The Choice is Yours
For a while now, I have started a new calendar year with four or five intentions for the year ahead. I hesitate to call them resolutions, because generally speaking, resolutions fade with time for me.
Rather than short term accomplishments or clearly defined finish lines, these intentions have been emphases that I return to, that I prioritize, that I use to consider how I am actually spending my time and my energy.
For example, last year, my chosen family intention was learning how to relate to my young adult children as they became independent, graduating from college, returning from their Peace Corps commitments, setting up their first homes and lives that were truly their own, prepping for overseas deployment.
Throughout the year, I would examine what had shifted or changed about the relationship with each kid. I would consider how I was being called to walk with them, in front of them, beside them, behind them, or to just watch from a nearby spot on the road of life.
Of course, that was last year, and COVID hit… so for a few months, I had to figure out how to relate to them as adults WHILE sharing a house with some of them.
This year, one of my intentions is joy – not just happiness, but deeply felt joy, rooted in a knowledge that I am blessed, that God is with me, that even when things are hard and complicated, there is a deeper gratitude for all of life that draws out spiritual and material capacity.
Right now, that work is being forged by efforts to suspend my inner judge, who is critical of me and others, and to use mindfulness exercises that return me to my own body, to my senses, and then to activate parts of my brain that are better at empathy, innovation, play, compassion and curiosity.
This kind of focus requires that I keep the intention always in front of me and that I return to it with some regularity, checking in to see how I am doing. It is something like a guiding star, drawing me to the next best step aligned with each intention.
I wonder how such intention-setting might frame our individual and shared discipleship journey?
This week, we wrap up our exploration of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has dropped an overwhelming range of teachings into the laps of his disciples, and now their work is to put it all into action.
This week’s passages focus us on discerning the right next steps. Using the image of a narrow gate or a wide gate, Jesus suggests that what looks simple and easy, the wide gate and road, might lead us down the wrong path. We might be tempted by that wide smooth passage, but really, we are called to a much narrower way – a way he has just spent more than two chapters describing for us.
His next warning is about discerning between false and true prophets. I heard more than once from my father that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. I feel like this goes along with Jesus’ counsel to know good messengers by their good fruit. Tying this to Paul’s writing about spiritual fruit, can we observe that someone bears love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and generosity as they move through the world?
And maybe we can’t always tell – and that was probably a challenge faced for even the earliest people of the church. But might our careful attention to the fruitfulness of others help us to discern who we walk with on this journey? How we might think about our own fruitfulness as a signal or invitation to others around us?
And, might our fruitfulness be evidence of how we are tending to God’s will for the Kin-dom?
And the final verses from hit me between the eyes, in this season of being the church, particularly being The United Methodist Church.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”
Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand….
Sometimes I think we’ve lost track of “these words of Jesus” here in these 3 chapters of vital teaching.
We tend to lean instead on our political system. Or our denominational system. Or our economic system. Our need for the rules of whatever system we trust or covet to be followed taking precedent over figuring out how to love one another well, how to recognize blessings, how to practice loving God.
Sometimes I think we’ve lost track of what the rock-firm foundation really is.
Is it a bunch of guidelines and rules for how we operate?
Is it the rules of the session of a business meeting?
Is it The United Methodist Book of Discipline?
Or is it the firm foundation of knowing that we are created by God, loved by God, and called by God to love God and our neighbor?
Sometimes it seems we are so distracted by the work of checking all of the church process and trappings boxes that we’ve forgotten or lost our chance or are too overwhelmed by everything else to actually be the body of Christ in the world—
Which in its best messy reality might mean sometimes the hands getting ahead of the mouth, or the feet moving away from the ears, all messy and human and interactive as we seek to figure out how to stay in love with God and demonstrate God’s love of everyone beyond the walls of our sanctuaries.
Sometimes it seems we lost track of our intention.
Our intention to be a vehicle for God’s love in the world.
Our intention to be salt and light.
Our intention to claim and proclaim blessing.
Our intention to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness and repent.
Our intention to accept God’s freedom to resist wickedness, injustice and oppression.
Today’s passage took me back to our earlier steps on the road that we are walking together. There were clues way back at the beginning of our series that we carry with us on the journey so that we can remember what a rock firm foundation really is.
I was reminded of the items we put in our backpack way back in October:
The mirror to remind us that we are made in the image of God.
The fork, reminding us always of the choices before us, the work of choosing life rooted in God again and again at every fork in the road.
The big old stone, a reminder of blessings – which at times feel joyful but at other times feel quite weighty.
We’ve wandered back through these same themes as Jesus has taught on a hillside in Galilee.
In the first week of Lent, we explored the complication of who is declared “blessed” in the beatitudes. (Pick up the stone.) Not all blessings meet the popular criteria. Blessed are those who mourn, the meek, the poor in spirit.
Last week, we pondered what it means to remember that we are beloved of God, loved and loveable just as we are. (Pick up the mirror.) When we center ourselves in our loving relationship with God, we are less likely to judge others so harshly.
This week, we are once again faced with choices before us – the narrow gate? The true prophet? The solid ground? (Pick up the fork.)
And so, I wonder…how might we set an intention for our journey forward from this place? How might we take what we’ve learned on the hillside in Galilee and translate it into our way of living right here in Rockville?
How might we intentionally be salt and light?
How might we intentionally include all of God’s beloved?
How might we intentionally work for peace?
My prayer, as we take our next steps with Jesus toward the cross is that we are choosing our steps wisely, lovingly, intentionally, actively. My hope is that we choose to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. Both individually and as a community.
May it be so.
Amen.
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