Homily 21 Sunday, Luke 13:22-30
 
At this point in Luke’s gospel Jesus is traveling through Galilee on his way to Jerusalem to his destination, Calvary.  He still has much to teach.  He is engaging in what many say is the theme of Luke’s gospel: that is, the Kingdom of God will not be what we expect.  It will overturn our expectations. Everything will be reversed. Money, power, privilege on earth will count for nothing in heaven. You can’t buy your way into God’s kingdom. And those in this life whose everyday is a challenge, is a struggle, those who live on the margins, at the edges of society, the poor, the outcasts, the refugees, will find themselves at the head of the heavenly banquet table. 
 
It was quite a shock to many Jewish leaders and many of their followers to see Jesus eating with sinners, conversing with Samaritans, and hanging out with prostitutes and even the hated tax collectors.  Jesus exemplifies that everyone, that is everyone, productive and successful, unproductive, unsuccessful, is deeply loved by God, and is vastly important to Father Son and Holy Spirit. 
 
But we have a question posed today in our reading: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” The person is asking for a number. Half saved? 10 0percent? 20? But for God we are not numbers.  As Pope Francis has 3said, “We are not numbers; we are important, indeed we are the most important thing to Him; even if we are sinners, we are what is closest to his heart.”  God loves us and yearns for our return love.  His only Son died in agony for all peoples and he asks that we love him and love his creation, all of it. But as the song goes and echoed by Jesus in our reading today: It Ain’t Easy...It ain’t easy to get to heaven...”
 
And so we have the image of the narrow gate as THE entrance into heaven.  Only essentials will get in.  A person carrying lots of possessions will not fit through the narrow door.  Jesus is saying how little possessions we really need to be with him. With Jesus we can live in simplicity. 
 
What’s our baggage that won’t fit through the narrow door? What do we carry to give us a sense of self-importance?
 
St. Ignatius says there are three things that prevent us from being with God, three things that prevent us from really living the good life: obsessions with wealth, obsessions with honor, obsessions with pride. 
 
Jesus later in this gospel, and in Mark and Matthew, uses the image of the eye of the needle, that’s its easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man get into heaven. In those days the eye of the needle was a small passage through a city wall that allowed sheep to pass through but nothing like a camel. 
 
So the wealthy must be careful to not let their possessions rule their life to the detriment of those who are poor, who are hungry, who struggle to find food and shelter. 
 
Obsessions with honor: demanding others look up to us because we HAVE to be first; we HAVE to be the best, our clothes must be expensive and our look must be superior to all.
 
Obsessions with pride: we are in total charge of our lives, leaving less space for God and his lowly people.
 
These three obsessions prevent us entrance through the narrow door, the happy door. We need little to be truly happy. What we need is love, charity, compassion for the lowly, that is the sick, the poor, the lost, the homeless, those in prisons and jails, compassion for those we dislike because they sound funny, dress funny, and in our opinion act funny.  You know what I mean when I say “funny,” they are different from me in look and speech. 
 
Jesus asks us to meet him at the entrance of the narrow door and to be less cluttered so we can walk with him, be with him as we live our lives in preparation for entrance through the narrow door into divine eternity. 
 
And Jesus says we will be surprised when we see, in our opinion, the strangest of people moving with us. As he says all types of people, from the north, the south, the east, the west, will be joining us at the narrow door and will pass right in. 
 
Jesus here warns us against any false sense of privilege or entitlement.  His listeners in this gospel passage may have dropped their jaws when they heard Jesus say this: What! Gentiles! Pagans! We must not be like this gospel crowd, believing that we can be comfortable in our belief because we believe in God, because we say our prayers, that God is obliged to save us. What counts for passage through the narrow door is not our past accomplishments, successes and even religious exploits, but being with Jesus at all times in humility, and through compassion and actions to relieve the burdens of the poor and lowly.  As we heard Mary say this month: “He has scattered the proud in their conceit, he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.” Mary gets it.  To be with Jesus, to get through his narrow door, is to have tried all your life, at every moment, to live the life of Jesus, in total compassion for his people and his earth.  And Jesus knows that sometimes we will fail and fail miserably, that we have brought hurt and anxiety to family, friends and/or strangers.  This is where his love for us comes in.  He died for us, for our sins, and is ready to forgive us for his has empowered his Church to forgive our sins upon our sincere sorrow and penance. 
 
And he says, get right up after your failings and go again and do all you can, TO STRIVE to enter through the narrow door.  In the original Greek the word for strive is “agonizesthe” meaning to fight, to compete, to make every effort.  It was often used as an athletic term. Every successful athlete and for that matter every musician, singer, artist dedicate themselves with a daily commitment to training for the grand performance or game, and so we must have that passion for salvation through a commitment to be like Jesus every day, every hour, every minute, no matter where we are, no matter who we are with.  This gospel makes it clear that our the future of our eternity depends on our encounter with Christ.  It’s not enough to know Jesus, not enough to claim to have spent time with him. The rich man was condemned because he did not help Lazarus the beggar.  Jesus tells us people are saved or condemned as per their tending to the needs of the vulnerable, that is the sick, the poor, the homeless, thee prisoner, and how we respond to their needs will be the measure of the final judgement we receive. We will stand or fall on how we have responded to the cries to the poor and needy, no matter their race, their color, their religion, their citizenship. 
 
Our Father wants all to pass through his narrow door. He, through Jesus, conveys to us his hope that we all will see the urgency and the anguish we must all have to pass through his door. He wants no one to perish and wishes all to have repentance. He wants us so much that his Son came to earth and passed through his own anguish and suffering for us.  Jesus gave us his Father’s calling, his inviting, his courting of us as his beloved. May we all have this divine sense of urgency for our salvation.