The Way is Narrow

Author: Mark Fenstermacher
April 08, 2022

The invitation Jesus gives the world seems wide and without limits (Matthew 11:28, RSV): “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” This sounds about as open as a Kansas wheat field or the wide plains of Montana.

So I’ve always been puzzled by his talk in Matthew 7:13-14 about the way to life being narrow and hard: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

For most of my life, I saw the “narrow gate” talk being a demand that we live a near perfect moral life with a faith absent of doubt or struggles. I imagined a narrow path high in the mountains that only a few moral and spiritual super women and super men could navigate safely to enter the Kingdom of God.

I’ve come, with the help of life lessons and spiritual mentors like John Pavlovitz, to see that Jesus is talking about the way of love. The way of love—inside or outside the Jesus community—isn’t popular with many.

We live, it seems, in an increasingly angry, fearful, violent, eye-for-an-eye world. Commentators talk about angry, flag waving, fearful, anti-immigrant, pro-weapon gatherings where people insist they are worshipping Jesus as Lord.

The way of love is the way to life. The Jesus way is love. But the gate is narrow and many of us insist on using gates marked “fear” or “revenge” or “power” or “more stuff” or “hate.” Voices get loud. Even some so called Christian leaders and writers seem impatient with love as they appeal to fear, anger, and hate. Love is for only those who look like us, worship like us, read the Bible like us, express their sexuality the way we do, and happen to live on our side of the border.

John Pavlovitz reminds us that the Jesus way is the way of love:

To claim the Christian faith is to aspire to practice the most radical kind of hospitality and the most counterintuitive compassion for the other. Jesus was an itinerant street preacher who modeled sacrificial love and who welcomed to his table both beggar and soldier, both priest and prostitutes, both Jew and Samaritan. It’s impossible to simultaneously emulate this Jesus while championing exclusion, localized supremacy, pigmented superiority, or bordered empathy. If we want love to be our calling card again, we’re going to have to tattoo this on our hearts, preach it from our pulpits, and tweet it every day until it takes hold of us.”

Holy Week is many things but it is a reminder of the narrow gate that leads to life. We see in these holy moments in Jerusalem the way of the Carpenter is the way of love. We see Jesus choosing love as he teaches in the Temple, feeds the fearful disciples, washes the feet of the friend who will deny him, and prays for a world that puts him on a Roman cross.

It’s a narrow gate. The way is hard. Because sometimes love isn’t easy. Many want no part of this kind of self-giving, sacrificial love. But the way to life is love. The way of Jesus is love.

We’ll learn that again this coming week.

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Join us for worship services this Holy Week:

• Palm Sunday (8:45 for Sanctuary or 10:45 for Chapter 2).

• Men’s Gathering - Wednesday morning at 7 am

• Maundy Thursday Communion - 7 pm

• Good Friday DeKalb Community Men’s Breakfast at First UMC Fellowship Hall - 7 am

• Good Friday Combined Worship Service - 7 pm at Auburn Presbyterian  (111 W 12th St.)

• Easter Sunday Worship - 8:45 Sanctuary (traditional) in the Sanctuary and 10:45 Chapter 2 (contemporary) in the Fellowship Hall.

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Aren’t we blessed to offer the world the way to life as we seek to live out the love of Jesus for all people?

In God’s love for all,
Pastor Mark

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