Will Many or Few Be Saved?

Father Jim Fosdick

St. Mary of the Snows Anglican Church

August 25, 2007

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight O Lord my strength and my redeemer.

Football season is upon us. All of us who have been to a Packer game or a Badger game probably have experienced what it’s like as the crowd moves toward the gate identified on our ticket. At first the entrance seems wide and open to all; but once you begin seriously pushing and struggling to go in you discover that the gate is not wide at all. The broad gate narrows down to a turnstile where you enter one by one, and the keeper says, "Hold your own ticket, please."

This is the way Jesus describes the door to the Kingdom in our Gospel today. It begins wide and open to all - but then comes the struggle to go through the narrow door: one at a time, and hold your own ticket, your own means of entry. Even coming from Jesus, I don’t think we like this idea very much. It  doesn’t match up with our sometimes comfortable idea of the Christian life: being kind when it’s not too difficult; going to worship when it’s convenient; giving a little money when it’s tax deductible; helping with the Lord’s work when we feel like it; acknowledging Jesus as Savior when we happen to think about it.

It’s easy to think that once we are members of the church we have reached the goal, come to the end of the road, and our striving for the Kingdom of God is done. The poet John Donne wrote a poem with one of the great puns of poetry. The pun is on his name…Dunne. The poem is entitled Hymn to Christ. The language is a little hard to follow but the point he makes I think is important.

Seal then this bill of my divorce to all.

To see God only I go out of sight;

And to scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.

Wilt thou forgive that sin, where I begun, which is my sin though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run

And do them still, though still I do deplore?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done for I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin by which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallowed in a score?

When thou hast done thou hast not done for I have more.

John Dunne knew what he was writing about. In a way his life reminds me a little of St. Augustine. Dunne was born to Roman Catholic parents in England at a time when it was dangerous to be a Catholic. He fell away from the church and lived a life of debauchery until he came back to faith and wrote several treatises in opposition to the Roman Catholic Church. He resisted when King James encouraged him to enter the priesthood and eventually gave in and was ordained in 1615. To me Dunne’s poem does an incredible job of explaining the constant struggle of pursuing our faith in Christ. The repeated verse, “When thou hast done thou hast not done for I have more,” references the reality that when God is done forgiving him his sins, God isn’t done because he has more sins to be forgiven. The Christian life is a constant striving to do the will of God as Jesus revealed it. The Christian life is not simply a destination, but a journey.

Jesus says we are to "strive to enter the narrow door." It is interesting to note that the Greek word for "strive" agohnidzomahee is the same word from which we get our word "agony." "Will those who are saved be few?" they asked. His reply says, in effect, that we are not to worry about that, but the door is narrow and we are to strive to enter by that narrow door. We are to strive ("agonize") to enter. That seems like a strong word for the kingdom of a loving God. We should not be too surprised: there are many narrow doors in our life where those who enter must strive to enter. It is true of the scholar who, in Milton’s words, must "scorn delights and live laborious days." In high school and my freshman year in college I was on the swim team. Agony is exactly what was involved in countless laps to get in shape for our events. My wife Susan was a violinist in high school and college and she can tell you that it takes years of practice for hours a day and still only a very few enter the narrow door of real proficiency.

The Christian life is a constant striving to do the will of God as Jesus revealed it. Why this need to strive? Because there are forces of evil within us trying to pull us down. Have you ever tried to walk up a down escalator? Not to strive upward is to be constantly pulled down. There are forces of evil within us and around us, constantly trying to pull us down from generosity to selfishness; from compassion to indifference; from sacrifice to greed.

One of those Reader’s Digest witticisms reported that a little boy once asked his mother if people who told lies went to heaven. She replied (perhaps unwisely) "Of course not." "Well," he said, "it must be awfully lonesome there with only God and George Washington."  So "lie a little," the forces of evil say. "Why struggle with it? Be partially honest, relatively pure, occasionally forgiving, comparatively loving, sometimes reverent. Relax. Nobody’s perfect." When I was first ordained a deacon, people used to apologize for swearing in front of me and wanting to be one of the guys I would say don’t worry about it. I don’t do that any more. This kind of thing goes all the way back to Eden when the devil as the snake says to Eve God surely did not say and encourages Eve to do what God forbade her to do. These voices speak to all of us at times encouraging us to ignore our conscience and do something we know we shouldn’t. It’s just a white lie.

Just like the gate at a football game, each of us must enter heaven on our own - not because we ate and drank where Jesus  happened to be; not because he taught on our street. Each one is to strive to enter the Kingdom. We enter in not because we go to annual meetings; not because we go to church on Sunday; not because we take communion. As a preacher I heard once said, just because you’re in a garage doesn’t make you a car.  Each one must strive to enter the Kingdom on our own. A man does not enter the Kingdom because his wife is a member of the ACW. A woman does not enter the Kingdom because her cousin is a missionary. Each must strive to enter on our own.

There are times, of course, when our striving seems useless. The goal of Christian living is unattainable, impossible; but that is not the point. The point is: are we doing all we can? Obscure heroes will be found at the judgment - those who have done what they could.

The words of a  youth hymn go something like this:

Living for Jesus a life that is true

Striving to please him in all that I do;

Yielding allegiance, glad hearted and free

This is the pathway of blessing for me.

Striving!

Here, of course, the New Testament teaching of Justification by Faith comes in. We are made acceptable to God by our personal belief in Jesus as the risen Son of God; by our own public profession of Jesus as Lord of our life. Paul addresses this in Philippians when he says his righteousness doesn’t come from works--- the law as he puts it--- but, “that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Martin Luther, in his great hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," wrote

Were not the right man on our side

Our striving would be losing.

We are not saved by works, but by grace through faith alone; yet if this faith in Jesus - this profession of Jesus as our Savior - is genuine, it will have a constant meaning for our daily living. It is not that we must do good works to be redeemed. We don’t do good works in order to BE saved; we do good works because we ARE saved. Jesus said you can tell a tree by its fruit. Good fruit comes from a good tree.

Do you love the Lord? The opposite of love is not hate - it is indifference. The theological word for this sin is acedia which literally means not caring. The King James translation translates this sin as sloth but it really means not caring or indifference. Lots of people don’t actively hate Jesus and what he taught; they are simply indifferent to it, doing what suits them, not what suits him.

It is God’s judgment, not the world’s that will determine the citizens of the Kingdom. I don’t think our post modern world likes that idea. We don’t like the idea that God would really be a God of justice. We don’t like it because each of us is aware of our own shortcomings. That’s why Jesus came. He came to die for our sins so that God could look at us and see Jesus. If we follow him that is.
Intimate experience, not outward appearances, determines what we really are. God lives intimately with us. Jesus says abide in me and I will abide in you. He knows our thoughts, our ambitions, our desires. He is the one, as our liturgy puts it, "to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid." What will his judgment be? Never mind what the neighbors think.

Jesus points out that for each of us the time is short. "When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying ‘Lord, open to us.’ He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ “There will come a day – and we can’t know when it is -- when God will say to us, as Jesus told the farmer in Luke 12:20, "This night your soul will be required of you." This it seems to me has two important consequences. First it makes it clear how important it is for each of us to make the commitment to follow Jesus. We don’t know how much time we have. We need to do it now. Second, it demands that we share our faith with others because we don’t know how much time they’ve got or whether we will ever have another chance to witness to them.

C.S. Lewis put it really well in his book Mere Christianity,

“What then is the difference which he (Jesus) has made to the whole human mass? It is just this; that the business of becoming a son (or daughter) of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing from the temporary biological life into the timeless spiritual life has been done for us. Humanity is already saved in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that salvation…If we will only lay ourselves open to the one man in whom it was fully present, and who, in spite of being God is also a real man, He will do it in us and for us.”

In today’s Gospel Jesus is telling us that the Christian faith is an active, lifelong striving, with God’s help, against the evil in ourselves and in our world. He has already done the heavy lifting in our salvation. We have to take the first step of accepting the gift he offers by believing in Jesus as our savior and following him as Lord. If there is anyone here who hasn’t done so or isn’t sure please talk to me and we’ll pray together. If you are a follower of Jesus then your lifelong striving has begun. The end of it is a narrow door where we enter - if we enter - like a turnstile: one at a time, holding our own ticket.
 Amen