Next Sunday's lectionary includes the "As for me and my house" passage from Joshua 24. A time to talk about choices.
One of the things I admire about the Deuteronomic tradition in the Jewish Scripture is the emphasis on choice (an emphasis best summarized in Deut 30 when Moses offers the people a choice between life and death). I admire this because I see that choice as a constant, not as a once and for all.
Day after day God calls us to choose between one path and another--the narrow and the wide as you will. Day after day we are faced with competing "gods". And how well do we choose?
My instinct tells me that we need to name the difficulty of this choosing. My instinct tells me that this passage is best paired with some of the "difficult" sayings of Jesus (let the dead bury their own dead comes to mind). To be a follower of The Way means being counter-cultural at times, perhaps a great deal of the time. What gods get in our way as we shout out "we choose God's way!"?
I think that recognizing the complexity of choice is a very good beginning. I'm not normally a fan of US-created sentimental cutesy outdoor church message board signs (the ones that say things like, "A baby is God's wish that life go on"), but this one, I thought, sums up something rather well:
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I agree it is a choice--a constant choice, to observe and follow the right path (which is not necessarily the easy path).
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