Lord, Let Me Come In!

August 24, 2025 sermon at Ascension Lutheran Church, Montreal, QC by Rev. Charles St-Onge. Text: Luke 13:22-30.

Transcript

Charles St-Onge, Pentecost 11 C, August 24, 2025

Who’s Knocking?

I was thinking this week of the story of the three little pigs. If you don’t know the story, there are three pigs who each build a house for themselves. Clearly the housing crisis has affected the swine as well. One builds a house of straw, another of sticks, and a third from bricks. A dastardly wolf, hungry for bacon, knocks on each door in turn and says “"Little pig, little pig, let me come in." each pig answers in turn, "Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin." The wolf, undeterred, answers, “Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in.” The houses of straw and sticks quickly fall, but not the house of brick. 

In the case of today’s Gospel we have sheep inside with the good shepherd, but the wolves still come a knocking. “Jesus Lord, Jesus Lord, let us come in!” But Jesus’ answer is not cute. It is not funny. He says simply, “I do not know where you come from.” You can stand outside and huff and puff all you want, but you’re not blowing the Lord’s house down. You’re not mine, and you’re not getting in. 

Who are these wolves knocking at the door, commanding Jesus to let them in? Who would dare give God a command, as he was a servant they could order around? That’s a good question, isn’t it? In just a few chapters, and we’ll hear Jesus speak this parable at the end of September, a rich man and a poor, leprous man die and both end up in eternity, the rich man in suffering, the poor man in the presence of Abraham. The rich man starts barking orders at Abraham like he was used to doing in life, only to have Abraham rebuke him. 

The wolves knocking at the door are insistent. “We ate and drank in your presence!” We made you a guest at our feasts – you owe us! “You taught in our streets!” Our streets, not yours! We let you, we gave you permission, to speak the Good News of God’s love for all people and to heal the sick and cure the lame and give sight to the blind in our towns. Weren’t we generous to let you do that? Now you owe us! Little lord, little lord, let us come in!

But Jesus answers with words much more chilling than “not on the hair of my chinny chin chin.” He says, “I do not know where you come from.” In fact, he answers that twice. The wolves wouldn’t like that answer not one bit. They would have been huffing and puffing in hearing that. “How dare he suggest he doesn’t know where we come from! Look at our family trees! Look at our lineage! We can trace our bloodlines all the way back to the Exodus – further! All the way back to the great patriarchs themselves, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!” 

If these wolves were proud of anything, it was that they knew where they came from. Jesus couldn’t care less about their family tree. They might be descendants of Abraham, but in Jesus’ eyes they were “workers of evil.”

Who are you this morning? Where do you find yourself? Maybe we should go back and ask how these wolves came to be knocking and huffing and puffing at the Lord Jesus’ door in the first place. It all started with a question: “Will those who are saved be few?” The question is outward directed. The people asking it assume they are saved by Jesus. But who will not be? 

Jesus makes the question not about “the others,” but about us. “You should strive to enter by the narrow door.” You should pay attention to how you come knocking at the door. Will you come knocking in entitlement, in pride, like a wolf at the little pig’s door? The many who will be saved are few, but what matters is not the many but you. Jesus warns the people asking him the question. You don’t want to see Abraham and Jacob and Isaac feasting in the kingdom with the prophets, but you yourselves cast out. 

We are not the wolf detection society, looking around to see if he or she or they will “get in.” We are an introspective society, asking, “what about me?” The ministry of the church is not in asking, “are they going to get in?” Our primary concern is “I don’t want the one to be cast out to be me.” 

The Good News of course is that Jesus is also not focused on casting out but inviting in. He’s not a wolf wandering around trying to devour the unsuspecting. He’s a Good Shepherd building homes for little piggies. For his sheep. For those who are not looking for what they deserve but rather what is freely and generously offered for no reason other than love. 

Jesus spoke through Isaiah and then from his own mouth that “people will come from east and west, from north and south” to the kingdom of God. As a Canadian I always liked these verses! People from the north get in! Israel had a bad habit of thinking they had to wall themselves off from the world and built their own protection from the wolves. In so doing, they became wolves themselves. But Isaiah says the people will go out in order to draw people in.

We may focus on those who are first who will be last. That’s what a wolf detection society does. Looking to see who will wind up in the outer darkness, with weeping and gnashing of teeth. But I’m looking around this morning, and I can say we are not “first” kind of people! What Paul wrote about the church in Corinth is true of us: “I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families.” (1 Cor 1:26-27, The Message). Is this not GOOD NEWS, that those who have been left out of the world’s prizes are received openly by Christ?

In 1987, Jordan Belfort took an entry-level job at a Wall Street brokerage firm. By the early 1990s, while still in his 20s, Belfort founded his own firm, Stratton Oakmont. Together with his trusted lieutenant and a merry band of brokers, Belfort made a huge fortune by defrauding wealthy investors out of millions. However, while Belfort and his cronies enjoyed a hedonistic brew of sex, drugs and thrills, the SEC and the FBI closed in on his empire of excess. This was the plot of the movie, “The Wolf of Wall Street.” 

Good Shepherds protect from the wolves. They protect little pigs, but also little lambs. They open their door to those who seem like the last of society but end up first in the presence of Jesus. Those who rejoiced that Jesus would choose to eat with them, rather than insisting on their right to eat with him because they “allowed” him to preach in “their” streets. 

I am Jesus little lamb / Ever glad at heart I am. That’s the hymn we sing. We look forward to life in the presence of God, at the table of the Lord, behind Jesus’ door, where no wolf or evil will EVER be able to get in. Not by the hairs on Jesus’ chinny chin chin.

Amen.