The way in which the Faithful regard Jesus of Nazareth is rich and complex.  He is adored in December, for instance, as the Infant Messiah; . . . during Holy Week He is the suffering Servant of God; . . . at other points in the Church Year Jesus is regarded as the charming rabbi Who tells us thoughtful parables.  . . . But there is an aspect to the character of Jesus which is rarely discussed among Episcopalians; . . . it is the fact that Jesus is a Prophet.  . . . Episcopalians talk about Jesus the Prophet so rarely because Jesus the Prophet says such unsettling things.  Last Sunday, for instance, Jesus the Prophet said,

I came to cast fire upon the earth; . . . Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division . . .

At the Episcopal Church I attended in Maryland last Sunday, . . . the Rector acted as if that Gospel had never been read.  He ignored Jesus the Prophet entirely, preferring, instead, to chat about the biblical scholarship that went into the writing of the Epistle to the Hebrews, culminating his talk with the homiletic admonition that we must, all of us, add the Bible to our summer reading lists.

    Of course, there are other people who are obsessed with Jesus the Prophet.  Tom, the former groundskeeper at Saint Margaret’s House in New Hartford, comes to mind as this sort of person.  . . . Tom wasn’t a particularly religious fellow, but what religious sentiments he harbored were mostly millennial and gleaned from a careless reading of the prophetic pronouncements of Jesus and the Book of Revelation.  . . . And every now and then news of a war or rumor of war (particularly in the Middle East) would stir up Tom’s millenarian anxieties so that he would come looking for me in my vegetable garden or find me reading on the back porch of Saint Barnabas House and button-hole me to get my take on the immanent end of the world and its judgement as foretold in the Bible and the signs of which are before our very eyes even now.

    I could never quite get Tom to articulate what it is about the Apocalypse which sends him over the edge; . . . I suspect it has something to do with the fact that God is ultimately unmanageable; . . . “alien is His work,” Isaiah says.  . . . I suspect Episcopalians are embarrassed by God’s unmanageability; . . . I suspect that people like Tom are frightened by it.  But if the millenarian utterances of Jesus the Prophet make you anxious, as with Tom or my Rector friend in Maryland, . . . comfort can be had from the fact that Jesus, the very Son of God; . . . Jesus has given us plenty of advice about the matter.  In fact, this morning’s Gospel tells of just such an instance!

    Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem, His days having drawn near “to be received up”, as Saint Luke puts it.  Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem, and someone asks Him a millenarian question; . . . someone asks Jesus, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”  . . . Now, Tom could probably have given the exact number of those who are to be saved, . . . but Jesus doesn’t give the matter any attention at all.  He blows off the entire question (!) . . . and says, instead,

Strive to enter by the narrow door . . . When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us.”  He will answer you, “I do not know where you come from.”  Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.”  But he will say, “I tell you, I do not know where you come from . . .

    You see, . . . as far as Saint Luke is concerned (and it’s the point of His Gospel) . . . and as far as our ancient Christian Tradition is concerned, . . . the End of the World has already happened!  . . . It happened at Calvary.  The Apocalypse happened when Jesus was crucified.  . . . And by the Resurrection and by the Receiving Up of Jesus at His Ascension . . . the gates of Heaven -- the life of eternal joy -- are opened and accessible to simply everyone!  . . . God is not an accountant.  God is not making a list and checking it twice.  God is not an accountant; . . . Jesus says that God is a householder!  God is a householder Who brings into His Home all who are recognizably His own:  all who are His family; . . . all who are His friends.

    And what is it that makes someone recognizable to God?  How do I become a member of God’s family; . . . how do I become God’s friend?  Well, His prophet, Isaiah, has told us:

Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone . . . a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation . . . And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet . . .

. . . At Jerusalem . . . at the city on the Hill of Zion; on the hill where Abraham faithfully obeyed God’s command to bring his precious son, Isaac, to be a sacrifice; . . . at Jerusalem the Lord God set His precious Son, Jesus, to be a foundation and its cornerstone upon which one may build a friendship with God.  Only those who are grounded in faith as enduring as Abraham’s and whose faith is founded in Christ Jesus, crucified and risen, . . . can be God’s son . . . can be God’s daughter; … can be God’s friend.  And there is a very specific measure for those who wish to be founded in Jesus and to belong to God.  The measure of whether or not you will fit through the narrow door that leads to Life; . . . the measure of whether or not you will fit within the walls of Heaven . . . is righteousness and justice.  . . . Not your conformity to the political and opinionated sort of “righteousness” and “justice” which issue from secular courts or religious councils, mind you. . . . The measure of whether or not you will fit through the narrow door that leads to Life is God’s righteousness and justice!  The righteousness and justice by which we are all measured for God’s Kingdom -- the righteousness and justice by which God knows where we “come from” -- . . . the righteousness and justice of God are the things about which the Gospels instruct us.  The righteousness and justice of God are poverty, chastity, and obedience; . . . they are simplicity, detachment, and focus upon God.

    All the other things which are called “righteous” and “just” by factions and parties and nations . . . are things which may be “touched”, to use the language of the Apostle writing to the Hebrews.  They are things which inspire ferocity!  . . . But what has God given you in Christ Jesus?

you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of the just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant . . .

As far as we who are in Christ are concerned . . . the end of the world came when Jesus was crucified.  And in Christ Jesus, Risen and Ascended, you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God.  . . . Right here -- in this place; in our hearing the cherished Word of God, and in our receiving the touch of His Body and the kiss of His Life; . . . in this simple banquet in this ordinary place on this most holy day -- . . . we are surrounded and accompanied by innumerable angels in festal gathering, and we are among the assembly of Apostles in the presence of our Lady Mary, the Blessed Virgin, and we are united with all those just men and women who have been before us, and are now made perfect in Christ Jesus, Who is the mediator of a new covenant.  . . . And the covenant of Christ is not a covenant of darkness or ferocity or strife.

    Very often, especially in Church circles, you will hear the word “justice” bandied about as if it were something tangible that we have in our possession in order to distribute to others by changing things around so that they can have their own way.  Katherine Jefferts-Schori preaches that “justice” involves pursuing the eight Millennium Development Goals; . . . David Bena thinks that “justice” involves becoming an African churchman.  But they are both wrong.  They are both wrong because they have forgotten what Saint Paul has written to the Church at Galatia:  … “if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”  . . . Katherine and David are both wrong because they have forgotten the advice which Jesus gives us:  . . . “Strive to enter by the narrow door.”  . . . “Justice” is not an object of the Christian Life.  Justice is a consequence of keeping to the discipline of the Christian Life!  Justice is the consequence of poverty of heart and soul, . . . justice is the consequence of physical and spiritual chastity; . . . justice is the consequence of a life given over to obeying Jesus.  . . . Righteousness is the consequence of simplicity, . . . righteousness is the consequence of a heart and a soul which are detached from -- which are indifferent to -- the world, one’s own flesh, and the devil; . . . righteousness is the consequence of a life focused upon God.  . . . The object of the Christian Life is God, . . . and it is attained by having your life founded upon Jesus.