Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Sometimes, Jesus says things that might strike us as more than a bit difficult. Today, he says in Luke 13:24: “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.”

As the sort of person that believes, with Paul, that we’re saved by God’s sovereign grace and not by works (lest any should boast!), my initial reaction is that what Jesus says here is pretty challenging…and pretty gloomy. I mean: is Jesus really intending to preach works righteousness? Is Jesus really suggesting that salvation is a function of our striving and not of our relaxing into the grace of the One who freely gives us salvation as a gift? If salvation depends on our striving, then surely we’re doomed: how could we ever be said to do or to strive enough? Is Jesus really setting up expectations we couldn't possibly fulfill? This narrow door appears to be impossibly narrow...why would God make it so difficult?

Happily, works righteousness isn’t on Jesus’ mind at all here. But that doesn’t mean that what he says is any less challenging. The Greek word for “strive” in this passage carries with it a sense of an athletic struggle, and the word for “try” means something more like “investigate” or “look into” or “search out.” What Jesus is asking us to do here, then, is to commit to a struggle the way an athlete commits to their sport, the way a wrestler commits to a match. We’re being asked to bring our whole selves—our bodies, souls and spirits—to a sort of contest that demands of us nothing less than our whole selves. It’s not enough to watch and wait from the sidelines; it’s not enough to seek or search if we will never commit to what we find…or if we will never consent to be found.

But with what or for what are we struggling? Here’s what I think: I think we’re struggling to love. We’re struggling to understand what it means to be called to love and to serve; we’re struggling to get out of the narrow straights of prejudice and preconceived notions we might have of who and what is worthy of love; we’re struggling by grace to undo in ourselves and in the world around us the systems and ideologies of oppression and dehumanization that stand in the way of Love and Love’s reign; we’re struggling to get out of the way of grace, so that grace can transform us and use us as agents of Love’s renewal of the world.

Friend, the narrowness of the door isn’t a sign of God’s desire to exclude people or keep folks out: it’s a sign of how narrow our own perception is of the wideness of God’s mercy. Indeed, if as Jesus says later in verse 29 that “people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God,” then it’s not God that’s preventing access to the eschatological feast (look at the generosity of the invitation!)…it’s us. And we’re being called to struggle with all our being against our habit of trying to narrow the horizons of God’s mercy.

With what narrow doors are you called to strive today? With what narrowness of heart does God call you to struggle? Whatever challenge to love you face today, know that God gives you the Spirit’s own strength with which to struggle—receive it with your whole being, let it love in you, let it love through you, let it strive in you for love's sake to the greater glory of God!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+