I’m inundated with choices. Just turning on the computer yields a whole series of menus (dashboard), glassy-eyed checkers at the cash register ask me about paper or plastic, the weekly entertainment supplement describes a deluge of places and events. My server asks questions about beverage, then hands me TWO booklets of choices! Sometimes I long for college-food meals; the only choice was Take It or Leave It. Thomas Oden once said, “Choice demands negation.” This weekend’s scriptures may speak simplicity to modern folks drowning in too much!
Deuteronomy presents parental advice of Moses to the Hebrews on the doorstep of the Promised Land (30:15-20). “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…” An important note is that Divine Preference is NOT for dead ends but is an active hope for restoration! God hopes that this People, this community, will make the right choice. Today’s worshipers resist having our menu sliced to an on-off button because it causes us to re-examine the myth of our autonomy.
We’re always a bit surprised, St.Paul tells the Corinthian churches, that God pays so much attention to our daily choices! “For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?” (I 3:3) An image presents itself of primary school kids being quiet only because Teacher is hanging over their shoulders. Not yet ready for universe-changing equations, their learning-moment involves choosing acceptable behavior.
Didn’t you always hate it when Teacher made the WHOLE CLASS miss recess because Jimmy was raising a ruckus? Readers of the Sermon on the Mount need to understand that these directives were issued to the Community of Faith, albeit composed of individual members. As Matthew 5:21-37 is read, hearers should see the Greater Picture: that is, not as alternative mores, but as BETTER ones. “You have heard it said…but I say to you…” The existing ways are OK, but there are refinements. Anger and lust and empty promises are more than legal infractions, they cripple and divide the People of God.
I always resonate with Robert Frost– I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–I took the road less traveled by… And that has made all the difference.
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
My thoughts about lectionary scriptures for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com
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HB…. excellent insights to remind us all of the choices out there. I don’t do well with the large number of questions asked pushing me to say, “Yes, no, I want this, I don’t want that.” My sister and her husband live in Columbia, SC. and often go out to Waffle House for breakfast. They told me the story, and if my brother in laws says it, it must be true, “I ordered pancakes, and they brought me waffles. I said some to the server, and she said to me, ‘Order what you want, eat what you git, This is Waffle House.”” Would that some choices be directed as clearly as that one. Thanks for the good work you do each week.