Discipline And The Joy Of Following Christ

Twenty-first Sunday in Course 2025

As a teacher, I used to tell my students there’s a good way to find out what the teacher finds important in a lesson. Here’s the rule: write down anything the teacher says more than once. That’s what is likely to be on the test. Today St. Luke shares a question and an unexpected answer. Somebody asks if only a few people will be saved. Jesus doesn’t answer that question. He tells the listeners to “strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many will try to enter but. . .” Here I have to go back to the Greek, which is what the church in the first century would have heard. The people who can’t get in are not healthy enough. Their weakness arises from their own decisions not to build up their internal character, their spirit, enough to open the gate to the kingdom. Instead, they wail “Lord, open the door for us.” Now here’s the test. The Lord says, “I do not know where you are from.” They object: “but we ate and drank before you and you taught in our wide streets.” Then, for the second time, He says “I do not know where you are from,” followed by aphistete apo ego ergates adikias. “Get away from me, workers of evil.” Then all the patriarchs and prophets will be admitted to the wedding banquet of the Lamb and the Church, and people from all the points of the compass, all over the world, just as Isaiah had predicted 2500 years earlier.

What Jesus is saying, in short, is, “You aren’t from me, so why do you think you can join me in the kingdom?” Jesus, as judge, will have the ability and right to peer into our soul and see every action, every thought. If there is no faith, only fear, He will know. If we approached the communion table without discerning and repenting of our sins, He knows. If we have come from a life of service to others, of frequent prayer and community worship, in brief, a sacramental life, it will be clear. Those who are cast out will not have to be thrown out by the angels; they will depart for perdition themselves, because they know their presence in God’s kingdom will not be fitting.

The good lesson in the Gospel is that Satan has worked all through human history to scatter the followers of God’s Law, to make them fight each other and flee from unity. God, however, wills all humans to be saved. He wants to bring us together in one Body, the Body of His Son, Jesus Christ. His chesed and emeth are reliable, as the psalm says. God is love and wants to bring all together in that love to praise Him forever. So why is God’s intention for us not happening, and not bringing His loving intent for us into the consciousness of all on earth?

In the Letter to the Hebrews, we see the reason. Humans are lazy and self-centered, the result of original sin. We don’t want the discipline that makes us grow into images of Christ by grace. What child is left without discipline? The ones who ignore their lessons, ignore the law of loving God and neighbor, and grow physically without progressing spiritually. We must all accept discipline so that we will receive the “peaceful fruit of righteousness” owed to those who are trained by discipline. Yes, it may hurt for a while, but growing into images of Christ, and attracting dozens of other men and women to the path of righteousness and joy, is well worth the trouble, praise God. Amen.