Choices

Proper 18C- the Sunday closest to September 7
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Preached at St. John's, Lancaster

All of us make choices every day. Some of our choices are good, and some are, well, not so good. On occasion, all of us have even made choices that are just bad. I believe it was Archbishop Temple who said that “when we choose well, God reigns, and when we choose poorly, God reigns.” But today’s first lesson and Psalm are not about the impact of our choices on God’s sovereignty; rather they remind us that we are personally responsible for the choices we make, and that those choices do have consequences in this world, and in the world to come.
The problem with lectionary readings is that they tend to be removed from their context. Today’s first lesson, for example, consists of six verses which comprise an ancient near eastern suzerainty treaty offered by God to the people of Israel. The conqueror (God) offers to the subject people (Israel) a no nonsense proposition: “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God…God will bless you…But if your heart turns away and you do not hear…you shall perish…” In reality, this “treaty proclamation” from a soverign Lord to a subject people is a small part of the farewell address of Moses to the Children of Israel. It begins at chapter 29, verse 2, and concludes at chapter 31, verse 15. It is just over two pages long, or 61 verses. Taken in the shortened form that we heard today, the choice sounds rather stark and forbidding, but taken in its full context, it paints a beautiful picture of the grace manifested usward by a loving heavenly Father. Let me illustrate by giving you a synopsis of Moses’ address to the people:
Paragraph 1: You all saw the great wonders by which God delivered you from the hand of Pharoah, but to this day you do not understand what really happened.
Paragraph 2: For forty years, you have been the recipient of God’s bounty and protection, your clothes never wore out, and you defeated enemies that were much stronger than you. Keep the provisions of His Covenant, and you will continue to be blessed by God.
Paragraph 3: You have come here today to pledge yourself to the covenant which God offered to our ancestors, but it is not with you alone that God makes the covenant. He makes it with your children and indeed with all those who will come after you.
Paragraph 4: If any of you today plan to give lip service to this covenant, but intend to follow your own stubbornness and serve false Gods instead of the true God, know that disaster will fall upon you, for you cannot hide your self-flattery and plotting from God.
Paragraph 5: If you refuse this covenant offered by God, your fate will become proverbial among all the nations of the earth.
Paragraph 6: There are mysteries hidden from the foundations of the world, but God has revealed this wisdom and this covenant to us and our children for ever, therefore let us keep its terms inviolate.
Paragraph 7: If you observe the terms of this covenant, God will gather you back to the land that He has prepared for you. Whatever you may have done, and wherever you may have been scattered, He will gather you back to the land of your ancestral yearning, and give you prosperity.
Paragraphs 8 and 9 bear repeating in full: “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and you will live. The Lord your God will turn all these curses against your enemies and the foes who persecute you. Then you will obey the Lord once more and keep all his commandments which I gave you this day. The Lord your God will make you prosperous in all that you do, in the fruit of your body and of your cattle and in the fruits of your soil; for, when you obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes, as they are written in this book of the law, and when you turn back to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, he will again rejoice over you and be good to you, as he rejoiced over your forefathers. This commandment that I lay on you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to the heavens for us to fetch it and tell it to us, so that we can keep it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to fetch it and tell it to us, so that we can keep it?’ It is a think very near to you, on your lips and in your heart ready to be kept.” and then comes today’s first lesson: “Today I offer you the choice of life and good, or death and evil.”
So you see, this Covenant is not merely a demand uttered in a vacuum to us mere mortals. God recounts the history of how he has taken care of his people that we might be encouraged to believe that he will take care of us as well. He states again the prophesy that even though we are scattered by our sins and the bad choices of the past, He will bring us together and give us a new start in the promised land. He will come and recondition our hearts and motives, and protect us from the enemies of our souls. He will instill in us such an overwhelming love for Himself that we will gladly follow these laws and statutes which he has given for our own good. Those laws and statutes which are not strangers to us, for they are clearly taught in the books of nature and revelation, that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. And that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. God has not hidden his will from us, nor has he rendered us incapable of doing this good. Rather he has acted to reveal his will to us in the clear words of the Bible, to write it upon our hearts, and to so fill us with love that we will desire to do that which is right. Far from a stark and impossible choice offered to a conquered people, the Covenant of God is a divine and blessed way offered freely to a chosen people by a loving and merciful God. And so we rejoice with Bishop Caesarius of Arles, and with the saints of God through the ages that “God has put it into the power of each one to choose and to stretch out his hand to whatever he wishes,#” to good or to evil, to life or to death, to heaven or to hell.
Know that on this day, the God who made you in his image, who loved you enough to send His only Son to die for your sins, that same God calls and enables you to make the most important decision you will ever make. Receive His love, walk in His ways, live in joyous obedience to His revealed statutes, and he will fill your heart with peace, and with joy, and in the world to come, he will gather you into the promised land, the new Jerusalem. AMEN.