A Mercifully Short Sunday Sermon

“Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able." (Lk 13:22)

Strive to enter by the narrow gate. It grates against post-modernist Marcusian ears, against the culturally ascendant air we breathe  because "narrow gate" sounds dangerously like narrow-minded, and so bigoted, intolerant and hateful.

"After all," says our Ivy League uneducated friend, "I've got my truth, you've got yours. Coexist!"

What a broad path and it sounds alluring; so free and tolerant, so very narrative. But let's apply this logic to mathematics. Imagine a classroom full of young children, pronouns mixed. Their teacher asks, "You have two rainbows in the sky and you add another two rainbows, how many rainbows are there?"

An impetuous youngster raises zhir hand, "One!" A pensive girl, she/hers, utters "three," another adventurer exclaims four, another eight and an enthusiastic child offers up "eighty eight!" The teacher beams, "Children, all of you are right!" And each receives a delicious unicorn cupcake, don't say Lambeth Conference.

But look what's happened. In the name of freedom, these poor children have been denied the liberty of doing mathematics because they haven't been allowed to go through the narrow gate of correct addition. The logic of salvation's similar.

As with 2+2=4, there's one solution to paradise and that's Christ; He is the gate. Only He unites humanity to God, He alone is true God and true Man. He alone offers the perfect, sinless, atoning sacrifice to the Father for the forgivness of sins and He, and only He, rises victorious from the grave only to give His resurrected life to the faithful.

So to get to heaven, the end or τέλος of desire, we have to go through Christ, the door, the gate of the sheep, the way, the truth and the life. And we must strive to do so, to make the conscious, deliberate effort to conform our lives to His.

The Savior's grace, frightened and gentle readers, will supply the deficiency.

Here endeth the Lesson,

LSP

Sunday Sermon

 

Strive to enter by the narrow gate, says Christ, and woe to those who don't,  "I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.” Depart and go where? To that place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, to Hell. Terrifying, not least to the wicked pharisees who presumed on salvation by virtue of birthright and letter of the Law, but nonetheless hated God. 

"They are enemies of the cross," blasts St. Paul to the Philippians, "Their end is destruction. Their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame." As with the pharisee so with us in what was once Christendom. Dominant cultural orthodoxy (DCO) rejects the crucified Christ, the narrow gate, as far too narrow minded.

So in the interest of broad mindedness, tolerance and liberty we're told there is no one truth, religious or otherwise, only opinion. You know the mantra, I've got my truth, you've got yours. Welcome to the age of narrative and note, narrative and fiction go hand in hand. No wonder we're deluged at every level with a barrage of lies.

That aside, the whole project sounds so rainbow utopia, so listening to John Lennon's Imagine on continuous loop. How very tolerance, I've got my truth, you've got yours. But hold on, there is no truth only opinion translates to, "Reality, truth, is whatever I decide it to be."

Welcome to satanic pride. Reality, truth, is whatever you decide it to be, emphasis on you decide. And what happens. Sure, you're the master of the universe, so get out there and own all the kingdoms of the world, greed. Fill your belly with the surfeit, stones to bread, and while you're at it throw yourself off the Temple and dare the God you don't believe in to do his worst. Reject the narrow way in favor of the broad. 

Go right ahead, just don't be surprised when you're locked out of paradise on account of your opposition to it. Wailing and gnashing of teeth? Don't say Yoko Ono. Instead, return to the Lord with a humble and contrite heart.

God bless,

LSP