Creation is absolutely astounding. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of a ten billion galaxies, each with about a hundred billion stars — that’s one billion trillion stars (ten with twenty-one zeros after it) twinkling in the nighttime sky. That is astounding. Our own sun, an ordinary star by all standards, is so immense that it is burning eleven billion pounds of hydrogen a second, has been doing so for five billion years and will continue to do so for another five or so. That’s astounding. A single oyster lays over 100 million eggs in a season. We’d be up to our ya-yas in oysters if they all grew to maturity. That’s astounding. But the most astounding thing of all is that in less than 10,000 years this creature known as ”homo sapiens” has moved from clubbing a mastodon on the head with a rock to flying a space ship to the moon. Human beings are different from all the rest of this astounding creation because of one thing — our ability to choose. All that the stars can do is shine; all that the sun can do is burn; all the oyster can do is oyst. But we can make our own way. We can choose life — or death. Perhaps the scriptures can best be viewed as an instruction manual in human choice. It would not be too far-fetched to claim that the purpose of God’s self-revelation is to enable us to choose to be human.
Joshua certainly appreciates the power and significance of human choice. “Decide today whom you will serve,” he urges the people. One is not forced to choose the God they had come to know. They could decide to follow another way, perhaps trying to accommodate the gods of their neighbors. How to tell which way to choose? Joshua says, look at your history. Look at the way God has dealt with you. See the hand of God active in your life leading you out of slavery; you know what you should choose. But I suspect that the story of their lives did not make the choice automatic. After all, although God did perform miracles leading them through the Red Sea they also had to suffer wandering in the desert for forty years. Though they were fed manna, the reason they needed the manna was because they were starving. History has both goodness and suffering. The choice is not obvious — “yes, I have to choose God because of the good things I have seen.” Rather the decision is a leap of trust. Do you believe in the God of miracles or in the suffering you’ve endured? If you believe that you are cared for and protected, choose God. If you believe that you have to care for yourself, choose elsewhere. The choice for God is not a mathematical conclusion but a risk taken — risking that miracles of love and caring (despite loss and suffering) are the true reality of human life.
St. Paul spells out what such a human choice should look like. To decide for God determines how one is going to live. A recent poll by George Gallup said that more Americans identify themselves as believers today than any time in the past thirty years. If there are so many God-fearing folk around how come things aren’t better than they were thirty years ago? The most likely explanation is that people aren’t willing to face the implications of choosing for God. To decide for God is not feeling all warm and cozy inside but taking a stance as regards this world. We are presented values by our society — get ahead, make money, make yourself comfortable, take care of number one — which run clean contrary to the ways of God. Paul suggests that if we look at what we know of God we will find what we are to do. Our actions are the very presence of God. Once we make up our mind to have everything reflect the love Christ has for us then we should know what to do, how to act.
Easier said than done. As all of us who strive to decide for God know, things are not quite that simple. Sometimes it is not at all clear how we are to act when we want to choose for God. How can I be faithful to my marriage vows in an intolerable situation? How can I love people who have hurt me terribly? How can I remain in a church where the reports of clergy abusing children keep on coming? What can I to do about war, poverty, hunger? Not knowing what is the correct choice we too frequently get immobilized. Afraid of making a mistake we give up the most basic part of our humanity, our ability to choose, and just let things happen. It is at moments like these that it is vital to remember that our decisions, as important as they are, are not nearly as significant as the prior choice that God has made. For God has decided too; God has chosen you, has chosen me. “No one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father,” says Jesus. The decision of God is to never abandon us, to be with us no matter what. You can almost hear the weariness in Jesus’ voice (steeling himself for another rejection) as he asks the Twelve to make a choice. But Peter answers the way believers through the centuries always have: where else can we go? You are our best hope to be alive, to be ourselves. I choose you because you have chosen me. The truth of the matter is, our human choices are merely echoes of the divine choice. We can take the risk of believing because we are confident God will still be with us no matter what. What we claim by being Christians is that our choice is the one Jesus would make if he were in our shoes. We are not deciding about this or that thing, but about who we are, and whose we are meant to be.
