Today’s readings provide us with an array of challenges.  The first challenge is found in the text from Joshua.  The people of Israel are gathered in the presence of God.  These are the direct descendants of those whom God freed from slavery in Egypt in the Exodus.  They are the first people to occupy the Promised Land, to realize the benefits of what God promised to their parents when they entered into covenant relationship with God at the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai.  God has proven faithful to the covenant with their parents.  Now it is time for this new generation of Israelites to enter covenant relationship for themselves.  “Choose this day whom you will serve…”  Joshua declares.  The people respond with a recollection of God’s saving acts in both their lives and the lives of their parents, committing themselves to this relationship:  “The LORD is our God we will serve, and him we will obey.”  Not so fast, cautions Joshua.  These are, after all, the children of the very people who committed to God at the giving of the Ten Commandments only to turn away and worship a golden calf during the forty days Moses met with God on Mt. Sinai.  These are the descendants of the folks who didn’t believe that God would truly enable them to settle in the Promised Land, which is why only their children saw that promise fulfilled.  This may look and sound like a regular treaty between a powerful ruler and his people, but it’s not.  It may resemble a land grant treaty, allowing them to settle here in return for their loyalty, but it’s not.  This arrangement may even resemble the common custom of putting one god first while appeasing the other local gods so as to hedge one’s bets, but it isn’t that either.  This is an exclusive, life long, total commitment to God. It is putting all of your eggs in one basket and once done, there’s no turning back.  Are we clear on that?  The answer is yes.

This story may not sound terribly challenging to us, since we are not one of the people gathered by Joshua, but it should.  It establishes a pattern that shows up repeatedly in the Bible, namely that God expects each generation of God’s people to make a choice.  It is appropriate that our parents make choices for us while we are young, but once we become adults we need to make those decisions for ourselves.  “Choose this day whom you will serve….” Our parents may or may not have chosen to serve God.  What will we choose?

When I finished college I worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.  It was a good job—especially for a political science major who actually got a position in her field—and the work was quite interesting.  I had developed many friendships in Harrisburg, was quite active in Church, and was dating a man who had asked me to marry him.  While all of this was going on I also participated in our diocesan discernment program.  God kept tugging at me and I really needed to figure out how to respond faithfully to that call.  One day I was required to go visit a psychologist for an evaluation as part of the discernment process.  When I left his office I saw a small bookstore --always a weakness for me-- and went in to look around.  I was trying to decide whether to buy a book when I looked up over the checkout counter and saw a verse from Scripture written in calligraphy and framed in gold.  It said:  “Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve…as for me and my house, we shall serve the LORD.”  It was one of those moments when it felt like time stood still.  I had to make a choice, and I knew what that choice should be.  I put the book down, bought the framed verse, and went home committed.  There was no looking back, there was no holding on to other gods:  the good job, the possibility of law school, the boyfriend, the security of my little niche in Harrisburg.  God was my choice, and that choice has shaped all of the others ever since.

Jesus’ disciples knew what it was to be confronted with hard choices.  “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  By the time we read this section of the Gospel Jesus has healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons, and attracted throngs of listeners to hear his teaching.  Like Moses and his successor Joshua, it appears that following Jesus will lead to God.  Then Jesus engages in a disconcerting bit of revelation:  “I am the bread of life…Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life….”  It is hard to tell which offends them more: the idea that Jesus is the bread-- the source-- of life; or the image of consuming his flesh and blood.  In the first case, he makes the distinction that he is not offering bread from God to sustain life, as Moses and Joshua knew in the wilderness in the form of manna.  Jesus is offering himself as a metaphor for bread because he is God, the only real source of life.  In the second instance Jesus presents his listeners with something that sounds like cannibalism.  If ever there were an argument against biblical literalism, this is it.  If taken literally the natural response is to recoil.  But Jesus points beyond the literal meaning:  “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”  The challenge to these disciples, like the Israelites gathered by Joshua, is to move beyond their limited experience of defining relationship with God and make a commitment to a new way of being in relationship with God.  Even given all that we know about the Eucharist, which dispels that nasty question of literalism in eating Jesus’ flesh and blood, it is still difficult to make the commitment to Jesus as God, the One in whom we find life.  We too must choose.

Then, just when I thought I was finished with challenging passages for today, I looked at the Epistle, which is the well known text on marriage from Ephesians.  The verse most people know is:  “Wives, be subject to your husbands….”  Many people assume they know what this means, for it certainly sounds like a conservative, traditional beginning for social structure.  In most cultures women have been, and often still are, expected to be under the authority of their husbands.  Then Paul says something to the men:  “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her….”  At first glance it may appear that this is a way to moderate power with loving kindness.  To make these assumptions, however, misses the guidance of Paul’s opening exhortation:  “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  The structure Paul gives may look like traditional marriage, but the motivation is very different.  The model for that difference is Jesus, who was in every way equal to God the Father, yet “emptied himself,” voluntarily giving up his claim to power and glory, so that he could put our best interest first.  The model for Christian marriage is based on Jesus.  The husband and wife are each expected to empty themselves of their own claims to power and to put the interest of the other first, just as Jesus did for us.  This is not a “traditional” family, it is a Christian family, one rooted in the behavior of a loving God.  Just like the Israelites making a covenant commitment to God, or the disciples making a choice to believe in Jesus, Christian marriage is about a transforming relationship designed in God’s terms.  It may look like something else on the outside, something we think we already know, but it is about God being at work on the inside.

Today, and every day, we are faced with opportunities to make choices.  Whether it is in choosing to commit ourselves to God, to follow Jesus, or to put the interest of those we love first, we have the chance to invite God to be the transforming power at work on the inside of our lives.

Amen