This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 5, 2010.

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Readings

Deuteronomy 30:15–20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1–21
Luke 14:25–33

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Prayer

Each day, gracious Father, we face the choice between life and death. Stir up in us the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may choose the way Your Son bids us to follow. Amen.

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Message

A great American philosopher
and retired catcher for the New York Yankees
receives credit for advising us,
“When you come to the fork in the road, take it.”

Yogi Berra may know baseball—
he owns ten World Series rings as a player
and three as a coach—
but his pithy and humorous comment
underestimates the profound consequences
that flow from the choices we face and must make
as we wind our way through life.

Another famous American, poet laureate Robert Frost,
wrote a well-known and beloved poem
called The Road Not Taken.
He gets much closer to the truth
beneath the consequences of our choosing
between two paths for our lives.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (from Mountain Interval, 1920)

Frost’s choice is real.
He chooses the road less traveled
and his decision makes all the difference,
not just a little difference or some noticeable difference.

The choices we face in our lives as people of God confront us
with decisions that do make all the difference.
Left on our own, we could be paralyzed by this reality.

But we are not on our own.
We live as members of a community of faith,
both this congregation and the whole Church.
We are heirs of a great Tradition
stretching back to the apostles
and even further, to the prophet and the patriarchs,
to the very beginnings of God’s people.

And so, it helps us to listen to the wisdom of our ancestors,
to ponder their history,
and to reflect on their choices as guides for making our own.

Our first reading lets us listen in
as Moses exhorts the people of Israel
to consider the fork in their road,
the choice they face as they stand
upon the borders of the promised land.

Will they throw in their lot
with the God of their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
the LORD who brought them out of exile in Egypt?
Or, will they turn away from him?
The hard truth is that it really doesn’t matter what they might choose
if they choose anything other than obedience to God.

That’s why Moses speaks of a stark choice—
two ways, two paths, two destinies:

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 your God,
[and] walking in his ways…
then … the LORD your God will bless you….
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…. (Deuteronomy 30:15–18a, NRSV)

Nothing is more clear than the distinction between life and death.
And it is just as clear that serving the LORD our God is the way of life,
and choosing to serve any other god, any other master, leads to death.

Our Psalm echoes the same truth:

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the LORD…,
for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1:1–2,6, NRSV)

So, this is the wisdom of our ancestors,
this is the testimony of God’s people,
this is what our LORD has spoken through the prophets.
How do we embrace this message in our lives each day?

The first helpful insight is to spend time with the LORD our God.
He has promised to meet us in worship,
to come to us in Word and Sacrament.
He promises to inspire and to guide us
when we read and reflect upon the Scriptures,
when we come into his presence in prayer.

He reminds us of his grace and mercy
through the acts of charity that others in the Church
carry out in his name.

So, when we want him to know we call him our LORD and God,
we want to be sure we meet him where he promises to meet us
and we want to immerse ourselves in the community
he creates and calls together.

Through all of these influences and sources and people,
our Father works through his Holy Spirit
to mold us and to shape us—more and more—
to live obediently to his will,
to serve faithfully in his name,
to glorify his Son, Jesus Christ, in all we do.

And so, when face the forks in the road,
the choices between the two ways,
we can ask, “Does this path lead me to the God of Israel and the Church?
Does this choice bring him glory?
Does it free me from serving other gods?
Does it set me along the path blazed by our Lord Jesus Christ?”

This means that our lives fill up with questions,
and so we can ask ourselves:

Do the entries in my checkbook testify that God is my LORD?
Are the activities filling my calendar a witness to Jesus Christ?
Do my words let others know of the love of our LORD?
Do my decisions contribute to the coming of his kingdom?
Does my life show others that I serve the LORD God alone?
Is it clear to people who spend time with me
that I worship and serve God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

These are the questions we ask ourselves.
They remind us of the choices we face between the ways set out before us.
And when we choose to follow the God who has come to us
and given us life, blessed us with hope, and loved us beyond death,
then we can rest in the assurance of his promises.
We can trust that what the psalmist sang of those who delight in the law of the LORD
will be true of us as well:

They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper. Amen (Psalm 1:3, NRSV)