Lincoln College, Oxford
17th October 2004
6 p.m. Evensong
Readings: Isaiah 50: 4-10 / Luke 23:22-30
‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ (Lk 23:23)
There is something mildly schizophrenic about the public reputation of Christianity these days. I suspect that this has, to a greater or lesser extent, always been the case. One moment we are being criticised for being too rigid – whether it is about marriage, or gays, or who should or should not be baptised, and why can’t I have my favourite from the top-ten at my father’s funeral when I’ve hired the crematorium for the purpose? Then another moment we are being criticised for being too lax: we let anyone in, regardless of where they went to school; we don’t stick to the ten commandments enough; and why on earth, from some broadsheet journalists, can’t the Church of England be just like the Church of Rome, as if there was nothing to have had a Reformation about?
It is in that context of popular critique that the question posed to Jesus on his way to Jerusalem in the gospel tonight begins to be quite sharp: ‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ It comes, characteristically, in Luke’s gospel. He is the only gospel-writer not to be Jewish. He is the one most keen to set Jesus’ teaching in a world context, hence all the scene-setting in the Christmas narrative about the reign of the Emperor Caesar Augustus, when Quirinius was Governor of Syria (Lk 2:1-2). And it is from this universal vantage-point that we go straight to an obscure northern village called Nazareth, and the tale of the arrival of the Saviour unfolds. So often Jesus is challenging people to look for the great eternal truths in the small and insignificant, like the mustard seed that grows into something much larger, or the yeast that helps to make bread, as he has been teaching just before tonight’s gospel reading begins. Will it be just a few – or what? The answer we give back will probably fall into one of those two categories for which Christianity is often criticised: if we say only a few, then the cry goes up ‘why not many more?’; and if we say many, then another cry goes up from someone else, ‘you’re making it too easy’.
Tomorrow is St Luke’s day, because for some reason October 18th was fixed many centuries ago as an annual commemoration. Many are the questions that he grapples with about the meaning of the Christian faith, both in the gospel that bears his name, and in the Acts of the Apostles, which records the first days of the Church’s mission. But the question that keeps returning is that balance between a life of faith that is full of encouragement, engagement, accessibility, really identifying with our lives, our needs, our experiences; and one that is at the same time full of grit, challenge, mystery, that draws us out of our day-to-day lives and says that we need to look beyond ourselves, our own paltry little worlds, in order to discover new truths, fresh perspectives, and even admit now and again that we might be wrong. By tradition, Luke was a physician, hence those hospital chapels frequently dedicated to him; and hence, too, his concern to see the human response to faith whole, and not divided up into little compartments, with a hobby bit there, an academic bit there, and the religious bit over in the corner – if, that is, you like that sort of thing. Perhaps because he was a physician, he realised how crucial is the forgiveness of sins to a fully integrated life – hence that prayer for those crucifying him, the innocent one, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34).
‘Lord, will only a few of us be saved?’ One of the great power-games of Christianity, in all its shapes and forms, has been a lamentable confidence in the precise answer to that question. If you were to see just a few of the letters in my post-bag, you would come across a level of confident vitriol that is at times laughable, even though humour is a dangerous coping- mechanism; ‘because you have said/done such and such …’ or, ‘if you don’t say/do such and such …’, and out comes a threat to consign me to eternal fire. Such letters do not appear very often, but they come with sufficient regularity to suggest that a more reasonable, more circumspect approach may be preferable.
But, then, when one tries to be reasonable and circumspect, a creeping sense of arm-chair spectatorship takes over. I become no longer a participant in life, with all its colour, vitality, energy, and aggression. Instead I am no more than someone who watches, ready to comment, of course, but keeping it all as much at arm’s length as possible. The ‘autonomous me’ takes over. I am keen on my space, anxious to preserve my independence, and enthusiastic only about not being enthusiastic. Whatever faith I have (or had) fades into the landscape: I become indistinguishable from the next laid-back, slightly cynical, post-modern, cut-price Blair-generation student or don (if that is possible)!
To the question ‘will only a few be saved?’ therefore comes a counter-question of a rather different kind: ‘who cares anyway?’ After all, the national average for persons declaring themselves to have no religious faith is one in seven. So the life of casual agnosticism has an excuse gradually to take over. Perhaps if Christians were more interested in listening to contemporary culture, which is, in a curiously secular way, much more spiritually aware than twenty years ago, we would manage to convince the many enquiring half-outsiders that here we can live in depth, and not on the surface, and we can seek for truth, as this is revealed and experienced in every generation.
‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ I cannot answer that question. But I keep going back to what follows, for, note carefully, neither does Jesus give a direct answer himself. Instead, he speaks about narrow doors that can be difficult to squeeze through; a door that might conceivably be closed to those who are more concerned about the words of life than what life actually means – to the extent that the owner of the house fails to recognise their faces. St Luke, who begins (Luke 1:5) and ends (Luke 24:53) his gospel in the temple, takes great pains to show that it is a temple that is constantly transformed, because it is populated by people who may not know all the answers to every one of life’s questions, but who are still humble enough to try to wrestle with them. This is, I fear, a far-cry from the impressive, well-organised, successful, suburban community that is occasionally set before us as the ecclesiastical answer to the world’s ills. Luke’s message is always, always, always, that we need to hear the gospel, because it is at root disturbing and uncomfortable, however familiar or routine we may try to make it sound.
All of which probably means that, if ever one is asked the question, ‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’, we could reply in a similar vein and accept that other hall-mark of Luke’s gospel – which is reversal. Earlier, the choir sang two canticles, the Song of Mary, known as ‘Magnificat’, from its opening Latin word (Luke 1:46-55), and the Song of Simeon, known from its opening Latin words as ‘Nunc dimittis’ (Luke 2:29-32). Unlike the other gospel-writers, Luke likes hymns (perhaps he was musical?) for in addition to these two, we also have the Song of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79) directed to be sung at Morning Prayer, and the Song of the Angels at Christ’s birth (Luke 2:14), which is the opening of a hymn at Holy Communion. All these songs are about reversal, putting down the mighty from their seat, in the case of Mary; salvation revealed to an old man, in the case of Simeon; giving light to those in darkness, with Zechariah; and peace on earth, from the mouths of the angels themselves.
Reversal means the possibility that those who are so sure they are ‘in’ might find the door slammed in the face of their arrogance. Reversal, too, means that the first might indeed be last, and even (especially) bishops have to give way to others of whom nobody has ever heard. After all, if we really take Luke’s gospel to heart, the first saint of the Christian faith was not some glamorous believer who did everything correctly, but the penitent thief, no less, who was baptised not by some fine church liturgy, at which nothing went wrong, not even the singing (!), but by the words of the dying Christ – ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:43). And if all this seems unimpressive and inconsistent, then so be it. It is so easy to make faith appear like a consumer commodity that is to be marketed on the basis of how quickly how many of our personal problems can somehow be solved. There was once a Danish University Chaplaincy with a poster which read: ‘If you haven’t got any problems, then come inside and we’ll give you some.’ I would rather have a faith about life that is worth struggling with, than one which is slick and exclusive, or unengaged and arid, and it is such a questing faith that is to be found in the pages of Luke’s gospel.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
