I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse.
Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live
This choice that Lord offered in Deuteronomy may seem opposed to the call made by Jesus in today's Gospel.
If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it
But the reason we are given both of these readings today is that they are expressing the same call.
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
The invitation Moses gave to the people was not to seek just any life, or life on their own terms.
If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen,
but are led astray and adore and serve other gods,
I tell you now that you will certainly perish;
you will not have a long life
on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy.
Moses invited the people to choose life that was life indeed in which they and their descendents could live, "by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him."
The trouble was the depths of the sway and influence that idols maintained over the people. Even after leaving Egypt their hearts were still pulled from the straightforward path of God by the idols of the nations that surrounded them. And it is the same for us. Even after we have been liberated from sin by baptism we are often still entranced and enchanted by the various idols of the world around us, the ways in which that world promises happiness on our terms, apart from God and his ways.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit himself?
The happiness that the world promises can't deliver in the long run. Even in the moment it is never something that fully satisfies our hearts. There is always the sense of something more that is missing even when we have the best that the world can offer.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
Because our problem has always been putting ourselves first and God in a distant second or third we continue to experience slavery to sin and dissatisfaction with our lives. And because that is our problem there is no way to be delivered from it that won't be a little bit like dying. It is precisely the call to choose life on God's terms and no longer on our own that really is true life, true joy, and lasting happiness. But to the part of us that is old and unrenewed it feels like death, because to that part of us it will be death. Let us trust God that old self of ours that protests and complains never gave us happiness anyway. Not really. And let us believe the one who made us, who knows what is our greatest good, about where true life can be found.
I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse.
Choose life
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