'Choose Life and LIVE!" given 2/12/2017

 Question: "Given the choice between good and evil--life and death-- you would choose life, wouldn't you?

Of course we all would. Wouldn’t we? But the choice isn't always straightforward for all people in all situations. You and I don't have a Moses, standing before us on the plains of Moab, addressing his farewell speech to us, who have followed faithfully through the wilderness for a generation.

The choices you and I face in this life aren't always clear-cut or easy. The Commandment says, "Thou shalt not kill." But society calls upon its young men and women to kill in time of war. Or what about abortion in a case of incest or rape? What about the option of suicide for a terminally ill person?

The Commandment says, "Honor thy father and thy mother." But which is more honoring-- placing an aging, ill parent in a nursing home, or disrupting our own family life by attempting to give twenty-four hour care at home? The choice is suddenly not so simple.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness", says the Commandment. But do we always immediately tell a terminally ill person that they're dying? Or Will worrying about it make their last days easier or more difficult? What if we fear that knowledge might drive them to take their own life?

"Thou shalt not commit adultery." says the Commandment. I heard the other day of a man who is suing his wife for divorce on grounds of adultery. He named as co-respondent a man whose name his wife didn't know and who she'd never met face to face. Who was her partner in adultery? Some guy she'd been exchanging steamy mash notes with on the Internet.

"Choose life and live!" said Moses. Conflicting ethical dilemmas are not original to us. The technology may be new, the opportunities for straying may be multiplied, but the choices are age-old. The people Moses was addressing had to make daily choices--for God, for the good, and for life. Just as you and I must, as well..

At times we may well need to devote considerable thought and prayer in making a particular moral choice. But sometimes we may not have the luxury of time in order to decide. Many times we find ourselves faced with the immediate choice between two, or even more, very difficult and painful, contrasting paths in this life. Other times, the choices between right and wrong, life and death can come in small, subtle ways. Sometimes we even have to look closely in order to determine that we're making a choice at all! “Not to decide is to decide” wrote theologian Paul Tillich.

Yet we make these choices every day. We choose to get out of bed, or to stay in bed. We choose to get involved with other people, or to withdraw. We choose to make a definite stand, or to let things take their course. We choose to take a risk, or to seek the illusion of security. We choose to grow, or to stay the same; to be honest, or to fudge; to be true to who we are, or to follow the crowd; to live for ourselves, or for others. We make all these choices because we must. That's the way God made us-- we are free. That’s our blessing—but at times it can be our curse.

Yes, we’re free. Yes, we can and we must choose. Yes, the evil and wickedness and wrong in our flawed and incomplete Creation are not of Divine making. But, and this is at the very heart of what I'm driving at, you and I are able to choose ONLY through the grace of the One who made us.

That free gift of grace empowers us to struggle against the imperfection of this life and all of the alienation and apart-ness that lie within us. We CAN rise above our own petty natures. We CAN rise above our own internal confusion and alienation. We CAN rise above all the sin and broken-ness of this world. We CAN choose and live in the light and good and in God and life. And when we DO choose light and life and God and good, there becomes available to us the strength to live out that choice.

But do we always necessarily choose well?

The question on the job application read: “Have you ever been arrested?”

The applicant printed the word “No” in the blank.

The next question was a follow-up to the first. “Why?”

The applicant answered truthfully, “I guess it’s because I never got caught.”

"Choose life and live!" But how do we choose? In a world where traditional values are continually called into question, in a diverse society where ethical issues become more and more complex and conflicting, we need a unfailing moral touchstone. We must have a guide. How can we choose alone? The truth is, we cannot.

That was the dilemma of the emerging Habiru or Hebrew nation during their Exodus from captivity in Egypt. By the time of the Exodus, they had become a mixed bag of peoples, customs and tribes, beliefs and cultures. All they really had in common were overlapping legends of a distant clan of nomadic ancestors with names like Abram and Sarai, Jacob and Rachel who had worshipped a single God— a single, sojourning God who had accompanied their forebears on their odysseys and promised them a home in a legendary land of milk and honey.

In order to survive, in order to become a single people, these disparate peoples desperately needed a set of commonly agreed upon rules for relationships and behavior. Acting through their leader Moses, God gave them the Ten Commandments, basis of the Laws of Moses.

This Law, made up of the Commandments and their subsequent elaborations and interpretations over the generations was to become the distinguishing mark of the people Israel-- even unto our own time. The Law became the fundamental glue that held their society together. Faithful adherence to this Law was the basis of what Jesus refers to as the "righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees" in this morning's Gospel.

In a time of deep national need, God provided Israel with a ethical system, a religious framework for living together, an external morality imposed through the Laws of Moses. And it worked—to an extent. But what about us, and our time?

A recent cartoon in the New Yorker showed two clean-cut, middle-aged men sitting in a jail cell. One inmate turns to the other and says, “All along, I thought our level of corruption fell well within community standards.”

Many believe we have a crisis in our country—a crisis of honesty, integrity, ethics, morality—what the Bible simply calls “righteousness”. If we as a nation are also caught in a time of deep, spiritual need, where do we find a basis of our morality?

Hemingway wrote that “What is moral is what you feel good after. What is immoral is what you feel bad after.” The late novelist John D. MacDonald coined in one of his books what he called “Meyer's Law”. "In a situation of moral confusion and ethical ambiguity, the hardest choice is almost invariably the right choice."

Either might work well enough for an individual secular person, but what about someone who, like us, has chosen to call our self by the name of Jesus Christ? Is our guide to be found in the Commandments? Or the interpretations of the rabbis? Shall we stone a disobedient child? Or condemn someone for wearing clothes made up of more than one fabric? Shall we keep kosher, or pray in Hebrew, or refrain from trimming our beards and sideburns?

Or can we find our guide for everyday living in the specific examples in the Sermon on the Mount? Are these to be the basis for our ethical decisions for the life choices we must make? Shall we cut off our hand if it offends us? Cast out our eye? Are we to take that seriously?

What does that mean in our day and age, our society? I don't know about you, but if I were to follow that teaching literally, I'd be so whittled away that about the only part of me to get into heaven might be my big toe—okay, okay, my little toe--and I'm not too sure about that!

The underlying touchstone we are searching for, the under-girding value, our guide for always choosing life and good and God, is found not in the Commandants or even in the Sermon on the Mount. Before we can even begin to understand these teachings, we must first absorb one simple statement of Jesus'.

That statement is the heart of the Commandments, the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, the heart of our faith, the heart of all of Jesus' teachings. It is not only the moral basis for the living of our lives, but the only rational basis for choosing life. In last Sunday’s Reading, Jesus told us,

"Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but rather to fulfill."

Not unthinking obedience for the sake of obedience, but fulfillment in our freely

given, joyful obedience. Here is our touchstone, here is our guide-- the person of Jesus

Christ. Remember those bracelets evangelical teenagers used to wear? WWJD?

Jesus demands from us a new and radical kind of obedience to our God. It is an obedience based first and foremost upon Him and His example. Through the life of Jesus, his teachings and ministry and willing sacrifice of Himself for the sake of the world, Jesus calls—invites us each to true righteousness, to true freedom, to true choice, to true humanity, to true and abundant, and eternal life. Choose life-- and live!

Look deep into what Jesus has to say. Listen carefully to His word. Through his teachings, you and I are able to transcend the straightforward external prohibitions and imperatives of the Commandments. In Him, the Law is completed and perfected and fulfilled. He allows us not simply to keep but to joyously move beyond simple "thou shalt-nots" and "thou shalts" and embrace lives of true freedom and obedience in His love.

Choose life and live! Jesus is saying up there on the Mount that what is just as important as our actions is what lies within our hearts. His Holy Spirit can enable us to do more, become better people than just rule-followers. Our Maker invites us to a transforming goodness, a righteousness that begins within us, rather than with our behavior. “I will write my covenant on their hearts” says the Holy God in Jeremiah.

Why? Because it’s within our deepest hearts, our motives, our intentions, our attitudes that true change, true growth, true righteousness must begin. Jesus invites us at our very deepest level, to choose to grow into true goodness rather than simply do good things on the surface of our lives.

Our Savior invites us to go beyond the Commandment not to kill and root out of our hearts the hatreds, the prejudices, the contempt and jealousies that make us all into potential killers. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers- -in our personal lives as well as in our world. We must begin by learning to reconcile our differences with others. We must learn to respect and love them as fellow children of God.

Our Lord calls us to go beyond the simple Commandment not to commit adultery and root out from our hearts the sinful Lust that makes us all into potential lechers. This is not the appropriate God-given, feelings of intimacy for a loved one in a committed relationship. No, Jesus is talking about that desire for an inappropriate partner or experience, that willingness within us to use another person as nothing but an object, a pin-up, to satisfy our own ego and urges.

Our Redeemer calls us to be pure of heart. When we know and respect someone else as a real, live person-- someone’s child or parent or partner or parent, when we respect them as a fellow child of God, we can honor the relationships they have already committed themselves to, how can we consider them as an anonymous package of flesh to fantasize over or exploit?

We must root out of our hearts the willingness to cut ethical corners now and then, our unscrupulous ability to make things easy for ourselves by seeing the other as someone to fool, an adversary to put something over on, a dupe to delude for our convenience. We must root out of our hearts that willingness to compromise with the truth and then turn around and justify their wrongdoings that make us all into potential liars.

At the center of all moral systems are human relationships. You and I cannot engage in true worship, true fellowship, we cannot be in honest relationship with our Maker when hate or lust or falsehood is in our hearts. When we see or treat others as less than us, we’re saying to ourselves that they are less than human, less than beloved children of the same God we worship. Can we claim to love our Maker and not be in reconciliation with our neighbor? Can we come before the Altar of God with resentment burning in our hearts? Jesus' answer is clear.

"First be reconciled, then come back and present your gift before the Altar."

This from the one who forgave all, even upon the cross. Can you and I do that all of the time, to everyone who wrongs us, in every situation? Can we respond to this call? Can we root from our hearts all of the hatred and distrust and anger and envy that mar our relationships with others? Hands please? Notice that you didn't see mine either.

Of course we can't do that! Not alone at any rate. I'm not trying to make you feel guilty or inadequate. I'm simply pointing to our mutual, fallible humanity. None of us can make it.. alone. None of us can live out a righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees.. alone. None of us can be that kind, that generous, that forgiving, that loving person that we'd like to be all of the time.. alone. None of us can be the person that God has called us to become.. alone.

But we all can at least begin, in our hearts, to choose to try and become that person. When? When you and I choose to walk in the way of our Savior. How? By choosing to avail ourselves of the forgiving, transforming Grace of the One who made us and the power of God's Holy Spirit. Where? How about right here? When? Why not now? How?

Let us pray,

Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us. Melt us, mold us, fill us, use us. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us-- that we might, this day and every day, be encouraged and empowered to be reconciled to one another, to choose God, and to live! Amen.