Epiphany 6

He looked up and said, "I make my own lunch".

So you see, our choices are ours, and ours alone to make.

Looking back, there are good choices and bad choices. But is this really true in the eyes of Our Lord?

What if it really isn't about being put into a category of good or bad, right or wrong? Choices that have left us feeling empty -- like something was missing despite what you wanted to choose.

Your life was not enriched, made full, and vibrant, like you thought it would be. Instead, it felt diminished, and impoverished.

These experiences of choosing,  tell us there is something more.

They point to the truth and wisdom that we heard in the first reading today.

There is really only one choice to be made. Choose life over death.

Beyond that, this is the only choice that really matters.

It is the ultimate choice, and the ultimate criteria for making all other choices.

We literally make hundreds of choices a day: when to get up, what to eat, what to wear, to run the amber light, to speed through an intersection, or to slow down.

We make choices between life and death every day.

We make choices about how we see ourselves, and how we see others.

Choices are in our thoughts, and in the words we speak, as well as the things we have done, and the things we have left undone.

The list goes on and on.

Friends, let's look at this a different way.

What if we intentionally choose life in every decision we make: as if it was the one thing that mattered-- the center of all of our thoughts, and how we speak, and what we do, and how we treat ourselves, and how we treat others?

How might this change us, and more importantly, how might this change the world?

I think that this is what Jesus is getting at in today's Gospel.

Jesus knows that life isn't tabulated, and that choices are more than a cost-benefit analysis. There is no general ledger held on each of us.

I am not suggesting that we throw out the rules. I am suggesting that we follow Jesus, and how he recognized the law to be about life.

Jesus never intended to divide people into categories of good or bad/ right or wrong. It was to point to a way of life.

Jesus did not come to destroy but to fulfill the law. He also did not come to make us good or bad, but he came to make us alive.

He set us free to make choices that support, sustain, and grow.

He asks us to nurture life: for ourselves, and for one another. He is asking us to look inwar--to move our vision inward. He wants us to recognize that the choices we make, our words and actions that we take in the world, first begin and arise from the world within us.

Jesus is asking us to transform our hearts.

This is what Jesus is hoping for: look within. What's there? Fear- anger-resentment-prejudices- grudges? What have these inward emotions caused in your actions against others and against yourselves?

Let's change the script! Throw away the old way of thinking, and get on board with what Jesus is trying to teach us! In the words we speak, and the actions we take, ask yourself, "Is this life-giving?"

Every time we make a judgement of someone; every time we talk about someone else, we are choosing death.

Or, if we speak out of anger, or isolate ourselves, or live in fear, or if we speak negatively about our neighbors, or about ourselves, we have chosen incorrectly.

Choose again!

When you come to the altar rail today to receive the body and blood of Christ,  we are choosing life.

As you pray today, think of ways you can make better choices in your own life.

I like to look for theological reflection in every day things. 

In a recent episode of 'Mash', (yes, one of my favorite shows) Colonel Potter said when speaking about the Korean War, " There is too much killing in this world. Too much death;  no respect for people, for tradition, for life. The whole world is spinning down the tubes,and no one ever seems to notice."

This is why we are reminded again, and again, in the readings and the lessons today from the Gospel: that we are responsible for our own choices.