2 September 2026 • Friday of Trinity 13 (observed) • Luke 13:22–30
In the holy name of Jesus. Amen.
Somebody asked Jesus a question about a number. “Lord, are there few who are saved?” (Luke 13:23). Of course, it’s still the question people ask. Luke never tells us who asked it, but maybe we all have at some time. And Jesus doesn’t answer it either.
One man asked Him, and then He turns to the crowd. “He said to them” (Luke 13:23). He turns away from the man and now to everyone else. And He still won’t give a number. Instead, He gives a command. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate” (Luke 13:24). It’s not exactly an answer, is it?
Everybody in this room knows exactly what that means, or at least thinks he does. We default to the old Adam religion. We hear that word strive, and we know that means to try, to work at it, to push. The Greek word is interesting, though. It’s agonizesthe. It’s a fun one to say. Agonizesthe. And in that word you can hear our English word agony, right? And that’s the command to all of us, in the present tense. Keep on agonizing. Don’t stop.
Except then Jesus wrecks our thoughts about trying harder in His very next breath. “For many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:24). Will not be able. Many will seek. Many will try that door. And they won’t be strong enough. So, wait. He commands the agony, and in the same sentence He tells you that your strength will fail at that door.
This means the agonizing He commands is not some kind of flexing of a spiritual muscle. He’s talking about repentance. The struggle you’re commanded to keep at is the struggle of a man who needs to be turned around. And if it’s one thing we know, turning around isn’t anything we can do ourselves, not before God. St. Paul mentions this fight, this agonizing fight, in Romans 7. He says, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24).
So maybe you’ve been striving, striving, trying, agonizing for a long time. Maybe you’ve been fighting the same sin since you were sixteen. The same one. It has a name, and you know its name. You’ve prayed about it, prayed that the Lord take it from you, more times than you can count. You’ve even strived against it with resolutions in this pew. And then you go home and somehow do it again. Somewhere along the line, maybe you even concluded that a real Christian would have won by now with all the striving and trying and agonizing. Maybe you’re not actually a true Christian, then.
Because you’ve probably heard that word, strive to enter the door, your whole life as just another thing you’re failing at. But the truth is, what Jesus commands, He doesn’t give the power to do. You were never strong enough.
This was meant for those who heard it, for them to answer back, Well then, Lord, who can be saved? Again, the question was, are there few who are saved? And the answer He gives is: by their striving, yes. So few, there are none, by their own striving. Many will seek and will not be strong enough. You and me — we’re not any exception to that. There’s no version of us — better rested, better disciplined, more sincere, maybe more mature twenty years along — that gets through that door by our own strength.
And then finally, on the last day, the door does shut. “When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door” (Luke 13:25). People knock, and they make their case. “We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets” (Luke 13:26). We were there. We were near. And then the answer comes back twice, to confirm that it’s true, and it’s really probably the worst sentence in the Bible, the hardest one to hear. “I do not know you, where you are from” (Luke 13:25). “Depart from Me” (Luke 13:27).
That’s pretty heavy. Notice He doesn’t say to them, you didn’t try hard enough, or you just came up short. He says, I do not know you. You are a stranger to Me. And then, depart from Me. So back to the man’s question — well, even more than his question: who then can be saved?
Consider that word again, though. The agonizing word. The striving, the trying. Luke uses that word one more time in his Gospel — in the whole Gospel. Once today, where Jesus commands you to agonize. And once more in a garden, where Luke says it of Jesus Himself. “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). The word is only used twice in the whole book. He commanded it once of you, and then He did it Himself once.
That’s right. He did the agonizing, the striving, the trying. He’s the one who heard the judgment at the shut door, because He’s the one who was put outside — outside the city, outside the camp, outside the gate — out to where He cried the thing no one else has ever had to mean. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). The cry of dereliction at the shut door. Depart from Me. He heard that for you. The Father turned His face from His own Son. And the good news is that when you come to the door — and you get to see the door every week, over here — you’ll never hear those same words. Jesus was made the stranger so that you would be known by God.
“And indeed there are last who will be first” (Luke 13:30). He didn’t say that about Himself. He did it. He took the last place. Was made sin for you. Made a curse for you. Made the man left outside the door who is never known — so that the last would be first. And of course, you were the last.
So you can’t strive your way in. You can’t agonize your way in. Then what do we make of the command?
Listen to what Paul does with that command in our Epistle. There the apostle wants to “perfect what is lacking in your faith” (1 Thess. 3:10). Now that’s curious. Lacking? Our faith is lacking something? It’s not the disqualification you’ve taken it for. It’s just a diagnosis. And then he prays. And in his praying he doesn’t command them to try harder to fill in what’s missing. In the very next words, Paul gives them what is lacking. Listen to who the subject of every verb is.
“Now may our God and Father Himself, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints” (1 Thess. 3:11-13).
May the Lord make you. That He may establish. Not: you need to work up more love. Not: you need to establish your own heart. The apostle takes the very thing that has to happen inside you, hands it over to God, and says, “Amen.” This is what striving to enter looks like when it’s finally been answered. May God do it.
Or even as we prayed tonight in the collect: Almighty and everlasting God, give us an increase of faith, hope, and charity; and that we may obtain what You have promised — that is, to enter through the open door — make us love what You have commanded. Make us love what You have commanded. Not that we could ever do it, but that He gives us to do it. Not help us try harder at what You commanded, not to strive, to agonize — but give it to us.
Our own Confessions ask the same question in so many words. They say the conversion of a man is real — this is in the Solid Declaration, Article II — the heart perceives its sin, dreads God’s wrath, takes hold of the promise in Christ, and then fights against the flesh. That’s what conversion looks like. But then they stop and ask the question that matters. “But the question is about the effective cause. Who works this in us?” (FC SD II 71). Again — who works the conversion, the heart perceiving its sin, dreading God’s wrath, taking hold of the promise of Christ, and fighting against the flesh? Who works this in us? That’s what Paul was answering.
And the answer is that God comes first, by His Gospel. So the fight, the agonizing, is real. Your fight is real. But the wrestling we’ve been reading as failure is actually the Holy Spirit at work in us, who isn’t finished with us yet. The old Adam doesn’t fight back against the new man in Christ if he’s dead. It hurts in you because Someone else has taken up residence in your heart. The struggle is real, as the children say.
So at that door, the word was, I do not know you, where you are from. And it has finally been answered. He knows where you’re from, because He put you there. Water was poured over your head, and a Name went with it — Father and Son and Holy Spirit — and that is where you are from. From the font. That’s your address. Not necessarily this font, although it may be for you. But the address you are from is not Sherman Center. It’s not the family name you were born into either. It was the water of baptism. And where the Master of the house looks at you, He isn’t seeing a stranger. He’s seeing His own Name on you. He’s seeing His own child, who was in the womb of the font.
And so He says it out loud, through a man’s mouth, so that you never have to guess again. That’s the delight of gathering around Word and Sacrament in the Divine Service — you get to hear it again. I forgive you all your sins. The words that open the door of heaven to you. That’s not a report on how well your fight has been going, your agonizing, your striving, your trying harder. It’s the verdict of the cross, handed down while the fight is still in progress.
The door was never a door you were going to open or get through. Because the best part about our stained glass window — you’ll see this when you come up to the rail — is that the door is a Person. The One who stands at the door is the door. And He came out, He opened it, and He takes you in.
And then, that table. “They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). Now that’s good news. People with no claim, hauled in from the four directions and sat down at the dinner table, at the family table. And tonight He does that for you now, even before the last day, with His own body and blood in your mouth.
The Christian life is not one that is easy. It is one of agonizing, striving, trying. You’re not going to get to stop fighting. Not now. The old man, the old Adam, will be here tomorrow and next week and thereafter. But the fight isn’t the verdict. Strive to enter — yes. Struggle against the old man, yes, against the flesh, as Paul calls it. And when you can’t — and indeed you can’t — the Lord Himself will establish your heart blameless, bestowing His Spirit upon you through this Word and His blessed Sacrament. And He promises that He will do it. He has already won the victory, and He gives it to you. And He will have you at His table indeed, with all the saints.
Thanks be to Jesus, in His holy name. Amen.
Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School — Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin