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A sermon on
Deuteronomy 30:11-20, Matthew 5:21-26; 33-37
Epiphany 6, Year A, February 12, 2023
“Your Choice Choose Life”
The Reverend Dr. Dorothy A. Jeffery
For Northwood United Church
Prayer of illumination:
May the words that I speak
Through the power of the Spirit
Be vessels for God’s truth to reach our minds and hearts.
It is good to be back here again for my second visit while Reverend Scott is on sabbatical.
Whenever Scott asks me to speak, he says essentially that it is “My choice” for the theme. The topic today is "Your Choice, choose Life". The Hebrew scripture today is about choice. It includes a portion of the great farewell speech of Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 29 and 30.
Moses, the greatest leader of all time for the people of Israel, is poised with them on a threshold. The people are massed on the plains of Moab looking into the “Promised Land”. But Moses did not enter the “Promised Land” – he died at a very old age in Moab.
This is more than the story of Moses’ last days.
The Israelites were called to remember their history and their faith in God, to recall the covenant that God had made with them at Mt. Sinai - the promise of the land, the promise of God’s steadfast presence with them, and the Commandments to shape and guide their lives. All this is recalled to restore the nation on its new journey in the wilderness, in a new act of taking possession of the land. The speech appeals to faith, urging Israel to accept past failures, to recognize its hopeless position without faith in God, and return to a renewed loyalty to the covenant and its commandment.
The choice and its consequences are clear:
Choose covenant, receive life; reject covenant, choose death.
Choose covenant, gain land; reject covenant, lose land.
Choose covenant, receive blessing, reject covenant, receive curse.
The good news is that God was willing once again to enter relationship with them - a relationship of restored land, of presence and of continued guidance.
Covenant is a special word, especially in religion - it means a two-way agreement, so both God and the people keep covenant.
Our second key scripture today escalates the importance of choice and anger. In Matthew, Jesus escalates anger to violence, akin to murder (5:22).
The author of Deuteronomy in words attributed to Moses recalls the history, and the choices. The writer repeats the original choice to "Choose life!"
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There are a few ways that this passage from Deuteronomy is problematic to the modern western mind.
We are a people who value freedom. We like to choose. And when we don't get what we want, (either by our own poor choice) or (by denial of our "right" to choose) far too many of us get angry.
In a nation (nations) of ‘choosers’ more choice seems to be the preferred value. The choice required in Deuteronomy does not sit well with a people inundated by choices.
A central feature of the Deuteronomist writers is their simplifying God’s action toward us: misfortune is God’s judgment; blessing is a result of our faithfulness.
The human mind is deceptively liable to seek easy answers to complex questions.
The “reward and judgement” theology does not fit reality. We know that bad things sometimes happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people.
The prophets, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah have a much more nuanced view of God relationship with us.
You may recall at the end of last month (January 29, 2023) one of the readings was Micah 6:8. This was the Sunday Deborah Richard offered the reflection.
… what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.
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There are two flip sides: one the ominous warning, and the other side that God desires the community (the world) to be blessed (v. 19). God desires life, not death. For ancient Israel, God hopes these people will make the right choice, the choice of faithfulness. The same applies today to the whole world, regardless of race, colour, wealth, geography, God desires the whole world to be blessed. I want to turn our focus now to reading with ecological eye and the ecological choices we face with climate crisis.
When I last visited you on January 15, I introduced the idea of reading scripture with an ecological eye. I used Psalm 40 v. 2 and the technique of bringing the background (the image and ideas of the earth) into the foreground, making the earth a character in the story. This week I am expanding the possible steps in an ecological reading. And it is easier this time since the setting of the text is replete with images of earth, land, location, action and moving the action from the ancient place to our modern situation and locations. The role of ecology in interpreting the text is more obvious.
In the language of Deuteronomy, the whole world, named as “resident aliens”, are given the land, a home. Right choice means economic and environmental actions and policies that leave enough of God’s abundance for everyone. The right choice means equitable distribution of resources to support life for every person AND every living thing. Remember God created plants and trees, birds, animals, fish of the sea and people and IT WAS GOOD.
// What are the choices you have set out to live?
Theologian and Hebrew Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann says “(the choice) we face is complex and demanding, and in the end comes down to a few large choices … a choice between fearful self-preoccupation that invites a shriveled human spirit, or a fresh embrace of … a buoyant alternative that calls us to a large reentry into the pain of the world and into the possibility of God’s newness.
This is quite different from the simple choice in the Deuteronomy text.
Consider the difficulty of making “right choices”.
For myself, I try to live a life which honors ecologically the world I have been placed in, to live a life which is enriched by family (both biological family and my church family), and to live a life where my vocational choice is meaningful.
Living in a democracy, we highly value “choice”, but lately I have been downcast because it seems my choices have been taken away. No matter how noble my choices, I feel powerless to exercise them.
Because caring for the earth, God’s Creation, is a primary value, I have chosen the following as an illustration of choices and responses.
Specifically, I want to talk for a while here about Climate Change and pipelines still and recently in the news - Coastal Gaslink cost continue to rise, construction delayed, environmental protests (some violent property crimes by unknown attackers), protest by Wet’suwet’en tribal hereditary chiefs and supporters. Again the IPCC has released updates on Climate than show governments across the world are missing or failing to address their pledges. The Canadian, BC, Alberta Climate leadership plans were released in the fall of 2016. I studied the plans in detail and saw there a step forward, a plan where before there was no plan to achieving our target for reducing GHG emissions agreed to in the Paris Climate accord. By capping and reducing GHG emissions in one area and by transitioning to sustainable non-fossil fuel energy Canada could meet its commitments. But these hopes and plans have been overshadowed by controversial and contradictory approval pipelines. Like Brueggemann said our choices are complex. By and large our citizens are unwilling to make major changes in lifestyle to reach these goals.
My attempt at balanced critical thinking on the environmental impact of pipelines, coupled with my aversion to demonstrations, seems thwarted by knee jerk negativism on many fronts.
My mood and energy is up and down - choose life, but some things beyond my control and influence point to “choose death”.
I struggle with anger on this issue. Simply being “against” pipelines will not move us forward. Simply saying approving any pipelines will prevent Canada meeting it GHG reductions targets without thoughtful consideration of the models is too shallow, too simple.
Demonstrating against pipelines is prone to anger.
In Matthew Jesus says
Mat 5:22 … if you are angry … you will be liable to judgment;
and if you insult … you will be liable to the council;
and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.
These consequences seem all too likely in demonstrations and blockades.
My reading of this Matthew text clearly counsels against angry responses.
Jesus goes on to say
Mat 5:24 … first be reconciled.
That is first talk to your opponents, do not simply react in anger.
I admit I struggle with a kind of anger stemming from responses being too superficial, taken apparently without thought.
Anger leads to despair. Despair leads to loss of hope. I am not sure what I can effectively do.
My story. What is yours?
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In the broader sense, this brief text from Matthew shows that “how we think matters”. I have a set of guiding principles for approaching critical and complex issues.
Awareness, advocacy, action.
Start with awareness, having gained understanding speak out (advocacy).
Take reasoned responsible action.
I advance from awareness to advocacy with my vocational choice to preach.
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We all face conflict in our lives – do we avoid it, or do we strive to be reconciled as Jesus counseled?
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Faith and loyalty to God are central antidotes to despair. Hopelessness generates despondency. Lack of faith makes a message of hope impossible to hear. It de-energizes and dehumanizes people so they no longer grasp the possibilities life brings. It generates self-pity and self-condemnation.
Our failures, we may prefer to think of as of some other origin than ourselves. Perhaps we have enjoyed the good things of life and lost them (like the Israelites). Perhaps we have fallen into despair.
We must guard against faithlessness and selfish complacency that can lead us to accept good fortune; and to willingly abandon concern for larger issues of faith and national destiny.
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We need to return to Deuteronomy in today’s readings to hear the promises, hope and good news.
God is the foundation for hope. This hope was needed in the world of Deuteronomy, because they had lost their land, but they were able to recall when they had chosen God in the past. Life had been difficult, but God had been with them. So, they once again were challenged to choose life with God.
Hope is needed for us today. The reasons can be personal, local, national, global. Jobs are lost, relationships breakdown, or plans turn for the worse. Despair for the future is a kind of social disease - whether due to warfare, deprivation, unemployment, social alienation or the Climate Crises we face.
Hope in God is a larger, surer and more comprehensive basis for hope than found anywhere else.
An appeal to hope and faith is an appeal to enter full humanity. It is an appeal to seek and to expect the future to be open and desirable.
In Deuteronomy, the appeal to faith emerges from the worst of times. It led to God's continuing call to covenant. For the Israelites, keeping covenant looked like God fulfilling the promise of the land, God being with the people in good and bad times, and God giving Commandments as guides for living.
For us, Choose involvement in God’s world.
Choose respectful engagement. Our call is to care for others, to seek well-being beyond ourselves.
Living in this way people not only receive blessing but become a blessing. Like covenant, blessing is a two-way relationship. Brueggemann reminds us that “A society that cannot be generous in public ways will not be blessed.”
In our world, God still offers this covenant relationship, and it still can be sustaining for us.
Whatever your history, you have a choice - choose life with God, with community, and with the physical environment. We can remain totally loyal to the covenant of following the way of God and retain the promise of hope.
A new choice, as faced the people of Israel, faces us.
Our world is changing around us. Shall we return in sincerity and truth to keep God's covenant and to remain unwaveringly loyal to the Lord God?
The choice is ours.
"Choose life ..."after that choice the remainder is up to God.
May it be so.