EPIPHANY 6A – Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37 – A sermon given by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

Godly Urges – Choosing Life

INTRODUCTION – The “Off-Limits” Approach to the Spiritual Life

It seems to me that there are at least two approaches you can take when it comes to trying to live a life that is faithful and committed to God. You can take the “suppress the wrong urges” approach. This tends to be a rules-based approach to the spiritual life, and it’s an approach that’s big on spelling out what is right and what is wrong – but mostly what is wrong. Over the centuries, some Christian leaders have pounded the Bible or the pulpit or the table and declared what things are off limits for Christians, and in some cases they have pointed to the Bible for supporting their rationale, and in other cases there is no real Biblical support, but the thing seems to them to be just generally bad, so hey – let’s ban it. And so you get statements like Christians shouldn’t drink, Christians shouldn’t dance, Christians shouldn’t play cards.

When I was in Dominica in the mid-80’s, the Pentecostal church was on the rise, and the students I taught who went to that church were obviously being taught by their pastor that you shouldn’t dance or participate in “jump up” – the street parade that happened on Mardi Gras, when some people dressed in costumes but most people simply became part of the crowd going down the middle of the street, dancing to the music of the Carnival bands. At least some of my high school students, the ones who went to this particular church and who knew that I was a Christian, were appalled when I told them that my roommate Alan and I were planning to participate in the jump-up one year. “Sir! You can’t do that if you’re a Christian! Christians don’t participate in jump-up.” No matter how much Alan and I reminded them that this was a big part of their culture, and that the Bible didn’t say you couldn’t have a good time, for them it was clear cut. The music and the atmosphere were too secular. You couldn’t be a real Christian and participate – end of story.

Christians shouldn’t listen to secular music. They shouldn’t go to R-rated movies. They shouldn’t go to nightclubs.

There is some of this “off-limits” approach to the spiritual life in our lessons from Deuteronomy and Matthew today. “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; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.” (Deuteronomy 30:17-18)

One recalls that eight of the Ten Commandments are prohibitions. You shall have no other gods before me, or make for yourself an idol…You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. You shall not commit murder.
You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet.

We need some boundaries if we are going to learn how to love God and love our neighbor. And Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, as he often did, looked more deeply into the law and reminded his disciples and us that we should not feel too smug about ourselves if we have not killed anyone, and not committed adultery. “But I say to you that… if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire… But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matt. 5:22, 28)

Part of the spiritual life is knowing what actions God says are out of bounds. But again, what God says is out of bounds and what a church leader might say is out of bounds are not always the same thing.

GODLY URGES – A second approach

Another approach you can take to living the spiritual life is to build a relationship with God – through Christ, through the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit – and then pay close attention, on a regular basis, to what you hear God is urging you to do. This approach to the spiritual life is definitely more complicated. It’s not all spelled out in black and what, for one thing, and you have to keep up with certain spiritual disciplines to keep developing your relationship with God, for another, and then – well, even if you’re doing those things, there’s the challenge of separating God’s voice out from all of the other voices that are trying to get your attention, and realizing – being human – that we can sometimes believe we are hearing and responding to Gods’ voice when in fact we might be flat-our wrong.

Having said all that, this seems to be the approach to the spiritual life that was most often adopted by Jesus. It also represents a much more positive approach to the spiritual life. Think for a moment how it can often backfire if a parent puts a tremendous amount of energy into telling a teenager what she or he is absolutely forbidden from doing something. Yes, there can be something about the not-yet-fully developed teen-aged brain, but – come on – on a human level that applies to maybe all of us, not just teenagers, if someone is going to yell and strut and get really worked up about why we shouldn’t do something, it’s predictable that we are going to start thinking to ourselves, “Man, that must be a really fun thing to do, if this person is so dead-set against it!”

Yes, the other approach to the spiritual life says, in effect, “You are smart and the beloved child of God. Stay connected to Christ, keep deepening your relationship with him, trust what you are hearing, and step out in faith to act on that guidance.”

Instead of an approach that focuses so much on trying to get us to suppress what can admittedly be our destructive and dehumanizing urges, this is a an approach that says “Pay close attention to the God-given urges that are coming to you.”
It is also what Jesus is talking about when he says, “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister first has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” (Matt. 5:23-24)

You can’t remember that your brother or sister has something against you unless you are listening for those godly urges. And the urges from God will never lead you or me to use our power in destructive or dehumanizing ways. It might be a fairly common human reaction to say, or to want to say, “You idiot!” to your brother or sister when you are really mad at them, but that’s not a godly urge. And it may be a fairly common human thing to do to look upon another person with lust, but that doesn’t make it a godly urge.

PAYING ATTENTION TO THE GODLY URGES
One of the great challenges of the spiritual life, it seems to me, is to be looking or listening for these urges that come to us from God. God, being God, has all sorts of ways that He can get through to us. He can speak to us through other people, through the Bible, during our times of prayer, in a quiet moment of contemplative solitude. We might just have an “aha!” moment when we’re reading a book or listening to music or doing the laundry or when we’re out taking a walk. But what the godly urges will have in common is that they will be grounded in who God is – so these urges will have to do with loving someone else, or making a sacrifice, or building someone up, or reconciling with someone, or being present to someone who is in need, or offering someone a kind word, or a word of forgiveness.

This is what the author of Deuteronomy means when he says that the way is always open to us to choose life. Choosing life, according to Deuteronomy 30:20, has to do with loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him, and when we are loving, obeying, and holding fast to him, we are led by him – inevitably – to acts of love and reconciliation.

A CONCLUDING QUESTION
You’ve figured out by now that in the Episcopal Church, we tend to promote the “godly urges” approach to the spiritual life over the “suppress the wrong urges” approach. We don’t tell you that you can’t drink. As a matter of fact, someone almost always brings wine to our Vestry meetings (just one of the many reasons to serve on the Vestry!). And we don’t say, “Christians can’t go to nightclubs, and Christians can’t dance.” In fact, our members stand up on Sunday morning and invite you to come hear them play in a nightclub, and they love it when you get out there and dance!

So here’s the question, as I see it: Who is God urging you to talk to today, or to go visit in the hospital, or to appreciate, or to call, or to mentor, or to listen to in a really focused and generous way? To whom is God urging you to share something of yourself and something of your faith journey? There’s undoubtedly some urge like that coming to you – today – from God, and if you listen, and act on those urges, you will be choosing life, and according to the Lord, you will be blessed and live an abundant life. And that is way more fun than keeping track of all the things that you are not supposed to do.