Enter by the narrow door
21st Sunday C
Norwood
24 August 2025
My friends,
Robbie Williams, the famous entertainer, surprised people with his very definite view that children should not be given iPhones. He wasn’t giving his children an iPhone because it was the equivalent of introducing them to drugs – such is the addictive nature of iPhone use by adults not to speak of children. The restriction he registers by not giving his children an iPhone is simply to keep them safe, to keep them safe from some of the poisonous material they might access and not be able to manage.
In some ways, what was evident was his sense of responsibility as a parent to watch over and guide his children. Doing that invariably means exercising some discipline. How you do so and what discipline or sanction to use is always difficult for parents and for teachers too.
We have a difficult and disturbing memory of corporal punishment because it was used so severely in some contexts. Yet, it was par for the course and accepted as the norm. It is now, thankfully outlawed.
The challenge today is to identify appropriate sanctions for children in a way that they will benefit and grow to maturity through the experience of good discipline. A line from the letter to the Hebrews is very blunt,
“Suffering is part of your training;
God is treating you as his sons,
Has there ever been any son whose father did not train him.”
Discipline or reprimand goes beyond the lives of children – it applies to all as children of God. We are called to life in its fulness despite our tendency to sin and failure. The grace of God is open to us always and grace builds on nature.
We live in a culture obsessed with personal freedom, but it is not the only value that enables us to live a wholesome and fulfilling life. Unadulterated exercise of personal choice becomes pure self-indulgence and narcissism. We are called to more – called out of our freedom and gifts to be ambitious for the high gifts of charity, generosity and empathy towards the plight of others.
The poet Robert Frost in his poem, “The Road Less Travelled”, speaks of the fork where the two roads meet/part. The one less travelled tells its own story, its not an easy one. Such a choice faces us throughout life. It requires a conscious choice to take that path.
A gentle yet purposeful self-discipline and sacrifice enables us to take that road willingly and joyfully, knowing that in giving we receive, in forgiveness we are forgiven and in dying we are born to eternal life.
Try your best, says Jesus
To enter by the narrow door
