Ellen Noble and I used to swap poems. One of my favorite poets to share with her was Rainer Maria Rilke. In response to a letter from a young person who seem full of doubt and confusion Rilke wrote this: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Giving someone the answers is not nearly as important as having people come to the answers themselves, to live into the answers. That was the teaching style of Jesus as well. Jesus very seldom gave a straight answer to a question. He told a story, used an illustration, refocused the issue – anything but a direct response. Who is my neighbor? “A man on the way to Jericho was attacked by robbers?” Should we pay the Roman tax or not? “Show me the coin of tribute. Whose head is it?” Are you the one we are waiting for or should we look for another? “Go and report: the blind see, the lame walk, the poor have good news preached to them.” So we should not be surprised at the interchange found in Luke 13. A direct question: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Yes, a few or no, many. Jesus as was his custom answered the question obliquely. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” Jesus wanted the questioner to look more deeply into the issue and learn how to generate the correct answer on his own. Jesus trusts us to be able to come with the right answer. Faith is not so much a matter of having the answers, but more a matter of living the questions.
Notice Jesus’ response to the question “how many”: “Strive. Strive to enter.” Jesus was not interested in how many will be saved but in how to be saved. The word translated as “strive” in Luke 13 has as its root in Greek “agon” from which derives the English word agony. It suggests a great effort, a mighty contest, a struggle to reach a goal. Associated ideas would include the training that an athlete has to go through, the time studying a student must put in, the military-style “discipline” referred to in the epistle that shapes and forms character. Striving in these various ways serve as a reminder not to presume. Even if you are an elite athlete at the Olympics if you don’t work at your training you’ll be out of the running. Even after you’ve been admitted to be an engineer at a prestigious school, if you don’t study you’ll be home before you know it. This business of striving, of keeping at it, is important in the spiritual life as well. Jesus warns his listeners not to presume on their heritage: “we ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets” is not sufficient for salvation. We can’t presume on God either by saying, I’m a Catholic, I was baptized, I go to Church on Sunday. Jesus says we have to strive to enter. Our Lord implies that they will be many in number who will be saved. “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.” It’s just not the ones you would expect.
What does it look like when we strive to enter? How do we, to heed he admonition of the epistle, strengthen our drooping hands and weak knees and make straight paths for our feet? It’s not with more – I’ll pray more, come to church more, read the bible more, say more prayers and that will be how I’ll strive to enter. We know from experience that more does not always work in life. Yes, an athlete needs to train but if she does more than she should injuries and strains and cramps are the result. You need to train better, not more. A student needs to study but more studying can produce diminishing results. Your brain gets fried, you can’t concentrate, you get confused. You need to study smarter, not more. There is something analogous in the spiritual life. We can’t batter our way into heaven with a flood of prayers. God wishes to bless us. We don’t need to convince God. We are already named and claimed by God. I’m reminded of the two boys who were spending the night at grandma’s right before Christmas. The littlest said his night prayers at the top of his voice. “Please God, send me a bicycle.” His brother said, “You don’t have to shout. God isn’t deaf.” To which the younger boy answered, “Yeah, I know God isn’t deaf, but Grandma is.” Don’t treat God like Grandma.
The way to strive to enter is not with more but with less, less of ourselves and our plans. We have ideas about how things should go. I’ll be healthy, I’ll have someone special to love me, I’ll live a comfortable existence, I’ll be honored and respected, I and the people I love will have a nice long life. When things don’t go according to that plan we get upset and can even blame God. We must cease to impose our plans on God and learn to trust that God’s plan is for the best. The narrow gate we must strive to enter goes through Gethsemane. We should learn to pray as Jesus did, “Not my will but thine be done.” Seek first the Kingdom of God, Jesus said, and these things we be given you. Strive to trust that God is smarter than I am. That is the way through the narrow gate. That sets our place at the table of the kingdom.
