The Last Prayer of Warren Zevon

I was the grader of ordination exams. Did it for a few years. It was fun. Reading essays of soon-to-be pastors demonstrating their seminary acquired skills in polity, worship, theology, and biblical exegesis. There are four exams. Although they are different tests, very different in content and structure, they all had to meet a single criterion. Did the essay answer the question?

Graders were instructed to not share opinions, to disagree with the content of the exams, just as they were told not to agree or concur. A proper grade to the test, they were all pass/fail, a proper grade simply conferred approval or disapproval: the essay answered the question; the essay failed to answer the question.

              Reading dozens of these in a day, it was like I was peeking into a collage of seminary classmates.  Sometimes I could hear the author’s voice; it took me back to classrooms, fellow students.  Some voices were strident, some reserved; some were rough, some ready for publication. 

              Being so focused on answering the question or not answering the question I remember only a few of the exams in detail.  Was there a reasonable, pastoral response to a theological question, an adequate interpretation of a bible passage?  Yes or no?

              Our reading today from Luke is like those exams.  Jesus is questioned: how many will be saved?  This is a theological question, judgement and salvation. Jesus was called to answer: how many will be welcomed by God? 

              In terms of an examination, Jesus failed to answer the question.  He didn’t offer the prophetoc wisdom of the remnant, the promise of God to Abraham of sand, stars.  There is no number for salvation, no approximation. 

              His response, while not an answer, is artful, powerful.  Jesus responds with six questions; hence he failed to give an answer. His statements are questions.  He turned the tables on the examiner.

              The six responses are a ladder or progression.  He moves from the narrow gate, and the house, and the village street, to the streets of heaven, the banquet hall of eternal life, to greatest mystery of God, the theodicy.  With each response Jesus turns the question around.  He says in effect, I don’t know how many, but I am curious if you would be one.  To be one who enters the narrow door.  Are you?  To be one saved by being invited in.  Have you been invited in?  To be among the righteous you must be more than an acquaintance.  Are you a beloved of God?

              The second set of three move from a common life to the great questions of faith.  Are you honest about unrighteousness?  Do you seek a table for all? And the final one, how is it that some suffer and some do not?  What say you? Each goads the examiner to offer a good answer.  And the answer needed to be good because the stakes are high.  Failure is dire.

              Let’s move through the six.  While the format and metaphors seem odd that is actually part of the art, the artfulness.  Each is very much a part of our faith and life, even our day.

              The narrow door is friendship.  Ancient cities had two doors.  A main door for people to come and go during the day.  Think economy, trade, business.  And then there was a small door, a narrow door used at night.  One person at a time.  Usually with a password or having a guard recognizing you. 

              The narrow door is the path of salvation as it is friendship.  If you want to be rescued from danger and given eternal life, you need friends, need to be a friend.  This is the classic last line of It’s a Wonderful Life, “No man is a failure who has friends.”  This is life, everyday life.  Jesus says the first step to salvation is to trust friendship.  Do you?

              The second response, or step, is to be accepted, to seek acceptance, to be invited in, and go in.  This is perhaps simply a deeper level of friendship, being a welcomed guest.  This is also a deep hope. 

              Each time I read this teaching of Jesus and its harsh tone, the refusal, I think of Warren Zevon.  Zevon was dying of cancer in 2003.  He spent the last year of his life doing what he loved, making rock-n-roll music.  His final album was a big success, won a grammy.  One song on his final album was a cover of a Bob Dylan tune, “Knocking of Heaven’s Door.”  Zevon’s cover of the Dylan tune is one of dozens, the song has been covered by all types of musicians.  Two things though stand out. The first is that Bob Dylan said, of all the covers Zevon’s was the best of the best.  High praise. The second distinction was prayer.  Zevon prayed in the song.

              Near the end, as the backup singers sang, “knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door like so many times before,” beneath their voices you can hear Zevon praying.  It’s a simple prayer repeated again and again.  “Open, open, open up the door for me.  Open, open, open up the door for me.”

              Like the man on the street pleading to be let in to the house, Zevon pleaded to be let into heaven before he died.  As an aside, Zevon recorded this song in the basement of the actor Billy Bob Thorton.  It was unplanned, unchoreographed, but it was Los Angeles and Billy Bob’s house just happened to be filled with great musicians who all jumped in and helped make the recording.  This is a unique setting, but a common prayer.  Like the man crucified beside Jesus begging, "remember me," Zevon wanted to be remembered and invited into grace.  Jesus is asking, is this your prayer?

              The third step, the rejection, the dismissal is a striking fear we all hold at some point.  To be sent away, to be discarded. At this, perhaps the deepest place of friendship, is the matter of being beloved.  Are you a beloved or will you be discarded?

              Over the centuries this question has been posed by distinguishing a cultural faith, a kind of cursory acquaintance on one hand, and then the depth of love that comes over time, with risk and intimacy and humility on the other.  A profound love undoing us or an attraction. 

              There is a moment I love in the movie While You were Sleeping, where an elderly woman comments on the mass while listening to the priest. “I liked it more when it was in Latin,” she said. “You couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it was pretty.”  Kierkegaard spoke of this cultural faith as lacking power, strength.  Cultural faith is weak and cannot withstand the challenges of life.  Jesus is asking, have you found faith giving power only mature love can bring?

              In the fourth step or response Jesus leaves this world and ushers his examiner to the judgement hall of heaven.  Here we see the patriarchs; here is the question of unrighteousness.  This is a big picture question, a matter of history.  Do you know what is unrighteous, are you honest about the powers that corrupt, destroy the fabric of life?  Can you gaze upon the challenges, hardships and not turn away?

              Jesus has moved the question of salvation from friendship and love to courage and morality.  From the day to day to the great spans of time.  In the arc of history he asks: Are you living a life of courage? Can you keep your gaze, or will you turn aside to weep and gnash your teeth? 

              This a very hard question to ask today as we are ever bombarded with the brokenness of the world.  Our instinct when faced with profound injustice is to turn away, shut down, repress emotions.  How do you respond to the depth of human failure?  Do you turn a blind eye?  Are you a cynic?  Jesus is suggesting salvation is not found in becoming a judge, but in those who do not turn away, the depth of honesty.

              Whenever I read this passage the image that comes to mind is the first generation of Israel after being created by the United Nations.  As a people, as a nation it was forbidden to speak of the holocaust.  Even though so many of the newly arrived in Israel were survivors, the Shoah could not be named.  It was too much to bear and there was too much to do.  It took a generation before people in Palestine could say, what was that darkness?  The question of courage is easy to raise, hard to answer.

              The last two are similar.  They are the closest Jesus gives to a count, to answering the “how many” question.  The fifth step, from east and west and north and south, this is a question of embrace and exclusion.  Jesus is saying, how big is your God, how big is this salvation? 

              This line is often spoken at the communion table before the sacraments are offered.  Very dramatic.  Pastors are trained to wave their arms, make sweeping gestures in all directions.  What pastors are not trained to do is to open the table, to undo the centuries of an exclusive God. No other part of the Christian faith has been more restrictive than this table.  They will come from all directions, but they, the "them", are particular and few: those who meet all the markers, check all the boxes. 

              I glimpsed the opposite of this for just a moment in Santiago de Compostella many years ago.  Standing in the packed pilgrim cathedral were thousands who just walked the camino.  The priest said, the pope has given us a special dispensation.  If you are pilgrim, you are welcome at the table.  Welcome to the table of the Lord. 

              I remember looking around and seeing faces filled with tears.  I too just stood and wept.  Even it was for just a small moment, a fleeting event in a remote place, it was something beyond what I believed, something I thought I would never hear in my lifetime in a Roman Catholic Church, all are welcome.  This is the table for you.  In the fifth piece Jesus asks, is this your God; is this your salvation, salvation for all?

              The final step is very hard.  It is beyond an answer.  The key to this final question is the word “some.”  Some who are first; some who are last.  Some.  This is the mystery of why some suffer and some do not; the darkness of: why does the rain fall on this field and not on that one?  This is the doctrine of theodicy; how do we respond to the whirlwind, the void?

              The responses of Jesus move from the simple and mundane (the door, the house, the street) to the most mysterious matters of our lives (goodness, love, suffering).  In each one there is a goading question: how do you respond? What say you?  Are you entering the narrow door; are you praying with Warren Zevon, open up the door for me; are you a beloved who risks rejection?  And then he starts again, can you be honest; can you see all as brothers and sisters; can you stand with courage?

              This not the usual advent preparation.  These six would make a very strange Advent wreath.  But in a sense these six ways prepare us for the Christ, for the child to be born in you.  To receive salvation, to have it reach our hearts, walk this way Jesus says.  How many are saved?  Bad question; let me give you a better one. Are you ready for joy?  Ponder this.

This is not a story of angels and sheep. No Christmas trees or eggnog.  But the truth is you have these answers.  They are all in you.  Ask them anew this advent so Christ is born anew in you.  Take these six and let them lead you to the joy of salvation. Amen.