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Sermon Preached at Worship of Three Episcopal Churches of Goldsboro, NC. Sunday November 8 2020, The Reverend Alan Neale

“So…?”

Any preacher sharing the Word of God to the People of God after an election, will walk with caution and deliberation. But even more so after the recent Presidential election. We have come to a point where we, despite our better selves, analyze, scrutinize, dissect and inspect every word, every nuance… trying to place the speaker on “our side” or “the other side”. Well, I invite you in this holy time of worship to lay aside the propensity for partisanship and in its place to arouse in yourselves (and myself) a propensity for partnership.

This past week, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York wrote to Anglicans worldwide. They spoke of George Orwell’s 1984 and especially Room 101, a torture chamber in the ministry of love. A room where your deepest fears are uncovered and where you confront those fears. It breaks everyone who is exposed to it.

The experience of this wretched, horrible pandemic, the experience of this contentious, fractious election has somehow placed many of us in “Room 101” where fears and shame are being exposed. And we do not like it!

We are experiencing, whatever our political leanings, we are experiencing a time when we feel (consciously or intuitively) that we have run out of choices, that we have no options, that there is (as it were) a juggernaut mercilessly and forcefully encroaching into our world stripping us of our ability to choose… in person, in family, in church, in nation and even in the world.

In this dystopic dilemma, I hear a divine call that both challenges and emboldens me; I hear a divine call that empowers and encourages me. And friends, I believe that whatever the Lord calls us to do, she/he enables us to do it for otherwise God would be some mean, nasty being setting unattainable goals, unreachable tasks. Listen “The One who calls you is faithful, and he will do it” (I Thessalonians 5:24).

And here is the divine call, “Choose you this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).

Choice – context, consequence, and constancy.

The context of choice. Joshua reminds the people of God that forever they have found themselves in situations where a choice has been imperative, inevitable, inexorable. Sometimes they have made bad choices but nevertheless it is an integral part of their very being that they “choose, opt, select”. And this power of choice is not only what makes them human, but what also aligns them with the divine. Throughout the Hebrew Scripture, the word used for “choose” is allied sometimes with God and sometimes with humans. When we feel “choices” are being restricted, impeded then we feel deep down… this is wrong and we become unsettled, uncomfortable, depressed or manic.
But Joshua also reminds the people of God that their current choice is molded, affected, shaped by their experiences of the past – “your ancestors once served other gods” (v.2), “your ancestors once served the gods of the Amorites” (v. 15) and so it continues. Not one of us comes to any choice as pristine and virginal, we must understand that the choices we make today are affected by the choices we have made in the past, by the choices our ancestors/families/friends have made. And we must be generous and allow that others, including those who choices we cannot understand, also have made decisions in the context of their past.

The consequence of choice. Joshua reminds the people of God that when they choose… the consequence will be that “they will serve” in one way or another. And the Hebrew word “serve” (avad… phonetics) means to labor for another, to serve as subjects, to be tilled (just as land is worked). There is nothing here in Joshua, there is nothing here in Holy Scripture, that suggests a choice made today will lead to perfect, unfettered, unrestricted freedom. The reality is one slave talking to another and asking, “And how’s your master treating you”. So much more to say, but so little time so…

The constancy of choice. In my early, middle teens (after I committed my life to Christ) I would read Joshua 24 and understand that as a call to a unique, once-only decision “to choose the Lord”. Reading and studying the passage this week I see it differently – not to downplay the invitation to follow the Lord, but to understand it as an invitation to make this choice from day to day, from hour to hour, from minute to minute. The Hebrew word for “day” (yome – phonetics) is not restricted to one day, or one period; it often carries the meaning of “the right time”. It comes from a root word meaning “hot” – you see, each moment before us is “hot” with the possibility of choice, selection, decision.

Using social media, I have Listened to some clergy and I have been daunted by the degree of depression, grief, overwhelming sadness. But I was also shocked to hear one or two say that they were finding it hard to love any in the congregations they serve who had voted contrary to their views. Now, it is good to have a place where we can safely express our grief and anger but the time comes when we have to choose for the Lord in this moment, right now to live, to love, to hope.

We have to choose now and constantly in the power of the Spirit, in the Loving Holy Name of Jesus…
To choose life not death,
To choose hope not despair,
To choose love not hate,
To choose involvement not isolation,
To choose farsightedness nor myopic vision.

A man once lived in the Himalayan mountains, a man with special gifts of foresight. One young boy of the village decided to play a joke on the old man and thereby ridicule his special gifts. The boy would capture a bird and stand before the old man. The boy would ask, “Is the bird dead or alive?”. If the old man said “dead”, the boy would release the bird; if he said “alive” the boy would crush the bird in his hands.

And so the boy presented himself before the old man; of course, the old man knew a bird was in his hands – he saw the feathers, he heard the rustling.

The boy then asked the question, “Is the bird alive or is it dead?”. The wise old man looked at the boy, thought for a moment and said, “The bird is as you choose it to be.”

Friends, I urge you in the name of Jesus and in the power of the Spirit… choose life right now and in all the moments to come, choose to live.

Amen