Character Choices

Moses Viewing the Promised Land, Frederick Edwin Church, 1846, click the image to link

Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 16, Deuteronomy 30:15-20

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 …. —Deuteronomy 30:19

Today, our journey through the Bible reaches the end of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The Hebrew Testament reading records a portion of Moses’ farewell speech to God’s people. From before the time they crossed the Red Sea, Moses has been their leader. Through forty years in the wilderness, he has watched over them. He is within sight of the Promised Land, but knows that he will die before he enters it. He attempts to sum up all that he has tried to model and teach. It comes down to a seemingly simple decision: turn your heart toward God, rather than away; do what it takes to receive a blessing rather than a curse; don’t select the path that leads to death, instead, choose life.

For Moses, choosing life meant embracing the law of God.  And the Law was summed up in the Ten Commandments: You shall have no other gods before me; you shall not make for yourself an idol; do not take the name of the Lord in vain; remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy; honor your father and mother; you shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or property. 

I’ve paired the reading from Deuteronomy with a text from the Gospel of Matthew.  Matthew works hard to show the ways in which Jesus’ life parallels Moses’ life.  As Matthew frames the sermon on the mount, Jesus offers ethical teaching that seems every bit as challenging as the ethical teaching presented by Moses. 

Reinhold Niebuhr once commented on this ethical teaching. Some of you will remember that Niebuhr was a famous theologian during the middle third of the twentieth century. He was born in Missouri and received his theological training in St. Louis. During the second half of his life, he taught at Union Seminary in New York City. In between St. Louis and New York, he served as a pastor for thirteen years in the gritty and still growing urban center of Detroit.

Niebuhr says that as he was concluding a youth Sunday school class about the Beatitudes, and the value of turning the other cheek, a boy raised his hand to ask a question.  The boy was sincerely struggling to understand how Jesus’ words applied to life.  He said that he was a newsboy. His father was dead, and the money he made supported his mother and family. Every morning, he explained, after all the newsboys gathered their allotment of newspapers, there was a fist fight to see who would get the best street corner, the one that always sold the most newspapers. In light of the Sunday school lesson, he asked whether he it was really wrong to fight so that his family could be fed. Niebuhr said that the question staggered him. To think that a path of nonviolence would lead to hungry children was more than he could bear. He had no simple answer.[1]

The words of Jesus have the same potential to stagger us today.  Jesus says to love your enemies, and to pray for those who persecute you. What Jesus poses as instruction may, in some situations, seem like a diabolical choice.  “Love the person who injured me, my child, or my friend?” “Pray for the person who has no regard for my well-being, who actively works toward my ruin?”

Moses, when he shared the Ten Commandments, didn’t say they would be easy to obey.  Moses never said that choosing life is simple. I look at my life, and find many examples. Is traveling to see my team play a football game a pleasant, relaxing diversion, or is it making an idol out of sports? When my job requires me to work all week, am I serving humanity or breaking the Sabbath? When my siblings and I reappraise the value of property in my mother’s still unsettled estate, are we striving for fairness in the way property is divided? Or are we coveting more than our fair share of possessions? If you think about things like this long enough, you’ll see that choosing life is not simple.  It seems impossible to choose perfectly.

The apostle Paul, who knew the Law exceptionally well, said as much.  For Paul, one of the chief purposes of the Law was to point out to us how dependent we are upon God’s grace.  When it comes to Law, we seem destined to break it again and again without some higher power intervening to help us love God, to devote a day to worship and rest, to honor our family, to be honest, and to be trustworthy.[2]  When it comes to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, I’ve known people who would choose almost any unpleasant task rather than forgive a family member or turn the other cheek to an alienated competitor. With humans, these things may seem impossible.  But with God, all things are possible.

Valerie L. is the daughter of my former colleague Allison, and a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina. Valerie wrote a paper that relied on the work of researchers Jedediah Jenkins and John Gottman to explain how arguments affect the brain. It was posted online, and I found the analysis fascinating. Valerie writes,  “…When we fight, our neurons inhibit the ability to learn new information, instead diverting their function to focus on information retrieval. Our sympathetic nervous system kicks in, and when our heart rate reaches a certain threshold, our brains enter a mental trap of repeating their own arguments, leaving no capacity for reasoning …. The whole concept of argument is ironic because while we are trying to persuade the other party that we are correct, amidst all the shouting, neither party is neurologically capable of learning new information. Hostile argument is not productive.”

Valerie, through Jenkins, quotes Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk and author, who wrote about the importance of first admiring enemies for their good qualities as the only hope for constructive discussion: “In the long run, no one can show another the error that is within him, unless the other is convinced that his critic first sees and loves the good that is within him. So while we are perfectly willing to tell our adversary he is wrong, we will never be able to do so effectively until we can ourselves appreciate (the other). Love, love only … this alone can open the door to truth. As long as we do not have love, as long as this love is not active and effective in our lives … we have no access to truth.”  Our young Presbyterian theologian advises, “… truth is often messy and people are fragile …. The only way to access truth effectively is through love, even if that means loving one’s enemies.”[3]

I could preach a longer message, but I don’t think that I could say it any better.  “Truth is often messy and people fragile … The only way to access truth effectively is through love, even if that means loving one’s enemies.” Often, loving another person who seems unlovable is a moral choice with far reaching consequences. And if we do not demonstrate the love of Christ, then who will?

NOTES

[1]I have heard the story told in two sermons, but have been unable to locate the original account in Niebuhr’s writings.

[2] Romans 7:13-25.

[3] Valerie L., “Love of Our Deluded Fellow Man,” facebook timeline of Allison L., 20 May 2016.

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