Word to the Wise
Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - Wednesday in the 30th Week in Ordinary Time
[Eph 6:1-9 and Luke 13:22-30]And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you se Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God and you yourselves cast out. And people wil 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. [Luke]
I have mentioned this incident before in these reflections, but it comes back to me whenever I see these words of Jesus quoted above. I was invited to give a short talk on Christian spirituality to a group of "conservative Christian" students who belonged to a national organization that has chapters at many universities. After making my presentation, i asked if there were any questions. There were questions, but not questions about my presentation. The questions were all about who can be saved! The general thrust of the questions was in the direction that only Christians like themselves were candidates for salvation! They were not happy with my response that God makes the decision and God can include anyone God wishes to include, which might mean Jews, Muslims, or animists in a jungle somewhere, and not just pious Christian folk like those eager faces staring at me from the audience!
Jesus warns the crowds and everyone who comes after them that his way is demanding and no one has an "inside track" based on acquaintance or kinship. Salvation is not a matter of riding another good person's coat tails into heaven. It is a matter of striving to do God's will in whatever way one knows. This can be dangerous because there are some terrible things that have been done in the name of "doing God's will!" Nevertheless, Jesus has given us some very specific directions about what following him can be. Our culture finds these challenges very difficult, but the choice comes from our own hearts and not automatically from our membership in a particular group. AMEN
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