A Hand on the Scales--February 11, 2020

A Hand on the Scales--February 11, 2020

"See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.  If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD you God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.  But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. 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." [Deuteronomy 30:15-20]

What'll it be--life or death?  Blessing or curse?  Door Number 1 or Door Number 2, like the old "Let's Make a Deal" game show put it?

At first, it can sound like God is setting the people of Israel (and us, too?) up for that kind of choice, where all the burden rests on us getting it right. On the game show, "Let's Make A Deal," the weight of that choice was part of the thrill and cruelty of the stakes.  There could be a great prize behind one door, and a terrible surprise waiting behind the other, but it all depended on the contestant having to make the choice, having to make the first move, and having to be clever enough or smart enough or just plain lucky enough to pick the right one.

Sometimes, I confess, Respectable Religious folk sound like this, too.  And then we project that onto God, too, so we make it sound like God throws choices at us with the same withholding smile as Monty Hall (or now, Wayne Brady), unwilling to help us make good choices, but leaving all the burden of our future dependent on whether we do make the right choice.  Sometimes our religious talk sounds like we are saying, "God is perfectly willing to let you have the good stuff (whether we are talking about heaven or prosperity or a warm, fuzzy feeling, or the abstract notion of "blessings"), but you have to choose it.  You have to be smart enough to pick it, wise enough to know which door is the right one, persistent enough to always make good choices at every moment and in every turn in life, and brave enough to take the first step and choose it.  It's all waiting for you behind one of these doors here, but you have to be the one who reaches out and takes it--no help."

And, again, of course, if you just have these verses by themselves, you might think, "God is willing to bring us to life... but only if we are smart enough to take the deal, or holy enough to know which door to choose." But these verses aren't the start of the story between God and the people of Israel--not by a long-shot. These verses come long after God had already rescued the people of Israel from enslavement in Egypt, delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh, saved them through the waters of the Red Sea, and provided for them for a generation in the wilderness giving them everything they needed day by day over four decades.  And only after having shown them such recklessly extravagant love and provision, only after having already given them freedom as a free gift, does God now say, "You can either continue on the path I've set you on, or you can go your own way--but I'm bending over backward to get you to keep going along the way with me."  

In other words, God is not a neutral game-show host leaving the terrible dilemma in our hands alone because it makes for great television to watch us deliberate between Door Number 1 and Door Number 2.  God doesn't stay impartial about which we choose, life or death, blessing or curse. No, God's got a hand on the scales. God wants us to choose life, and says so.  There is no sly silence from the heavens while God watches us hem and haw and guess about what we should pick.  God just clearly says, "Choose life!  Keep on in the path I've set you on!  Keep going with me!"  

The difficult truth for all of us--as a species and individually--is that even when God does everything you could imagine to tip the scales and get us to choose life, we don't.  We keep choosing the way of death.  We keep deciding, "I know better than God..." or "I don't want to love my neighbor..." and we end up choosing rottenness.  A less patient deity would have given up on me a long time ago, but the God we know in the Scriptures keeps on loving us anyway.  When we choose death, God sets us back up again, helps dust us off, and says again, "Let's try this again. Choose life."

That kind of mercy would make for a terrible game show, but it makes for deeply good news.  Our is the God who doesn't let our choices for death be the last word.  Ours is the God who insists on saying, "Life!  Life!  Life!"  And ours is the God who lifts us up from the rottenness and makes it possible for us to start over again.

So let's do just that.  Let's start over again... right now.

Lord God, our ears are stopped up--because we have put our fingers in them.  But don't stop calling out to us to walk in the ways of life you have already set us on.  Let us hear your unending relentless call to life.