"Choosing...No...Receiving Life"

Pastor Tommy Thompson
Deut 30:15-20 & Matt 5:20-37
The Sixth Sunday after The Epiphany
13 February 2011

“Choosing...No...Receiving Life”

“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, 20 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.”

Choosing ... something we’re accustomed to doing. Our whole world is shaped by the fact that we have the power to do such a thing. We choose daily...cereal, toothpaste, shoes, hats, watches, fragrances, screen names, colors, pets, restaurants, web addresses, you name it. We are beings who choose.

The problem is that our society, and Israel’s wasn’t too awfully different, tells us that choosing is all that matters...all choices are legitimate in our world...as long as they are “free” choices...meaning that as long as desire runs rampant, you are free to choose whatever, and I am free to sell whatever...this is the way our society runs.

In the Old Testament lesson for today, the people of God are summoned to make a choice....to choose life...problem for them, like us, is there is not a life isle in the grocery store like the cereal isle where we are free to choose whatever form of life we want. There is but once choice for God’s people -- life or death. Our world tells us all choices are valid choices...the Bible calls the people of God to the truth that our choices are the reasons for the stench in the air...we have died but the world keeps telling us that they can keep us alive...if we keep making choice the end in itself...

In the book of Deuteronomy, we learn that God gives His people land upon which and through which His people are freed to live a very particular way of life; On the flip side, God does not give us life for the sake of gaining property. This way of life God calls His people to display before the nations is nothing short of the Torah, the will of God for the world.

Moses stands on the plains of Moab and gives Israel this key to life in the land. It is fourth and inches for Israel and the Super Bowl is on the line. She has had opportunities the whole game...but she forgot what she was playing for...now it comes down to this last chance...fourth and inches...the timeout has been taken...the coach has opened the playbook, given a motivating speech, reminding the team of who and whose they are...the team goes back on the field. Will she cross and score or will she be sacked without ever tasting the flowing of milk and honey?

When Israel arrives in the land will she receive the land as gift--as the raw material for faithfulness? Will she receive God’s blessing for what it is--the means provided for the sake revealing life and light to the nations? Or will she take it, possess it, as and end in itself, leading her to bow down to the other gods who promise to give her more and more..to a way of life that reeks of death, where choice is again the idol of choice?

We don’t have to pretend we haven’t read Jeremiah ... when the Lord spoke to Israel in her sin. He asked, “Can Ethiopians change their skin? Can leopards change their spots? Can those who are evil do good?” Of course the answer in every case is no. People cannot change the color of their skin…leopards can’t change their spots... and the people of God, who have become stiff-necked and rebellious, cannot turn and do good.

The people of God have fallen in love with the false sovereignty of choice. We have made ourselves kinds and queens, so we think...we call the shots...we know what is best for us...we feed our passions...giving them what the world says they need...We don’t know how to choose life...to live in the land as God’s people...

Which is why we don’t like to hear what Jesus says in his sermon on the Mountain. I’ve noticed that when Jesus’ sermon is read, we cringe... we can’t wait for it to be over and we hope the preacher won’t expound on it...and the preacher hopes she doesn’t have to...Jesus’ sermon is much like Moses’ sermon, but hits closer to the heart...because Jesus is even closer to the heart of the Torah -- the will of God for God’s world, because He is the will of God, the Logos of God, the Divine Word of God, the Torah’s fulfillment.

It’s hard enough for us to hear, “have righteousness equal to scribes and Pharisees and you will enter the kingdom of heaven”...even harder to hear that our righteousness must exceed it...hard enough to hear, “you shall not murder,” but quite another to hear “if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. It’s one thing to obey the command “you shall not commit adultery…” It is another to hear, “Whoever even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart...

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is fair enough...it protects the perpetrator from having to give up more than an eye or a tooth...but to say that when a man strikes me on the right cheek to turn my head so that he might strike the other is preposterous…I want to hit him back! If someone steals the wheels off my car, am I really supposed to give him my car?

This is serious stuff Jesus is proclaiming...stuff that seems so far removed from the world we live in...where murder, anger, lust, brokenness, and revenge run rampant. Jesus proclamation is radical heard through the filters of this decaying world...it turns upside down everything we’ve been taught as normal...

It’s pretty radical to look at folks who are sinful and say “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.” My reaction to that is, “Lord, there’d be nothing left of me!”

And that’s exactly what the point of this sermon seems to be--to jolt the people of God with the divine light that wakes us up to the realization that we are utterly sinful with ho hope for fruitful change within ourselves! As we are attentive to Jesus’ sermon, “the light of the Gospel uncovers the darkness of our lives with a clarity which will leave no cause for hope in ourselves.” When we hear the words of Jesus’ sermon, we stop patting ourselves on the back for at least a moment. We’ve all been bragging about how high we can jump...how we out jumped so and so...but now we hear that the goal is to jump to the moon and all our bragging is revealed as ridiculous.

We cannot choose life...and that’s why Jesus is on the mountain proclaiming this sermon. The good news of the Gospel is that the proclaimer is the proclaimed! He speaks knowing full well we cannot do what he says...he speaks knowing full well he will do for us what we could not do for ourselves! The sermon of Jesus is revelatory of what will be normative in the future when we are “perfect” as our heavenly Father is perfect...being who we were created to be...as He is who he always has been...but this perfection, this fulfillment is a received perfection, not an achieved perfection.

Jesus’ sermon “can be compared to flashes of light out of the kingdom to come. A traveler groping through dangerous terrain in the dark of night may chart the way by the wind in the trees, the obscure glimmer of the stars behind the clouds, the memory of the way as it was described earlier, or the faint light of a lantern against the storm...But the brilliant flash of the lightning illumines the path, the perils, and even the distant goal in the twinkling of an eye...Suddenly everything is clear, although the darkness quickly closes in again.”

Without the flash of divine light that Christ is, we are left with the obscure glimmer of cloud-covered stars and the faint light of our own faith and reason. The good news is that the Christ light shines forth from the reality of Jesus’ sermon showing us the way to our future. As the lightning illumines the path, the design of the road is unmistakably in the form of a cross filled with water. The light summons us to the water where we accept the gift of life, dying to the world of the sovereign chooser and rising to life as the grateful servant who lives the future reality of the sermon in thanksgiving and praise.

Moses called the people of God to make a choice. But we cannot choose to change our spots...or our skin...Now Jesus calls us to accept the gift. All we have to do is accept in faith that Jesus has chosen what Israel could not choose. We accept it by going down into the water of the cross and rising to new life of thanksgiving in response to grace that is best described as faithfulness and life.

May the jolt of lightning that Jesus’ sermon is wake us up to our utter need for grace and a celebration of the mighty acts of God in Jesus Christ that has made grace available like a gift under the tree...will you open the gift or leave it there?