PROPERS: SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, YEAR A
TEXT: DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20
PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2023.
ONE SENTENCE: We typically do not make a single choice, but multiple choices which have a compounding effect.
Life is a series of choices. They are like building blocks, determining what we become.
The poet, Robert Frost, described the cumulative effect of those choices in his poem written in 1915:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth…
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
That poem has led to some monumental choices over the years. But, as you likely know, life is a series of choices. And those choices have a compounding effect. They may lead us higher and higher, or perhaps take us lower and lower.
There is a practice in engineering which applies to other aspects of life. It is called Root Cause Analysis. As I have applied it in congregational consulting, it posits that there are typically multiple causes for issues of conflict, decline, or controversy in congregations.
Root Cause Analysis has been applied or can be applied to many situations to show why things have gone off the rails. In the deep investigation, root cause analysis showed that there were many actions, inactions, or factors which led to the massive tragedies of September 11, 2001.
Root cause analysis could be read into the compounding decisions in the Viet Nam conflict, as described in David Halberstam’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Best and Brightest. We could apply those same principles of multiple causes to Watergate and the staggering death toll of COVID. In each case, there was a cascading effect caused by choices which were made.
Our lives are built on such choices. There may be a primary cause for success or failure… of employment… of health… of relationships… but there are always many choices which lead us to that point.
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Moses and the wandering Hebrew people are standing on the plains of Moab today. They have been there for a long time, in the arid area of today’s south Jordan, near the eastern shore of the Dead Sea.
Moses will soon climb the hills of Ammon, to the north, from which he will look across the Jordan Valley into the Promised Land from Mount Nebo. There he will die.
But first he wants to finalize his teaching. He has conveyed the Law he has been given. It began with the Ten Commandments and has been completed with oracle after oracle of minute directions for the ordering of life and community. Hear his words from today’s first lesson:
“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 to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”
Moses has given us a choice – as to our primary allegiance in this life. That is an important decision, and one we have the opportunity to affirm on a weekly basis, even a daily basis.
But like 9/11, the Viet Nam War, Watergate, and COVID, our daily decisions have a cumulative impact which lead us either toward or away from a life of ongoing sanctification.
A friend once gave me an image that is enormously revealing to me: The unbaptized corners of our hearts. Our choices should call us to bring those unbaptized corners into the light of Jesus’ redeeming love.
With such choices, we build block-by-block.
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