Choose Life

Epiphany

Pastor Mitch Coggin February 12, 2023 Epiphany 6A

Deuteronomy 30 is the end of Moses’s farewell address to the Hebrew people whom he led from captivity to the land they were promised in Canaan. He has been with them through thick and thin. He knows he will not go with them into the Promised Land. Moses is preparing them to leave their wilderness life of total dependence on God and what it means to be God’s in a culture of plenty in which everything and everyone was viewed as a usable, tradable, ownable commodity.

Moses’ farewell address, which begins in chapter 29, is a renewal of their covenantal relationship with God. Moses is building a covenant between the Hebrew people and God that is based on their relationships with God and one another. He emphasizes that only when they turn to the Lord God with all their heart and with all their soul are they able to love their neighbour. The covenant equated love of God and love of neighbour.

Moses presented the choice that they faced, “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity… If you obey the Lord and walk in his ways, obeying the commandments…then you shall live.” This isn’t a casual choice.

Obedience is hearing with our mind and our heart. Obedience is not merely doing as one is told. Obedience means listening which involves more than hearing and following. Obedience is a discernment process rather than just making a decision. Discernment takes the time to step back and listen to God and one another.

What does it mean to choose life?

We make choices every minute of every day. We choose to listen or not. We choose how to spend our money. We choose our friends. We choose how we care for our bodies and the earth. We spend little time making these daily decisions.

When Moses says to choose life, he is talking about how we love God. However, there is another choice. Moses explains that “if your heart turns away and you do not hear but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them” then your life will not be sustainable. It will be a life that is destructive, it is a life that withers away.

How we choose to live our lives is up to us. The practice of discernment is ongoing. Listening to God is an attitude, not an act. What are the beliefs underneath our decision to choose life?

Matthew 5 begins the teachings of Jesus. Much of what Jesus said goes beyond or around what God had said through Moses. The question was how to remain obedient to God in a changed world. The Jesus of Matthew 5 came to fulfill the Law not to abolish it. For the Jewish people, Torah is the way of life granted by God’s love for humankind. There is the choice. Jesus taught that the weightier matters of the law were justice, mercy, and faith. In Jesus’ words and in his deeds, he was the living justice, mercy, and faith in God. Jesus erred on the side of people which still reverberates in our life together.

This way of living has never been a matter of following rules but of honoring relationships. When we honor our neighbors – when we love them as ourselves, then and only then are we ready to discover what the law and the gospel are all about.

Jesus begins his teaching from the Torah, “you have heard it was said to those of ancient times…but I say to you…” He goes beneath the issue of murder, adultery, divorce, and oaths. Being angry with another is as destructive as murder; adultery and divorce reduce persons to a specific act or role. Your words carry weight. What Jesus is saying is that loving God is tied to relationships and we cannot differentiate our relationship with each other and our relationship with God.

How we love God is reflected in how we treat one another. We reduce the store clerk to an act of serving us as they run the till and bag your groceries rather than encountering them as a person, a mother or father, or a neighbour with particular challenges. How we treat one another is how we treat God.

In a world that continues to build walls and divisive rhetoric, it calls for words that renew relationships. In a world that constantly invites us to see people through the labels we put on them: gay and straight, indigenous, immigrant, liberal, conservative, under-housed and single housed, ill and well. Jesus calls us to discover wholeness, and righteousness in relationships of equality and compassion. In other words, our relationships reveal the same justice and love that God constantly shows toward each of us.

We cannot become the church by accident but only by obedient intentionality.

How do we in our life of faith choose life?

We choose life when we choose to give life to the people around us. Let it be so.

SUNDAY READINGS

1^st Scripture: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

2^nd Scripture: Matthew 5:21-37

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”