Will I Choose Life or Death? Ruminations of a recently retired priest
Choosing is more than a right. It is our God given obligation to choose.
Choosing life is bending into the persistent urge to become something more; consenting to change and peeking possibility hidden in the unknown. Which sets me scratching my head and wondering, “From where does this ‘persistent urge to become arise?”
This is what I believe. The aching hunger to become something more rises from our living source, from the singular One breathing awe in me and mud and wonder in bread. But woe are we when, nailed to our rustic dogmas, we wage war for certainty.
Worshipping gutless idols and insubstantial stuff it is no wonder we wallow in a certain wilderness. We have no idea the death blows we deal by wielding the weapon of certainty. I wince when I think of the ways I have crucified awe and wiped out wonder insisting on certainty. There is no doubt. Certainty is the grave of awe and the tomb of wonder.
Ben Sira, the teacher, philosopher and writer of the Wisdom text known as Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, insists we humans have free will and that it is our responsibility to choose to act faithfully by following the commandments and choosing life or death. Here is the thing. Choosing is more than a right. It is our God given obligation to choose. So the bedeviling question is this, “Do I choose the uncertainty of life or the certainty of death?”
Do I risk losing my balance to lean into the ungraspable possibilities that foster wonder, awe and life? Or do I cast my feet in cement, fixed to the lay of the land? Do my inordinate desires for security, attention, affection and power enslave me? Or do I choose to be free, giving away the gifts that by grace have been given to me? Am I hell bent on being right and dying to be certain? Or do I strap doubt to my shoulders and accept life’s chancy bid to become? I say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” so I pray. “Holy One, give me the grace and the grit to choose life.”
Oh how the words of the Wisdom teacher Ben Sira resound in me. “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice… Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.” (See text below) Choosing life is choosing God and choosing God is bending into the persistent urge to become something more.
Sitting with the disciples at Jesus’ feet we listen intently and begin to understand that Jesus did not come “to abolish the law or the prophets, but… to fulfill” them. (Matt 5. 17) Building on his Jewish wisdom tradition Jesus embodies the way of deepening our faith by choosing to live in accord with the hidden root of our good and godly nature.
Jesus invites the disciples and us to expose the specter of certainty and lean into life’s arousing root. What is this arousing root? It is God with us; breathing awe and wonder in the depths of our being, giving us the grace and grit to choose life, insisting we fulfill our hidden good and godly nature.
God with us insures more than our right to choose. God with us fulfills our obligation to choose life with God. As the Jewish sage Ben Sira wrote some twenty-two hundred years ago, “To act faithfully” in accord with our God given good and godly nature “is a matter of (our) own choice.” Before each of us is life and death. It is up to us to choose, to choose for ourselves as well as for our community and the world. What do you choose? the grave of certainty? or the growth of awe and wonder?
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Sirach 15:15–20
If you choose, you can keep the commandments,
and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.
He has placed before you fire and water;
stretch out your hand for whichever you choose.
Before each person are life and death,
and whichever one chooses will be given.
For great is the wisdom of the Lord;
he is mighty in power and sees everything;
his eyes are on those who fear him,
and he knows every human action.
He has not commanded anyone to be wicked,
and he has not given anyone permission to sin.
