Strategies for Heaven
Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30
Make no mistake about it, the gate to life, to the kingdom of God, is not narrow! Am I challenging the gospel reading of today? Not at all! I am simply saying that adages and idiomatic expressions have more connotations than the denotations of the words in which they are crafted. Jesus’ admonition, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate,” leaves open the question of what and who make the “gate narrow”. Our common life experiences show that “gates” are made in the dimension and to the proportion of whatever is expected to go through them. Could God possibly design a gate that is narrow for those who need to go through it? The three contexts of our gospel reading provide the answers to the meaning of the “narrow gate”.
Our gospel begins with a question of curiosity: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” The question sounds like a census or budget driven inquiry, not to say information for tax purposes, or a question by a frustrated individual on the verge of giving up on his/her struggle for eternal life because the stakes are too high and the chips are down! Whichever way we conceive the question put to Jesus, there is a problem that needs solution, and Jesus provides three solutions to the question he was asked about salvation.
Our first solution comes as a challenge. The challenge of Jesus, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate . . . Before the master of the house has arisen and locked the door,” speaks of “time” and “work” as essential ingredients for making it into the kingdom of heaven. In other words, here and now, the way into the kingdom of heaven is wide open because the door/gate has not been shut (“Before the master of the house has arisen and locked the door”), it is now that everyone should “work out his/her salvation”. “Strive,” if we paid attention to the imperative verb Jesus uses in the gospel admonition, emphasizes the “drive” that shows one’s willingness to conquer and be successful in the face of an uphill task – the task of making it to the kingdom of God. Interestingly, there is a “time limit” for this striving, “before the Master of the house has arisen and locked the door” (Luke 13:25). The attainment of heaven doesn’t allow for despondency and discouragement because every moment is the right moment; to start asking for who will make it to heaven is to waste precious time because now is the time to make hay because the sun is shining!
Our gospel helps us to envision the “time” to make it to the kingdom of heaven. Our second solution comes from the “evildoers,” who condemned themselves because they wasted the opportunities or time Jesus offered them for making it into the kingdom of heaven. They tell Jesus, “‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’” They never construed Jesus’ teaching in their streets and eating in his company as “Jesus’ election campaign day”; that when the “door is shut” is “Election Day”! Since they were interested in eating and drinking and not in Jesus’ message, they lost out on the kingdom of heaven – to waste time on futilities is to make the gate to heaven “narrow”. Listening to Jesus and doing what he asks is the door to the kingdom of heaven. As long as the good news is preached, the “gate” of the kingdom of heaven remains open. Jesus means that now is the day of salvation – neither yesterday nor tomorrow – today is the time.
The third solution is very severe – an eventual condemnation of evildoers. “Depart from me, all you evildoers!” is Jesus’ answer to the question of curiosity, instead of an effort to do God’s will. “Evildoers” make “narrow” the way to the kingdom of God because they waste their time doing evil, while calculating alternative entries into the kingdom of God – “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Jesus makes it abundantly clear that the gate of the kingdom of God is wide open for everybody when he says: “And people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God”.
The mention of the four cardinal points (north, south, east and west), in our gospel, tallies with the universal desire of God, in the first reading, for the salvation of the whole of humanity: “They shall bring all your brothers and sisters from all the nations as an offering to the Lord” (Isaiah 66:20). This confirms God’s willingness to keep wide open the doors and gates of the kingdom of heaven, at the mercy of human activities that threaten to narrow it through sin and iniquities. In fact, the greatest human activity narrowing the gate of heaven is the disunity among the sons and daughters of God – all the wars we fight in God’s name!
The greatest news of this Sunday, from our second reading, is to know that God adopts and treats us as his children: “‘My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son [and daughter] he acknowledges.’ Endure your trials as ‘discipline’; God treats you as sons [and daughters]” (Hebrews 12:7). It is categorically impossible for God to desire to narrow the gate of heaven, since he wants the salvation of everybody. Paul puts it this way: “[God] desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
Every authentic child of God knows that heaven and communion with God is the final destiny God plans for his children. The question is not whether the gate of heaven is narrow or not, but are we determined to make it to heaven? The homily you are reading now, and those you read on social media, as well as the homilies you listen to in the church, these present to you the opportunities to enter the kingdom of God, and how to go about doing so. Of course, God awaits your little efforts and mine, on account of which he will save us. How beautiful and apt the concluding sentence of our second reading, which is worth cherishing: “So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed” (Hebrews 12:13).
Assignment for the Week :
Look out for someone who has given up or about to give up on life and help them to see reasons why life is worth living.