Sermon delivered September 4, 2016 (The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 18, Year C)) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Luke 14:25-33
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Our reading from Deuteronomy today comes near the end of that book, as the Israelites are preparing to cross into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. As they stand on the brink of the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them, Moses is near death, and these last several chapters of Deuteronomy detail his “parting words” to the people before naming Joshua as his successor.
After a long recounting of the laws given at Mount Sinai, Moses reminds the people that if they obey the laws God has given them, they will prosper, but if they do not, they will perish. Although only one of these choices offers a desirable outcome, inherent in this exhortation is a reminder of their free will: the Israelites actually do have a choice in the matter of whether they will love God and follow his commandments or not. God does not make them obey him, controlling them like puppets; he grants them the freedom to choose disobedience, even if it leads to their destruction.
Like the Israelites, we too have a real choice as to whether we will love and obey God or not, whether we will choose life or whether we will choose death. We too are free to choose disobedience, even if it leads to our destruction. We only need to take a brief look at the evening news to find plenty of examples of how often people choose destructive behaviors over life-giving ones. And truth be told, there are probably plenty of examples a lot closer to home than the evening news.
Within our own lives and choices, we can all find examples of times when we chose to break our own religious covenant – the vows we made at our baptism – and the negative consequences that resulted. The times we turned a blind eye to someone in need, the times we spoke harshly to our spouse or children, the times we neglected to spend time with God in prayer and worship, the times we knowingly participated in unjust social systems simply because it was easier than challenging the status quo – in all of these times, we broke the covenant we made at our baptism: to be regular in prayer and worship, to share our faith with others, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being.
Each time we break one of these vows, we are, in however small a way, choosing death instead of life. Although we may not feel like we are making a conscious choice to disobey our baptismal covenant in those moments, we could have chosen to behave differently. We could have chosen to see the person in need rather than walking past them. We could have chosen to hold our tongue when we felt negativity and harsh words rising up. We could have chosen to get up and come to worship even when we felt like sleeping in. We could have chosen to challenge the policies and programs in our communities that perpetuate social inequalities and injustices. We do have the ability to be conscious and intentional about our actions, and to make choices that are life-giving rather than destructive.
But as Jesus reminds us in our Gospel passage, these choices are not always easy. He reminds the crowds that the cost of following him is high, that sometimes it feels more like choosing death than choosing life: "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,” Jesus says to the large crowds that begin to follow him. “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
In all the hypothetical examples I just gave of ways we might break our baptismal covenant, the things I spoke about as “choosing death” instead of “choosing life” are all essentially ways in which we “choose self” instead of “choosing others.” So, even though Jesus’s words about carrying our cross might at first glance seem to be in conflict with God’s exhortation in Deuteronomy to “choose life” rather than “choose death,” in the paradoxical way of the Gospel, sometimes it is through choosing death that we choose life. As the prayer of St. Francis that we’ve been using at the end of the Prayers of the People says, “It is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are reborn to eternal life.”
That “dying” is not primarily referring to our actual physical death, but a spiritual death of ego that allows us to become more authentically ourselves, to flourish as we become truly awake and alive as we are connected on a spiritual level with everything around us.
There’s a scene in the film “Peaceful Warrior” (2006) where Dan Millman, a college student at UC Berkeley who is struggling to recover from an injury that has taken him out of competitive gymnastics, a sport that had been his whole life, goes to the top of the clock tower in Berekely and crawls over the railing onto the ledge.
As he stands there contemplating suicide, he is confronted by a second person, also on the ledge, who begins taunting him, encouraging him to jump. When he sees this person’s face, he realizes it looks exactly like his own. He’s come face to face with himself – a self-absorbed jerk who sees value only in winning, in amassing more trophies, medals, and accolades, who can’t find a reason to live if he can’t be the best in the world, whose self-worth comes from beating everyone else.
Suddenly, it clicks, and he realizes that in order for him to truly live, “ego Dan” must die – this force, this voice that tells him he is worthless if he can’t succeed or produce.
As he tries to pull away from “ego Dan,” who has a strong hold on him and is pulling him toward the edge, ego Dan suddenly looks fearful.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Dan’s ego asks.
“No,” the real Dan responds.
“DO YOU KNOW… WHO YOU ARE… WITHOUT….. ME?!?!?!” Ego Dan screams, his face angry and contorted, in an expression that can only be described as demonic and evil.
“No,” the real Dan says again, shaking his head and trembling. But despite his utter terror about the uncertainty of what will happen if he lets go of “ego Dan,” he pulls away from him anyway, taking a leap of faith as he sends everything he’s built his self-understanding on falling backward over the edge of the tower, screaming as he falls to his doom stories below.
To choose life for oneself and for the world means choosing death for one’s ego. It means dying to self in order to be raised in the new life of Christ. It means actively seeking to destroy the parts of ourselves that seek self-interest so that the light of Christ within us can shine unabated. It means allowing our egos to be replaced by the “mind of Christ,” as the apostle Paul encourages us in his letter to the Philippians:
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)
Jesus is constantly telling his followers that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). The choice is always before us, although it may not be as clear-cut as we might think at first glance. Will we choose the way that leads to true and abundant life, even if that comes through death? Or will we choose the preservation of self at the expense of all else, the way that leads to destruction even if it seems to be leading us to life?
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
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