The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
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
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