by Rev. Carolyn Estrada
Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18 (NRSV)
Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel:
“Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”
John 6:56-69 (NRSV)
Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”
Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
“…choose this day whom you will serve…” Joshua directs the Israelites.
Jesus tells the disciples the same thing, in a rather backwards fashion: “Do you wish to go away?”
This morning’s Scriptures ask us to choose a relationship with the God who has first chosen us:
I will be your God, and you will be my people, God told the Israelites.
We often have lessons which are variations on the theme of God’s love for us and our having been chosen by God. Today’s lessons focus on the other side of the equation, on our choice of God, our choice to LOVE God back.
How often do we even think of our relationship with God as a choice?
“Choose…whom you will serve,” Joshua says.
“Are you in or out?” asks Jesus.
Most of us, I think, are Christians by habit: we grew up that way. The last time we consciously thought about CHOOSING God may well have been when we were confirmed – or, perhaps, when the alarm went off this morning.
Today we have baptized Kai. As an adult he would have been asked, “Do you desire to be baptized?” That is, do you choose this relationship with God? As a child, his parents make the choice for him – and for themselves, as they live into teaching, by word and example, what it means to love God.
A choice – and a commitment.
The disciples said, “These teachings are difficult…” And they are: Jesus’ teachings have not changed; they are today as difficult as they were for Peter and the other disciples: love God; love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; and discover the Kingdom of Heaven in your midst.
But they are also incredibly rewarding.
They offer life, light, and hope.
It’s not that people don’t still want those things – the life that Jesus offers. It’s just that – well, isn’t there an easier way?!!
And there are so many other things that seem to call out, offering the same benefits!
Our media constantly bombards us with opportunities for a future filled with happiness, success, popularity, perpetual youth, abundance – a kind of secular equivalent to Light and Life – except that it’s illusory. These things are programmed, not for fulfillment, but to leave us longing for more, better, the next thing…
In our own lifetimes many of us have seen our contemporaries, even our own children, turn away, sleep in, do something different on Sunday mornings, no longer make the choice that you and I have made to be here this morning.
They’ve made their choice for Jesus at baptism, or confirmation, and now they’re on to the next thing…
What we often fail to recognize is that our choice for God is not a one-time, once-and-for-all thing. It’s not a box to check on our “To Do List” or a “Well, now that’s done – I can put it on the shelf until we need it or mount it in a box on the wall marked ‘In case of emergency, break glass.’” Our choice for God is on-going, made over and over again in everything we do, every act we take…
Our choice for God is made not with our mouths, but with our lives.
Our choice for God is not a list of creeds and strictures externally applied and enforced, but manifests the essence of the Hebrew schema: the loving of God with heart and soul and strength.
Our choice for God is not a certificate we hang on the wall, but a way of being in the world.
I know a woman who tells the story of what brought her into the church. It was a woman she worked with, she told me, who brought her here: not because of what she said (“Have you been saved?” or, “Why don’t you come to church with me?”) but because of who she WAS, a woman whose way of being in the world was so compelling, so inspiring, that Robin found herself saying, “I want that! I want what she’s got!”
I want to feel that Love of God, that Love FOR God!
How DO we love God?
What does it mean, then, to choose God?
It means that in all that we say and all that we do, we are mindful of the Way of Jesus; we remember that we are God’s way of being in the world, God’s hands and feet and, yes, voice.
It means we must heighten our awareness of even our most unconscious acts – and recognize that we are constantly making choices to do one thing and not another, to say one thing and not another.
And we must ask ourselves: does this choice lead me in the direction of God?
In our daily interactions – not just with our “company manners” – are we reflecting love and compassion?
Are we extending our embrace not only to include, but to draw into the center, those on the margins of society?
This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?
Yes, this teaching is difficult. That’s one reason we come together as a community, to support one another on this difficult journey, to help each other get better at loving God.
Annie Lamott defends making her teenage son go to church, even though he hates it, not because God doesn’t love teenagers who don’t go to church, but because she feels he needs to see people who “love God back.” “Learning to love back,” she says, “is the hardest part of being alive.” (cited in Christian Century Aug. 23, 2006, p. 6)
Learn to choose God, she is telling him, from the witness of those who have chosen God. Learn to love God by being with people who love God.
Dorothy Soelle, a feminist theologian and activist, talks about how she grew up hearing the gospel of God’s saving love for her – but nothing about what it might mean for her to love God in return, to choose God. It was discovering the mystics who taught her to go from “thinking about” God to loving God in such a way that her love for God animated her prophetic witness, her activism. She chose the God who had already chosen her.
Augustine tells us there can be only two basic loves: the love of God into the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self into the forgetfulness and denial of God.
Do we choose to love the gods of our captivity – or to love the God who brings us out of Egypt and into new life in Cana?
Do we turn our backs, like some of the disciples, and go away from following Jesus, get distracted by other options, or seduced by other promises – or do we choose the new life in him?
Yes, this teaching is difficult.
But we choose it!
We choose it!
Not because “to whom else would we go?” as Peter said, but because it works!
It is life-giving!
It enriches our world, gives texture to our lives, and brings joy and peace to our souls.
May we continue to choose God in all that we say and all that we do, that our choice to love God SHOWS in our lives, making us instruments of God’s love in this world.
Amen.