Choices

Life is difficult. We are bombarded by choices. We choose where and what we want to eat. We choose where we want to shop and the brands we want to buy; we choose what automobiles we want to drive; we choose what movies we want to see; we choose how we want to spend our time and how we want to spend our money; we even choose what church we want to go to. We choose, we choose, we choose. And in our culture, it seems to have become our right – to choose what we want and how we want it.

The readings for today are really about choices. These choices can be very difficult, and all have profound consequences. But in every case, we are called to make decisions that lead to a deeper life with God. The big chasm of our lives is the decision to live our lives God’s way, the way God intended for us to live, or to live the world’s way, the way the world dictates we should live.

Especially in western, American consumerist culture, we are conditioned to make choices that make our lives easier or at least more fulfilled. Advertisements that seek our attention and loyalty attempt to win our choice to buy their product or service. If you pay attention to the underlying message in most advertisements, the message is that our lives will be better if we buy. This messaging is not limited to products and services from corporations and manufacturers. In an election year, we hear a similar tone: vote for me and you will be safer and richer. Vote for the other and you will be poorer and at higher risk. Vote for me and your life will be better. Vote for the other and your life will be worse.

We have the right, right? To live high quality lives, whether we vote for them or purchase them. We are entitled to the good life…and it can be yours for a 60-month payment plan. That’s what the world tells us. Repeatedly.

Since the beginning of religion as we know it; 5,000 years of our relationship to God or Yahweh through the Jewish and Hebrew faith, there has been the great chasm: God and humanity; God’s way and our way. For the last three Sundays, the Old Testament lesson has been from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s prophecy was written in the 6^th century BCE during the Babylonian Exile. Babylon conquered Jerusalem in 597 and exiled the Israelites to Babylon to enter them into slave labor as well as the brightest and best of Israel, crippling Israel’s communal life and success as a nation. Jeremiah’s message to those in exile was to return to Yahweh, because Israel had lost their way. Last week, the first reading was from the beginning of chapter two of Jeremiah: The Lord says, “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?” And it seemed their heart didn’t turn. Ten years later, in 587, a second exile took place. At this time Jeremiah felt that all was lost and that only God could make something out of the nightmare that Israel was living. So he likened Israel to clay that God (the potter) would mold into something new.

A potter working with clay was an everyday occurrence in the ancient world, so it was an understandable image. As a result of his watching the potter at work, Jeremiah receives God’s instruction to issue a call for repentance. This call for repentance includes an unequivocal warning that the consequences for failure to honor God can be severe. The community needs to know that God’s dealings with the nation extend to the consequences of covenant theology. Covenant theology is a theology of rewards for obedience and punishment for disobedience. As in our Baptismal Covenant, we honor our promises to God and to each other, and when we fall into sin, we promise to repent. This is the call that Jeremiah is making to his people and the nation of Israel.

As humans on our journey with Christ we remain pinched between our desire to live God’s way versus the way the world influences us to live. Our decisions matter. So many of our decisions, even small seemingly insignificant ones, lead us closer to God and others away from God. I don’t believe in a vengeful, wrathful God that we might find in the OT, but I do believe that if we fail to nurture our spiritual lives, most specifically, our lives in Christ, then we will drift and miss the blessings that God promises us in the life of faith; promises of grace and peace in our living.

In the gospel teaching today, we hear that “large crowds were traveling with Jesus.” Now, if Jesus were a good church programmer, he would have dispatched some of the apostles to get everyone’s name, phone number, and home address from the members of this large crowd. He would have made sure everyone felt welcome. Perhaps he would have fretted over his sermons, making sure that each one was a practical, uplifting message that the crowd would come back for again and again. If they were singing psalms, he would have made sure the tunes were easy and appealing to the largest group possible.

But Jesus wasn’t a good church programmer. This is because Jesus wasn’t calling crowds; he was calling disciples. Jesus wasn’t concerned with being popular; he was concerned with helping people transform their lives. Jesus was leading people toward eternity, not temporal things like material success.

When Jesus sees the crowds, his instinct is not to wow them. His instinct is to make each person aware of the cost of being his disciple. It is this awareness of the journey that brings about transformation. He tells the crowd that unless they can detach completely from everything they are holding onto emotionally and physically, they can never really be his disciples. He tells them – and us – that we have to detach from our family and cultural norms, from our very lives as we know them. We have to be ready to take up our cross. Jesus says, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” End of sentence.

The conditions that Jesus sets forth here for true discipleship are radical, uncompromising, and even harsh. First, Jesus calls for the denial of close family ties and even of life itself. Family obligations were central in Hebrew culture; but even the most cherished relationships must be renounced if they stand in the way of faithful discipleship. Those who follow Jesus will have a new family of disciples based on their loyalty to Christ and one another.

So we find ourselves as confronted and challenged once again by scripture and Jesus’ teachings to order our priorities. Although I believe in a forgiving and loving God whose Son came to teach us how to live for the Father, I believe that the accountability and expectations are high for the Christian believer. The door into the church is the beginning point for us. Once we have decided that we want to be sojourners with Jesus, then we must examine our lives and prioritize.

Jesus never said “don’t have a life and stay at church 24/7”, but he did say, “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.” Harsh and scary words for sure. But to keep this in context with the thought of his day, Jesus’ word ‘hate’ means to prioritize. If our current priorities get in the way of our relationship to God, then we have a really hard time with his call to discipleship. The imagery here calls us to live the covenant which God calls us into: To love the Lord your God with all of your heart mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. All is renounced for the sake of Jesus. Even our possessions. The gospel passage ends with Jesus saying, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” We must be ready always to give up, put aside and renounce everything that seems important to us. We are called to stop seeking fulfillment from our own means and the world’s means, and to start seeking faithfulness to God in Christ. It was Jeremiah’s call to his people 2,600 years ago and it stands today, as we too are a people of covenant.

One must be willing to renounce anything that stands in the way of a full commitment to discipleship. Discipleship demands sacrifice. The imagery of taking up one’s cross must have been striking to the disciples before the crucifixion, and even more so in the days and years immediately following the crucifixion. A fitting description as discipleship demands sacrifice: sacrifice of one’s own dreams and ambitions, sacrifice of one’s pleasures, sacrifice of control over one’s own life. In exchange, however, discipleship offers a new vision of God’s will for our lives, new joys, and an acceptance that God is in control. Discipleship means counting the cost, which is often large. Count the cost, Jesus said, if you want to be my disciples. You’re liable to lose a lot if you choose to become a disciple, but what you gain will be immeasurably greater.