Bonus Sermon: Difficult Choices
Sermon
Sunday, August 27, 2023
Thirteen Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21) (Year A)
Baptism & Holy Communion
Exodus 1:8 – 2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20
“Difficult choices”
Life is full of choices. In fact, let me suggest that there are only two times when a person doesn’t have to make a choice: when you are in the grave and when you are asleep—and, I’m not entirely sure about that last one. In fact, from the moment you get out of bed in the morning you are faced with choices. And even as an infant or a young child, you have choices.
Now, some of those choices are rather easy, and rather inconsequential in terms of their consequences. Others are most difficult and longer lasting. Today, in this baptism service, we are being served up with a series of choices, choices both for the children involved and for ourselves. And, in this case, they are choices with long range implications. These choices ‘may’ right now seem pretty easy and straightforward but let me suggest that down the road your choices may involve some difficulties, some difficulties in deciding which road to take, which choice to take.
So, let me ask you a question: have you ever been faced with two difficult choices, neither of which seems very easy or attractive? My guess is that all of us have experienced this at some time or other. It is not a pleasant experience, not at all. We call that ‘being stuck between a rock and a hard place.’
To illustrate what this is like, let me tell a story. A young man’s mother promised to throw a birthday party for her grown-up son, and his best friend has volunteered to help out in any way he could. This is great for the mom, for she has found herself in a ‘real pickle.’ Without realizing it, she had committed herself to doing two things that day—and at the very same time! The party itself works out fine, but not the time immediately afterwards.
She had double-booked herself, booked herself into two conflicting engagements. And so, the offer of help couldn’t come at a better time.
On the one hand, several months prior to this date, she had managed to book a rather crucial evening vet appointment for her dog, one that she had a great difficulty arranging given that the vet is very busy. If she cancelled the appointment she would incur a cancellation fee; furthermore, it might be months before she could book another appointment for this matter, which was of a rather pressing nature.
And, on the other hand, she had promised her nieces and nephews that she’d take them out for ice creams immediately after her son’s party. It was something of a real treat for them, and something they were greatly looking forward to.
Obviously, she can’t do both at the same time, so she asks her son’s friend, the one who is so eager to help out, which engagement he would be willing to take off her hands, the vet appointment or the ice cream run. Now, unbeknownst to her, this friend is in a real quandary, stuck between a rock and hard place—because neither task is very much to his liking:
-on the one hand, this friend hates dogs in general and isn’t good with
them, and furthermore, this particular dog hates cars—and vets, and
is apt to growl the entire time—or worse! It is certainly not a very
pleasant prospect.
-and then there is the ice cream excursion with eight excitable kids,
already hyper, already revved up from the sugar overload of the
birthday cake. And that, with those potentially messy and less than
careful youngsters in his immaculate Porsche car. He just cringes
with the mere thought, the mere prospect.
So, what a dilemma! What a choice? But then, he did volunteer! So, what will his choice be?
But, doesn’t this sound familiar? Haven’t most of us been stuck like this, albeit in other situations. Probably most of us really have found ourselves between a rock and a hard place at some point. And let me suggest that the promises we make in today’s baptismal service will inevitably incur some of those difficult choices down the road.
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In today’s reading from Exodus we find several people faced, similarly, with some equally difficult choices, albeit choices that have much more serious and long-term consequences. The new Pharaoh, or king, of Egypt, the first in a newly restored purely Egyptian dynasty, has decided on a rather terrible course of action. For years, a Semitic people, the Hyksos, a people that we now know as the Hebrews, had ruled the land. (This, presumably is how Joseph was able to attain such a high position as Prime Minister, given that the rulers were generally from his own ethnic group.)
But now the Hyksos have fallen from power and the new king wants to make sure that it stays that way. During the previous rule, the Hebrews had grown very numerous and basically controlled the fertile Lower Egyptian region of the Nile Delta. And, to make matters worse, it was Egypt’s best farmland. And yes, it was on its very border with hostile foreign nations.
No wonder Pharaoh was worried! No wonder he decided to nip the problem in the bud. And he decided to do this by decreeing that every male born to a Hebrew family would be immediately put to death. He figured that this harsh remedy would stem the flow of Hebrew births and eliminate the source of their strength.
This decree presented a real dilemma to several people. The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, who customarily attended upon the births of Hebrew babies, were ordered to kill on the spot any male child that was born. So, what were they to do? Obey the king, the government of the day? Or, preserve life? They were stuck with a difficult choice, stuck between ‘a rock and a hard place’. Their choice: we are told that they ‘feared God’ and didn’t kill the children.
But then they wondered about the wrath of Pharaoh, the king. After all, he was the one who’d decreed such a drastic move. How would he react to their disobedience? And how would they answer him when called ‘up on the carpet’ and forced to ‘face the music’?
Well, their answer really buffaloed, stumped the king. They replied, “O Pharaoh, our Hebrew women are not such pampered and delicate women
as yours, who desperately need a midwife. No, ours are strong and vigorous women who give birth on their own—who give birth before we can even get there! So, killing the baby long after the fact is pretty difficult indeed.” So, what was Pharaoh to say?
Nipped at the bud with that strategy, Pharaoh then tries something else. He decrees that any male child born to the Hebrews should be thrown into the River Nile. But this time he was outfoxed again, this time by three women! When Moses was born, his mother spared him, keeping him at home until she could hide him no longer. Then, and only then, did she ‘throw him’ into the river, but only ‘after a fashion’. She put him into a tiny ark, a tiny water-proofed basket of papyrus reeds.
And here’s where a second woman comes into the picture, namely, Pharaoh’s very own daughter. She comes to the river to bathe, spots the tiny ark, has it retrieved, takes pity on the child and decides to adopt him—yes, in spite of her father’s orders! And then, needing someone to nurse the young child, she takes up the offer of Miriam, Moses’ older sister, to find someone to do this for her. As a result, Moses’ very own mother is recruited, hired, to be Moses’ wet nurse during his earliest years. So, here we have three very strong-willed women, acting entirely in defiance of Pharaoh—and right under his nose, as it were. Three strong-willed and resolute women, who when ‘caught between a rock and hard place’, make some very difficult decisions, namely, to preserve life rather than to cave into Pharaoh’s wishes.
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Today, we are making promises, making vows, about the choices we will make in life, for these youngsters, yes, but actually for all of us. And, occasionally, these will turn out to be difficult choices, leaving us too between ‘a rock and a hard place.’ And so, to me, this story suggests several principles that we might apply, that we might use to guide us when we are confronted by difficult decisions, when we are ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’:
-first, we are told that the two midwives ‘feared God’, that is, they
wanted to obey God and fulfill God’s will above all else;
-secondly, we find that all five women chose life, the greater
possible good, over their own rights and freedoms:
-the midwives faced possible punishment or other
repercussions from Pharaoh. Given his firm resolve, his
intransience, over this matter, they could well have been
killed and replaced with others who would obey him;
-Moses’ mother and sister, even if they escaped unharmed
themselves, still lost their son and daughter;
-And Pharaoh’s daughter, probably quite unexperienced as a
mother, was saddled with raising a child that was biologically
not her own!
But, we are not yet finished—only with this one passage! Our passages from Romans and Matthew also give us some helpful advice and direction for our decision making. Today’s section from Paul’s Letter to the Romans offers three suggestions of value as to how we make our difficult choices in life:
Firstly, we are to present ourselves wholly over to the service of God.
This is exactly what is suggested in our baptismal vows.
Secondly, we are not to allow ourselves to be shaped by our world’s
values or allow ourselves to be conformed to it. Doing either of these
has a way of squeezing us into something that we were not meant to
be;
And thirdly, we are to allow ourselves to be transformed, made new
deep inside, by the mind and will of God. In other words, letting God
take up residence in us, so that He becomes part of our very being.
What all of this is about is about making choices, the choices we make in life, whether difficult or not.
Then let us turn to today’s passage from Matthew. It is a most intriguing one for Jesus and His disciples have taken a ‘time out’ and are now well outside the normal range of control of either the Jewish establishment or Herod Antipas. They are at Caesarea Philippi, which had been a centre of diverse forms of worship for centuries upon centuries. Paleolithic Man, the
Greeks, the Romans, the Jews: all of them had worshipped here at some time, and even at this particular point in time it was an active place of worship for various pagan cults.
And so, in one sense, it was not accidental, not at all, that Jesus chose this particular place to ask His disciples about who He was. And by being revealed as the Christ, the Son of the living God—and accepting that title, Jesus was saying that all these other gods paled in comparison to Himself. None of them were worth worshipping. Indeed, all of them were to be rejected and He and He alone was to be worshipped. Jesus was to be their Saviour and Lord, and none other.
So, what this says to us is that we, in like manner, should reject all the other gods of this world. Now, for us, this won’t be the gods of ancient times, Zeus or Isis, or Thor or Baal, or Mercury. No, the gods of this age are much more familiar than that. These are our society’s gods and our own personal gods.
Society’s gods are things like intellect (or intelligence), appearance, possessions, and achievement (or measuring up). These are the things that others use to judge us, to assess our worth as people. I look at my grade school photos, for instance, and lament how much of a nerd I was in terms of how I looked—which only goes to show that, far too often, whether done consciously or not, we tend to ‘buy into’ the judgements that other people make, those assessments of our worth, and accept them as being true.
Many of our personal gods are similar, but I like to sum them up using 6 P’s: power, pleasure, prestige, privilege, position, and possessions. These are the gods that we are prone to worship on an individual or personal level. And, haven’t we all ‘bought into these’ at some point or other, holding on to our comfort level, or the status quo, or a measure of control, even when it was not appropriate to do so. And, I suggest, that it will be just the same for these little ones that we baptize today.
Indeed, all these things taken together are the very things that we promise to renounce or say ‘no’ to in our baptismal vows:
Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness
that rebel against God?
Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and
destroy the creatures of God?
Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
And, in each case, we say, “I renounce them.” These are some very significant choices indeed, and not always ones that are particularly easy. Sometimes in choosing the right way, God’s way, we will be caught ‘between a rock and a hard place.’
However, we are, in all this, to invite Jesus into our lives and allow Him to be our friend, our Saviour and our Lord. Indeed, that is what our final three vows entail:
“Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Saviour?’
“Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?”
“Do you promise to obey him as your Lord?”
And again, we consent, this time saying, “I do”, to each of these vows. So, as the women did in our reading from Exodus, we are to obey God above all else. And, as Romans suggests, we are to give ourselves totally over to God. And, as Peter and the others said at Caesarea Philippi, we are to make Jesus Lord of our lives and allow Him to rule there. Indeed, these are the things that we promise today. We will indeed have some difficult choices during this life, inevitable times when we are stuck between ‘a rock and hard place’, but with Jesus as our Lord and friend and guide, we can do it. And so, once again, we dedicate ourselves anew to Him, and these little ones as well. Amen.