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Larry R. Hayward
August 15, 2004
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Narrow Gate
Matthew 7:13-14

For the past fourteen years, I have been, for better or worse, the primary person to interpret the Christian faith in your midst. Today I will try to place in context my particular understanding and experience of Christian faith. By doing so, I hope you might better understand what my preaching and teaching have offered your faith and what my preaching and teaching has
de-emphasized. I share these major and minor notes of my faith with you so that you might grow in yours.

Let us pray. Lord, we believe; help thou our unbelief. Amen.

I.

(a)

For many people, the primary appeal of Christianity is that it is a system. Many people believe that Christianity offers

• A coherent view of the world
  
  
• A set of ethics consistent with its worldview
  
  
• And an effective way of communicating and enforcing its ethics.

The best familiar example of Christianity as a system is the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church views all life as scared. Therefore, in its official teaching, it

Opposes abortion, mercy killing, and the
death penalty
And tolerates war in only a few limited instances.

As we have seen in several national elections, including the current race for President, to be a "good Catholic," one must subscribe to and follow the teachings of the church — the teachings of the system — even when one is running for public office.

(b)

For others, Christianity is less a system than an experience.

The dominant mode of Christian faith in our country is "evangelical." The largest denomination representing an evangelical experience of faith is Southern Baptist. Evangelical Christianity encompasses people who have had a "born again" experience, who are certain of the presence of Christ in their lives and of their salvation in the life to come, and who can often name the date, time, and place they first encountered Christ, the date, time, and place they were saved.

For such Christians, faith is primarily a deep, meaningful, personal experience of Jesus Christ.

(c)

Still for others, Christianity is primarily through which God moves for peace and justice in the world.

In our country, this strand of Christianity impacted the abolitionist movement, women's suffrage, prohibition, and civil rights movement. It animates many anti-war efforts. It encompasses the Social Gospel of the early twentieth century and Liberation Theology of the late twentieth century.

(d)

All three strands of Christian faith are legitimate. Each is historically significant. Each is represented in our congregation in some way. Many people have elements of all three in their faith. Yet neither expression is complete.

As you have listened to me preach and teach, and as you have received pastoral care from me for decade and a half, you have heard only echoes — or traces — of these three expressions. This is because I simply do not fit into any of these categories.

• I admire — and sometimes envy — coherent systems such as Roman Catholicism; but systems never seem to account for all human experiences. Therefore, in my mind, they come up short.
  
  
• I was reared in a part of the country where the "born again" model of Christian faith is strongest. I have had several intense, personal experiences of the presence of Christ in my life. But I never had an encounter that seems as strong, as certain, as "born again" Christians describe. Furthermore, I was nurtured in a congregation that helped me understand that I am still Christian even though I have not had a dramatic conversion experience. I have spent my entire life in a denomination that appreciates the life of the mind and teaches me t "God is greater than our hearts[1]," that God is present even when our hearts do not feel God's presence.
  
  
• And as I have shared with you many times, as a teenager, I was deeply moved by the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in my home city. The support white Presbyterian pastors — and some elders — gave him, the personal price they paid with their congregations and their businesses, showed at an early age faith that was courageous and concerned about national and world events. Yet even though I was inspired by this activist impulse in faith, I soon realized that I am simply not an activist, not a crusader, not a leader of a cause for social change. It is simply not a part of my personality.

Each strand of Christianity — Christianity as a system, Christianity as a "born again" experience, Christianity as a movement for social justice — fits me only about as well as a glove at an O. J. Simpson trial. Therefore, you have only seen smidgeons of these during my ministry here. Instead, you have seen something different from yet I believe common to all three.

II.

Many years ago, one of the theologically-trained people in our congregation remarked to me: "The people of First Presbyterian seem to respond well to the Christian existentialism of your preaching."

"Existentialism" is a big word. You add "Christian" in front of it and it gets complicated. But I think I know what the person was saying.

Existentialism focuses on how we experience life in the choices we make at the core of our existence.

Christian existentialism maintains that we encounter and know Jesus Christ as we wrestle with life in our most personal struggles, in our most significant decisions and our most trying or beautiful moments. "Work our your own salvation in fear and trembling[2]," writes the Apostle Paul, surely one of the first Christian existentialists.

What energizes me as a human being and as a Christian is seeing the challenges people face at the core of their existence, how they experience the presence of God in those challenges, and how they respond both to those challenges and to that presence with courage and grace. Whenever one of you calls me to be with you during a crisis, my adrenaline flows because I am overwhelmed by the power of God and by the human courage I normally see in such situations.

Amy Bloom ends one of her short stories by having the main character say, "I have made the best and happiest ending that I can, in this world, made it out of the flax and netting and leftover trim of someone else's life, I know, but I made it to keep the innocent safe and the guilty punished, and I made it as the world should be and not as I have found it." Though Bloom is Jewish, she is onto Christian existentialism: work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, make the world as it should be, and not as we have found it. [3]

III.

My Christian existentialism has intellectual roots as well as roots in human experience and pastoral care.

• Hemingway's definition of courage —"grace under pressure" — is one root for me.
  
  
• So is Kierkegaard's concept of "truth as subjectivity." [4]
  
  
• Abraham's willingness to "suspend the ethical"[5] and — for the sake of faith — to sacrifice his son Isaac[6] against all known standards of decency makes him a forerunner of Christian existentialism.
  
  
• Bonhoeffer's willingness as a Christian to participate in an assassination plot against Hitler is an example of a Christian wrestling with the core issues of his native land, of human civility, of what it means to follow Christ in times turned upside down.[7]
  
  
• Karl Barth's implication that in rare instances, we might be called to set aside a commandment of the "Second Table —"Do not kill, do not steal" — in order to fulfill the commandments of the "First Table" —"Honor God" — is an example of wrestling with issues at the core of our existence, an example of Christian existentialism. [8]

Paul, Hemingway, Kierkegaard, Abraham, Bonhoeffer, Barth — each in his own way a Christian existentialist.

IV.

I find our passage today consistent with Christian existentialism. It comes at the end of the first major section of Jesus' teaching in Matthew — the Sermon on the Mount.[9]

"Enter through the narrow gate," Jesus says. "The gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it."

But he then says: "The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it."[10]

(a)

A lot of religious teaching and preaching in our country offers a wide gate and an easy road. But I believe entering the wide gate and following the easy road often leads to destruction. It sometimes gives religious sanction to avoiding core issues that that lie at the heart of our lives.

• The rule my say "Thou shalt not kill," but what do you do if you live in a nation that has the power to stop genocide?
  
  
• The formula may say: "Heterosexuality is the norm," but what do you do if at the core of your existence your find yourself loving a person of the same gender?
  
  
• The system may say: "You must be born again," but what if your emotions are not given to dramatic experiences? What if at the core of your existence your head rules your heart?

Few choose the hard road. That's part of what makes it hard. Yet the hard road promises life, and in my experience, it delivers.

(b)

Notice Jesus says that we "take" the easy road, but we "find" the hard road.

"Taking" is easier than "finding."

• I take a box of Cheerios off the shelf at Hy-Vee.
  
  
• I must search out, ask for help, find tofu, flax seed, cream for my coffee.

"Finding" is always more difficult than "taking."

We "take" the easy road; we "find" the hard road.

Over the years of my ministry with you,
I have asked you to find many things.

More often than not,
You have searched, you have hunted, you have found.
I am proud of you for hunting,
Proud of what you have found.

I pray that through it all,
You have come to experience
The love of God,
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
At the core of your existence.

I know that
In your midst,
I have come to experience,
Come to find,
This Holy Trinity.

Amen.

First Presbyterian Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org

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