A Choice Only God Could Make

Father Xavier Fagba welcoming Muslims fleeing violence to his church in the Central African Republic.  Full story and image source here. 

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

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 his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in he 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 him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. 

Sermon: “A Choice Only God Could Make”

Choices matter.  We all want to feel we have a choice.  I was raised with lots of choices, but my parents were very particular about what those options were:

“Do you want to eat your broccoli or peas first?”

“Would you rather do your homework or help with chores?”

One particular choice set before me is forever burned into my memory.  I had made the foolish choice to pretend I was sick and needed to come home from school.  I dreamed of a day in my pajamas watching movies.  What I got was somewhat different. 

You see, my mother is a smart cookie.  So, when I complained of completely undiagnosable stomach pains and said I needed to go home, she did take me home.  And then she put me straight in bed.

Well, there’s only so much staring at a ceiling an eleven-year-old can put up with.  After what felt like hours (and what was probably only 30 minutes), I put on my most pathetic face.  I gripped my invisibly aching stomach and shuffled outside to where my mother was watering plants.

“Mom?” I said, weakly. “Yes?” she said, an eyebrow already starting to raise.  “I feel a little bit better.  Can I watch some t.v.?” I asked eagerly.

Her reply was swift (and decisive). “If you feel well enough to watch t.v., you feel well enough to go back to school!  You may either go back to sleep or clean out your closet!”

Those were my choices.  And I really didn’t like either very much.

Our reading from Deuteronomy this morning is all about choices: about choosing to follow the commandments of God, and thus choose life, or choosing to follow other gods, and choose death.

Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.

Or, 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. 

Life or death, blessings or curses.  The choice seems obvious, right?

Why would you choose the path of ignoring God’s commandments, of following lesser gods and turning your heart away from the One who made it?  Simply choose life.

Turn your heart to God.  Follow the commandments like a to-do list of how to be faithful, do all those things that everyone knows are Christian (and make sure everyone knows you’re doing them).  Go to church.  Listen to your preacher lady.  Pray at night, and maybe even, during the day, too.  Read your Bible.  Give to those in need.  Choose life.  Easy, right?

Well, no.  The thing is, we’re not wired that way.  For some reason, God decided to make us with free will, meaning we have the choice to not choose God.  Why would God do this?

Is this because God doesn’t want us to be mindless puppets, but instead complicated creatures that choose our Creator of our own free will?  I think it must be deeper than this.  God chose to give us a choice, and this was a sacrifice on God’s part.  More than God not wanting puppets, the power to choose is woven into our very being.

We see it at the beginning of things, in Genesis.  God chose to create us – female and male – in God’s image and then God presented us with a choice:  an abundance of creation, more to eat and drink than could ever be needed.  But one tree, just one, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that was forbidden.  “Eat anything y’all like,” God said.  “Just not from that tree over yonder.”

And with those words, God gave us a choice.  And like a toddler reaching for that forbidden cookie, like an adult indulging in gossip we know is bad for us, we chose, wrongly.  We chose not the path of life, but the path of death.  The path of our own destruction.  As God probably always knew we would.

And we proved something essential to ourselves and to God in that moment, something we’ve been proving ever since.  We do not choose what’s good for us, or good for others, or good for the earth.  Our impulse is to choose the way of death, not life.

It’s why we choose to fill our schedules to the point of bursting even when we know we can’t possibly have enough energy to do all they demand.  It’s why we choose to indulge in food that we know is no good for us, choosing also to ignore the consequences.  It’s why we choose to perpetuate the same cycles throughout history of suspicion, greed, hatred and violence.  It’s even why we choose to make our faith watered down into a list of do’s and don’t’s and not an abiding relationship with God and our neighbor.  Given the choice, we will always choose the lesser path.  We call this sin.

But the good news (and there has to be good news, doesn’t there?) is this:

God knows this about us.  And God will always stir within us the choice for life.  When we don’t choose to be fully alive, but instead choose to be fully occupied, busy, worried and incomplete, when our natural inclination like in the garden is to choose destruction, God has a choice too.  And God’s natural inclination is to both allow us that choice and, at the same time, open within us a better option: life.

God’s Spirit stirs within us the potential to choose a path we could never choose for ourselves.  We call this grace.  While we have the natural tendency to choose destruction, God refuses to leave us that way.  God fills us with a holy desire to choose faithfulness, reconciliation, peace and home.  This is evident in our world, too.

God’s Spirit has stirred very divided people in the Central African Republic to choose life.  The village of Boali is one of countless sites of violence between Muslims and Christians.  The cycle of revenge seems endless as mosques are burned and Muslims are killed in the streets simply because they are, and then churches are burned and Christians are killed in the streets simply because they are.  The choice of death, over and over and over again.

But God’s Spirit has stirred Father Xavier Fagba to choose life instead.  In his small, shabby church, St. Peter’s Parish, he has welcomed over 650 Muslims to take refuge.  After their mosques were burned, he opened his doors to them, even to ones who had taken part in violent actions against Christians in the past, saying, “"I've spoken to those who have done bad things. But I have not mentioned their deeds. When I talk to them it's a call for them to change their lives and their behavior."  In loving them, he gives them the choice to love.

His church is under attack each night, not by Muslims, but by fellow Christians seeking to destroy everyone inside, even those who share their faith.  But still, Father Fagba stands his ground and risks all to choose peace.  "The Muslims discovered in our church that the God we worship is the same as their God," said Father Fagba.  “And that's the vision the whole of this country needs to have.  We should consider them as our brothers. What happens here gives me a certain conviction."

Father Fagba’s choice of forgiveness is a choice no human being could make.  It is a choice only God could give him the strength to make.  And every day he cares for refugees, every night his church is peppered with bullets, he makes that choice of life, again and again and again.

We do not have it within ourselves to choose the path of life.   Only God can give us the courage to choose life.  But the God who wired us with free will also wired us with a soul that longs for life, not death, peace, not destruction, home, not wandering.  And so our soul desperately reaches out to the God who has already chosen us.  God chose to make us that way.

Choices matter.  And when we boil them all down to the choice to forgive or cling to past hurts, to speak with honesty or spread falsehood, to trust God or do things the way we’ve always done them, every choice we make is a choice for life, or for death.  We cannot choose the path of life on our own.  But with the stirring of God’s Spirit within us, and the community of one other beside us, God can make that choice for us, and we can then choose to follow where God leads with courage.

Powerful things happen when God chooses life in us.  People are changed.  Communities are transformed. Churches become refuges of hope and light.  And everyone, everyone, is blessed.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.