21/08/2016

La porte étroite - Lc 13, 22-30 (21ème dimanche du temps)

A propos de Lc 13, 22-30
Le salut, c'est la rétribution de nos actes bons ou mauvais, un salaire, ou la vie et le bonheur ?
Si c'est la rétribution, il ne faut pas s'étonner que la porte soit étroite. Et encore, il est dit ailleurs que pour les hommes, c'est impossible, porte close, pire, pas de porte du tout, impasse.
Pourtant, certains s'obstinent à penser le salut comme rétribution de leurs mérites, parmi lesquels, et non des moindres, d'être des familiers du Seigneur. Nous avons mangé et bu avec toi, tu as enseigné sur nos places.
Mais comment se dire familier du Seigneur quand on pratique l'injustice, comme si le nom de Dieu était une formule magique ? (Cf. Jr, 7). N'est-ce pas pour cela que l'on ne peut prononcer le nom de Dieu, pour ne pas s'en servir comme d'une formule magique ?
Si le salut est rétribution, rien ne le garantitet surtout pas l'appartenance au (peuple du) Seigneur. Version lucanienne de la parabole des brebis et des boucs de Matthieu (Mt 25, 31 ss).

Si le salut est vie et bonheur, alors, comme la vie et le bonheur, il se reçoit. Qui s'est donné la vie ? Qui s'est donné le bonheur ?
Le salut, comme la vie, comme le bonheur, se reçoit; il ne s'achète pas ou ne se procure pas ou ne se fait pas.
Et la porte du salut est large, comme la miséricorde de Dieu. Elles sont ouvertes, les portes du salut (Ps 118, 19-21) en grand et toutes les nations y entrent, pas seulement le peuple choisi, pas seulement les amis de Dieu ou ceux que l'on appelle amis de Dieu. C'est la superbe prophétie d'Isaïe (Is 66, 18-21) que Jésus reprend ici.

Jésus parle ici comme souvent par antiphrase, ou selon une logique qui pousse à changer son regard. A question stupide, réponse stupide. A penser que le salut se fait, est rétribution, on va à l'impasse; forcément la porte est étroite et tous sont condamnés, car qui n'a jamais méprisé son frère, qui n'a jamais été injuste.

La porte du salut est large, parce que le salut, c'est Dieu qui se donne, c'est la vie et le bonheur, et Dieu ne donne pas chichement, sa miséricorde, son amour sont infinis, larges, qui embrassent la création entière.
Et si l'on veut poser la question du salut des méchants, des injustes, il faudra être soi-même des justes. Mais qui en est ?



Traducted y completed by Jean François Garneau
Is salvation really the reward for our good or bad deeds, the salary we received, at the end of our lives, for a job well done or poorly done? Or is salvation not, rather, just life and happiness, but in the fullest?
If salvation is a reward, then one must not be surprised that the door given access to it is narrow, the discipleship to get there, harsh, and the grace to get it, costly. In fact, the Gospel says elsewhere that for men and human doing, crossing that door is impossible. The door is closed or, worse still, there is no door, our hope of finding one leads to a dead end.
Yet despite all those killjoy passages in the Gospel against any attempt to think of salvation as a reward for our good deeds (among which, the most meritorious being to have gone to confession and communion regularly, so much so that one can pretend to have spent one’s life in the intimacy of the Lord). We have spent our lives eating and drinking with you, we have spent our lives following your teaching on discipleship.
But how can one pretend to be in the intimacy of the Lord when one is complicit of all the injustice that goes on in the world (the nuance between explicitly or implicitly complicit meaning next to nothing given the atrocious level of that injustice), as if God's name was a magic word (See Jeremiah 7)? Is that not why one cannot pronounce the name of God, so as not to use it as a magic word?
If salvation is a form of retribution, nothing can guarantee it, and especially not proper membership of the people of the Lord (i.e.: identity Catholicism). See the Lukan version of the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew (Luke 13: 22-30 being Luke’s adaptation of Matthew 25; 31-46).
On the other hand, if salvation is life and happiness, then, as is the case for life and happiness, it’s not something that can be earned, only something that can be received. Who managed, ever, to give oneself one’s life? Who managed, ever, to give oneself one’s happiness?
Salvation, like life, and like happiness, is received; it cannot be bought, it cannot even be acquired through other means (such as pleading with God with lots of weeping on the misery of our fate) and it cannot be made as a result of some costly discipleship on our part.
And yet when understood as a gift (rather than the reward for our good deeds), the doors of salvation are wide open, as wide as God’s mercy. Psalm 118: 19-21 says it in so many words: They are open, the doors of salvation, and all nations will come, not just the chosen people, not just the friends of God, those who called themselves or are callsed “friends of God”. This is the great prophecy of Isaiah (66: 18-21), which Jesus here repeats.
In short, Jesus speaks ironically in the passage of the narrow gate (i.e.: by pushing the logic the law to such an extreme that it ends up exploding). In so doing, he forces one to conversion, to change the legalistic way we look at things. Ask a stupid question and you’ll get a stupid answer, can we almost hear him say. If you want to think of salvation in terms of reward, then look at the dead end it leads you into. Of necessity, the gate of salvation will need to be narrow and all your efforts to be doomed. For all are damned in this perspective for who has never despised his brother, who has never been unjust…
The only way the door of salvation can be broad is because salvation is God Himself giving Himself to us. It is that, not costly discipleship, which is life and happiness. And God is not cheap with his gifts. His love and mercy are infinitely broad. And they embrace the whole of Creation.
And if one insists to continue raising the question of the fate of the truly wicked and the truly unjust, the only answer to be given to us is who the hell do you think you are to look upon those truly wicked and those truly unjust with such moral self-righteousness?

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