Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons: 24th August 2025

Door of Humility, Church of Nativity, Bethlehem

Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time

1. What is the discipline of God?

Is it useful to be reminded that we are loved as part of God's family and that any difficult circumstances particularly where we learn the Lord's discipline as a salutary lesson in life are then seen and understood as trials that will lead us onwards to greater understanding? Or as our second reading puts it : 'At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it'.(Heb 12:11) I'm afraid I don't have an easy answer for this, as the passage from Hebrews takes me into areas of life many of us still have difficulties with, that of parental discipline, which I am afraid is often misunderstood by those towards whom it is directed. You and I know of many people who have been badly scarred by this kind of discipline as children and reap the consequences in our adult dysfunctional life. But is this what we should perceive God as, a kind of stern parent?

I know that the author of Hebrews is trying to help us see beyond the problem of life, the knocks and hurts we get, the sufferings we endure, and suggests that there is a real purpose in dealing properly with these things in order to move beyond them and understand them in a greater context. Yet, this is not useful to anybody in the midst of great difficulties, nor is it a completely acceptable perception of what parenting or a parent is about. Life is full of this learning experience, where good and bad alike are mixed and in which we can be 'disciplined' in a positive way when we happen to see our sufferings and misfortunes as points of change, moments of new perception. It is only at that point of illumination, when as adults we can understand the situation in a better manner, that these words make sense: 'So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.'(Heb 12:12.13)

2. Training ourselves in the spiritual way: the narrow door

In part we can discern this as a call to an internal and spiritual discipline which we might eventually embrace with the spirit of joyful acceptance Hebrews mentions (Verse 11) because we eventually ( though not without a steep learning curve) begin to see and make some sense of it as part of what makes us whole, the training all of us take on from Baptism onwards. But caveat emptor, not all our trials make sense in this life, there are many issues such as the death of the innocent, illnesses like cancer or the ebola virus, the wanton and selfish destruction of life, wars such as that in Ukraine, or the appalling famine now visited on Gaza, all of which are NOT part of this discipline - but result from other causes, and which demand from us a different response, a positive response such as that of healing the hurts of others, challenging the cruelty inflicted by evil doers, alleviating the pain of the suffering, and striving for permanent peace. The love Christ enjoins on us is often tough , and there is also tough love, but the task of our loving for Christ's sake, is to bring life and hope even now, not misery and death.

My reflection takes us I hope to the gospel of today taken from Luke 13 where Jesus says to us: 'Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough'. To my mind, and this is a personal thought, Jesus is building upon the idea of that innate need for our training in the Gospel way. A narrow door needs careful scrutiny for a number of reasons, one is so that we don't damage anything going through it or in fact the door itself, another is that we need to work out what can go through it, and furthermore a narrow door is not always a closed door, it is precisely what it suggests a place where the wideness of crowds are whittled down to a manageable size, or even as the door of the Nativity Basilica in Bethlehem, only one person at a time can enter, but it is also a vulnerable place, who knows who or what might be on the other side as we come though.

3. We find strength in our weakness

The strength Jesus mentions is one we all seek it is partly the resolve to persist through things, it is also the acceptance of our own frailty and sinfulness, so that we are strong in the wisdom of the Spirit. In order to find the narrow door to the Kingdom we need to have a different strength the humility of adapting ourselves to the least of all and to remember his insight that he himself is to be found in the vulnerable, the stranger, the unloved, the little ones.

For when we knock, the following warning by Jesus is we hope, not the response we will get: 'After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you stand outside knocking and saying, 'Lord, open the door for us.' He will say to you in reply, 'I do not know where you are from'.(Lk 13: 25) Instead the strength of the Lord is with us in our humbleness of heart, having seen that the road and door is narrow we divest ourselves of greed, ambition, arrogance, anything totally ego-centric and instead carry that small light pack of a humble and contrite heart, and as a mantra for the journey we must repeat to ourselves Jesus' words and make them our own: '… people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God. For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.'(Lk 13:29,30) And let us place our hope in the love, companionship and constant presence of the Lord.

Lectio Divina

Cardinal Basil Hume's well-known statement about the 'narrow door' is: 'To walk through a narrow door, we must strip off every pretension we have. All the things that clutter our lives, all the things that we are often loath to lose-we must give up.' This reflects the idea that entering the kingdom of God requires a shedding of worldly attachments and self-serving tendencies.

Karl Rahner, quoted in the Wittenburg Door - 'The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim God with their mouths and deny Him with their lifestyles is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable.'