Decisions, Decisions
Decisions, Decisions by Rev. L. John Gable
October 16, 2022
As brilliant as he was, Albert Einstein was also known to be terribly absent-minded. Perhaps it is urban legend, but supposedly one day he called the operator in Princeton, New Jersey, asking where Dr. Einstein lived; apparently he had forgotten his own address.
The story is also told that one day he boarded the train in Princeton and as the conductor came through to punch the tickets Dr. Einstein was unable to locate his. By the time the conductor arrived at where Einstein was sitting he had pulled all of the pockets out of both his trousers and his jacket, and had unloaded the contents of his briefcase on the seat beside him, all to no avail. The conductor, immediately recognizing the renowned scientist, said, “Don’t worry, Dr. Einstein, I trust you”, and moved on through the coach. After finishing his rounds he was walking back through the car where Einstein was sitting, only to find that he wasn’t sitting any longer. He was now down on his hands and knees, searching frantically for the lost ticket. Again, the conductor assured him, saying, “Please, don’t worry, professor. I told you before that I trust you.” Einstein looked up from his downward position and said, “Young man, this is not a matter of trust. It is a matter of direction. I have no idea where I am going!”
The train we get on, the expressway we enter, the path of life we choose to follow are all determined by the direction we intend to head and by the destination we intend to reach at the end of our journey. It is a basic lesson of life all of us would do well to learn, and the sooner we learn it the better: we cannot get where we want to go by heading in the wrong direction. Simply put, our decisions determine our destinations.
This is the point Jesus is making in this section of His teaching from the Sermon on the Mount. Recall last week we heard Him say, “In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; this is the Law and the prophets”, and I commented that that would be a fitting way to conclude any message. But rather than ending there, Jesus then goes on to issue a series of warnings, beginning with this one: “Enter by 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 difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
As He draws near to the conclusion of His sermon, Jesus is calling His listeners, then and now, to take seriously His teachings. He is calling us to make a decision between two gates, one wide and the other narrow; between two paths, one easy and the other hard; between two crowds, one the many, the other the few. He reminds us that the decision we make at the beginning of the journey should be based on one thing only: the destination we intend to reach at the end. The wide gate, the easy road, the way of the many leads to destruction; and the narrow gate, the difficult road, the way of the few leads to life, and the decision between the two is ours to make, it is always ours.
Do you recall the conversation between Alice and the cat in Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland? Alice says to the cat: “Mr. Cat, please tell me which way I ought to go”. The cat inquirers, “Where do you want to go? Alice replies, “I don’t really care”, so he answers, “Then it doesn’t really matter.” If our destination doesn’t really matter, then neither does our decision as to which path we will follow, as any path will do. But this decision should matter to us because the destination matters – it is the difference between life in abundance and life in despair, between God’s way and the world’s way, between life in the presence of God in the Kingdom of Heaven and life cut off from God in the kingdom of darkness.
We have seen that Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount lays out God’s way of life for us very plainly, the way of life as God intends it to be; the way of life as it one day will be in the Kingdom of Heaven. As we have seen, it is the way of God’s blessing even at the hands of the world’s rejection. It is the way of turning the other cheek, of giving the cloak when asked for the coat, of walking the second mile. It is the counter intuitive way of loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us. It is the way of giving and living that seeks not to be honored and rewarded by others, but by the One who sees in secret. It is the way of refusing to worry about earthly things by setting our focus on heavenly things. It is the way of not judging, and of doing to others only what we would have them do to us. It is the way of following Jesus, come what may, regardless of the cost, simply because we believe that He is the way, the only way, to the only true life we will ever know.
So now, after Jesus has told us all of this, it only makes sense that He then asks us to make a decision about it. This hasn’t been a hard sell. There is no hint of arm twisting or of bait and switch here. He hasn’t made it sound too good to true, such that we suspect that it’s probably not. He has been perfectly candid with us. The way to destruction is wide and easy and well traveled. The way to life is narrow and difficult and the road less traveled, and we are called to decide which we will take.
But this decision entails more than simply choosing which door we want to walk through so that we can claim the prize on the other side. This decision is not the end of the journey but its beginning. This decision is the invitation to the life of discipleship.
Some have led us to believe that all one has to do is accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, that decision which is made at the opening gate, and once made, we are “saved” and can then go on living in any way we choose. Not so. The decision we make at the beginning of the Christian life, the decision to enter the narrow gate, is exactly that and nothing more; it is the beginning of the Christian life. It is unquestionably the most important decision we will ever make in life and one that has eternal consequences, as this decision determines our destination, but it is only the first decision in a long series of decisions as we journey on the way of following Jesus. That first decision starts us down the path of discipleship and what is asked of us after that, to use the words of Friedreich Nietzsche, “is a long obedience in the same direction.” You see, where the decision is made to take Jesus seriously the way to life is found.
In this teaching Jesus is challenging us not simply to agree with what He is saying, He is actually calling us to commit ourselves to doing it. Perhaps shockingly, we hear Him say, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven.” So, nodding our heads in agreement with Him is only the first step in discipleship, then we actually have to do what He tells us to do. To quote Yoda on this from The Empire Strikes Back, “Do, or do not do. There is no try.”
The narrow gate is not just getting our theology right. It is not just having correct orthodoxy, right thinking or proper believing, or joining the right church in town; it is actually committing ourselves to a way of living, to living the Jesus way. As Tony Campolo puts it, “The difference between being a believer and being a disciple is, believers believe and disciples do.” Jesus is calling us here to be doers of His Word and not hearers only. The difficult road is not an intellectual exercise, a set of suggestions we can take or leave, one of many possible philosophies we can choose to follow, or not; it is the exclusive way of actually following Jesus, of doing what He tell us to do, of being the people He has called us to be. It is the way of discipleship that follows after the initial decision we make as to which gate we will enter, which is based solely on the destination we intend to reach at the end of our journey.
The word discipleship shares the same root as the word discipline, and for good reason. We are called to be disciples of Jesus because we are being disciplined as His apprentices, learning every day, day after day, in all of life’s experiences, how to live as Jesus lived, how to do what Jesus did. And that way of living won’t be chosen by the majority. To be a disciple is to live in the moral minority, because it is the narrow way, the hard way, the demanding way, but it is also the way that leads to life.
Anyone who has ever tried to learn a foreign language, or how to play a musical instrument, or trained to run a marathon, or gone on a diet, knows the difficulty, even the drudgery, of that kind of discipline. We know that we don’t make the decision to do those kinds of things only once; rather we are called upon to make that decision repeatedly, every day, to stay with the discipline, or not, and the only reason we stay with it is because we know what awaits us at the end if we do. A woman rushed up to the famed violinist Fritz Kreisler after a concert and cried, “I’d give my life to play as beautifully as you do.” To which he replied, “I did.” Being a disciple of Jesus may have a starting point but it is not a one time decision. It is a daily decision, a thousand times a day decision, not only to start on the journey of following Him, but to stay on it. And when we get off course, when we get distracted by some amusement that causes us to wander off of the path, it is the decision to get back on it, no matter how many times we step off and have to step back on again. And for those who stick with it, at the end of the road of discipline, is a freedom which others will never enjoy; the freedom to speak fluently in another language, the freedom to sit down at the piano and play a beautiful piece of music, the freedom to cross the finish line after 26.2 miles, the freedom to enter into life abundant and eternal in the Kingdom of Heaven, simply because there has been a long obedience in the same direction.
Discipleship to Jesus is not only the way to life, is the also the way of life, and Jesus calls us to choose this way because He is the Way, because He is the Truth which leads us to this Life. And we find this way only when we choose to take Him seriously.
Biblical scholar John Stott puts it so succinctly, “The Sermon on the Mount is probably the best known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the least understood and certainly it is the least obeyed.” Why is that? Is it because it is challenging and hard? That should come as no surprise to us; He told us it would be. I believe Chesterton was right when he said, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it is has been found difficult and so not tried.” Yet why should that deter us? We have done other things that are difficult. We have kicked habits and fought battles and worked to improve difficult relationships and marriages. Why would we give up, or why would we not even try living as Jesus calls us to live? Or worse yet, why would we say we are trying, but not really doing what He says at all?
It is disappointing when we don’t have the discipline to complete the training for a marathon or the self-will to stick with a diet, but how devastating would it be if we don’t have the discipline to actually do what we say we believe, if we give up following in the way of the One we dare to call Savior and Lord simply because road has become narrow and the way has become difficult. How disastrous would it be to lose the opportunity to gain the only true life we will ever know simply because we do not have it within us “to follow a long obedience in the same direction?”
So friends, let us listen and take to heart Jesus’ words of warning and encouragement: “Enter by 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 difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” He calls us to the road less traveled, to the narrow road, to the difficult road, to the “few find it” road because this is the Jesus road, and it is the only road that leads to life.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN