L'Chaim
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Matthew 5:21-37
February 12, 2023; Emmanuel Baptist Church
A very old funeral prayer says “in the midst of life, we are in death.”[1] Death has seemed particularly close recently. Since Monday, we have watched the news from the earthquakes Turkey and Syria where the death toll is now approaching 30,000. Across the twelve years that I've been your pastor, I have led funerals at the rate of 0 to 2 per year. One year, there were three and that felt like a lot. However, in the last three months, we have lost 4 church members to death. Some of you have told me that in addition to those 4 Emmanuelites, you are grieving for several other friends or family members.
This week, I learned of the deaths of two pastors. One of them, Karen, didn’t show up for worship on January 29. When members of her congregation went to the parsonage to check on her, they found her unconscious. She lingered a little while in the hospital and then died on Thursday at age 59. Another pastor died quite unexpectedly on Wednesday. David was just 40 and leaves two young sons and his wife who is also a pastor. These were active American Baptist pastors. While I did not know them personally, all across my network of friends and colleagues I see those who are deeply grieving for them. In the midst of life, we are in death. If death has come close for you, please know that it is OK and right to grieve, OK and right to lament, OK and right to be sad and to talk about it. All of these are healthy and necessary responses. In the midst of life, we are in death.
Often when someone dies, we reflect on their life, their joys and disappointments, their passions and accomplishments and strongest relationships. And sometimes when we do that, it makes us wonder about our own life and how we are living it and what might be said about us at our funeral.
In our reading from Deuteronomy, Moses is approaching his own death. He led God’s people out of slavery and for years afterwards. The Exodus will become one of the key identifying moments in Israel’s history. His leadership has been unparalleled, but it seems like he still has things to say, wisdom to share before he departs. Our reading comes near the end of his farewell speech. The speech goes on for 26 chapters. I’m sure there’s other important stuff in it, but this part is surely worth remembering – “I have set before you life and death . . . Choose life so that you and your descendants may live . . .”
Moses is saying farewell to a people who did not personally experience the Exodus. Because they did not live under the oppression of Egypt, they may not value the freedom that is theirs, they may take for granted God’s presence and blessing in their lives. And so, Moses goes on and on reminding them of their history, imploring them to keep on loving God with all their heart and soul and mind.
He is calling them to obedience, but this is not a blind obedience to a list of moral do’s and don’t. In earlier chapters, he asked them to listen with all their hearts. Listening that way involves careful discernment. The path that is life-giving may not be immediately apparent. Sometimes, especially perhaps in moments of crisis, we rely on the spiritual formation that has taken shape in us over our lifetime. We listen to God in our selves, at our core, and seek to live out that word, for the transformation of our lives and those around us. When it works that way, we are choosing life.
But it doesn’t always work like that, does it? Sometimes our baggage gets in the way. Sometimes we don’t pause to listen, but act impulsively. Sometimes our pain or anger or disappointment or fear is greater than our desire to listen. Sometimes we are just living life as it comes along and we make choices, fall into patterns without even realizing it.
“The choices are not usually labeled ‘life’ and ‘death’. Most of our decisions do not seem important, but life and death are before us every day. We choose death when we ignore God and choose anything inferior. Death is a slow process of giving ourselves to what does not matter.”[2]
That great sentence is from Rev. Brett Younger, who is currently pastor at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. “Death is a slow process of giving ourselves to what does not matter.”
By extension, then, to choose life is to give ourselves to what does matter. Choosing to do that over and over again. When put that way, it may start to sound like choosing life requires total dedication to some great cause, becoming activists and living our lives on the front lines of social change. Some of us do that, but most of us don’t. We have other responsibilities – showing up for work, keeping the household running, paying the bills, and being a good neighbor, we can barely manage that.
But that’s all right, because that is what Moses was really talking about. And for that matter, so was Jesus. What we read today is a part of the Sermon on the Mount. Some parts of that sermon are really beautiful, like the beatitudes for example. This part is not my favorite. It sounds kind of like Jesus is wagging his finger at the crowd, telling them not to do stuff stuff they already know not to do.
In fact, Jesus is quoting the law of Moses, isn’t he? “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not swear falsely.”
Jesus is talking about rules and laws in order to get to something deeper, to get to what really matters. Like Moses, Jesus is asking us to listen with our whole hearts, to discern how to choose life.
“Do not murder.” That’s a baseline. We know that. We have no intention of breaking that commandment. But Jesus says, choose life and take it deeper. One commentator says, “Coexisting without killing each other is not enough. Agreeing not to commit homicide is essential and lovely, but what about all the other ways we human beings “kill” our relationships through resentment, rage, unforgiveness, and spite? . . . Don’t we inflict soul-killing violence on each other through our words? Our silences? Our refusal to extend and receive forgiveness? What good is it if we, God’s children, technically spare each other’s lives, and yet commit unspeakable acts of murder through a refusal to love?[3]
“Do not commit adultery.” Again that’s a baseline. But choose life and take it deeper. Cherish your spouse. Cherish other people’s spouses by recognizing the boundaries of faithfulness. Refuse to objectify other people in any way.
Tell the truth. Let your yes by yes and your no be no. Jesus is creating a community in which the default assumption is that people tell each other the truth. People keep their promises. And so people trust each other.
These practices are the ways that we choose life, as individuals and as a community. These are the ways, in the midst of every day life, that we give ourselves to what matters.
Michael Jinkins, is a former president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. His book, Called To Be Human, is a collection of letters to his adult children. In one he writes, “The purpose of Christian faith is for us to become human. I’ll put it even more bluntly Christians believe that God became flesh and dwelt among us. And I do not for a moment think that God went to all the trouble of incarnation - let alone the trouble of being crucified, just to make us religious. God became human to make human beings out of us.”[4]
Jesus does not come to help us escape this world in its brokenness, sin, and suffering. He comes to help us live more fully in it. He comes to help us choose life by protecting the relationships that make us more fully human.
Life and death are before us every day. So friends, let us choose life. Let us give ourselves to what matters. Only you can discern what that means for you today and tomorrow and the next day. But I’d like to close with some suggestions from Brett Younger, the pastor in Brooklyn I mentioned earlier. He offers a long list of ways to choose life. Here are just some of them.
“Walk around the block.
Turn off the television.
Get together with your friends.
Invite a stranger to lunch or dinner.
Clean out a drawer. Read a book of poetry. Quit doing what is not worth your time.
Do something so that someone else will not have to.
Stop arguing.
Apologize to someone, even if it was mostly his fault. Forgive someone, even if she does not deserve it.
Have patience.
Stop having patience when it is time to tell the truth.
Figure our what you hope for and live with that hope.
Delight in God’s good gifts.
Believe that God loves you.” [5]
In the midst of life, we are in death.
Choose life so that you and your descendants may live. Amen.
[1] The Book of Common Prayer, 1662, Burial of the Dead
[2] Brett Younger in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 341.
[3] Debie Thomas https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2525-but-i-say-to-you
[4] Michael Jinkins, Called to Be Human: Letters to My Children on Living a Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) p. 9.
[5] Brett Younger in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, p. 343.