6th Sunday after Epiphany Year A

6th Sunday after Epiphany—Year A i February 12, 2023 It’s been a hard week in the Lemburg house. We’ve had a run in with our next door neighbor (yes, it’s that same neighbor that I’ve preached about before). It’s been bad, and I’ll confess that I’ve spent the week fantasizing about horrible things that might happen to her. And then I read today’s gospel. I thought about ignoring it and preaching on something else. But it was too late for that. It had already taken hold in my heart in the midst of this horrible week. It became clear that it was something that the Holy Spirit was encouraging me to wrestle with. But I couldn’t see, through my hurt and my anger, through my hardness of heart, any good news in this challenge this week. I knew I had preached on these lessons numerous times over my 18 years of ordained life. So I looked back at the good news that I had found before, relying on earlier foundations of my faith in my wrestlings with the readings and my integrity this week. So, today, I’m sharing with you what I preached on these readings in 2011; it’s what I needed to hear today (they say we preachers really just preach the sermons that we, ourselves, need to hear), and I hope it will be a gift of good news for you today as well. There is nothing like death to help give us perspective on life and how we are living it. Moses shares some of his own insight with us and the Children of Israel as he faces his own impending death on the outskirts of the Promised Land and as the Children of Israel prepare to enter the Promised Land and begin their new life there. “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.” There at the end of his life, Moses encounters the reality that most of us are not able to choose the manner of our death, but that our lives are made up of millions of opportunities in which we are allowed to choose between adversity and prosperity, curses and blessings, death and life. In his valedictory sermon, Moses doesn’t just tell the Children of Israel to choose between life and death, blessings and curses. He tells them how they may choose death or choose life. You choose death, he says, when your hearts turn away from God; when you do not listen to God, when you do not obey; you choose death when you bow down and serve other gods. You choose life, he says, when you love the Lord your God. You choose life when you walk in God’s ways and when you observe God’s commandments. You choose life when you hold fast to God. Jesus’s message in today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount is a much harsher and hyperbolic way of articulating this choice between death and life. “Let your word be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no,’” Jesus tells his disciples. Others have said this in various ways: “You’re either for us or against us.” “Do… or do not….There is no try.” While we know that neither of those sayings is really faithful to life because life isn’t about such dramatic extremes, the message is clear. Choose life. Jesus speaks strong words about the choices people face over the course of their lives: the choices of nursing and nurturing our anger against one who has wronged us or one whom we have wronged versus doing the difficult work of forgiveness and reconciliation. In this he tells us to choose reconciliation, choose life. He speaks of the choice of lusting after another, of coveting aspects of another’s life versus being reconciled with the reality of our own lives and what we have, and again he urges us to choose reconciliation, to choose contentment, to choose life. He speaks of divorce and urges people to work to preserve marriage, and he lays out again the choice between divorce versus reconciliation. When at all possible (and he acknowledges that it isn’t always possible in marriage, in relationships), choose reconciliation; choose life. Finally, he offers the choice between making false vows versus reconciliation between your values and your action, reconciliation between your words and your works. Choose reconciliation; choose life. In his piece of the Sermon for today, Jesus says that the Way of God is the path of reconciliation; it includes being reconciled with ourselves, who we are, the reality of our lives, and being reconciled with others, rather than holding onto our anger, past wrongs or injustices. Choosing life means recognizing that our relationship with God is deeply connected with our relationships with others. Choosing life means knowing and believing and holding fast to the reality that no matter what we have done, God continues to reach out to us, that we do not have to live a life of curses, of adversity, of death; we may accept God’s forgiveness and our restored relationship as God’s beloved that we might choose life. Again and again we are offered this choice, between death and life. It is the choice between living our lives for ourselves alone, not worrying about who we crush to get what we want versus striving for justice for all people and care for the poor, searching for something deeper than our own comfort. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between living our lives in a rush to meet deadlines that are, in the scheme of things, completely insignificant, and ordering our lives around those lesser things versus spending time with those who are dearest to us, and letting them know how precious they are. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between shutting down our emotions, not dealing with the reality of grief and loss in our lives versus acknowledging our losses and grieving…. grieving well. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between shuttling our children through the countless rounds of school and sports and clubs and social activities, expecting as much or more from them than we expect from ourselves versus spending some time every day playing with or being present with them, enjoying their childhood and youth, and sharing in their joy that they so freely give. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between being polite and saying what we think the other wants to hear, our tongues held captive by the fear of hurting feelings versus speaking the truth in love when the truth begs to be told. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between making all our decisions, living our lives based on fear versus living our lives out of a deep and abiding hope that nothing can separate us from God’s love. And we are urged to choose hope, to choose life. It is the choice between bowing down and serving anything less than God: ideas that are not worthy, the demands and priorities of our culture, our own over-programmed calendars, our jobs, our loneliness, our despair, our own deep control needs and plans for how our lives should go versus holding fast to God, offering to God nothing less than our whole hearts during worship, praying, and giving thanks for all of God’s good gifts. And we are urged to choose life. And here’s the really good news in all of this. We are always offered the choice, and even when we continue to choose death, for whatever our reasons, God can and will redeem that too, if we will let God. God can take the death that we choose, and God offers us in its place reconciliation… redemption…. resurrection. It is the very heart of the resurrection: that God’s love is stronger than anything this world has to offer—stronger than our bad choices, stronger than evil and hate, stronger than anything. God’s love is stronger than death. Therefore, when we choose God, we choose life. Your invitation this week is to join me in looking for ways to choose life, to choose God, in the midst of the hardness and the challenges of our lives. One way I have been doing this this week has been when I find myself nursing my anger, I acknowledge that. I take in a big breath, and in my heart and mind, I say to God and myself, “Choose life.” i. This bulk of this sermon was originally preached at St. Peter’s by-the-Sea, Gulfport, MS on February 13, 2011