Choose Life

Choose Life

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

February 12, 2017

Scripture: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Benjamin Franklin famously said that the only things that are certain are death and taxes. Taxes may or may not be spiritual issues—I actually think that they are—but death is definitely a spiritual issue. Life and death: Two profound realities of human existence. All of us here today are physically alive, and most of us have been for quite some time. All of us here have experienced death. Not our own of course. Not yet, but we have experienced other deaths. Maybe for you, like for me, the first death we experienced was the death of a pet. I’ve heard it said that one reason for children to have pets is so that they can begin to experience death. Most of us at least have experienced the deaths of people too, often the death of someone we have deeply loved. A grandparent perhaps, or a parent, a spouse, maybe even a child. Most of us Americans don’t like to think about death much. Our culture does a pretty good job of avoiding the subject most of the time. Yet of course we can’t avoid it forever. It is too much a reality of human life. All humans, all animals, are mortal. We usually live ignoring that reality, and perhaps we must in order to keep on living. Still, there it is. It breaks into our lives. Eventually it will end our lives. That’s just how it is whether we like it or not.

The setting of our passage from Deuteronomy this morning is just before the Hebrew people cross the Jordan River to occupy Canaan, the land they believe their god has promised to give them. Deuteronomy, which actually dates from many, many centuries after the time of Moses, is set as Moses speaking to the people. He calls on them to choose life rather than death so that they may live long and prosper in the land they are about to enter and possess. In Deuteronomy choosing life basically means following and worshiping Yahweh. That’s fine, although I think Deuteronomy misses the mark when it says that doing that guarantees long life and prosperity. Still, this passage points us to something really important. In it Moses says “love the Lord your God and hold fast to him, for the Lord is your life.” The Lord is your life. God is your life. That is profound truth, one of the most profound truths in the whole Bible. Deuteronomy nails it with that one.

Deuteronomy nails it with that one, or at least it does if we understand the word “life” properly. Yes, God gives us physical life. God is the Creator of all that is, and that of course includes us. But I think there is another profound truth here, one that is if anything even more important. “The Lord is your life.” What does that mean? It means, I think, that the life God sets before us and asks us to choose is something more than merely being physically alive. The life God sets before us and asks us to choose is life with God. It is life in the spirit. It is the fullness of life, not merely the external characteristics of life.

Life in the spirit is something that is always open to us, but if you’re like me (and I suspect that in this respect most of you are) you don’t often choose it just as I don’t often choose it. In our American culture when we think of life we typically think of being biologically alive. We don’t so often think of life as being spiritually alive. Yet many of us know at some deep level that truly being alive means being spiritually alive. To be spiritually alive is to know that all this material stuff all around us, including the material stuff of which we’re made, is not all there is. To be spiritually alive is to know that there is so much more to life than material abundance and social prestige. To be spiritually alive is to know that God is that reality in which, as the book of Acts says, we live and move and have our being. To be spiritually alive is to live with a steady awareness that God is with us and in us every minute of our lives. That God is the ultimate reality to Whom we can always turn for comfort and for guidance. We do that through prayer. We do that through spiritual exercises like meditation or other practices that work to connect us with God.

Now of course whether or not to live in the spirit, whether or not to live life fully, is always a choice we have to make. In our reading from Deuteronomy it’s Moses who puts the choice between life and death before the people. I believe that God puts that choice before each and every one of us every day. We can choose life, real life, abundant life; or we can choose a physical life that is really a spiritual death. Moses said to the people “Choose life.” I say to you, and I say to myself, choose life. It’s up to us.

We are coming to a change in our lives. We are coming to the time in a few weeks when I will no longer be your pastor. I think perhaps both you and I regret that reality, although it was my choice and one I still am convinced I must make. As we come to that parting the choice between life and death lies before both you as a congregation and me as an individual who has been called to ministry. I won’t ask you to worry about my choice, but I urge you in the time ahead to choose life for this congregation. You are alive. You are good folk who are today’s incarnation of a church that has been alive in this community for well over one hundred years. You are a church where people have found welcome. Where people, including several new people who have been here less time than I have, have found a spiritual home. Keep being that spiritual home for all who come here. You will choose life if you keep loving one another. You will choose life if you keep serving this community.

You will choose life if you open yourselves to the calling of the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit is not likely to call you only to remain what you have been in the past. God rarely calls anyone merely to remain what they have been in the past. It isn’t so much that the world around you is changing; rather, the world around you has already changed. Church as it used to be is not church as it will be. It will be up to you to decide how you will be church in the future. Will you have a pastor? Not necessarily. There are models out there of churches being vital, being alive, without a pastor. Will you stick with old, familiar theology? Or will you open yourselves to new insights and new ways of imaging and speaking about God? Only you can say. The choice lies before you. I say to you as Moses said to his people so long ago: Choose life.

God sets before us every day the choice between life and death. God calls us always to choose life. God calls us to choose life for ourselves individually and for the church collectively. That choice isn’t always easy, but here’s the good news about it. As we face that choice God is always with us, holding us in unfailing grace, calling us forward, nudging us in the direction of life. God wants us all to have a life that is full and abundant.

God will help us find that life; but here’s another thing we can’t deny. Eventually death comes to all of us. None of us is immortal. Institutions like churches aren’t either. Death is part of God’s creation, here’s what we always need to remember. Death never separates us from God. Ever. God is always calling us to new life, and God calls us to new life even beyond death. There is life for its people after the death of an institution too. So I pray that this church will choose life, and I beg you not to be afraid. God is with you. God loves you and holds you. God is here to help you. I pray that you will find this time of parting to be as much opportunity as loss. I pray that it will be that for me too.

So I say to you and I say to me: Choose life. Choose life with God, for God will never desert either you or me. God sets the choice before us. What we choose is up to us. So choose life. I pray that I will, and I pray that you will. Amen.