Among the many stories I have heard about Dr. Wallace Bassett, who, for the sake of our newcomers, was the pastor here from 1918 to 1966, one of my favorites has to do with his love of cigars.  Now, I’m not going to get into it with you about whether or not Dr. Bassett should have smoked cigars.  If you have an opinion about that then you can feel free to express it to him personally someday when you see him in heaven.  But, before you do, you might want to hear this story.  As I am told, Dr. Bassett had been to Baylor hospital one day to pay a visit to a church member.  As he was leaving the hospital, he started lighting up.  Just then, he ran into one of the ladies from the church who, obviously very disappointed to see her pastor with tobacco in his mouth, said, “Dr. Bassett, I didn’t know you smoked.”  Without missing a beat, Dr. Bassett said, “Well, now you know,” and kept on walking.

I’ve often envied Dr. Bassett’s independent spirit and wondered how it is he came by it, especially as a pastor.  Having been raised myself in a day and time when people are more swayed by image than substance, by what is so artificially superficial than by what is real, I’ve marveled that he could be so stubbornly uncaring about what people thought about him.  Maybe his decades in the pastorate had taught him that, no matter what he did, he wasn’t going to please everyone anyway, so he might as well get some pleasure out of it along the way.  Instead of letting people blow smoke his way he blew some theirs.  I’ve been tempted myself of late to ask someone what brand he smoked.  Some people’s expectations of their pastor are so out of line with reality that they are going to be perpetually disappointed as long as they stay close enough to see his or her humanity.  They think pastors owe more than any human could ever deliver.

One of our members recently shared with me about a church that investigated fifteen candidates in their search for a pastor but were continually disappointed in the prospects.  Some examples.  They thought about calling Noah.  But, though he had 120 years of preaching experience, he had no coverts to his credit.  They looked at Moses.  But, not only did he stutter, his former congregation said he lost his temper too easily.  They looked at Abraham, but he tended to run away when things got tough, got into trouble with the authorities and tended to lie his way out of sticky situations.  They looked at David but his moral character was unacceptable.  They looked at Solomon who, though he had a reputation for wisdom, didn’t practice what he preached.  They even looked at Hosea.  But, his home life was in shambles; he was divorced and remarried to a prostitute.  They looked at John, who was called a Baptist, but, not only was he very untactful, he dressed like a hippie and they figured he would not feel comfortable at church potluck suppers.  They looked at Peter.  But, he, too, had a horrible temper and was even once overheard denying Christ.  They actually considered Jesus.  But, he tended to offend church members with his controversial questions about their traditions.  Finally, the committee settled on one man.  He was practical, cooperative, good with money and even cared for the poor.  His name was Judas.

Again, some people just can’t be pleased.  Their expectations of their church and their ministers are so out of line with reality that they live in a constant state of frustration and anger as their church or their pastor fails to deliver on the level they believe they are owed.  Dr. Bassett could be known to disappoint people from time to time because he had a tendency to tell the truth. That people had the right to their opinion but never the right to use that opinion to leverage him into a way of behaving that was beyond the scope of his calling in Christ.  Which meant that he often times ended up not telling people what they wanted to hear.  Jesus was very much the same way.  As in the text we have read this morning.

Now, I wasn’t there so it’s difficult to be sure.  But, it sounds to me like this person who asked Jesus, “Lord, will only a few be saved?” wanted reassurance.  The answer Jesus gave was anything but reassuring.  “‘Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.  There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves thrown out.  Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.  Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’”  Your spiritual ancestors will get in, Jesus said.  And, some will get in who come from places that have never heard of your ancestors.  But, some of you won’t.

Jesus’ answer must have been troublesome.  The people to whom he first told this parable were Jews.  People who believed that their place in God’s kingdom was a birthright.  Jesus was saying that not everyone who thinks they are entitled to heaven necessarily has a place in it.  But, as troubling as his words were to those folks, they are no less troubling to me.  In my earlier years when matters of salvation and heaven and hell were more rigidly black and white, I could preach from this text or ones similar to it with great enthusiasm. 

It once gave me great pleasure to warn people that they might be the very ones who, thinking they had a place reserved in heaven, would find themselves standing outside of it someday, beating on the door and begging God for entrance only to hear their request denied.  Of late, this text has troubled me for two reasons.  First, I’ve had difficulty attempting to reconcile what I am coming to know of God and his grace with the picture Jesus paints of him in this parable.  Second, I’ve been made to wonder, since Jesus was speaking to people who thought their religious beliefs entitled them to something from God, whether Jesus might be speaking to me.  What if weeping and gnashing are in my future?

This is what troubles me.  How could a loving God listen to people weeping outside his kingdom door, begging for entrance, and turn a deaf ear to them?  The apostle Peter later wrote that “The Lord is . . . patient . . . not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  (1 Peter 3:9)    How do we reconcile that with what Jesus is saying here? 

Again, listen to those to whom Jesus was speaking.  He said that these people, the ones who would be “‘weeping and gnashing’” would be doing so because they thought God owed them something.  He described them as complaining to God, upon being restricted from his kingdom that, “‘We ate and drank with you.’”  They believed that their previous association somehow or another entitled them to a place in God’s kingdom.  Jesus was simply and profoundly saying that nothing could be further from the truth.  As Americans we believe ourselves entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  God owes no man such an obligation.  With him there is no such thing as entitlements.  No one can bring any credential to God that entitles him to anything.  God owes no man anything.  That’s what this parable means.

One of my colleagues in the ministry tells me the story of a painful experience he once had with one of his members on the backside of a building program.  This particular member was very wealthy and enjoyed using his wealth to gain access to positions of prominence in the church and the community.  He had donated quite a bit of money to the church to help build the new facility, a family life center.  After it was completed, he called on the pastor one day to ask for his personal set of keys so that he could come and go at will in the new facility.  The pastor explained that, for security reasons, only paid staff were allowed keys and that he would not be able to grant his special request.  That, like every other member, he would have to come and go during regular hours.  The church member was livid.  He had, after all, donated quite a bit of money, thought this entitled him to special privileges and threatened to leave the church.  When the pastor refused yet again the man kept his word, left the church and made his way to another church in that city where, I hear tell, keys were for sale.

The emotional and spiritual math in this situation is quite simple.  The more you think people owe you, the more you are going to tend to be disappointed.  Relationships tend to thrive or die based on how high your expectations are of another person and how well they deliver on those expectations.  As a rule, the more you believe people owe you something, the more you are going to spend your life disappointed and disillusioned with other people, with the church and even with God.  By the way, that’s what kills most marriages.  People’s expectations of their mates are so out of line with reality that the debt on what each mate thinks the other owes keeps piling up until, one day, under the weight of it, the will to keep sacred vows collapses. 

So, as I see it, this is the meaning of the parable Jesus told.  The people most likely to miss the kingdom of God are those who believe they are, for one reason or another, entitled to it.  Jesus was saying one very fundamental thing.  The keys to God’s kingdom are not for sale.  We cannot bring our credentials of spiritual depth or religious performance to God and barter them for a seat at his table.  There is only one way in and it has nothing to do with our credentials.  God doesn’t owe anyone anything.  Not anymore.

At one time, he did.  The scripture says, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Romans 6:23)  A wage is an obligation owed for work done.  Our work was sin.  Even our best work still has an element of sin in it.  The only debt God ever owed was the wage of death for the work of sin.  And, the good news is that, the only debt God owed he took upon himself.  When Jesus died on the cross, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting (the sins of men) against them . . . he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  (2 Corinthians 5:19, 21)  Again, the only debt God ever owed, he paid himself. 

God doesn’t owe us anything now.  He doesn’t owe us happiness.  He doesn’t owe us a middle-income lifestyle.  He doesn’t owe us answers to our questions or explanations for why our lives didn’t turn out the way we thought they should.  He doesn’t answer to us as to why evil not only exists but sometimes prevails or why it is that the innocent suffer and the guilty profit.  He doesn’t owe us anything.  The creator never answers to the created.  Most of all, he doesn’t owe us our personal salvation.  Which all goes to say that, if we don’t get hell for what we’ve done then we didn’t get the one thing God did owe us.  And everything else we do get is gravy.  Everything.

Just our presence in this world, forgiven in Christ, is nothing short of God’s good and free gift.  The air we breathe, the ability to think, the opportunity to pray, the relationships we enjoy.  The list is endless.  Whatever you have is God’s good and free gift.  Especially your own personal and saving relationship with him.

All of which tells us about what it means to get into God’s kingdom.  Jesus called it “the narrow door.”  It’s narrow because there is only one way in and because God saves all of humanity one person at a time.  And, most of all, the keys aren’t for sale.  Nothing we bring with which to bargain is of any value because the only way into God’s kingdom has already been paid.  You either receive it by faith in Christ as the free gift it is or you lose it altogether.  There is no other way.  The only people who are going to be eternally disappointed are the ones who stubbornly refuse to stop believing that God owes them something and keep banging on a door of bargaining and bartering that God will never open.

As we turned through the winding bend of a mountain highway in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado last week, looming before us was the biggest and most beautiful snow-capped mountain Cameron had ever seen in his twelve years.  He asked, “Is it real?”  For a minute, I didn’t know how to answer until it registered with me that the only mountain like that Cameron had ever seen was in a picture.  A copy of an image.  But, not the real thing.  When what was only a copy of an image had been replaced by the real thing Cameron could barely believe his eyes.  (I’ve often wondered if that will be our experience upon entering heaven.)  Anyway, after having spent a few days in the real place, I asked each of my family to share what they had learned about God that week.  Cameron said, “He must love us an awful lot to put us in a place like this.” 

I only pray that he can keep that perspective the rest of his life.  That everything we have is because God loves us and not because he owes us.  That the only debt God owed he took upon himself.  And, the rest of the story is about how much he just loves to give far more than he owes.