6 March 2014 - life, but not as we know it

6 March 2014 - life, but not as we know it

I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse.
Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God,
heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.

It sounds simple enough.  Choose life.  But our minds are darkened and death often looks like life to us and life like death.  Choosing life, we read, means to live "by loving the LORD, your God heading his voice and holding fast to him."  Good so far?  What about when the very voice we are to heed says, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

This is true life.  But life sounds a lot like death to the worldly part of our minds.  Jesus tells us that "whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."  We are reminded of Bonhoeffer's saying that, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." 

But wait!  Aren't we being offered life this morning?  Doesn't he want us to choose life?  The fact of the matter, which we must accept today, is that we don't really know what true life means. 

Jesus reveals what true life means but only to those who have faith. The faithful look around themselves and see apparent life.  They look to Jesus on the cross and see apparent death.  But they are not fooled because they make Jesus, not themselves, the arbiter of just what life and death means for them.  To do this, they love Jesus, heed his voice, and hold fast to him.    

The faithful take Jesus' word that there is more to life than what they have and what they see.  When they do this they find that this Jesus to whom they cling is himself the "way, the truth, and the life" (cf. Joh 14:6).  He himself is "the resurrection and the life."  He tells us that he comes that we may have life abundantly (cf. Joh. 10:10) but we only know this life when we cling to him in the face of apparent death.  Then we come to know that he is raised, as he predicts, "on the third day".  We come to "know him and the power of his resurrection", but only after we cling to him so much that we share in "his sufferings by being conformed to his death" (cf. Phi. 3:10).

This is why we must meditate on the law of the lord day and night.  If we do not we "are like the chaff which the wind drives away."  The way of the wicked promises life but it ultimately vanishes without the LORD to watch over it.  After all, in this world of entropy, change, collapse, and dissipation, what stability have we accept God?  What hope of permanence?  What source of life can we have apart from him?  But with him we truly do find life, life in abundance.

He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.