Choosing Life: It All Costs

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Luke 14:25-33

It's not often enough that I make the time to read fiction these days. This is so, in spite of the fact that a well crafted story --- factually true or not --- awakens my imagination and pushes me to measure my own life's choices in ways little else does.

And so it was a couple of weeks ago I spent a few days living alongside the two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle in Kristen Hannah's The Nightingale. Set in Nazi Occupied France during World War II, this remarkable novel is based loosely on the legendary life of one of the two sisters who devoted her life to the work of the underground --- specifically that of rescuing downed British and American pilots. Throughout the story we hear how these two women make hard choices, day after day after day. And on many days? It seemed circumstances created a climate which meant there was not necessarily one good, 'morally pure,' right choice. And yet, they kept moving forward, attempting to 'choose life' in the best way they could.

My life is clean and easy compared to the world I lived in alongside Vianne and Isabelle for a few days. Even so, it surely helps me to dwell in such stories for such as these remind me of the ways in which my choices, too, reflect my values, my hopes, my dreams, --- and hopefully, most of all, my faith.

Indeed, the story I offer now is an old one and is in some ways yet unresolved. And while it is so that it was a large 'choosing' that was mine to make then, it serves as but an example. Without a doubt, we also'choose life or death' in small ways every single day.

This is how it was. I was 20 years old and a sophomore in college where I was majoring in political science. It was in a course which focused on international relations and the power of multinational corporations where my eyes were opened to the sometimes abuses perpetrated by entities whose bottom line is always monetary profit. Now one doesn't have to work hard today to realize that much of what you and I consume is done so 'cheaply' at the expense of impoverished workers the world over. This was news to me then, though. It was but a footnote in a larger textbook which pointed out this sort of abuse by one such corporation in a country in the southern hemisphere. That company also had an operation in my hometown. Indeed, that very company in its local expression in a small town in Northern Illinois helped pay my way through college by giving me a summer job.

I remember still how my heart fell when I put all those pieces together. I remember the internal struggle I had for even though I was hardly out of my teens I sensed that I was somehow complicit in all of this. I wondered then what to do. Was I wrong to build my own future on a foundation which was literally destroying the lives of families not so many hundreds of miles away?

I made a decision then which I still mull over from time to time. At the end of the school year I returned to my home town and went back to work my summer job in the same place I had the year before that and the year before that. I reasoned to myself that my refusing to work there would not have any impact on the decisions of a big company like that. Especially in the low end job I held. I came to the conclusion that I would be better off finishing my education and maybe one day I would be able to make a difference in significant questions like these.

It's not that I was entirely wrong those many years ago. Given the scarcity of options even then for kids like me to work their way through college, perhaps I did not have much of a choice. It's just that now --- these 35 years later? I still haven't found a way to make an impact on these sorts of injustices. I still haven't found a way to "carry my cross" in the way that Jesus calls us to now into this particular matter. Indeed, when it comes to this, those choices which are before me still seem like small ones which likely won't make much of a difference at all.

And maybe it is so that this particular challenge is not what I am called to address even now. Perhaps there are other every day challenges where I am meant to stand alongside and raise my voice and affect change. For it is so, today as always, that there is no scarcity of injustice to be addressed.

Either way, you and I are charged with dong precisely what Jesus calls us to today as we seek to follow him: We are to measure our options. We are to estimate the cost. We are, in the words of Deuteronomy, to wonder and to act day after day on the question of what will lead to life and what will lead to death. We are to do so, always, carrying the cross which is ours to carry.

As I think back on the decision to stay in a job I had questions about some 35 years ago, I realize that at least twice since then I have been able to make a different decision --- actually picking up and leaving work where I felt I had to compromise too much of who I was called to be and what I was called to do. In both cases I came to the painful conclusion that I could not change it so I decided to move on. What was different was that both of those times I actually had other choices. Most importantly, in a way that was profoundly different from when I was a young adult, both times I was surrounded by communities of people who supported me as I discerned my way in attempting to choose "life over death." And yes, both times, I paid a price: in at least one case in dollars and reputation both.

It all costs. All of it. And just like two sisters in a novel I read a few weeks back, the choices may never be clean and easy. Even so, those choices are ours to make. Day after day we seek to cast our hope on the side of life. Oh, there will be days when we will side with death for the cost of life may seem just too high. And there will be days when the line between life and death is not entirely clear. On those days --- in all of our days ---- may the gift that the One who promises life also freely grants forgiveness and strength for a new day sustain us then. And may we awaken tomorrow with a heart renewed to try again to choose life. Whatever the cost.

• What does it mean to you in your life to 'choose life?' Can you think of a time when the choice was not easy? Can you recall a time when you made the wrong choice? How do you find yourself thinking about that today?
• What difference does a supportive community --- perhaps even members of Christ's church --- make in terms of how you choose? As I indicate above, it has made all the difference to me.
• What has it cost you to 'choose life?' How has that compared to the cost of 'choosing death?'
• In my reflections on this scripture in this space three years ago, I offered a number of 'real life' concrete examples of 'estimating the cost.' You can find my thoughts at "Estimating the Cost."

Choosing Life

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

I approach this piece of Moses's sermon today with joy and with trepidation, with deep certainty and with profound questions all at the same time.

For on the one hand, we know that it is so. Our choices do matter. They shape our every day. On the other hand?  Well, I know that so very much has already been chosen for me. For by virtue of my place of birth and opportunity, some choices were never really mine to make in the first place. Even more than that? I am of the particular theological persuasion that when it comes to the largest questions of my existence, in this life and in the next, God made the choice for me in baptism.  I belong to God. Nothing I choose or do not choose will ever change that. 

And yet I also know that every moment of every day I have choices to make.Will I heed my alarm clock at 4:45 am and go to my early morning workout or will I snuggle down under the blankets and enjoy just a little more sleep? Will I continue to mindlessly eat the box of chocolate covered peanuts and almonds that some very kind friends gave me last week, or will I set it aside for another day --- or better yet share it with others? Will I spend an extra ten minutes hearing the story of the man who is sitting in my office needing a place to finish out his court ordered community service or will I send him on his way? Will I pause to pray before I jump headlong into my day or will I move ahead as though it all rests on me? Will I put away my smart phone long enough to see the person standing in front of me --- or behind me in line at the grocery store --- or serving me at the cash register? And these are the easy choices. 

No, indeed, most of the choices I am called upon to make in the day-to-day really do not seem like they are so much about 'choosing life,' do they? Or do they?  For no, they may not be 'life and death' choices', but they are choices which lean towards life or death.  If you think about it, every one of them is.  And perhaps they prepare us for the day when the choice we are offered will be monumental and life-altering:

• That day, for instance, when it will be yours to choose between staying in a marriage or a job that is not about life, but about death. When you venture out not knowing what this new life will hold but knowing that the old one was surely not right.
• That day when you will need to dig deep to find the courage to speak the truth, even knowing the consequences for you may be less than desirable. 
• That day when you will sit at the bedside of a dear one and know that it rests with you to decide what life will look like for him and for you both --- and whether or not you trust the promised life yet to come.
• That day when we are called to choose between the comfort of what we now know and the terror of what is yet unknowable. 

They are all hard choices then.  And so it is helpful that Moses's sermon in Deuteronomy frames it in such away that he reminds us that all of our choices really do come down to one choice. Will I love God or won't I? Will my choices in how I live reflect that love or won't it?

We are told the stakes are high. We also know that Moses's listeners so long ago did not heed his urging. In fact, we understand that the form we hear his sermon in now was first heard by a people in exile who understood themselves as being punished for having failed to listen to these very words.  We also know that, in spite of themselves, later God made a way for them to come home.

We do hear today, however, that our choices matter:  at least they do in this time now, today.  We know that as people who follow the Living God, who believe in the Resurrected Christ, that we are those who are called to choose life.  Sometimes I'll get it right.  Often I won't. Either way, every day the gift and the privilege and the yes, the challenge, is to sort out what life looks like and to try to choose it. And then to entrust it all back to God whom we love and who chose to love us first. 

• When you hear the words 'choose life,' what comes to mind for you?  What does it mean to choose life?
• Do these words from Deuteronomy fill you with certainty or with questions or with both?
• How do our smaller day-to-day choices reflect or impact the larger choices we make?
• What difference does it make if we believe God chose us first?