Choose
John 15:9-17
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To be alive, it would seem, particularly to be alive in this first part of the 21st century in North America, is to be surrounded by choices. Some of them are small. Out in our commons this morning, the Youth are having their annual plant sale, raising money for Youth Week at Ghost Ranch and a week of mission with our Presbytery in Northern New Mexico. If you’ve been to see the selection of available plants you know that there are quite a few choices. And we like that. We’re all about choices. At the grocery store the question used to be paper, or plastic? Go out to eat, and in addition to pages of entrees, you often have an array of side dishes to choose from. Students who register for classes get to choose their electives. There are dating apps that people download onto their phones that allow them to swipe left or right depending on who they might choose to go out with. For years, as parents, we have emphasized and encouraged our kids to, “make good choices.” From bagging groceries and having dinner, to getting an education and finding love, the message is clear. We have a choice to make. This, or that. Yes, or no. In, or out.
Of course all these options, all the choices that lay before us does have a couple of paradoxical consequences. The first is the expectation of options. When presented with something we may not like, a product or an outcome, we look for another option- something more in keeping with what we need, or want. Does this come in any other colors? Can we substitute this for that? Is there an earlier show, or a later one? It’s like that ridiculous program, House Hunters, in which people with unfathomably inflated budgets pass on house after house because it doesn’t fit their exact specifications. “This house is 200K under our budget with a quick commute.” “But I really wanted a bedroom with an alcove.” Have it your way is no longer the slogan for how you want your hamburger, it has become a comprehensive way of life.
But that leads to the second consequence. In John Guare’s play, Six Degrees of Separation, the character of Paul is explaining something about the classic novel, Catcher in the Rye. “The book is primarily about paralysis,” he explains, “The boy can’t function. And at the end, before he can run away and start a new life, it starts to rain and he folds.” Intellectual and emotional paralysis, he continues, “may indeed, thanks to Chekhov and Beckett, be the great modern theme. The extraordinary last lines of Waiting for Godot- ‘Let’s go.’ ‘Yes, let’s go.’ Stage directions: They do not move.” He goes on to observe that this paralysis is brought about by the death of the imagination. We expect to have a choice in everything, but then find ourselves paralyzed- unable to make one- because the multitude of options before us, for just about every aspect of our lives, has taxed our imaginations to death.
As good as it is to have a choice, there are some areas of our lives where it is really nice to have some clear direction. While I find the alternate routes that Google Maps shows me to be interesting, I’m ultimately grateful for a definitive direction for the fastest way to get to where I want to go. When Moses addresses God’s people before they’re about to cross the Jordan to enter into the land that God has promised them, he sets before them two ways: one lived in response to God’s commands, and one lived in pursuit of all the other gods worshipped by the Canaanites. The first leads to life and goodness, the other to death and despair. Choose life, he tells them. As if that’s really a difficult decision. Given the alternative, you’d think that would be a pretty definitive direction. It seems like it would be a no-brainier. But you’d be surprised.
Somehow we get it into our heads that if God is the one giving the commands, then whatever the command, it must surely be intended to ruin our good time. If God is the one giving the command, we decide that whatever the alternative that God is keeping us from must be so much better. This is where the archetypal story from the garden comes from. Given all of creation to enjoy, we zero in on the one thing we’ve been warned against and choose that instead. But then maybe that is why God speaks in commands in the first place. Because if what is offered is just a suggestion, you know a recommendation from God- if you’re into that sort of thing- chances are good we’ll get it wrong. It’s like that scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when they’ve arrived at the hidden cavern filled with chalices that may or may not be the mythical Holy Grail, the actual cup that Jesus shared with his disciples at the last supper. The Nazi commander has a cup chosen for him- beautiful gold, inlaid with jewels. “Certainly a cup for the King of kings,” he observes. He fills it with water believing that to drink from it will give him eternal life. Instead he quickly ages, dies, and crumbles into dust. To which the knight Templar, who guards the cave, says, “he chose...poorly.” Given our own track record, you would think that we’d figure out that we’re not the best judges when it comes to this sort of thing.
So we are commanded. Last week we talked about what it means to abide in Jesus and to let his words- his commandments, really- abide in us. It’s about more than following a set of directions, or living by a particular guideline. The word ‘abode’ comes from the same root as the word ‘abide.’ To abide means to find our home, or to make ourselves at home. It’s what Augustine was talking about when said that,”our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” And Jesus goes on to specify the nature of this abode in which we find our rest. It is love. Not just any kind of love. Not the ooey-gooey love you find in pop songs and greeting cards, the wistful, moon-eyed, dreamy kind. It’s a little deeper and more substantial than that. It’s the love that the Father has for Jesus, that Jesus in turn has for us. We make our home, we find rest for our restless hearts there, as his words find their home, take up residence in us. And here’s the thing that we so often miss in our mistaken belief that such words, such commands are full of authoritarian buzzkill. Those words, that command holds the key to our joy. Just as this love isn’t infatuation, neither is it dull and dutiful. To talk about Jesus’ love for us is to talk about his joy. It is his joy to love us like he does, and when we discover that love making its home in us, it becomes our joy, our complete joy.
But here’s where it gets tricky, because the joyful love in which we find our home, the love that come to us from God by way of Jesus isn’t some general abstraction, some theoretical suggestion. It is something that gets lived out every day with other people. Love one another, Jesus says, as I have loved you. And here again is why this is a command, and not a suggestion- God’s strong preference. Because all things being equal, I’m not sure I have that in me. In her most recent book on belonging Dr. Brene Brown suggests that people are hard to hate close up, move in. What she means is that it is much easier to hate groups of people from a distance, to use sweeping generalizations as a way of diminishing and dismissing other people and their experiences. But the converse of the equation doesn’t always hold. Over time, people can be equally hard to love close up too. And that’s when we have to remember that the love that Jesus is talking about, the love God has for him that he has for us, is not a feeling. It is not the warm sentiment that is the stuff of sonnets. Rather, this is joyful love in action. It is for us, looking out for us, willing the best for us. The way in which we participate in the flow and movement of this holy pipeline of love is by loving one another. Being for one another. Looking out for one another. Willing the best for one another.
Look I know that church is not the most popular place to be these days. For the spiritual, but not religious, it’s seen as an irrelevant institution. And I get that. For too long we have majored in the minors, focusing more on the maintenance of the institution and the way things have always been than on what calls us into being in the first place; which is love. Specifically, love for one another. Church, this community of strangers, this motley crew of of misfits is God’s laboratory for love. It is where we put this stuff into practice, loving one another out of the fullness of joy that has made its home in us. Practicing forgiveness, bearing one another’s burdens, sharing one another’s joys.
On our own, I don’t know why we would ever choose to do such a thing. It’s just too hard. It’s certainly inconvenient. There are too many sharp edges to our lives, too many prickly people, too many ways to hurt and get hurt. It would be far easier to leave well enough alone and fend for ourselves as best we can. Except,(and this is critically important) it isn’t our choice. We have already been chosen for this, chosen by the love that in turn commands and equips us to share that same love with one another. We have been enlisted by God, as Jesus’ own friends, for the complete joy that comes in laying down our lives, our plans, our preferences so that we can be for one another, look out for one another, will the best for one another.
There was a video that someone shared with me this week of a young woman in South Carolina named Sofie Cruz Turner who wanted to do something special for her longtime classmate, Jahiem.[1] In the video that another classmate shot on her phone, Sofie approaches his desk at school and explains, “You are a very good friend to me. And, since I got a job, I've been thinking about getting something special for somebody, and this is for you.” Inside her backpack were a pair of shoes that the boy had mentioned needing. He was completely overwhelmed and began to cry at the thoughtfulness of this young woman. I imagine there are a few other things that this young woman might have done with that money, but instead she layed those things down in order to do this for her friend. And in doing so they both discovered the complete joy for which we too have been chosen.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-gift-brings-classmate-to-tears/