Epiphany 6: Living Deliberately

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 119:1-8
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37

In the summer of 1845 Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American writer and philosopher, embarked on a personal experiment and moved to a small, self-built house on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson around the shores of Walden Pond. His book, Walden, was the record of the experiment, and in it he wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” There is a difference between living life and choosing life, there is a difference between living by accident and living deliberately, consciously. To live deliberately is to live with a goal and a purpose beyond just survival; it is to live in the reality that our lives matter and that our decisions have meaning and repercussions for ourselves, for others, for our environment. To live deliberately is to live in the knowledge that there is a context to our lives and that – for Christians certainly – in the end we will have to make an account for how we lived. “Living life” – in the narrowest sense – is just about getting on in our little sphere, usually looking out for “number one”, keeping things safe and tidy, no dissensions and – above all – no awkward confrontations. “Choosing life” is about opening our hearts, mind and bodies to embrace all of life, all of creation and opening ourselves to the possibility of transformation. It is living deliberately awake and aware.

In the book of Deuteronomy and in other places in the Hebrew Scriptures, the difference between merely living life and choosing life is expressed in some pretty extreme imagery and language, chiefly in the difference between idolatry and worship. Idolatry is the handing over of our allegiance to a god of our own creation, whether made with our hands or constructed with our minds. Yet, no matter how much religiosity we may vest in that god, it is an easy out because the gods of our idolatry always tell us what we want to hear, always affirm our little selves, always give us a sense of arrival. Idolatry in all its forms is always about the small and narrow picture. Choosing life in this context means deliberately embracing the big picture; embracing the journey of finding God and not, as the poet John Betjeman phrased it, finding “a God who fits”.

Paul presents the difference in the terms of “flesh” and “spirit”. Through Christian history this has led to some misunderstanding that the physical is somehow second best to the spiritual, and thus opposed to the things of God. But nothing could be further from the truth. Paul is using both “flesh” and “spirit” as philosophical categories. The flesh is associated with all that hinders the community’s full revelation as the Body of Christ. It is interesting to note that flesh of itself is a dead thing, it is the meat one buys at the market; but a body is a living thing, and when we talk of the Body of Christ – that is the Church – it is the presence of the living God in the world. For Paul, whatever undermines the community is of the “flesh”, deadening: “For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?” (1 Corinthians 3:3) Human inclination is the default position, the un-thought out, knee jerk reaction – defensive, cliquish, parochial. Human inclination is living accidentally. Choosing life, living consciously and deliberately is living into the cooperative reality that is the Body of Christ in which “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. [For] the one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose”. (1 Corinthians 3:7, 8) Choosing life means choosing the big picture and accepting that few things in this world are about me, about my little and immediate concerns, about my petty hurts, arguments and allegiances.

It is not so much that living accidentally is particularly wrong or evil – although historically un-examined and accidental living has resulted in some quite horrendous consequences – but rather that purely accidental living cannot bring us to the fullness to which we are called and for which we were created. For Jesus in Matthew’s gospel the difference between the two lies in the difference between outward action and interior attitudes. Doing the right thing is certainly a good discipline. It helps us get along with others, and to some degree it works to our benefit; it makes things run more smoothly. But certainly the aim is that by doing that which is right and proper, we will slowly be transformed at a deeper level. Isn’t that what we believe about children – that by molding their behaviour we shape their consciences? The ingrained human inclination may be to follow the rules, but choosing life, living deliberately asks the harder interior questions, it signifies harder, interior work. “You have heard that it was said…, ‘You shall not murder”; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement;…You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:21-22a, 27-28) Pretty harsh stuff. Few of us here will have committed murder or adultery and for the most part that is clear for all to see, but have we entered into the deliberate transformational work of being people of peace, or being people who objectify or prejudge no one? Are we consciosuly working to bring to fulfillment God’s vision spoken through the prophet Jeremiah of that time when the law will not simply be a list of rules, but instead be written on our hearts? (cf. Jeremiah 31:33)

Whether in my relationship with God, my relationships with others or even my relationship with myself, I can live accidentally. I can live from that default place where God is comfortable for me and comformable to me, where the picture is small and my allegiances parochial, and where I can safely live within the rules; or I can choose life – real life – and live deliberately where it is not always about me, where God is big and does not always fit into my plans or prejudices, where I really understand that I am part of the whole, and where I consciously allow God’s Holy Spirit to transform me interiorly according to the image and likeness of God which I was called to be from the beginning. The difference between merely living life and choosing life is the difference between existing and existence. As Thoreau observed, merely living life can be a sort of quiet desperation – the desperate work involved in keeping one’s world-view intact, the constant worry of whether one measures up. Choosing life, living deliberatively opens us up to the mystery of reality not as we would like it to be, but as it is in God, in others and in the world. If we are honest and committed, choosing life in this way is the only response we can make to Christ’s proclamation: “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)