24 August, 2015, 21st Sunday, Year C: Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30
I don’t believe that Jesus is being evasive when he doesn’t reply with a number to the question, “will only a few people be saved?”
I suspect he’s indicating that his interlocuter is asking the wrong question. What is as stake here is not statistics but my relationship with God.
I suppose the question could have been motivated by probability; if many will be saved then I have a better chance of being saved. If few will be saved, then I had better exert more effort to be good enough to qualify for salvation.
But is that right? Wouldn’t that be treating salvation like an exam? If I study hard and remember the important information, I’ll earn a good grade.
Jesus describes salvation as a banquet in the Kingdom of God, not as a report card. An invitation to a banquet is pure gift! The guests we invite to dinner are compatible people. To strive to enter through the narrow gate is to focus, to narrow down and sharpen my choices, examine my prejudices. It is like getting to know someone I esteem and admire, who brings out the best in me, motivates me to curb my toxic tendencies. One day, we will share a table together. I’ll become fit to receive salvation from God, to be at ease in God’s company and with God’s ways.
Look at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets in the Kingdom of God: they all have their shady side! But they weren’t stuck there. They wrestled with themselves to live a vibrant, if sometimes stormy, relationship with God here and now—and became capable of feasting with God.
A banquet necessarily involves other people, not just myself. But it’s God’s business, not mine, who is invited and who responds to the invitation. My business is entering through the narrow gate and leaving the judgment of other people to God.
I don’t think that everyone who assumes the name “Christian” today is ready to accept those parameters. But if I presume to play God—and what an inept god I’d make—am I truly a Christian?