The senior sermon of Amy Moehnke, Class of 2008 from the Diocese of West Texas, given on October 3. 2007 in Christ Chapel

Matthew 7:13-21

In the Heart of the Texas Hill Country there’s a magical place called Enchanted Rock. People have been making pilgrimage there for years to ascend a small mountain (okay, really a big hill) made entirely of pink granite. Once you reach the pinnacle you can see for miles and miles -- its really quite spectacular. After you’ve had your fill of the glorious view, another opportunity awaits you, for just down the hill a bit is a series of caves in which you can participate in the art of spelunking.

Spelunking, or cave exploring, was something foreign to me until one hot July day last summer when I found myself standing at the mouth of one of these hallowed caves with members of my CPE group. There had been excited talk all day about this part of the Enchanted Rock experience and low and behold, here we were. Not knowing exactly what I was getting into, I began to ask Mark, our experienced and fearless leader (who also happened to be our CPE Supervisor) some questions.

“Is it dark?” I asked. “Yes, very dark”, he said and motioned to the miner’s light on top of his head. “That’s why you need some light.” “Well, I don’t have any light”, I said. Someone handed me a flashlight. “Now you do”, Mark said with a grin. “Are there any animals?” I asked. He nodded. “Plenty of bats, if I remember correctly”. My eyes widened as I pondered this. (I‘m not too fond of bats but decided they were better than rats, so it would be okay.) “Are we going to get wet?” “There’s some water, but mostly its just damp.” “Is it hard?” I asked. “Yes”, Mark said. “It’s hard. There are lots of twists and turns and rough places, but mostly it’s hard because it’s narrow. There are lots of places where you will need to squeeze and duck and scrunch.”

Narrow, I thought. Narrow doesn’t sound so bad. I’m fairly flexible, can suck in my breath to fit into small places. I can do narrow. I smiled at Mark. “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s go!”

Our group started off. Seven eager seminarians and a CPE Supervisor -- ready to get our spelunk on. It wasn’t so bad at first -- there was some nervous laughter as we entered the darkened space, some choice words at the first small drop off, but we were making it just fine. And then Mark pointed ahead -- “That part’s tricky”, he said. “That’s where it really narrows, so just be aware.” I looked where he was pointing and saw little more than a large crack in the rock. “Really, that’s the entrance?” I said. He nodded. I watched silently as my companions on the way entered the narrow space and moved forward to take my turn. I could hear two of my friends behind me, nervously whispering that they weren’t sure they could fit into the narrow space, and so didn’t know if they would attempt it. Having spent most of the summer with them and knowing their gifts and abilities I felt confident that they would figure it out and so I forged ahead.

At the entrance I stopped. Not only was it narrow, but there was also a slight drop so I had to navigate how to squeeze and jump at the same time. Following that, I quickly had to lie on my back and hoist myself down to the next level all the while pointing my flashlight toward the depths below hoping the next level was 2 feet down and not 20. So far so good. I managed these acrobatics and then looked back to find Mark behind me rather than my two hesitant friends. “Where are they?” I asked. “They decided not to come”. “Oh,” I said, disappointed and surprised. “Was it too narrow for them?” I asked him. “I think it was”, he said.

So now we were six, six who had decided to enter this narrow cave determined to navigate whatever we encountered. We dealt with the dark using our lights and each other. The bats stayed asleep, so they were no problem. We got a little wet, but none of these things bothered us too much. As predicted, it was the narrowness of it that gave us the most trouble -- the narrowness that forced us to leave our packs behind, scooch on our bellies, contort our bodies into all kinds of ridiculous positions, and that at several points along the way threatened to make us turn back. We certainly missed the two who had decided not to come, but didn’t blame them. If they knew they couldn’t handle narrow then turning back was the only thing they could have done.

Narrow…this crowd knows a thing or two about narrow. Many in this room have quit jobs, sold homes, uprooted families, left family members. We have told our stories, had them inspected and sometimes rejected, stayed up late, gotten up early all in order to do the very thing that Jesus tells us to do: We found the narrow gate and have entered it, and now we are on the hard road that the narrow gate leads us to. We are 5 weeks into our semester and things have officially gotten tough… the honeymoon is over, so to speak, and we are left with assignments to turn in, papers to grade, meetings to attend, families to appease, sermons to write, liturgies to construct and people to live with (not to mention groceries to buy and laundry to do). Many of us are tired, many of us are using muscles we haven’t used in a long time, many of us might even be standing at the mouth of yet another narrow crevice wondering if we can go on.

The good news is that Jesus knows this about us, he knows our tendency to ditch Narrow when Narrow gets really tough and go with Wide. He knows there will be those from Wide who will try to get us to join them because Wide needs lots of people in order to survive. He knows those people will hold out fruit that will appear perfect and look like exactly what we think we need: security, power, money, love, time, sleep. He knows this and so he warns us: beware. Beware because inside that perfect looking fruit are thorns and thistles and other useless things that will drive us not only to distraction but also to destruction. Beware because Wide does not lead to life and life is the goal: life here, life now. Matthew’s Jesus calls this life “entering the kingdom of heaven” by which he does not mean going to a place called heaven but rather coming under God’s rule in such a way that we recognize God’s kingship and live by its standards, thus truly becoming God’s people. It is a way of living that produces life, and this is what we are made for. We are made in the image of a Creator who is life itself and for us to seek anything different is contrary to our very nature. Wide can try to convince us all it wants, we can try Wide all we want but at the end of the day Narrow is the only true way for us.

More good news: As we struggle to live this out day after day we can take comfort in the fact that there are plenty who have gone before us, both living and dead, who cheer us on as we maneuver and scrunch along the way. As we travel, we see the remains of their journey: a burned out miner’s light, an empty water bottle; a tattered Bible, some worn prayer beads. We pick them up and hold them close, hoping that some of the courage of the original owners might be transferred onto us. And we move forward together, continuing to trudge the path laid out before us.

Someday it will be our remains that others find, those things that we used to make our journey through the narrow gate to the hard road that led us to life. And those others will know that they too are not alone in their passage.

In case you’re wondering, all six of the remaining spelunkers made it though the cave. As each of us emerged from the darkness to the bright light of the midday sun we had to blink a little and adjust to our new surroundings. We had grown accustomed to the narrowness of our temporary home and so could not immediately face the open space that awaited us. But we knew that this open space was quite different from the wide road Jesus warns us about in today’s passage, for it was characterized by living things: fresh air, flowers, and a view that took us far beyond ourselves. We could reach our arms to the sky, stretch out on the pink granite and thank God that that part of our journey was through. And then after a time, we could gather up our things and head out to find the next narrow gate, knowing that only there would we find life.