Choosing God
by The Rev. Sara Fischer
As most of you know, I’ve been home sick with Covid, although I am much improved at the moment. I’ve spent some time in the last week watching two series: The Chosen and the Messiah. One is about Jesus and his chosen followers and is set in Ancient Palestine in the time of Jesus. The other, the Messiah, is set in modern times and—like the times we live in—not for the faint of heart. It also was canceled after one season, which makes me sad.
Both shows emphasize—illustrate in living color—the call to discipleship and the call to believe, the call to faith. And on TV, just like in the Gospel of Luke, the call to faith is always a call to faith-in-action.
I’d like to suggest that the first step in faith-in-action is found in the words of Moses in today’s reading from the book of Deuteronomy: Choose life.
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity…today I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life…
Choose. Life. A wise person has said that it is these two words that sum up all the law and the prophets and in fact all of scripture. God is not commanding all Israel to choose life the way one might choose a paint color or an outfit. To choose life is to choose God. To choose life is not merely to choose God but to make our primary task each day the task of orienting and re-orienting ourselves toward God. This is a tall order for most of us, something we might do for moments here and there throughout a day or throughout a lifetime.
When I started looking at this wonderful passage from Deuteronomy, I kept thinking it be so cool if this passage were paired in the lectionary with Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John, I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly. Abundant life is, in fact, what is at stake here, and so this reading is paired with a gospel about the ultimate choosing: to pick up one’s cross and follow. Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. “Hate” here does not mean what it might mean today. It means indifference, detachment.
Jesus says: unless you do not hold lightly, with indifference, all that we may hold dear—father and mother, spouse and children—you cannot be my disciple. Unless you are unattached even to your own mortal life, your daily comings and goings, you cannot be my disciple. Unless you give up all that possesses you—your stuff, your opinions, your earthly needs—you cannot be my disciple.
In gospel terms, our loves and our hates are all about our priorities.
Jesus’ requirement that we pick up our cross and follow is perhaps one of the most misused lines of scripture. To bear a cross (as in “this is my cross to bear” is not about a personal resentment or inconvenience, like having a difficult mother-in-law or coworker.
To pick up one’s cross is to empty oneself of one’s own ego needs, even one’s own self-understanding. To pick up one’s cross is to open oneself to the vulnerability and humiliation of following Jesus. To pick up one’s cross is to be entirely at the will of the Spirit. To choose life.
Today’s gospel is about choosing because we do this kind of choosing all the time. The good news is that God also chooses us. God chooses us every day, ever hour. God chooses us to help bring about God’s purpose in the world, which is love, plain and simple.
Choosing life is not just about choosing to live well and fully, although it can be that. It is about entwining our life in God’s life, measuring all our choices against our love of God, neighbor, strangers, and enemies. It is about measuring our choices against our baptismal promises to pray, to resist evil, repent of sin, proclaim Good News, serve Christ, and strive for justice, with God’s help.
When we choose life, we also choose how we engage with others. The temptation in the wider culture to death and adversity is strong, and I think it’s easy for it to seep into our own Christian counter-culture. Choosing life means choosing a life of faith and practice that calls us toward light and toward joy, toward patient service and toward revolution, calls us into deeper love of God and neighbor. Choosing life calls us to stand with those on the margins whom no one really wants around. Choosing life calls us to stand with those who are in danger, and even to get in between them and those who would do them harm.
When I talk about revolution, and revolutionary love, I mean rebellion against death and adversity, as a community. I mean resistance to the forces that would tear us apart.
There are many ways to practice resistance and revolution. There are protestors and advocates, builders and nurturers, pray-ers, connectors, and artists. Planting a garden in a world that leans toward chaos, is an act of resistance. Painting something beautiful in a world that would have us believe that all is ugly is an act of resistance. Paying attention to all the ways that the world calls us to be complicit with greed and death, and choosing to practicing love and hope instead is resistance. Choosing life is choosing revolutionary love.
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Next week I hope we will all gather together at our holy table and eat bread that is broken in the name of the one who picks up his cross and calls us to follow him with ours. We will drink wine poured out by the Christ who makes us one. When we do that, let us choose life.
