Easter IV

Easter IV
May 18, 2025
 
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way,
that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 
because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,
which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
St. Matthew vii. 13, 14
 
         Our opening quotation, taken from St. Matthew’s Gospel, gives us a useful segue into our study of the meaning of Resurrection in this Eastertide. In it, Jesus Christ tells us that most people go to Hell and few go to Heaven. Pardon my candor, but these are Jesus’ words, and He knows most about our fallen human condition. Of course, Jesus wants all men to be saved, but Truth is truth. Far from being a condemnation or sentencing of His own people to Hell, these words should be taken as a warning for us all when we think irresponsibly that Cheap Grace will save us. None of this is good theology and it certainly isn’t Biblical. Most men go to Hell because they choose the broad way over and against the strait gate and narrow way that alone leads to salvation.
        
Of course, none of this is pleasant news to Christians who think that God wouldn’t damn anyone. Many Christians don’t think. Of course, God damns people. If He didn’t, He wouldn’t give them the respect they deserve as being free willing creatures that can defy reason and reject Him. God creates man with reason and free will to discover their respective perfections. So, our Good God loves us so much that he allows us not to want, find, love, or put Him first so that we can go to Heaven. Our God is Good and so never compels anyone to love Him enough to be saved. God gives to every man his due or will render to every man according to his deeds. (Romans ii. 6) So, we might want to wake up to the fact that man’s deeds come from man’s choices. Man’s choices are the result of his free will. What moves and defines us most determines the character, state, and condition of our souls forever. This is God’s loving justice. He respects us enough to allow us to love Him above all things or not.
        
So, if we hope to be saved, we must want it. To want it, we must find it. To find it, we must discover our need for it. We cannot really search for and find it unless we need it. Coming to discover that we need it is the hard part. To need it comes only when we have taken a long, hard look at ourselves and found ourselves to be bereft of the knowledge and happiness that it offers.
        
I have said that needing what Jesus brings is the hard part. Most of us, wouldn’t you say, think that we are alright, are good enough, and shall, more than likely, just scrape by to enter the Kingdom? Such is wishful thinking on our part. Jesus says that we must find the strait gate and enter the narrow way if we hope to be saved. And needing to find the strait gate and narrow way is no easy business. The old adages no pain, no gain, no suffering, no salvation, and no Cross, no Crown should strike us as necessary for any good we hope to find, but chiefly the spiritual good that alone leads to salvation.
        
We can only realize what Christ has done for us when we come to know ourselves as sinners. In these dark and dangerous days, where the idolaters of our world convince us that God loves us just the way we are, this is challenging. Even the words of St. James, written long ago, Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you, (St. James iv. 7,8) fall flat in a world where men have lost any sense of the moral conscience and the awareness of their sin.

The words of Christ might be helpful in a more elemental way. Christ was always and everywhere determined to reveal truth and righteousness to the world. What He revealed, He found in the Father. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (St. James i. 17) We shall only need God if we find God. And we can’t find God until we search for God. And we won’t search for God until we admit that we don’t possess the truth and happiness we desire. The first step towards needing God by finding God is searching. Aristotle says that all men by nature desire to know (Met. I. i) Admitting that we do not know the truth is a first step. Socrates, Aristotle’s mentor via Plato, insisted that I know that I know nothing. (Apology 22d) This is the first step in the acquisition of knowledge through learning. In the basic trades, like baking, weaving, and candlestick making, little girls used to begin in ignorance and learn form their mothers. In trades like masonry and carpentry, fathers taught their sons what they did not know but learned. The end in both was knowledge. But knowledge was not the only reward. Aristotle says also that all men seek happiness. Happiness is a spiritual state in which the soul finds satisfaction. And as civilization developed, men came to know that greater forms of happiness depended upon labor, toil, self-sacrifice, and cooperation. For the little boy to become a great carpenter, he would have to sacrifice many other desires in the service of his trade. In addition, he would come to know that not all men were called to be carpenters since otherwise the world would be full of too many tables and chairs and no food. Someone else had to be as sacrificial in a life devoted to farming so that whilst sitting on their chairs, men could eat. In sum, knowledge that yields happiness would require a hard-working society with many talents. And, in the end, the provision of the necessities of life, would not bring lasting happiness. Men are not animals and thus they would seek to know more, by way of learning techniques and crafts that could secure happiness more efficiently, so that man might search for and find the deeper truth that had given him the potential intellect to find goodness in the first place. Ancient man was forever restless. He was a searcher and seeker, he wanted knowledge in ways that transcended his own life for spiritual happiness. He searched to find where he came from and for what reason he was made. With all his knowing, ancient man knew that he knew nothing with regard to the deeper questions, whose answers would bring happiness to his soul.

Given what we have said, we must acknowledge that our proposition suggests that we must become more like ancient man. Ancient man conquers nature and then opens his soul to search for, find, and need the gods and God. For thousands of years, ancient man sought knowledge for spiritual happiness. But where does that situate us? We have reaped that whereon we bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and we are entered into their labours. (St. John iv. 38) Materially and spiritually, contemporary man is a taker and not a worker. He has lost all sense of the labor that is essential to searching for, finding, and needing truth. Postmodern man, enslaved to this world as an entitled recipient of the labors of a civilization, has lost his mind. He knows nothing but is miserable and not happy.

Christ utters words that are telling to a braindead civilization.
 
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you….The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake because they know not him that sent me. (St. John xv. 18-21)
 
Christ speaks of our discipleship. But we might also discern that He speaks of everyman who has searched to find, and needed to know what can only come from God for happiness. Christ’s words rang as true for Socrates as for us. Socrates died for the truth because his quest threatened Athens’ limited power over the souls her citizens. Socrates’ freedom, found in saying I know that I know nothing, was the only spiritual state that seeks to know to find spiritual happiness. And it is threatening to all who think that their lesser gods comprise the truth.

This morning, St. James writes Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. (St. James i. 19.20) These words also describe the character of Socrates’ soul. Those who search for the truth, hope to find it, and need it must be concerned with calm determination.  Even when St. James writes, My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience, (St. James i. 2) Socrates quest for truth is acknowledged. If we seek knowledge for happiness, our faith will be tempted to throw in the towel and abandon the quest. Patient dialogue with the world is needed, with the hope that some may join us in our spiritual pilgrimage.
No doubt, we live in a world full of dogmatisms. The earthly state controls us with its own dogmas of supposed truth without feeling any compulsion to prove them in a scientific and Socratic manner. The churches are obsessed with dogmas that she refuses to teach and explain. The postmodern world, relying on the labors of so many laborers, has rendered itself idiotically entitled to drivel. But Christ calls us to be like Socrates.

Today the Resurrected Christ tells us that He will send us the Comforter, the Holy Ghost…who will lead us into all truth. (St. John xvi. 13) All truth cannot be found unless and until Socrates helps us to learn that we live in sin because we know that we know nothing, God alone, from above, can bring righteousness for happiness, and that judgment is the wonderful God-given potential for us to know ourselves and our deepest spiritual need for God, perfected in Jesus Christ.
 
Amen.
©wjsmartin
 

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