Word to the Wise
Thursday, March 10, 2011 - Thursday after Ash Wed.
[Deut 30:15-20 and Luke 9:22-25]Moses said to the people: "Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the Lord, you God, which I enjoin on you today....you will live.... If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen....you will certainly perish.. [Deuteronomy] If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself? [Luke]
One of the great messages of Lent is that life is about choices! This message has been before us since humans were first created. Once God gave humans free will, human life became a life of choices. Not all choices are equal, however. The notion that life is a smorgasbord (pace Auntie Mame) of equally enticing options is very dangerous. Both Moses and Jesus remind us of this in today's scriptures! Some choices will bring us closer to God and some will not! Furthermore, some choices that do not seem very attractive to us may be the very ones that will bring us closer to God. The Old Testament is full of the bad choices continually made by the Israelites in favor of local pagan religious practices and against the covenant of Sinai. The scripture from Deuteronomy arose from a collective effort to restore that covenant choice and reform the community. The practices of local Canaanite fertility religions were attractive, but were counter to the covenant and the Ten Commandments. The Old Testament prophetic literature is testimony to the need to remind the Chosen People of the consequences of bad choices!
Jesus' statement about taking up a daily cross to follow him may seem, in the light of our consumer and pleasure-sotted culture, to be a form of masochism! Yet, the media every day show us examples of the bad choices continually being made in favor of the "attractive options" of our culture. Christianity makes great demands of both heart and mind, but those demands, if accepted and lived on a daily basis, lead to rewards far greater than the latest cultural or consumerist fad. This is why I think Lent offers us an opportunity to evaluate our choices - not just the choice of "what to do for Lent" but the choice to follow Christ and then see all other choices in the light of that first choice. Does this or that option lead us any closer to God? Is it what we truly NEED or is it simply something we WANT? Seeing our choices in the right kind of light can help us to avoid bad choices. That light is Christ. AMEN