Moses
makes it sound like such a no-brainer!
He
stands there with all the people of God on Mt. Nebo at the very boundary
between the wilderness of their wandering at their back and the Promised Land
of milk and honey in front of them and he says, “Choose this or choose this.” The
way behind them, remote and dangerous and filled with the peril of the
competing tribes, was like choosing death and adversity, and the way in front
of them, with the land they could occupy, beautiful and promising and filled
with abundance, was choosing life and prosperity.
Yes,
Moses makes it sound like a no-brainer, and you’d better believe that if I had
been an Israelite standing there that day, after having lived through forty
years of wandering and wondering in the harsh, godforsaken desert, I think I would
have known exactly which choice to make. To choose life was to choose a home, a
future, the good things God had promised me. To choose life was to realize that
the commandments and laws God had given us weren’t arbitrary rules that made
life less fun, but were a way of blessing and honor and right living. The
commandments were, as Moses pointed out, a gift to help God’s people live in
community, the way to prevent them from surrendering to the chaos of their
desires and to fully enjoy the freedom God was giving to them.
But
choices, even when they are pared down to the basics and set in life-or-death
contrast to each other, are rarely no-brainers. We find a way to make it more
complicated that it should be, to make everything seem equal. The stakes aren’t
quite as high as what Moses was presenting, but I can tell you that Melinda and
I have had the most intense disagreements of our marriage when it comes to
making decisions about where to eat when we’re travelling on the road. Even
when we have learned to narrow down options offered on those blue highway signs
to just two alternatives, we seem rarely able to come to some sort of clear
decision. It’s as if we’re choosing life or death: fast food or sit-down
dinner. Cold subs or hot meal. If Bojangles’ isn’t listed as an option, then
we’re really lost. Sometimes, at complete loggerheads, we have inadvertently
made the decision not to decide and instead travel on down the road, ever
hungrier, ever angrier. The fact of the matter is no matter how clear and
obvious the choices are—even if they are laid out before us as getting food and
staying hungry, blessings and curses, life or death—we still find we are unable
to make the right choice so much of the time. And so to some degree I can
imagine those ancient Israelites, frozen in their bickering and looking at
Moses’ obvious choices on the blue sign by the side of the wilderness road and
still wondering what to do.
Martin
Luther spoke a lot about this. His understanding of Scripture and observation
of human behavior led him to believe that we don’t really have the freedom to
choose what’s good for us. He called it the “bondage of the will,” which is a
fancy way of saying that even our ability to discern and decide is tainted by sin.
There is a darkness in here (our heart) that we must acknowledge. Captive to an
innate desire to put ourselves first, we tend to do whatever we want to do, to
satisfy some of our most immediate desires, which aren’t always innocent and
harmless. There are interpretations of the Christian faith that say we need to “make
a decision” for Christ, or that our salvation is dependent on accepting Jesus
as our personal Lord and Savior, but Luther would have said that just can’t be
done. To say so doesn’t do justice to that inner darkness and assumes we are
somehow moral or pure enough on our own to bring about God’s grace. To say it
another way, Moses can stand on the edge of the Promised Land and lay out the
choices as if it is a no-brainer, and the people of God are still going to
struggle with it, are still going to choose death and adversity, if not now,
then at some point down the road. And God, in God’s infinite grace, will hold
out the option of life again and again.
Then
along comes Jesus, a new prophet and rabbi and descendent of Moses, and he sits
down on a small mountain not too far from the River Jordan and gives another description
of the land that lies before them which his followers could go in and occupy. And
as he speaks about it and their choices, they learn this land they could dwell
in, this kingdom of God, is far more beautiful and abundant and complex than they
might ever imagine.
 |
| Jesus Preaching the Sermon on the Mount (Gustave Dore) |
In
this land, for example, no one expresses or maybe even feels anger with one
another. They certainly never insult one another, label one another. In this
kingdom people practically jump at the opportunity to practice forgiveness and
reconciliation with one another. They apologize readily when they’ve done wrong
and hurry to show mercy to those who’ve offended them. People in this land don’t
manipulate relationships for their own benefit. They don’t objectify women or
men or children and don’t take advantage of anyone who is vulnerable. When they
speak, their words are trustworthy in and of themselves and they are so honest
in their speech with each other that there’s no reason to take oaths or get
anything notarized.
It’s
a kingdom that anyone would want to lay claim to and live in, far better than
the purposeless wandering they find themselves in now. It’s a place where each person
deals with one another in the perfectly correct and most beautiful way, and
even though, deep-down, they know it resonates as something really right, the
people still hear it all as just more commandments and more laws they’re
supposed to follow. “Do this, don’t do that”…in fact, now it seems to be a
place even more rule-bound than what Moses had described.
In
the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes each commandment, here the fifth, the
sixth, and the eighth, and rather than lessening them, loosening them up a
little, he expands them, makes them more strict and detailed. What is meant by
murder, as it turns out, is actually broader than just physically taking
someone’s life. What is meant by adultery is broader than just having sexual
intercourse outside of marriage. What is meant by bearing false witness is more
than just gossiping and lying. And the choice to enter there and live in that
land is, once again, not as much of a no-brainer as we might expect.
There
was a story this week where a prominent news organization that had recently
aired a story about people’s views regarding the recent election and politics. The
organization posted it to their Facebook page, like usual, and got thousands of
comments lambasting one of the people interviewed in the article. Most of the
comments were quite rude and mean-spirited. So, in an interesting twist, the
news organization reached out to ten of those people who made the comments and
offered them the chance to sit down and learn from the person who was interviewed
in the story, the person they had insulted and called an idiot. Only two
accepted.[1]
Life is offered—a chance to live in abundance and harmony—but so often we just
can’t seem to choose it.
The
good news is, however, that God knows this. After travelling with us in the
wilderness, God knows about that inner darkness. And the Teacher who sits on
that small mountain and offers up this beautiful kingdom for us understands we
are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. He is not content just to stand
at the edge and explain what his Father’s kingdom is like or point us how to
get there. He is going to take us there, himself. He is going to become that
kingdom, giving himself over to us. And to do so he is going to confront the
darkness we bear within and die to any belief system that is based on our
choosing and deciding.
He
is going to represent a choice, you see, but not our choice, not our choosing. Jesus
is God’s choice for us. Jesus is God’s life for
us. Jesus is God loving us, and redeeming us from ourselves. And henceforth
having faith and living as one of God’s children will be more about God’s
decision to have us than our decision to have God. Having faith and living in
God’s kingdom will more about God’s holding fast to us in love and mercy than
about our holding fast to him.
Last
week in one meeting here one person shared the story about an elementary school
teacher in Charlotte, NC, who has created a personalized handshake with every
single one of his fifth-grade students. Each day, when they arrive at school,
they form a line at the door and, one by one, as they enter the classroom he
has prepared for them, he extends his hand and holds fast to each one of theirs
in their own unique way. Some of the handshakes are pretty elaborate and involve
turning around, waving limbs in the air, incorporating fist bumps and snaps. He
has committed them all to memory—that is, how he holds fast to each student, how
he claims them for the day and offers them the classroom. The administration loves
it. “The only way to help our scholars achieve at high levels every day,” says
the principal, “is to embrace the need for meaningful and deep relationships.”[2]
So
there is Jesus, the Teacher, embracing relationship with us, holding to us fast
so that we can enter the kingdom and live with him forever. See him there, at the font in the
water, welcoming us in, maybe giving us a fist bump. Then again at the table, with his
body and blood, reaching out his hand for a high-five. One at a time, over and
over, the decision is made and we respond, held fast: “I’ve chosen to love you
deeply, my child,” he says. “You are a no-brainer.”
Thanks
be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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