21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today’s readings are all about who’s in and who’s out. Most of us, I would assume, like belonging to groups that give us an identity, and we are deeply hurt by being left out. Often, members of a club will deliberately aim to keep their membership small and keep the majority of people out of their club so that the few members who are in the club can feel special about belonging to an elite club. I’m told that it is notoriously difficult to pass the bar exam set by ZIALE (Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education). Few pass these exams on their first attempt, and many people require multiple attempts to pass and enter this elite club of legal practitioners in Zambia. To take an example a bit closer to home, I’m also told it can also be quite a process to be bloused in some of our parish sodalities. Now, far be it from me to suggest that the leaders of these sodalities deliberately make it hard for new members to join. Nevertheless, if any old woman is able to join the Catholic Woman’s league, then what’s the point of being a member? We must at least maintain standards. After all, didn’t Jesus encourage us to enter by the narrow gate? If it is hard to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, then shouldn’t we also make it hard to enter into the different groups of our Church? And yet, by inviting sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes to be part of his club, wasn’t Jesus trying to abolish all vestiges of elitism in the chosen people of God? Isn’t the sine-qua-non of the Kingdom of God the fact that all are welcome? How do we resolve this seeming paradox?

In today’s gospel we see someone come up to Jesus and ask him if only a few people will be saved. In order to understand Jesus’ response, we first have to understand the context that formed the background to this person’s question. We need to rewind all the way back to the Babylonian exile that took place in the year 587 BC. When the Babylonians deported the Israelites into captivity, they did not take the whole nation en-masse. They only took the strongest and most healthy portion of the population who would make good slaves. The rest of the people were left behind, and in the wake of the destruction and decimation caused by the invasion of the Babylonians and then the deportation of the strongest members of their clan, their unity as the people of God was severely compromised and they were less inclined to maintain the same strict observance of the law and especially observe the strict prohibition from intermingling with other peoples. Through intermarriage with other peoples they became lax in their observance of all the purity laws and contaminated the purity of their lineage. When those who had been deported to Babylon returned from exile some 60 years later, having strictly observed all the law, as often happens with a first generation diaspora who see their culture as the last link with the homeland they had been torn away from – they found their fellow tribesmen having fallen away from the law and the culture. These were the people that came to be known as the “the people of the land” – some of them were Samaritans and others were just called sinners. Those who had been deported and who had kept the faith pure and now returned to rebuild the Temple came to be known as “the remnant.” This pure “remnant” would form the kernel of the chosen people that God would use to restore the nation of Israel to its former glory. It is this idea of the “remnant people” that forms the background to this person’s question about whether only a few will be saved.

Instead engaging this question at the level of theoretical speculation regarding the arithmetic of salvation, Jesus gives an existential response directed at this person in particular: “strive to enter by the narrow door, for many will attempt but will not be able to.” How is this different from the elitism that we noted as being antithetical to the message of the gospel? A helpful image to discern this difference is to picture a castle where the King is holding a banquet. The main entrance to the castle would be a wide avenue with a big imposing door, guarded by the King’s guards. Only the VIPs, celebrities and high society who had invitation cards to the event would be allowed in. Getting access to the castle would not be based on merit but rather on who you know, and how much you are able to puff up your own ego. Now imagine another back door to the castle, hidden away, used by those who work in the kitchens of the castle. To enter through this narrow door, one would have to renounce all pretense of being important, and make oneself small. You wouldn’t be able to simply saunter through this narrow door, you would have to struggle to find it, as it would be well hidden. It is through such a door that Jesus invites his followers to enter the banquet.

People like the Pharisees and the scribes would have imagined themselves entering through the main wide door to the castle – holding the invitation card of their own credentials as being part of the remnant people. As the purest of the chosen people, the Pharisees and scribes would have imagined themselves the first to be saved. Imagine their shock hearing Jesus tell them that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. If what is needed to enter the King’s banquet is a chastened, humbled ego, small enough to fit through the narrow door, then the first to enter will be the prostitutes, sinners and tax collectors who have heard Jesus’ words and have repented. When the Pharisees finally realize that Jesus is the King’s Son, they might try to shout out to him – “we dined with you and heard you preach in our streets.” But Jesus wants to make it very clear that the Kingdom of God is not like an elite club, where knowing the right person will get you in. It’s not about who you know, but about what you do. Now you might respond and say – but this sounds like we have to earn our own salvation – that being saved is all about our own efforts to find the narrow door and get in – what about grace? If anything, I think that the point of this parable is precisely that salvation doesn’t come through our own efforts. The invitation cards that the Pharisees thought would give them first priority to the banquet were their credentials of their own holiness as part of the pure remnant who had kept the faith. What actually gets you through the narrow door is the humility to accept your own need of God’s grace. Paradoxically it is more difficult to surrender to God’s mercy that to try and go it alone and engineer your own salvation. Paradoxically the most difficult part of the spiritual life is to admit our need of God and deflate our own ego so that we can fit through the narrow door. The only elitism that is present in the Kingdom of God is that it is a small select group of have sufficient humility to recognize that they cannot earn their way into heaven. May we be counted among that number who know their need of God.

Questions for reflection

1. In what ways can I challenge the elitism that may have crept into groups that I belong to, be they secular or religious.
2. Where are the places in my life where I have most acknowledged my need of God?
3. Where are the places in my life where I am trying to engineer my own salvation?