The Word For the Week

Matthew 7:21-29

Deep in the pastoral CD collection, there’s a song based in part on this passage. It’s the Louvin Brothers:

That word “broadminded” is spelled S-I-N
I read in my Bible “They shall not enter in…
For Jesus shall tell them: ‘Depart, I never knew you!'”
That word “broadminded” is spelled S-I-N

I appreciate the Louvin boys; you’ve got to if you like bluegrass. They’re great singers, great pickers.

Lousy theologians, though.
Because to make sense of this text, you absolutely must know how to put it in context. Read on its own, it seems like the most horrid, exclusionary language you could imagine. Considered with what surrounds it, though, new possibilities bloom.

For example, my trusty Harper’s Study Bible puts today’s lesson in a larger section (7:13-29), and adds the title A Series of Warnings. This is not much help, since the section begins with Jesus saying:

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there few who find it.”

That word “broadminded” is spelled…

But if you page back a bit, you realize that this is in fact part of the Sermon on the Mount, which goes all the way from 5:1-7:29 (compare the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:20-49). It’s a tremendous amount of material–three full chapters out of 28 in the whole gospel–and it includes both the beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer.

How can you tell all of this belongs together? Well, 5:1-2 tells us that Jesus sits down on the mountain and began to teach his disciples, and 8:1 mentions that he comes down from the mountain to heal a leper. Everything between those two points is part of the same story.

And when you look at the material in between, you find a lot of stuff that upends what we’d expect to hear in moral exhortation: blessed are the losers, not the winners; adultery isn’t just about having sex with someone; “an eye for an eye” isn’t going far enough; love your enemies, don’t be proud of your giving or your faith; don’t worry about where your next meal is going to come from; don’t judge one another; trust in God’s kindness.

It’s all pretty far from the Louvin Brothers’ rather conventional morality: don’t dance, drink or gamble.

And I have to ask, which do you suppose is the more difficult path to walk?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got two of the Louvins’ three commandments down. I never did like to gamble, and my dancing is its own punishment. I do like whiskey–as did Ira Louvin.

But sakes alive, it’s hard to love one another as Jesus teaches! Is there any one of us who hasn’t given in at some point to anger, pride, judgmentalism, insecurity or just plain rottenness? If this is to be the standard of salvation, we’ll discover it is a narrow gate indeed.

Lucky for us, God isn’t looking for excuses to knock us out of contention. Grace isn’t a commodity in short supply, and it doesn’t get doled out just to the fortunate few, as though life were some celestial game show. Instead, it is as free-flowing as the love of a parent:

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?

Furthermore, bookending the entire sermon are stories of Jesus’ ministry of healing for lepers and “all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics.” The context, in other words, tells us that our behavior is measured not against the arbitrary standards of a distant and angry father, but by the deep needs of the broken and hurting world around us. Those who would follow Jesus are called to the narrow path not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who need their loving service.

So the next time you’re accused of being too “broadminded,” just pick up a newspaper and plead guilty as charged. Then, say to your accuser: “Now about this situation here…” and know that your life is built upon as solid a rock as we’ve got.