Choosing to Follow Jesus

Beloved in Christ,

One of my many irritating qualities is that I can be very slow to make a decision. In smaller and larger choices, I can spend so much time considering all the pros and cons, that I get stuck in the fact that every option looks equally good, and every option looks equally bad. The fact is every decision is a trade off, every choice bears a cost. My slowness to make a decision is often just a matter of not wanting to pay its cost.

Our scripture lessons for this Sunday invite us to make a clear choice, and to count its cost. In our reading from Deuteronomy, as the people of God prepare to enter God’s promised land at long last, Moses speaks on behalf of God: “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. . .Choose life so that you and your descendants may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors.” And in our gospel lesson, Jesus reminds us that following him requires that we take up our cross, and be willing to give up all that we have.

Jesus is always in the business of subverting the violent and oppressive world order, where people look out for themselves, and see life as a matter of gaining all I can, with the power of love, which looks out first for others, and is willing to give it all away.

Following the way of Jesus then, draws a line, and presents us with a clear choice. We can choose the way of God’s life and love, or we can choose the way of the current world order, which makes peace with children being shot in school, that looks the other way when immigrants are dehumanized and scapegoated, where the economic order devours the vulnerable to feed unchecked greed.

Making this choice, as individuals and as congregations, will make us appear strange, it will cause conflict and division. It might cost us members and friendships.  But making this choice grounds our lives squarely in God’s project to heal the whole world with love.

Following the way of Jesus does not work as a side hobby, one more activity we stack alongside already overly full lives. Following Jesus demands that we place God at the center of everything we do and everything we are. It’s a choice that will cost us everything, but through which we finally find the liberation and healing our souls so desperately thirst for.

Are you ready, and are we ready as a church, in a world of mimetic violence, to take up our cross, to choose life, choose love, choose joy, choose liberation, choose healing? Are we ready to choose Jesus above all else, losing our lives in order to be fully and finally found by the God who calls us each by name?