Easter IV 2024

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 words from St. Matthew’s Gospel give us a segue into our study of the meaning of Resurrection in this Eastertide. Here our Lord Jesus Christ, curt and candid as usual, tells us that most people go to Hell, and few go to Heaven. Pardon me for cutting to the quick, but these are Jesus’ words. And contrary to the wishful thinking of puerile Popes, Christ means what He says. Christ intends that His words be taken as a stark warning to all who bank on Cheap Grace or think that their religion and all their good works are going to save them. 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 the narrow way that alone leads to salvation. This certainly qualifies the good news and the peace that most men artificially conflate with the musings of jolly old Buddha, earnest Confucius, the fraudulent Gandhi, and other religious armchair amateurs whose philosophies never graduated to high table at a covered-dish supper. Comparative Religion isn’t intellectually compelling. The ease with which postmodern Christians neglect the harder sayings of our Lord is troubling, to say the least. And while we might engage in a slothful wishful thinking about how all men go to Heaven, such jejune feeling neither squares with the Gospel nor leads to the Kingdom. 
        
No, I fear that the Christian religion is much more about the hard truth and our ongoing struggle to apply it to our lives.  Christians have every reason to rejoice in the knowledge and love of God found only in Jesus Christ and to believe that the Good News or Gospel alone leads us to salvation. But there is more. Jesus also says, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (St. John xiv. 6) Salvation means the return of man to God through the Redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by participating in His Atonement of our sins. Jesus died and rose for us, and yet it is up to us to respond. Jesus has won our salvation, and we cannot have it except we will it by and through Him. This means that Christ expects us to have a relationship with Him. Unless we find the strait gate and enter by the narrow way that He establishes for us, we cannot reach Heaven. Entering the strait gate requires our moral effort and decision. This means that the life that He lived, the unearned, unmerited, and undeserved suffering and death that He endured, and the Resurrection He commenced must all become our own that we participate in willingly, sacrificially, and joyfully. This is the message of Eastertide.
         
To find the strait gate and to enter the narrow way is difficult. The old adages no pain, no gain, no suffering, no salvation, and no Cross, no Crown are all consecrated by the earthly life our Lord lived and intends for us to live. Christ will sanctify us by the Father’s Grace in a patient progress that leads us out of sin and death and into righteousness and new life. The pattern He consecrates and blesses will involve sacrifice, suffering, and death before we find new life. Christ never promised us immediate and paranormal perfection. This is a gift to be bestowed upon us as we find the strait gate and enter the narrow way that leadeth unto life. (Idem) 
         
Therefore, what we have before us is the promise of an eternal reward to them that embrace Jesus Christ. Again, embracing Jesus Christ in our hearts and souls is the hard part. In Eastertide, we learn that no sooner has Christ risen from the dead than He tells His Apostles, Now I go my way to Him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? (St. John xvi. 5) Like men in all ages, we want God with us and for us, tangibly present in the flesh. We want the immediate gratification of Christ with us in the way closest to us, through our senses. We believe, immaturely, that His absence from us in the fleshwill breed catastrophic sadness and sorrow. Yet we, with the Apostles, must learn that Christ cannot save us until His suffering, death, and victory over our sin is something that we embrace inwardly, spiritually, and rationally. His fleshly Incarnation is only the beginning. We must find the strait gate and narrow way that leadeth unto life inwardly and spiritually through the indwelling of Christ the Word through the Holy Spirit. Christ intends to come alive in our souls by working His redemption into us. Christ desires to dwell in us spiritually and intellectually. If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (St. John xiv. 23)
         
With the Father, Christ intends to come to us and pitch their tent on the soil of our souls. But for this to happen, we must expect the same temptation and troublemaking that the Devil brought to Jesus. Christ’s Redemption, accomplished once for all, must be tried and tested from the ground of our souls through persistent faith.
 
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)
 
Salvation is a process of becoming little Christs. (C.S. Lewis) The world might very well hate us and persecute us because it knows not the Father who sent the Son. (idem) Christ was made flesh to order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men. (Collect Easter IV) The comfort and strength of the same Holy Spirit will enable us to love the thing that [the Father] commandeth and desire the thing that [He doth] promise (Collect…) in His Son. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. (St. John xvi. 7) 
        
Christ will come to us from the Father, inwardly and spiritually, through the Spirit. St. James exhorts us to 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) Jesus tells us that when He sends the Comforter unto us, He will reprove the world of sin. (St. John xvi. 8) The Comforter is the Holy Spirit, who must come to convict us of our sins, which were the cause of Christ’s passion. St. Thomas Aquinas says that he will convince, rebuke, the world, as the one who will invisibly enter into their hearts and pour his charity into them so that their fear is conquered, and they have the strength to rebuke. (Aquinas: John’s Gospel) We must not only repent but rebuke all sin with courage in the Name of Jesus. Next, the Comforter will reprove…the world of righteousness. (Ibid, 10) Aquinas reminds us that St. Paul, the greatest of convicted Christians, proclaimed that we are sold under sin… There is none righteous, no, not one. (Romans iii. 10, Ibid) and that the world must be convicted always of the righteousness that [we] have ignored or neglected. (Idem) Through the Spirit, the Father will reveal to us how we have rejected the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Finally, the Comforter will rebuke…the world of judgment because the prince of this world is judged. (Idem) Aquinas warns us that the Devil and an unbelieving world will be judged. Thus, the world is reproved by this judgment because being unwilling to resist, it is overcome by the devil, who, although expelled, is brought back by their consent to sin: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies" (Rom 6:12, Idem) In Christ’s death, the Devil was robbed of any power he had over us. In the end, through the Spirit, we must not only rebuke sin, acknowledge our own unrighteousness but also hold the Devil in contempt by ongoing surrender to the Father and His Word, Jesus Christ, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
        
Christians should never seek an easier, softer way. The journey into Christ’s Resurrection is a pilgrimage whose suffering, sacrifice, and death must be measured and tempered with all faith, hope, and love. St. James exhorts us:

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience… Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
(St. James i. 2-4) 
 
Patience enables us to suffer the Devil’s divers temptations with joy and blessedness. We must cleave to the Good, come what may. St. James continues:
 
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. Of his own will begat he us with the Word of 
Truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (St. James i. 17, 18)
 
The gift of the Father is Jesus Christ, His only begotten Word. Jesus, the Word of God’s Truth, will prune away the dead wood of our old hardened sinful selves to implant the new life, the beauty of holiness, the first fruits, from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to bring alive every good gift that God intends for us to use in His service, leading us through the straight gate and narrow way. Every good and perfect gift should overcome our spiritual exhaustion and fear. So, with John Henry Newman, let us beg of Christ Grace wherewith to enter into the depths of our privileges, to believe, to use, to improve, to glory in our present gifts as members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. (Sermon xvii, J.H.N.)

Amen.
©wjsmartin

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