Choose Life
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, September 9, 2019
When I sent my son off to school, I think I shared with you in a sermon three years ago my sage advice: Don’t do anything stupid. I refined that advice a bit for when we dropped my daughter off at college a couple of weeks ago. I did say “Don’t do anything stupid.” But then I added “Make Good Choices. And if you don’t make good choices you know Daddy and I are here for you no matter what and we love you. Talk to us.”
I joked a couple of weeks ago with Kat S. if she needed any advice after she went off to college, she could get in touch with any of us because we would love to give her advice.
And so, I was thinking over the last couple of weeks- what does it mean to make good choices. How do we know what choices are good and which ones are bad?
After this – we discussed this as a congregation. The final comment was from a young acolyte who, from the pulpit, told the congregation how important it is to think very long and hard about big decisions. The following are thoughts that I had prepared in advance:
Thought number one: Know your values. It is a lot easier to make good choices when we know what our values are. The Old Testament passage for this morning has Moses telling the Israelites that God has given them a choice – you can choose those things that bring about death or those things that bring about life. In this case – following the commandments of God are life giving – not following them is death dealing.
And in this case those life-giving commandments were the 613 laws that govern Jewish life and worship. In the Christian faith our values are embedded in the summary of the law “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” And those life-giving values play out in all sorts of behaviors and choices – of kindness, compassion, courage, love, and there are many more of course.
Second Point – Prioritize your values. And in our Epistle we hear Paul say in his letter to Philemon that he really wanted to keep Philemon’s slave Onesimus because he was so helpful to him during his imprisonment. However, Paul knew the right thing to do was to send him back. Which may seem odd to us now, returning a slave – but it made sense at the time. Two thousand years ago in Israel, people “willingly” entered into slavery to avoid starvation and abject poverty. But Paul asks Philemon to receive his slave back kindly as a brother in Christ. Paul has to prioritize the right thing, to return the slave that did not belong to him, over his pleasure of having Onesimus as a companion.
Why is prioritizing values important? It’s important because values bring clarity to decision making. Human beings apparently make anywhere from 6,000 and 35,000 choices a day. Thank the Lord that some of them never really cross our consciousness. The ones we are aware of are the harder choices. Usually the choices we are aware of are between two good things – stay in bed longer or have a good breakfast. Or, maybe between two things – one takes more effort and is harder – and the other provides a lesser pleasure but is easier – like going for a walk, or staying on the sofa and binge watching Netflix.
Third Point: Know who you want to be, and the costs associated with that choice. And this is brought up in our Gospel lesson for today. In this passage about discipleship, Jesus tells the disciples what it will cost to follow him by sharing two parables. These two parables concentrate on the necessity of reflections before action[1] – what is it going to cost to build a tower and what are my human resources for going to war. It points out that those who want to follow Jesus on the way must weigh the costs.
One of the most transformative experiences I ever had was having an internship in college. I worked with young teens in a program called Leadership Decision Institute. The program took teens away from their schools into a camp setting for a week. They did things like ropes courses and other team building games. But the main component of the week was education – to help the teens think about what they wanted out of life, what they wanted to be after their formal education was over, and what kind of people they wanted to be. And the teens set goals, and considered the costs associated with those goals. A large number of the teens were from families who existed below the poverty level. They were taught that if they get side lined by bad grades, partying, pregnancy at an early age – that those choices were going to make it harder to reach their ultimate goals of whatever that was – technical school, emergency services, education, etc.
To repeat what Acolyte C. said, we need to think long and hard about our decisions – know your values, prioritize your values, and consider the costs – because discipleship is costly, it will cost you your life and give you a new life. But the cost of not living according to your values, means losing your life, and losing your authentic, beloved self.
Amen
[1] Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1990, p.707
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