I grew up on science fiction. From Star Trek to Star Wars to Battlestar Galactica, we were glued to the television. One of the sillier shows I enjoyed, though, was Dr. Who. If you’ve seen that British series, you may remember the TARDIS, the machine the Doctor used to travel through time. On the outside, it looked like a simple blue British police box — approximately four and half feet square. On the inside, however, it opened up to an almost unlimited size.
That is the magic of television, right? By passing through the narrow entrance, one can access a whole world heretofore unknown. It is a little like the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia or the Weasley’s tent in Harry Potter. A narrow entrance sometimes grants us access to a whole new world.
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells those listening, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). That passage has always baffled me a little.
What did Jesus mean by this? A couple of verses later, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…” (vs. 21). I’ll be the first one to admit that this passage gave me a crisis of faith in my earlier years. Many of us read Jesus’ words and wonder if we will be among those welcomed in or whether we might be among those cast out. Narrowness can feel more like a threat than an opportunity.
In his book, The Narrow Path, pastor Rich Villodas observes, “In our culture, narrow is a negative term. It’s used to describe closed-minded, stubborn, holier-than-thou people…To be narrow is not something we aspire to; it’s a characteristic to avoid. Not so with Jesus.” Like the TARDIS, wardrobe, or tent, the narrow gate of Jesus can open the door to an entire world that we did not know was possible.
Few find it, not because Jesus has tried to hide it or made it difficult to reach. Few find it because we aren’t willing to take the long, slow path of conversion. We want quick fixes when Jesus wants to slowly transform our heart to better reflect his own. We want retribution when Jesus wants to teach us forgiveness. We want position and power when Jesus wants to teach us about service. Jesus wants to teach us how to love ourselves, God, and our neighbor.
Few find the narrow way because it is a whole lot easier to go with the flow of the culture around us. It is a lot easier to feign outrage at the offense of the day and allow ourselves to get whipped up in mob-like groupthink. If you are looking for the narrow way of Jesus, Villodas and I might both suggest starting with the Sermon on the Mount. There, we find a vision for a world that is possible as we move beyond calling Jesus our “Savior” to calling him our “Lord” as well.