The Narrow Door is Thin

Matthew 7.7-14

The last name on our All Saints necrology belongs to Nancy Sayre. We buried Nancy outside under the fall leaves the day before yesterday. A few years ago Jesus appeared to Nancy at the foot of her bed— remember, he’s not dead.

The Risen Christ stood in the moonlight by the bedrail before Nancy and he assured her that everything is going to be okay.

“I have a place for you. Don’t be afraid. Everything is going to be okay,” Jesus told Nancy.

The door from this life to the life to come isn’t just narrow.

It’s thin.

In an essay for First Things, my former teacher, David Bentley Hart, reflected on his childhood friends Angela and Jacob. Fast friends through their teenage years, their contact became intermittent as the three went their separate ways for university. Two years after their last get together Angela was killed when a drunk driver struck her car in an intersection; she was alive for several hours after the collision, but never regained consciousness. Hart writes,

“I learned of her death three days after from Jacob. I won’t  bother to say how the news affected me, but I will remark that I had had what in retrospect seemed to have been a premonition of it. On the night of her death, Angela had suddenly, for no discernible reason, come into my mind, attended by an inexplicable sense of aching melancholy, which at the time I simply took for acute nostalgia. Jacob, though, had had something that seemed like much more than a premonition.

On the night of Angela’s accident, apparently during the hours when she was lying in the hospital unconscious but still breathing, he had had a particularly vivid dream in which she and he had spoken to one another in a strange house that, after the fashion of dreams, was also somehow a garden. Their conversation, which had been pervasively sad, concerned her imminent departure for somewhere far away; and it seemed to Jacob that it was understood between them—in that way in which, in dreams, many unspoken things seem simply to be presumed—that she was leaving on a journey from which she would never return. She told him, he recalled, that she had come only to say good-bye.

Now, these things—my vague intuitions, Jacob’s haunting dream—may have been merely coincidences; but, frankly, I can’t make myself believe that the universe is quite large enough to accommodate coincidences of that kind.

What was most extraordinary about our experiences, however, is that they were not that extraordinary at all. That is, it is rather astonishing how common these encounters with the uncanny really are. You may not recall any yourself, but it is quite likely that you need only ask around among your acquaintances to discover someone who does. I myself have had at least two others, one utterly trivial, one of the most crucial importance, and both together sufficient to convince me that consciousness is not moored to the present moment or local space in quite the ame way that the body is.”

The door from this life to life everlasting is narrow.

Of course its narrow.

It excludes every last one of your good works.

But the door from this life to the life to come— it isn’t just narrow.

It’s thin.

We’re just too thick to recognize it most of the time.

I remember, years ago now, we were sitting in his battered, red F150 when he asked me, “Will I be able to pray for them? After I’m gone?”

We were parked in front of the mud-brown elevation sign at the Peaks of Otter overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Four-thousand feet, the sign said.

 We were sitting in the cab of his truck, both of us looking straight ahead, not at each other, a position I think is the only one in which men can be intimate with one another. Looking at Bedford County below us, neither of us had spoken for several minutes until he broke the silence by asking me, "Will I be able to pray for them? After I’m gone?”

David was (is) one of the saints in my life, and not because of any remarkable feat of his or his exceptional religiosity. David was just good and kind, a Gary Cooper-type without pretense. What you saw was what you got, and what you got from David was very often the love of God condensed and focused and translated into deceptively ordinary words and gestures. Not long after I’d been assigned to his church, David let me know that he’d like to spend an afternoon with me.

He wanted to get to know me better, he said, because he thought I’d likely be doing his funeral. David was only a few years older than me. He’d lived every day of his life in the same small town and wouldn’t have had it any other way. He’d been baptized and raised and was now raising his own two kids in the church I pastored. Ever since graduating from high school, David had worked in the local carpet factory and had survived as the captain of the volunteer fire department, despite his slight frame. But when I first met him, David hadn’t worked for over a year. Not since his Lou Gehrig’s Disease had begun its monotonous mutiny against his body.

At first I’d suggested to David that we grab some lunch, but he blushed and confessed that the stiffness in his jaw and hands would make eating distracting for me and embarrassing for him.

“Let’s go for a drive,” he suggested.

He picked me at the church. He was wearing jeans that his wife had sewn an elastic waistband into and a t-shirt that was much too big for him but was just big enough for him to be able to dress himself. I could tell he was proud that even though he could only awkwardly grip the steering wheel he could still drive his truck. We switched places when we got to the edge of town; he couldn’t navigate the steep, winding roads that wound their way up the mountain. But we switched back again when we got to the top.

Driving through the Blue Ridge, every now and then, David would stop at places as though he were turning the pages of a family photo album. He stopped at the spot he’d gone hunting with his Dad just before he died. He stopped and showed me the woods he’d snuck into as a teenager with his friends and snuck his first beer. He coasted the truck and pointed to a ridge with a clearing where he’d proposed to his high school sweetheart; he said that was the best spot to see the stars at night. And he stopped and showed me the place he liked to take his kids camping.

It was at that stop that he asked, with the V8 idling, my advice on how to tell his kids, who thus far only knew that their Dad was sick, that he walked and talked funny now, not that he was dying.

David parked at the Peaks of Otter overlook and turned off the engine, and all of a sudden the pickup took on the feel of a medieval confessional. Staring straight ahead, David faked a chuckle and told me how he’d rushed into burning homes before without a second’s hesitation but that he was terrified of the long, slow death that awaited him. He pretended to wipe away something in his eye besides a tear, and I pretended not to notice.

Then he told me how he’d miss his kids. He told me he worried about them; he worried how they’d do without him. He was quiet for a few minutes, evidently thinking because then he asked me, “Will they be able to talk to me? Pray to me? Will I be able to pray for them? After I’m gone?”

It’s a good question.

I don’t think David would’ve known or would’ve cared for that matter, but in so many words his was a question that’s been a bone of contention between Christians ever since Martin Luther nailed his 95 protests against the Catholic Church into the sanctuary doors in Wittenberg 505 years ago this week:

Can we solicit the prayers of the dead?

Can we ask the saints to pray for us?

The instant David asked me his question I felt glad that we were sitting in a pickup staring straight ahead instead of in my office or over lunch facing one another. I was glad we were sitting in his truck because, with tears in his eyes, I wouldn’t have wanted him to see the confusion in my own, to see that I didn’t know how to answer him. My first impulse was to sidestep his questions, to ignore the questions about the saints departed, about what their life is like, what they do, and what we can ask of them. My first impulse was to sidestep those questions and just offer David the reassurance that Kinnon and McKayla would be fine. And I could’ve gotten away with it, I suppose.

But David didn’t just want reassurances about his kids.

He wanted to know if he’d still have a relationship with them.

He didn’t just want to know if they’d make it after he died; he wanted to know that even if he did not, would his relationship with them survive death?

Could they speak to him after he was gone?

Would he be present to the living even though he was dead?

Likely, David had heard all the evangelical cliches before, how praying to anyone but Jesus Christ is idolatrous, how devotion to anything else, saint or otherwise, detracts from our devotion to Christ, how we are saved through faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone, who is our Great, High Priest and therefore we don’t need any other priest, confessor or saint to mediate our prayers.

But David wasn’t asking about the limits of orthodoxy.

He was asking about the communion of the saints.

Before I had the gumption to answer his question, David turned towards me in the cab of his truck and he said,

“I hope you keep my kids in church. I hope they stick close to Jesus.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where I’ll be, right? In Jesus. Sticking with him is the best way they can stay close to me after I’m gone.”

The door from this life to the life to come— it isn’t just narrow.

It’s thin.

We’re just too thick to recognize it most of the time.

Fortunately, every year All Saints forces us to remember that Jesus Christ has made all the world a thin place between the living and the dead. Saints are not simply the dead in Christ. Saints, the New Testament makes clear, are any believers who have been baptized into Christ. It’s a distinction that applies to the living as much as to the dead. To believe in the communion of the saints, therefore, is to believe that Jesus Christ has forged a bond between the baptized that stretches not only throughout the globe but across time.

The door is more than narrow.

It’s thin.

It’s so slight it’s not even like a door or a gate at all anymore. It’s more like a veil because Jesus Christ has bridged the greatest barrier that divides human beings.

Death.

Death— not culture or color, not language or class, not political parties or opinions of Elon Musk— is the divide that splits every human being into one of two categories, living or dead.

On All Saints, we remember that the Body of Christ is the most inclusive community imaginable upon the earth not only because it’s for sinners (which means you’re included) but also because it’s a community comprised of the living and those who are now alive, for the time being, only in Christ. In other words, it’s a mistake to think the Golden Rule in our text applies only to those on this side of the narrow door. Because Jesus Christ has destroyed the power of Death, you have more neighbors than you can scarce count.

As it turned out, David was wrong. I wasn’t the one to do his funeral.

As it turned out, David was just as strong and determined as everyone believed him to be and stronger than he gave himself credit. He lived longer than the doctors expected and by the time he died I was serving a different church. But even though I wasn’t the one to preside at his funeral service, the script— the ancient script— was the same.

Draping a white pall over his casket, the pastor proclaimed:

“Dying, Christ destroyed our death. Rising, Christ restored our life. As in baptism David put on Christ, so now is David in Christ and clothed with glory.”

     Then facing the standing-room only sanctuary, the pastor held out her hands and for the call to worship voiced Jesus’s promise,

“I am the resurrection and I am life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

  And then at the end of the service, after the preaching and the sharing and the crying, the pastor laid her hands on David’s casket and prayed the commendation,

“As first you gave David to us, now we give David back to you. Receive David into the arms of your mercy. Receive David into the fellowship of your departed saints.”

When we baptize someone, we baptize them into Christ. By water and the Spirit, the Father gifts to every believer an unevictable place in the Son. And so Death does not alter in any way our fundamental location. We’re all already in him.

This is why, from the very beginning, Christians have used the word “veil” to describe death, something so thin you can nearly see through it.

Baptism is a bond that cannot be broken by time or death because it’s an incorporation into the Living Christ.

The dead in Christ don’t disappear.

The door is narrow.

It’s exactly the dimensions of Christ and him crucified.

The door is narrow.

But it’s also incredibly thin.

The dead in Christ don’t disappear.

Therefore—

Our fellowship with the departed is not altogether different from our fellowship with the living.

That’s what we mean when we say in the Creed, “I believe in the communion of saints…”

We’re saying, “I believe in the friendship between the living and the dead in Christ.”

So, yes, we can pray and ask the saints to pray for us.

Not in the sense of praying to them, not in the sense of giving them our worship and devotion, but if we believe in the communion of saints, living and dead, then asking the departed saints for their prayers is no different than Sherri, Paul, or Bill— in this congregation— asking for my prayers for them this week.

It’s not, as Protestants so often caricature, that the saints are our way to Jesus Christ.

Rather, Christ is our way to them.

Because we (living and dead) are all friends in Jesus Christ we can talk to and pray for one another.

I can ask Ray Wrenn, who certainly knew more about pastoring than I do, to pray for my own ministry.

I can ask Tina Svenson, who endured MS far longer than I’ve suffered cancer, to pray for me.

I can ask Frida Hill, who had more patience for you all than I can sometimes muster and who never let her own complicated family steal her joy, I can ask her to pray for my own forbearance and hope.

I can ask Les Brownlee to pray for Ukraine, for he certainly understood war better than I do.

The dead don’t disappear from us.

They are in Christ.

Therefore, they are as real and present and available to you as bread and wine.

“You never answered my question,” David said, as he pulled the gearshift into reverse, “Will I be able to pray for them?”

I turned in the passenger seat and, violating the man code, I looked right at him and said, “I hope you’ll pray for me too.”

I was still a novice pastor at the time. I didn’t know whether it was a good or right answer. I do know, though, that I think of David every time I stand behind a loaf of bread and a cup of wine and pray, “…and so with your people here on earth and all the company of heaven, we praise your name and join their ending hymn…”

I was in Texas on Saturday speaking at a conference.

Passing through Denton on the way to Oklahoma City where I preached last Sunday, I suddenly felt compelled to reach out to a childhood friend who lives in the area. I haven’t seen him or spoken to him since my wedding day. I don’t even have a phone number or email for him. I messaged him on Facebook.

“You suddenly popped into my mind and I thought I’d reach out and say hello.”

The rolling text bubble appeared instantly on my phone.

“Mom’s been in hospice for a while now,” he typed back, “She died only a minute ago.”

The universe is not large enough to accommodate coincidences of that kind.

The narrow door is incredibly thin.

Marcy, Ray, Jane, Beverly, Paul, Sue, Loretta, Freda, Les, James, Tina, Nancy— these are but the names of saints the church lost this past year.

But all of you, surely, have lost others you love.

Hear the good news:

Those you’ve lost are not gone.

Not only is the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead determined to give them all back to you, in the meantime they are closer to you than you are to yourself.

Because the promise of the Gospel is that those who are baptized are in Christ and Christ himself promises, “Lo, I am with you always to the end of the age.”

Those who die in Christ are in Christ.

The same Christ who shows up today to say to you, “This is my body broken for you…this is my blood poured out for you…”

Therefore, the departed are not far off from you in an eternal distance, darning angel wings or tuning harp strings.

They are as close and present to you as Christ is in word and wine and bread.

It’s not simply that Christ is truly present in the sacrament.

All those you’ve loved and lost are present here too.

At the table.

Stick to him.

And you are with them.

So come to the table.

Christ may be the host.

But he brings friends.