The Gate

If you were to walk into the 1980s, and travel up the north fork to a little ranch beside the river… you would find yourself at my Gramma’s house. Just outside the basement door, past Gramma’s crooked stepping-stone path (the one I used to play leapfrog on), under the shade of at least three Pine trees

-and a crabapple-

sat a little,

gray,

gate.

It was only wide enough for one person to walk through. And it was held closed (quite thriftily and ingeniously) by an old, rusty trampoline spring that squeaked and made the gate BANG shut every time you let it go.

I can still hear the sound of its hollow bang if I close my eyes. One of those sounds you wouldn’t think important – one you would hardly even take note of – and yet, it’s branded into my memory as clearly as if I heard it yesterday. If you walked through that narrow gate, you were walking out into the Happenings – where baby calves were born, where horses were kept, where the big red barn stood waiting with its WIDE open windows, and its cool, hay-filled loft… full of hidden tunnels, and tantalizing ideas of forts waiting to be built and played in.

There were midnight calving adventures with hushed adult conversations and dangerous procedures to save calves and their moms in trouble. There was grandpa coming home from chores, stomping his boots, swinging his hat, fresh off of the big green tractor, ready to swing me up on his knee and sing hupa-hupa-risa or sneak me chocolate treats.

I spent a lot of time at Gramma’s house growing up. Playing both inside and out, waiting for Grandpa to come home so we could have fresh baked buns and plum jam over CafLib (the old Mennonite farmer’s version of coffee). There were many days of listening to Gramma’s stories, singing Bible songs, and the constant stream of verses she would try to get me to memorize. “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.” She would say.

Growing up in a conservative church with a sensitive heart, I began to worry about that narrow gate. What if I lost sight of it? What happened if I stopped going through it? What happened if I made a mistake by accident that kept me from finding it? What if I did something too big, too bad, to be saved from? What if I got tricked by my friends into forgetting it was there?

And how many of my friends and family had missed it already and were being sucked into the whirling, wide chaos of the crowds that lead them to DESTRUCTION?

Verses like those ones sat around in my head and heart as a never-ending echo of fear that bounced from one moment of imperfection to another. A stern warning to my childish heart to behave. One that spanked this message into me:

Only a few people get to heaven. It’s much easier to get sucked into destruction (with all the others) than it is to find that narrow gate and go through it. The whole world is too caught up in being bad to be saved – and it’s so much easier to be bad than good. Only a few who try hard enough and choose to be good – who keep themselves disciplined, and controlled – get rewarded with being with Jesus. Try harder or you’ll slip.

Every time I heard that verse – or some other version of that message, I would forget that:

Jesus called himself the gate.

And the way.

And the shepherd, too.

He said he would follow just. one. lost. sheep. who wandered away – until he found it. And he promised his sheep would know his voice – Recognize it. And if it didn’t?

He would stand in the street – in the wide, busy, not-paying-any-attention, thoroughfares where everyone walked and hold out his arms. Then he would wait. And wait. All day.

There’s a story about those crowds – how he was found there by a woman who needed healing – and she didn’t even need to see his face for him to give of himself.

Not too long ago I heard that verse again in a discussion between theologians and thinkers. All of them were trying to ride the line between the hope of something restored inside Christianity beyond the same old fear stuff, while not ignoring the blaring of the word Destruction.

And I thought of that narrow, gray, gate that fills me with such affection and nostalgia. I thought of listening for the arrival of my grandpa after chores; hearing the bang of it in the middle of the night during calving season; holding it open for my siblings to follow behind me; of my grandpa reaching over my head to push it open when I was still small enough to fit under his arm.

And I wonder how much fear, and hell, and damnation, have twisted the meaning of that verse.

When I look at the face of my best friend, when I sit in his lap beside the quiet crackle of a campfire and wait for his voice to sound above my head, nothing I accepted as a harsh, cutting-me-down-to-size, truth seems to fit. The destruction that always looms both behind me, and ahead of me if I slip, doesn’t seem to hold its sway. I can’t quite reconcile that fear that lurked inside me with his expansive, hugely abundant, love and power. His never-ending patience, and his unplumbed depth of determination to bring good, to bring freedom.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I think destruction doesn’t happen. It’s not that I haven’t walked through the quagmire of it, either. I’ve been inside that destroying of self, been hit with a loss of who I was made to be – until there’s nothing left but empty, reactive, days – and hollow, meaningless, treasures to distract myself.

Yes, yes.

I have gotten lost in the mob many, many times. I have lost my voice to the lure of what others say. I’ve parroted the words and actions of those around me instead of listening to the quiet murmur of my beloved, most familiar, voice – the one that only sounds itself inside my heart. I have often let ego speak out of me – or misplaced zeal. I have hurt those I love and been hurt in return. Destruction is old news. But.

If I am being honest right now, and I take the time to press my ear to the steady thump of that heart I love most above all – the one that belongs to him, my person, my Jesus, who has followed me all the way through those timeless moments… If I let myself remember that he silently held me during those endless days of destruction, and promises me he will continue to do so in the days ahead no matter what… If I hold that in my thoughts then I think a verse about narrow gates and wide destructive paths can maybe be read differently.

What if, instead of hearing it like its from a police officer at a roadblock;

or an angry parent using the tired old phrase of “or else“…

what if instead… it’s an invitation?

What if it’s a best friend’s voice you hear instead of the scary “or else” one?

You know, the one I just told you about? The Jesus whose lap I snuggle on around an early morning campfire after his death, content to just be held and listen like a child while he murmurs and laughs with friends. The place where I can just be me, and he is just being him, and being together is enough to fill my heart until it bursts into a thousand pieces.

Can you imagine if that person, the one who makes everything more and deeper, invites you to look for a little gate – and a narrow path beyond it – the one that leads into the unknown, the Happenings,

the gate, and the path, that only one person at a time can travel down.

What if the truth of that verse is not in the expected destruction but in the intimacy, the solitude? Because meeting Jesus is meant to be done on your own. No one can do it for you – and you can’t do it for anyone else. Don’t get me wrong: We’re meant to live in community. We’re meant to live side by side and bolster each other up. But. Following a crowd won’t be enough to experience him. Putting all of your beliefs or hopes into a system – into a rulebook or Bible; into a church that meets on Sundays – into what any group of people is doing or saying – none of that can get you through the veil to find Jesus. They can point the way – they can help when you’re hurting or sad, but they can’t do it for you.

Jesus lives on the narrow path, through the gate that only you can open and slip through by yourself. Conversations with him are meant to be a just you and him thing. He is the most generous soul, but he guards that intimacy of getting to know you fiercely. He won’t do it by proxy. He won’t let a crowd, parents, a pastor or a group of elders be enough. He might speak in a crowd or partner with a friend to reach your heart – but the instant he opens his mouth and you decide to listen, everyone fades away until all that’s left is just you and him.

He speaks in the quiet corners of your soul, in the secret longings of your heart, in the alone places that no other person can reach. You and me? We can only find him in the solitude, not through someone else’s connection. Not even each other’s. We might sense him in each other – but only as a beacon he’s lit from another place – a place on that mountaintop inside your own heart.

It may be that few find that narrow gate – few know how to look for it, few trust themselves enough to step away from everyone else.

But then, finding Jesus was never about trying harder, working more, holding on tighter.

It was, and is always, about Jesus coming out to find you, and me, first, anyways. And always. It’s about Jesus being the gate,

being the narrow way,

and the whisper,

and the cornerstone,

and the foundation,

baring his arm to make clear the path, traveling the distance through time and obstacle to reach not only the margins, the hurting, the grieving, but also the ordinary, the humdrum, the joyous, the busy, the unique, the blind, the deaf, the disabled, and the stubborn.