“Brothers and sisters, are you ready for the word of the Lord?”
“Yes,” the voices around me said.
“Yes,” I responded a beat too late. People reached in purses for their Bibles. It was time.
“Open your Bibles to Matthew 7:13,” Papa commanded.
“In Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14, the Scripture says, ‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.’ This is the word of the Lord. May the Lord bless the reading, hearing, and doing of His word.”
Papa rested his Bible on the podium and slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose. He inhaled—sniffing out sin in the congregation—and people’s backs straightened where they stood. What they didn’t know was that sniffing was one of Papa’s tricks for figuring out if people were guilty of sin or not—it made the guilty immediately want to repent. The congregation froze, not even wanting to shift in uncomfortable high heels. Any slight motion could catch the attention of Papa’s roving eyes. The electric buzz from the overhead strands of lights thundered in the silence.
“You may be seated. My message this evening is entitled: ‘The Gates of Hell.’ ” The silence seemed to deepen. Hell was something we all believed in, had been terrified of since we first learned about it in Sunday school. It was a message that would scare people, and, for Papa, fear was as useful a tactic as any to bring people to Christ. Ma had let go of my hand and her skirt, and my heart thrummed at a normal pace for the first time that day. Just a couple more hours to go.
“Gates have very specific uses in this world. One use is for keeping things out. Some communities are surrounded by high wrought-iron gates designed to prevent strangers from entering. People live behind those gates, lured by the promise of safety that they provide. Other gates are used for keeping things in. Prisons are surrounded by miles of chain-link fencing, gates, and barbed wire precisely for keeping inmates sequestered. The rest of us rely on those gates so that we can walk our dogs or take our children to school without worrying about those walls being breached. The third type of gate is for regulating flow. When you visit a baseball game, you step through a gate one at a time so that there’s no stampede. Gates allow for a controlled entry.” His voice was as soft as it would get during the sermon. He took a long pause for emphasis—he had planned several of these during the message. In the seconds of silence, he scanned the crowd. By now he had already estimated its size and scoped out the fact that at least a hundred people were huddled in the back, craning their necks toward the pulpit.
Some heads nodded while other soft amens floated up from the back of the congregation. He took a deep breath, and the fabric of his dress shirt stretched around his barrel chest before he exhaled. I exhaled with him. You can do this, Papa.
“So, it’s not a coincidence that the entryway to heaven is a gate.” His voice had gotten louder, and he was starting to drag his vowel sounds. “And this heavenly gate is designed to let only certain people in. Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14, describes the type of gate that leads to heaven. Matthew uses the words small, narrow, and few to show Christians that not everyone gets into the gates of heaven. Small sins, the ones we overlook every day, are enough to keep us from getting through the narrow gates. Take a moment to think about all the small sins that you committed today.”
He got quiet again and looked around. I was writing down every word in my journal; his long pause allowed me to catch up and scribble his final sentence. But when his silence extended a few extra seconds, his words seeped into my skin. He wasn’t just talking to everyone else about the sins they committed: he was talking to me about my doubt. About the fact that I kept seeing the pregnant girl’s face. I spoke to God in the quiet of my heart and repented.
“I won’t ask for a show of hands, but did some of you think about the lie that you told your boss to leave work early to come here? You comforted yourselves by calling it a white lie, but while you left early, someone else had to cover your shift. Did others of you think of the unkind word you said about your neighbor whose barking dog woke up your child in the middle of the night? Or about the woman who came into revival wearing a dress that was too short? I could go on all day, but I won’t. You overlooked those sins because they weren’t murder
