Enter through the Narrow Gate June 27

Piety

Jesus, isn’t the Golden Rule enough? Jewish and pagan cultures for thousands of years have followed that in one fashion or another.

Instead, you implore us to go further than that – to take the narrow path that leads to life. Please dwell with us and within us to give us strength to meet the challenges you have placed before us – to live and love in a community with the obedience of faith while following your commandments.

Make us worthy to be your New Jerusalem. Help us to study your words of liberating love and the call to live according to it. Amen.

Study

“Enter through the narrow gate.” Matthew 7:14

My how Jesus changes EVERYTHING! No longer do we see a God who would send angels down to wipe out an enemy. Now, the Son of God calls upon us to take the path of peace. That “pre-emptive” strike against one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp would not be the narrow gate of the Good News.

Jesus starts in a very familiar place for those who are listening to him – traditional Jewish law that is what we now call the Golden Rule. “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.” Conversely, do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you. By using familiar scripture and law, Jesus can augment it with the new lessons he teaches.

Then, we get the Jesus Effect – the added challenge of his Good News of love and friendship. Enter through the narrow gate. Jesus knows that love is a challenge in the world. Because he dwells within us, he does not want us to take the path of least resistance. He wants our lives to be fortified by our faith commitment to His message.

Jesus challenges each of us to enter through the narrow gate – to challenge and question the dominant aspects of our culture (violence, consumerism, etc.) and to accept his message of love. The basis of the narrow gate in the New Testament is love and life, not violence and vengeance as in the story from 2 Kings.

So, if Jesus dwells in us, protects us and strengthens us, we become his city, His New Jerusalem. He protects us by offering his own life to save us. How much more should we protect Jesus within us from any further destruction!

How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few. Even though the narrow path may be harder to find and harder to walk along, let us take the narrow path of piety, study and action together.

Action

We have all been challenged by the weather lately. It is pretty easy to give in to your impatience and emotions – pent up for hours in a traffic jam or cleaning up a flooded basement – and explode in anger. Especially when we are grid locked and somebody cuts us off or that new pump does not work.

Maybe this is a little reminder that it will take us a while to make it to and through the narrow gate. Be patient today as we cope with the next deluge. Let’s hope that path of Jesus is as crowded with sincere disciples as our local roads.

And when the daily challenges are too great, repeat a phrase from today’s Good News. Enter through the narrow gate.