A SERMON FOR THE 15TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
After their 40 year journey through the desert, Moses and the Israelites have approached the Promised Land. Now, their leader gives them final instruction, as they will soon press on to dwell in the land promised to them by God and he will remain there to live out his final days.
The book of Deuteronomy contains the incredible set of instructions, which Moses delivers to God’s people. These people are people of the promise. They are truly living in God’s grace. They have been delivered from slavery and given freedom. They’ve survived the trecherous years of wandering in the wilderness. And they have been given the Law, which has the power to guide them into the paths of life.
In this morning’s passage from Deuteronomy, we are allowed to listen in as Moses lays out the important choice that they will need to make: obedience or death. Love God and live, he tells them. Or serve other gods and perish! The entire Torah, the first 5 books of the Hewbrew Scriptures, has been driving toward this choice.
Now, on brink of the Promised Land and at this crucial point at the end of his big sermon, Moses urges the people to make the right choice. God won’t make the choice for them. God simply lays it before them. Life or death. You can imagine the passion with which Moses cries out these words: "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity." Choose life.
How do they do this? They cling to the law. They learn it, they love it and they obey it. All too often, as Christians, we get so fixated upon grace in Jesus Christ that we forget that the law is life-giving. When we obey God’s law, we send our roots deep into the very heart of God. We know God and we learn to conform our actions to God’s will. Not that we’ll ever be perfect, but each good choice we make brings us closer to life, closer to joy, closer to being who we were created to be.
You see Moses is preaching to the people who came from Egypt. They were born and raised there. Slavery in Egypt is all they knew. Now, he shows them the way of freedom. The hope is that they will want to embrace this freedom and not be tempted to go back to Egypt.
The hope for us is that we, too, will embrace the life-giving freedom God offers us. We too, must resist the temptation to go back to Egypt. Why would we want to go back to Egypt? Because it’s easy. Because it is what we know. Because it is where everybody else is going. Egypt, in this sense, is not the country, but the state of mind that loves to disobey God. It is that part inside of each one of us that says: “You don’t need this! Obeying God is too demanding. It’s way too risky. Just forget it. Be selfish. Live for your own purposes. You don’t need God.”
And that voice, my friends, is the voice of enslavement. It is the way that leads to fear, saddness, and death. It lies to us. Every day it lies to us. But we don’t have to listen to that voice. We have a choice, Moses reminds us. And the choice God wants us to make is life. Will we choose life? It’s risky, it’s alaming, but it’s incredible!
In the Psalm for today, it says: Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.” (Psalm 1:1-3)
For us to be happy, according to this piece of wisdom literature, we must reject the advice of this world and delight in God’s Law. We must meditate upon it constantly so that we’ll be like trees plated by streams of living water. No matter how the weather batters us, we will still be tapped into our source. We will not wither. We will be choosing life.
What does this mean? How are we to meditate upon God’s Law? The word “meditation” often scares people off—they associate it with eastern mysticism. That’s not the point here. To meditate means to think about the instruction God has given for life. It means to dwell on it so much that it changes us. Day and night, we are to keep God’s Law in mind. This means the Bible is not casual reading. It is not for amusement, it is for life! We need to be reading it, considering it, meditating upon it, and acting upon it. That’s what choosing life is all about. How exciting that we can make this choice.
Jesus put this choice before his followers as well. To everyone’s shock, he says: "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. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27)
Wait a minute, I thought Jesus wanted followers. Now, he makes it sound so difficult that nobody would want to follow him! But he wants people to know exactly what they are getting themselves into. Early Christians left everything to follow Jesus and exchanged their place in their birth families for the Christian community, which became a surrogate family for them. It is not that they hated their families, but their allegiance to Jesus was so much greater that it resembled hate by comparison. These followers understood that life apart from Jesus is without value. Nothing is more important than following him. Nothing. And for this reason, they were willing to forsake all for him so that they could choose life—authentic life.
And so today, we have the exciting opportunity to meditate upon Moses’ message of the choice we have to make: life or death. We hear the joyful wisdom of the Psalmist who reminds us that happiness comes not from this world but from God’s law. And we have the call of Jesus who also invites us to choose life and not take that choice lightly because it may cost everything. Today, my friends, may we recognize anew that life, true life, the life we seek so deserately, is found in God alone. So let’s go after it with everything that is within us. Let’s choose life.
© 2010 Laura Gentry
