getting our way after all) embodying the Peace of God. It is to act justly and love mercy and walk humbly. It is to proclaim the good news to the poor, favoring the downtrodden and the oppressed and the disenfranchised… It is to regard the last as first and the least as greatest. It is to serve, and to love, and to do so indiscriminately. It is decidedly for the Other, even if -- especially if -- the Other is the enemy. It is almost always, therefore, in conflict with the status quo and the complacency of cultural maintenance. It eschews partnership with the dominant power structures. It questions the prevailing definitions of success. It is prophetic, and it is apocalyptic. It is awfully difficult, and it is impossible alone. It is not a path you follow because you want to go to heaven when you die, it is a path you follow because somehow you get the feeling that eternal life – whatever that means chronologically -- is something that has to be lived, and Jesus was onto something about how to do that." Near the heart of the Way of Jesus -- of this narrow door -- is Jesus’ statement, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who shall save it." Apparently the Life that Jesus came to give us is only possible on the resurrection side of self-denial, and this is, no doubt, part of why it can be so unattractive to people who haven’t experienced it. There is a Way, and it’s narrow. And it’s not narrow because it’s a bunch of crippling rules, but because it means dying -- giving up my will. Giving up the right to judge. To manipulate. To covet success. To condescend to anyone. To engage in the struggle for power. (Ironically, the way that many people reject, thinking they’re rejecting Christ, isn’t his Way at all, but an insipid misrepresentation masquerading as the Church.) The Way of Jesus -- the narrow door to an eternal kind of Life -- is to constantly lay down my life to find myself resurrected. I work with a guy who is mean to me. I never expect it -- I actually think he likes me -- but very often, when I see him, he says mean things. Things about my hair, or my clothes. Things that send me hurtling back to the sixth grade emotionally. Things that make me want to hit back. And I could. His life is a train wreck, highlighted by a failed mockery of a marriage and a lousy personality. It’d be easy to lash back at him. I want to. But that’s not an option for me anymore. And rather than existing in a world full of the reciprocal meanness that my retaliation would have fostered, I choose instead to let mercy lead, and to contribute to a world in which curses are met with blessing, and the other cheek is offered with grace. And that’s a world where we find Life on the other side of dying. When Ruthie and I were in Kentucky doing youth ministry, I tried to teach this concept of self-sacrifice to our students by suggesting that if they were in the cafeteria line at school with their hearts set on a chocolate pudding pie, and if they found that there was only one left, they might consider leaving it for the person behind them. Even if -- especially if -- the person behind them was an enemy. (Maybe love is, in fact, "found in the things we’ve given up more than in the things that we have kept.") Our students laughed, and the whole "pudding pie" reference became a kind of a good natured running joke with us, but the fact is, this idea -- this Way, this narrow Door – is often best lived out in the very ordinary things that comprise our lives. In the choices that we make in conversations and in lunch lines that seem so insignificant. And it’s much better taught in living Life together than it ever could be in some kind of "lesson." (I’ve learned more about loving people by spending time with Justin Golden than I ever could have from listening to someone do what I’m doing now.) That kind of selfless Life runs counter to most of what my nature wants. But imagine a world in which each of us has set down the desire to control the lives of the people around us and get our way. A world in which everyone considers others better than themselves. A world in which we’re safe, and free to love. That’s just about how I imagine the Kingdom of God might look. It’s the Way of Jubilee -- of slaves made free and debts forgiven. Of freedom for the prisoners and good news for the poor. Of sight for the blind and release for the oppressed. Of pudding pies for people who have mistreated me, and grace for people who are mean to me. Ultimately, it’s about resurrection. Apart from whatever happens when I die, there is a Life – a full, abundant, eternal Life -- available to me on the other side of my continual picking up my cross. Available to me now. Whether anyone gets it or not. After all, it’s a narrow door. |
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