Master, will only a few be saved?

Luke 13:22-30 

Jesus went on teaching from town to village, village to town, but keeping on a steady course toward Jerusalem. 23 A bystander said, "Master, will only a few be saved?" He said, 24 "Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life--to God!--is vigorous and requires your total attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you'll sit down to God's salvation banquet just because you've been hanging around the neighbourhood all your lives. 25 Well, one day you're going to be banging on the door, wanting to get in, but you'll find the door locked and the Master saying, 'Sorry, you're not on my guest list.' 26 "You'll protest, 'But we've known you all our lives!' 27 only to be interrupted with his abrupt, 'Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing. You don't know the first thing about me.' 28 "That's when you'll find yourselves out in the cold, strangers to grace. You'll watch Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets march into God's kingdom. 29 You'll watch outsiders stream in from east, west, north, and south and sit down at the table of God's kingdom. And all the time you'll be outside looking in--and wondering what happened. 30 This is the Great Reversal: the last in line put at the head of the line, and the so-called first ending up last.

Food for thought!

Jesus' answer to the man's question must have come as a shock: "Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life, to God, is vigorous and requires your total attention. With it Jesus declared that entry to the kingdom cannot be taken for granted; it is the result and the reward of a struggle. "Keep on striving to enter," he said, "the way to life, to God is vigorous." Jesus told this man to mind his own business: “Do your best to go in through the narrow door; because many people will surely try to go in but will not be able.

Like this man, we sometime look at some people as hell bound and ourselves as heaven bound. Sometimes we think that some people will not simply go to heaven, or that once we ourselves have made a commitment to Jesus Christ, we have reached the end of the road and can, as it were, sit back as if we had achieved our goal. There is no such finality in the Christian life. We must ever be going forward or else we go backward.

Please note the defence of these people was, "We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets." There are those who think that just because they are members of a Church, all is well. They differentiate between themselves and the rest. But belonging to some church is not all; going to mass is not all; carrying a Christian name is not all; that is no reason for sitting back content that all is well. Rather, belonging to a church, going to mass or carrying a Christian name should inspire us to be and do more; to struggle to improve what is good to being great.

Jesus is cautioning us not to take salvation for granted. He is urging us to keep on struggling; keep on praying; keep on walking, and working, and loving, and forgiving, and hoping, and believing. Let us all do like Jesus did in today's gospel reading: "He went on teaching from town to village, village to town, but keeping on a steady course toward Jerusalem." This is what Mike Ditka once said: "You never really lose until you stop trying." And it is what the Budhist proverb says, "If you are facing in the right direction, all you need to do is keep walking." It is what St. Paul urges us to do: "Keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God." (Philippians 2:12). And it is what Oliver Wendell Holmes indicated when he said, “I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” 

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. (Matthew 9:35)

Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. (Acts 10:38)