Year C - Pentecost, Proper 16
Readings: Isaiah 28:14-22; Hebrews 12:18-19,22-29; Luke 13:22-30; Psalm 46
This is a difficult passage - it's really harsh in some parts, especially in the way the owner talks to the people knocking on the door.
Once the door is shut, the owner of the house refuses to open it when people ask to come in. And not only that, he says he doesn't even know them: 'I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!"
But - Just a few chapters earlier in Luke, Jesus was saying 'Ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you."
Which is it?
If the people come and ask to be let in, the owner of the house should let them in - that's the compassionate thing to do. Just because they're a little late ... they shouldn't be thrown out - especially when you're talking about 'weeping and gnashing of teeth!'
This is what I want to focus on - what is going on between the people at the door and the owner of the house?
I found this story really hard to take. It didn't seem fair. I was stuck for what to say about it.
I read the passage again and again in different ways. I wrote it out and noticed certain words that stuck out or seemed important. I copied the passage on a small piece of paper and carried it around with me, reading it in different places. I tried imagining how I would stage this scene if I was a theater director. I read it again imagining different emotions and thoughts could be under the surface of each person's words - I tried a lot of things, but I was still stuck.
The last exercise I tried involved asking someone else to look at the passage and give their reaction. I took my piece of paper over to my friend Janeal's apartment and asked her to read it.
Her reaction to it suprised me. She saw it from a completely different perspective.
In the passage, the people come to the door and ask to be let in, and the owner refuses to let them in. In fact, he says he doesn't know where they come from and tells him to go away.
I drew a picture of this, trying to imagine it. In my picture, a stick person stood outside a house, with his hand up to the door, his eyebrows up, looking anxious. Inside, the stick-person owner sat in a chair, his back to the door, his eyebrows down, scowling, and his arms crossed.
When Janeal read it, she thought the people outside were whining, making up stories and excuses, and the owner of the house just wasn't falling for it.
Suddenly, the passage had a completely different feeling.
Instead of a sincere, earnest Prodigal Son type figure, the person outside the door becomes a bad salesman. 'You remember me! We go way back...'
And instead of a mean father holding a grudge, the owner of the house seems perfectly reasonable.
Did you ever get a phone call from a telemarketer who couldn't pronounce your name but pretended to know you anyway?
One of my friends recently got some strange calls from a lady wanting to apply for a job. 'Oh, I know your parents!'
Her parents both said, 'We've never heard of her.'
If the situation in the passage is like this, it suddenly makes a lot of sense for the owner of the house to refuse to open the door - and for him to say, 'I do not know where you come from; go away...!'
One thing about reading the Bible is that you're not likely to find THE ONLY WAY to read any passage. That's not to say that anyone can make it say anything they want; there are limits to interpretation, but within what's possible, there can be some variation.
For one thing, there's a lot of background meaning that we all assume - and assume differently - when we read scripture. Without even realizing it, we fill in all sorts of randome little details that become the background for how we read the passage, sometimes that can help and sometimes it can get in the way.
When I read the passage at first, I assumed a lot of things that weren't specifically stated. For example, I assumed the people who knocked on the door were telling the truth, that they really did know the owner and they were sincere and earnest.
But there's a problem.
The people say the owner knows them, and the owner says he doesn't know them, so who's telling the truth?
Since I first assumed the people were truthful, it had to be that the owner did know them; he was simply denying it.
That creates another problem - Why?
The story doesn't say anything about this - so I assumed there was no reason - he just must be arbitrarily vindictive.
All of a sudden, the story is terrible. Here are these innocent, pleading people asking to come in to their friend's house, and he cruelly throws them out, pretending to not even know them. Now, if we imagine that the owner of the house represents God - what an awful image! How scary! You think God knows you, but what if someday, you come to heaven and knock on the door and he tells you to go away and pretends like he's never even seen you before?
That didn't seem right at all.
But what about from the other perspective?
The people are cons, pretending to be friends of the owner, and he doesn't fall for it - he sends them away. When he says he doesn't know them, it's because he doesn't know them.
This doesn't say anything about how the owner of the house treats his family or his friends. Most likely, he would have a very different response if it was his family or his friends knocking on the door, because he knows them.
With this in mind, the passage started to fit in better with my experience of God and other descriptions we read in the Bible - Especially if you combine this with some of the other stories from Luke's gospel - the Prodigal Son, the repentant thief on the cross, and the passage including the Lord's Prayer, where we're invited to pray, 'Our Father...' - this passage goes on to say, 'ask and you will receive... knock and the door will be opened for you.'
I think, in interpreting what we read, it's important to bear in mind what we know about God - what our experience of God is.
This passage still fits in with the others. It makes a difference, though, how you frame the images.
For example, after hearing Janeal's response, I also imagined this story in light of a student/teacher interaction. I teach ESL writing at Lamar, and just this week, a student came in - on Thursday, the first day of the fall semester - to question her failing grade in the spring semester.
"I don't understand what a 'U' is."
"It means 'unsatisfactory' - you failed the class."
"No, I couldn't have failed the class, because I know I was passing."
I pulled up her grades for the semester and printed them out - "You had a passing grade for your quiz average, but you had only half credit for each of your essays, and you failed the exam."
"But I thought I was passing - you didn't tell me I was failing."
"I gave you your grades at mid-term, and I told you that you should re-write some of your essays."
"I know, but you didn't say that I was failing."
"I told you your essay grade was a 50."
Whether you are a teacher or a student or a parent or ever have been, you can probably imagine similar situations from your own experience - think of the he said/she said dilemma parents have in weighing a child's version of why he got in trouble with the teacher's version. You have to decide who's more credible - and who's more likely to exaggerate the story.
In this passage, who's more likely to be exaggerating - the owner of the house or the people outside?
When you compare this dynamic to today's passage, you can imagine the people at the door like students protesting, 'You didn't tell us we had to know that,' and the owner of the house like a teacher responding, 'You know everything this course requires - it's in the syllabus.'
It's not like we don't know what's required of us in this 'course' we're taking in life. As we read in the well-known passage from Micah, 'and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?' In the New Testament, it's summed up in Matthew, Mark and Luke as essentially 'Love God... and love your neighbor'
A main point in this passage is the response Jesus gives to the person who asks, 'Will only a few be saved?' He doesn't answer that question directly, because it's not about a number, it's about doing what's right - what we know is right already. "Strive to enter through the narrow gate." Try your hardest; do your best, but don't worry about who's first or last; it's not a competition. It's not about who gets the highest grade - it's about learning what the teacher is is trying to teach us.
And good teachers want their students to learn; they'll do everything they can to help their students succeed. Good teachers are not out to make their students fail - but they're not going to be duped or bullied either.
So,
- come to class
- do the readings
- do your homework
- ask the teacher for help when you need it
Strive to enter through the narrow door - then don't worry about whether you come in first or last. Just make sure you know the owner of the house - and the owner of the house knows you.
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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Aug. 26, 2007
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