The following homily was shared at our Sunday Evening Eucharist Service 8/24/25.

Jesus passed through towns and villages,
teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem.
Someone asked him,
"Lord, will only a few people be saved?"
He answered them,
"Strive to enter through the narrow gate,
for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter
but will not be strong enough.
After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door,
then will you stand outside knocking and saying,
'Lord, open the door for us.'
He will say to you in reply,
'I do not know where you are from.
And you will say,
'We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.'
Then he will say to you,
'I do not know where you are from.
Depart from me, all you evildoers!'
And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth
when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and all the prophets in the kingdom of God
and you yourselves cast out.
And people will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.
For behold, some are last who will be first,
and some are first who will be last." (Luke 13:22-30)

As Christians, we ought to be letting Christ narrow down our lives.

This passage always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I think it’s because Jesus issues a warning about the difficulty of salvation without giving a lot of clues as to what we, then, ought to do. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.” My question for Jesus here would be: What does being strong enough mean? To me this hearkens to all the different scriptures that talk about endurance and long-suffering and steadfastness of faith, and how do we develop these virtues except through discipline? Discipline is a necessary skill to have as a Christian, and I think that’s what's required to make it through the narrow gate.

When Jesus says that we should strive to go through the narrow gate, he means that we need to go ahead and be Christians all the way. To go through the narrow gate means deciding to simply do the right thing even when it’s hard. It means being honest when it would be easier to lie, or avoid the truth. It means spending time praying when you’d rather do something else. It means stepping boldly and humbly into conflict resolution, and confessing your sins to other Christians even though it’s embarrassing and you’re scared of what people will think of you. It means giving up your dreams of wealth and fame so you can do a good job of loving your neighbor. It means submitting to Jesus’ lordship, and acknowledging that he gets to tell you what to do with your life. In short, it means restricting your life to just living like a Christian and not leaving room for anything else. This is discipline incarnate. Most Christian practices require a measure of discipline, and for many we need it before we can even start.

I’ve been praying for a long time now. Not as long as others, but in my time I’ve learned a few things. First, it has to be in the morning, otherwise it’s far less likely to happen at all given the busyness of the day's work. This means getting up before you need to do anything else and making time for prayer. As you get older you are only going to get busier, which means it will only become more imperative that prayer happens as one of the first parts of the day. Second, a good 30 mins of physical activity will set you up to actually be focused and not falling asleep when you get up at the crack of dawn to do it. These two things are already extraordinarily difficult considering that most people fail to do them despite trying for most of their lives. Add in the fact that to actually get enough sleep to wake up to workout and to pray, you need to make sure you’re getting to bed on time the night before. I’m actually going to go even further- bear with me here. If you consistently miss nights of good sleep- say you stay up watching Youtube till 1 in the morning a couple nights one week- then it’s going to take 2 weeks of getting 8-9 hours of sleep before you wake up feeling rested. That means it can take weeks of preparation just to have a dedicated time to pray! Tell me you don’t need discipline to do this thing. I think that’s what Jesus is driving at here. That if we don’t take this seriously enough to really buckle down and make some sacrifices in our lives, then we aren’t going to make it.

So as we prepare to come to this table, let’s get some sleep and pray to God that he will help us to narrow down our lives. That way when we finally come to the gate, instead of seeing a narrow entryway, we can be met with the immeasurable expanse of God’s open arms. Amen.

The Narrow Gate: Akin Bailey

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