Sermons

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The Dimensions of the Doorway
June 19 , 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Luke 13:22-30

This is a big day for me. It’s Father’s Day, when I get to both honor my own dad, who with my mom continues to live in the same house I grew up in here on Queen Anne. I get to revel in my own kids, now between 13 and 18 years old.

Today also happens to be our wedding anniversary, #23, and I’m so grateful today for our love and friendship that started all the way back with a date at “the Barn Dance” at Queen Anne High School in 1975! And, it’s my last time in worship with you before leaving next week on a 3-month sabbatical.

I never even dreamed before about such a thing as a sabbatical, and it took us several months to even get our arms around such a thing. I’m very excited for our plans. As I wrote in the Bethany Briefs, there’s really three main pieces to the time:

a) we’ll be going with the kids to spend several weeks in London.

b) I’ll have most of a month up on Whidbey Island in August, during which I have a writing project I’ll be working on.

c) And then in September, I’ll be taking 3 trips to California, Montana and Iowa, to spend some intentional time with three people who have been mentors to me in faith and in ministry…people you’ve heard me talk about frequently: Dale Bruner, Eugene Peterson and Bruce Murphy, who was the previous pastor here at Bethany.

I’m so, so grateful that our community here would give me the time to recharge, and such an amazing opportunity to do these things. So I thank you.

So you’d think that given all these big things for me today, I would have a Bible passage to preach on that is sort of a feel good, warm, message to exit on. How about a nice, gentle “grace” sermon to leave on, Lord?

No such luck.

We’ve been pretty much plowing through the gospel of Luke now for 35 weeks, and today we come to a place where Jesus is asked a question that many people ask today:

“Lord, will only a few be saved?”

My grandparents lived in a tiny, tiny town in rural Idaho. When we were younger, my brother and I used to go and visit pretty much every summer for a couple of weeks. We experienced lots of things that city kids wouldn’t normally.

• We learned a bit about farming, and sometimes walked through fields of golden wheat with the heads so heavy with grain they were starting to bend over.
• We watched the combines mow down the wheat and spit it into the truck. We walked to town and visited my grandma at the post office where she worked on the two block main street.
• We felt the cool of the evening when the sun was setting after a hot day, and smelled the smells of open places and livestock and growing things.

My grandparents’ lived in a modest little house in town, and they, like every single person in town at that time…never, ever locked their door. Even if they went away on vacation, they just left the door unlocked. Blew our minds, coming from the city!

That unlocked door was a symbol, really, of the welcome of their house. Up the two back porch steps, open the creaky back screen door that always slammed behind you, turn the nob and walk into the house. It was always open. Maybe a picture for you of heaven.

It’s a nice picture, isn’t it? Which may be one reason that when Jesus continues teaching us about the kingdom of God, it is so grating to find that he says “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” We resist the idea of narrow doors, doors that are not open with welcome to anyone who approaches.

“Jesus, will only a few be saved?”

Notice that Jesus doesn’t actually answer the question…or does he?

“Jesus, will only a few be saved?”

It’s a question we still ask today. It’s not so much a question as to “How many?” but it sounds like this: “Jesus, will these people be saved? Will those people? Will this person? Will I? In the end, will everyone?” It’s not about the number, it’s about who.

Before and after becoming a pastor, this question came up frequently. “Who will be saved? What about the people in China, or Africa or Indonesia…who have never heard the gospel? What about people of other religions? What about people in my family who say they believe…sort of? Isn’t eternity without God –hell- an outdated concept? And in the end, won’t all people be saved anyway?”

I cannot read the gospel and say “in the end it won’t matter.” It’s everywhere.

I cannot read the gospel without running into Jesus saying, “I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

I cannot read the gospel without hearing Jesus say “I am the gate ( or “door,” same word) for the sheep…anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.”

I cannot read the gospel, this gospel, without hearing Jesus say “Many will try to enter and not be able.” It’s surprisingly, and perhaps disappointingly, narrow.

Often, what I tell people is this:

First of all, I don’t decide who is saved and who is not. Nor do you. That is not our job, thank God, not our decision.

Second, what I know for sure is that scripture teaches that the way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. That is what I can know. That is what I teach. That is what I try to live. Now, can I hope for other things? Envision them, dream of them, wonder about them?

Can I hope that God’s grace is bigger than I think it is? For sure. Everytime I think I have God’s grace figured out, it’s always bigger than I realized, always more powerful than I thought.

I can hope that God works in ways beyond what I see or read or understand. I can hope that when my friend’s father lay unconscious and dying in a quiet hospital room in Ballard, that Ballard God met him in a way we never saw evidence of.

I can hope that in comas, at the point of death, who knows? Maybe even after the point of death, Jesus Christ has met someone and provided a way. Can I hope those things? Could they possibly be true? Certainly.

But because I cannot know them from the scripture…I intend to follow Jesus Christ with everything I have. I want to live out the grace of Christ in every area of my life. I will share with everyone I can…in word, or in deed…the news of freedom and eternity in Christ. I’ll tell them what I know. I’ll tell them about Christ the Door.

“Strive to enter through the narrow door…for many, I tell you, will try to enter and not be able.”

Doors appear quite a bit in the scripture. I think I read every single verse of scripture that mentions a door this week. Sometimes, of course, doors are just a descriptive part of the story. But actually not very often! It’s amazing how often a door is clearly a key transition point, an access: between heaven and earth, between good and evil, or between eternity and hell.

For instance, in prayer Jesus says “knock and the door shall be opened to you,” the access to God available. Or when the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples, including Thomas the doubter, “the doors were shut…but Jesus came and stood among them,” the barrier overcome. Or in Revelation (4:1), when John receives his vision, he says “After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open…”

Doors in the Bible are often a way to kingdom of God, here on earth and ultimately in heaven’s eternity. So, surely Jesus would talk about a wide open door to heaven. Surely Jesus, the very embodiment of God’s grace would rip the door off the hinges and throw heaven open wide!

“Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.”

We resist the idea of narrow doors. Previous generations talked much more about the heights of heaven, and the depths of hell. Previous generations grappled much more with the idea that God was also a demanding God, that it was in fact possible to displease God, that it was in fact possible to choose to turn away from God and go one’s own way, and that there were consequences to doing so. Eternal ones. Ones that brought weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

I stumbled on a book this week that reminded me of this. The book is from the 1920’s, by a man named James Weldon Johnson called God’s Trombones.

“God’s trombones” are the black preachers of earlier generations, whose sheer volume and the ability to use the rhythm and nuances of the human voice reminded people of the versatility and power of the trombone.

This little book has seven “sermons in verse,” the first of which is called “Listen, Lord- A Prayer.” Now, I’m clearly not a trombone…but let me read the first two parts of this prayer, and especially in the second part, you listen for the language of eternity that makes us squirm:

O Lord, we come this morning
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before thy throne of grace.
O Lord –this morning-
Bow our hearts beneath our knees,
And our knees in some lonesome valley.
We come this morning-
Like empty pitchers to a full fountain,
With no merits of our own.
O Lord –open up a window of heaven,
And lean out far over the battlements of glory,
And listen this morning.

Lord, have mercy on proud and dying sinners-
Sinners hanging over the mouth of hell,
Who seem to love their distance well.
Lord – ride by this morning-
Mount your milk-white horse,
And ride-a this morning-
And in your ride, ride by old hell,
Ride by the dingy gates of hell,
And stop poor sinners in their headlong plunge.

Jesus says,

“Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and not be able.”

We resist the idea of narrow doors.

Once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us,” then in reply he will say to you, “I do not know where you come from.” … “You will begin to say “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!”

So what is it that would keep a person outside the door? Or maybe a better question is…what exactly might get a person through the narrow door?

The most common answer to the question is: right behavior.

If I live a certain way, if I look a certain way, I’ll get through even the narrow door. If my visible vices are not too strong, if I don’t drink too much or don’t look much greedier than most around me, if I tithe, if I look like a good evangelical conservative or a good social liberal, I’ll be able to squeeze through.

Eugene Peterson’s latest book has a fabulous old Greek myth in it of a man named Procrustes. Procrustes was a motel keeper along a well-traveled road in Greece. A nice bed-and-breakfast kind of place, and Procrustes was a grandfatherly host who liked things neat and well kept.

He wanted folks to leave better than they arrived, walking out as rested specimens of Greek perfection. After dinner, Procrustes would show his guests to their rooms. And…he had a bed in his house that he claimed had the unique property of exactly fitting the frame of whoever slept in it. Amazing.

What Procrustes did not tell people was how this could happen. After the guest was asleep, Procrustes would enter the room, and make the person fit the bed. If the person was too short, he would stretch them on a rack until they filled the bed! If they were too tall, he would cut off whatever hung over the bed! Everyone, one way or another, was made to fit. They fit the dimensions perfectly. But…they were still the same people.

The most common answer, I think, for who can fit through the narrow door is: those who look the part, or act the part…you’re in. But…it’s not what Jesus says.

Others thought that familiarity with Jesus would do the trick:

“Lord…we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.”

Or the way The Message says it,

“But we’ve known you all our lives!”

I’m not sure what that would sound like today, and it’s a little scary to imagine. Because I’m afraid it would rain fire down on the church.

“Lord, I was a member of Second Presbyterian for years. Led the building campaign. Lord, we were around you a lot.

Lord, we used to get involved in theological discussions.

Lord we took the right stance on the controversial issues, the godly stance.

Lord, we came every week for communion.”

And Jesus says:

“Get away from me, all you evildoers.”

Ron Sider, who years ago wrote Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger that we’ve read in several classes at Bethany recently published another book called The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. The subtitle is: “Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World?”

He takes the evangelical church to task in a big way. Which means he takes himself to task, as an evangelical Christian, and he takes me to task.

The book is very simple. The first chapter looks at these issues: materialism and poverty, divorce, sexual disobedience (including pornography), racism, and physical abuse within marriage relationships. In every case, most statistical studies will say that the difference in behavior in these areas between people inside the church and those outside…is negligible. Almost no difference.

“Lord, we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.”

“I do not know where you come from…away from me you evildoers”

It’s not the dimensions of the door, in the end, that we are to notice. It’s knowing the Lord of the house. In the end, knowing the One who stands by the door, Jesus the Christ, is what matters.

Knowing Jesus. Not knowing about Jesus. There’s a million ways to do that. But knowing Him personally, opening our hearts to his leading. And knowing Him will change how we live.

This week I thought, “I’m going to be gone for three solid months. What will this last sermon be about?” I imagined myself talking about one poignant social issue or another that I would leave ringing in your ears. But this text changed that. And I’m glad it did.

Because just in case something happens on my sabbatical, and I am moved to take a church in rural eastern Iowa…or I get run over crossing a street in London because I was looking the wrong way, this is what I’d want to ring in your ears from me:

When all is said and done, argued about and theorized, hoped for and lobbied against…in the end, what matters is whether you know Jesus Christ. He is the door. And we must follow Him.

And surprisingly, people will come from east and west, from north and south, to sit at table and eat…in the kingdom of God. Let us pray.

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