Choose Life
Rev. Lee Ann Bryce
Community Christian Church
February 13, 2011
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in God’s ways, and observing God’s commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. 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, loving the Lord your God, obeying God, and holding fast to God; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
I happen to think this is a gorgeous passage of scripture. I’m sure I’m not alone in that and I can imagine many uplifting sermons that can be preached on this text. However, we really do this passage a disservice if we move too quickly to how it might apply to our lives, without first considering what it meant in its original context. So, we’re going to begin today by looking at what these verses reveal in the life of our ancestors in the faith, then with that context as a backdrop, we’ll move to what it might mean to us.
Let’s start with a whirlwind tour through the history of ancient Israel. (Depending on who you are, you either got excited when I just said that or you groaned to yourself at the prospect of a history lesson. I promise it will go quickly!) Since we’re been reflecting on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount for the past few weeks in worship, consider that these words from Deuteronomy speak of a time thousands of years earlier. The Israelites had been held in slavery in Egypt, then Moses arose as a leader, going to Pharoah demanding, “Let My People Go.” Things didn’t go as quickly as Moses and the people had hoped, of course. And so all those plagues were sent (you know, gnats, frogs, boils, hail, locusts) to persuade Pharoah to listen and release the people. Eventually, when all the first born children in Egypt were killed, that was the last straw. Pharoah had had enough and he let the Israelites go.
They went gratefully on their way, into the desert, led by Moses where they wandered for 40 years, of course, not a literal length of time, but Bible short hand for a long, long time. They were headed for the promised land that they felt God had promised to them. The book of Deuteronomy opens when the people are poised right on the edge of the promised land looking in. The failures of the past lay behind them and the challenges of a new future, ahead.
It’s been said that Deuteronomy is Moses’ last will and testament for the Israelites though that’s a little misleading. After all, Deuteronomy was written down hundreds and hundreds of years after these events happened and so what we have is the record (again, not a literal account) of how a much later people shaped these traditions. The book is organized around 3 speeches attributed to Moses. The first two speeches include historical summaries, plus an urgent appeal to faithfulness. In the second speech you’ll hear about the Ten Commandments and the Shema, “Hear of Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”
Sometimes when I’m doing sermon research I come across one of those passages that just stop me in my tracks because it’s just so, so strange. Most preachers will ignore those passages, but I just cannot help myself. I have to show it to you. Though there’s a lot of, shall we say, interesting reading material in Deuteronomy, I just want to quickly point out chapter twenty-eight. Remember, in Deuteronomy, Moses is teaching the people what they must do in order to be safe and thrive in community. So there’s a lot of, do this good thing and this will be the result, but if you do this bad thing, then this horrible thing is what you can expect. While we might be put off by this sort of instruction, this teaching, which ancient Israelites considered as law, was really a gift to the people. Obedience to the law was literally a matter of life and death. They didn’t think of the law as a burden to be endured. Following the law meant that you’d be more likely to survive under dangerous conditions.
Chapter 28 is one of those “blessings and curses” chapters and it does go on and one. It’s quite explicit! The first 14 verses outline all the good things they could expect if they follow the law, things like, “The Lord God will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock,” (v. 11) and God will “make you the head, not the tail; you shall only be at the top and not the bottom” (v. 13). That sounds pretty good, but what if they didn’t follow the law? What would happen them?
Beginning in v. 15, we hear. “If you will not obey the Lord your God by diligently observing God’s commandments and decrees, which I am commanding today, then all of these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.” Then the rest of the chapter describes in great detail the curses they could expect:
Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send upon you disaster, panic, and frustration in everything you attempt to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me. The Lord will make the pestilence cling to you until it has consumed you off the land that you are entering to possess. The Lord will afflict you with consumption, fever, inflammation, with fiery heat and drought, and with blight and mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish….
That’s enough of that. You get the idea. But in case you haven’t, let’s pick it up in v. 52 with a little reminder that, as I said, gets very explicit:
It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your land; it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout the land that the Lord your God has given you. In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you. Even the most refined and gentle of men among you will begrudge food to his own brother, to the wife whom he embraces, and to the last of his remaining children, giving to none of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because nothing else remains to him, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in all your towns. She who is the most refined and gentle among you, so gentle and refined that she does not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge food to the husband whom she embraces, to her own son, and to her own daughter, begrudging even the afterbirth that comes out from between her thighs, and the children that she bears, because she is eating them in secret for lack of anything else, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in your towns.
(I wonder how often this passage has been read in worship.) Yes, in my book, this falls under the “Strange and Shocking Things Found in the Bible” category. And lest you think I’m just pointing it out for a laugh, I’m really not. I’m showing you how seriously the ancient Israelites took this instruction. Being faithful to God by following the law God had provided was the path toward survival in a time when they thought any of those horrible and terrifying things could happen.
“I set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” (Deut. 30:19). I saw a film recently that is a great illustration of choosing life. It’s academy awards time and one of the films up for best pictures is “127 Hours.” It’s the story of Aaron Ralston, an avid outdoorsman who in 2003 was hiking alone in a canyon. A big rock slipped, pinning his arm so tightly that he couldn’t move it. And as all the headlines at the time reported, he ended up severing his own arm to escape. It’s a terrific movie – not for the faint of heart – but an amazing film that pays tribute to Ralston’s strength, courage, and will to survive.
In the film, he had been trapped for almost 5 days with little food and water and was close to death. He had tried everything he could think of to escape and was ready to give up and let go of his life. And then something happened to renew his will to live. I won’t go into it because I don’t want to give away the film in case you haven’t seen it yet. (No spoilers in my sermons!) For Ralston, to choose life meant that he found a way to literally survive. But more importantly, in those long days pinned in the cavern, he thought about his life – his fierce independence, the ways he had isolated himself from the people who loved him, his arrogant idea that he was so indestructible that he could go hiking all by himself, miles out in the Utah desert and not tell a single soul where he was. He realized that dying in a canyon, pinned under a rock, all by himself, was a fitting death, a natural consequence of the life he’d lived.
Let’s hope it won’t take any of us such extreme circumstances to realize the errors of our ways. The issue of survival for the ancient Israelites was essentially a conflict of faith and culture. They were to do certain things because their faith required it. They were urged not to “bow down to other gods.” Arrogant independence was the god that called Aaron Ralston. What other gods call to you? The possibilities are endless. There are many engrained values of our culture that continually call to us, that we struggle to resist; things like financial prosperity, excessive focus on how we look or value placed on the things we own, accumulating stuff. Many struggle with an intense desire simply to be liked that keeps them from living with integrity. Or some struggle with addictions that lead to their destruction.
What are the other Gods that call to you? Let’s pause for a moment to reflect on our own lives, to identify the things that get in the way of healthy living. (Silent reflection.)
“I set before you life and death; blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live." As we consider the many choices before us, let us make choices that will lead to healthy living – physically, emotionally, spiritually. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment