Choices, Choices

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Daniel 6, Matthew 19:16-30


At the bottom of an interstate off-ramp in suburban Boston, Karin Round finds herself constantly faced with situations demanding she make a choice. Karen is an office manager at her family’s hardware store but her home is located at this busy spot where travelers come and go, and she is frequently tested. Here is Karin’s story: “One afternoon a couple of summers ago, just as the sky was darkening, a woman I didn’t know stood sagging on our threshold, holding the screen door open. I saw the silhouette of her head through the window.

"No, she answered me, she was not all right. She didn’t feel well at all.

"So, I wondered what was I supposed to do now?

"This moment of decision had happened to me before says Karin For almost 19 years, we’ve lived here at the foot of a highway exit ramp. Our address is blandly suburban, but the highway often leads exhausted cars onto our curb. Lately cell phones have diminished the flow, but we’ve met many people in distress. More diverse than our own community, these travelers have all asked for little things, such as the phone, a glass of water, or simply directions. All have been strangers to me.

"Ours is a cynical, suspicious time,” Karin reflects. ”The news is full of stories about victims who unwittingly endanger themselves. I’ve no doubt that they are true stories, but the lesson rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes to do the right thing, you must take a risk. Must we fear all of those whom we don’t know?... Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?

"Our location forces me to make difficult choices. This is not some classroom debate for me. The highway makes it impossible to ignore the world and our relationship to it. When someone approaches us for help, I have to decide: Do I help them or not?” (“Opening the Doors of Mercy” by Karin Round. This I believe as heard on the Bob Edwards Show, Sept 10, 2010 http://thisibelieve.org/essay/14284/)


Now, more than the specifics about this story—it really is more a Good Samaritan story—but more than that, I am struck at the way some of her thoughts ring in my ears for today: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices."

Today we are given two familiar stories about choices: Daniel and the lion’s den, and the rich young ruler. In the first one, about Daniel, we know the outcome. We see his decision and its ramifications. We are told how God protected Daniel because he chose to be faithful. For Daniel, that choice meant continuing to pray to YHWH, rather than to the King. It meant not being afraid to risk even his life, choosing open windows towards Jerusalem, even if it meant closing him into a den of lions.

In the second one, the one about the rich young ruler, the choice is less clear. In fact, we don’t know at all what the rich young ruler finally did decide. We infer that he probably chose to stick with all his possessions since he walked away in a funk because he liked his stuff too much. or so we think. But who knows? How many of us have ever changed our mind, even regarding the things very dear to us, our possessions, our stuff? We are left wondering in this story about the decision this young man will ultimately make.

With Daniel we see a hero who is unafraid in the face of death. He is our ideal, what we think we should or could be if we had that much faith. We are left wondering, would I risk the lions or abandon my God?

With the rich young ruler we don’t necessarily see a villain, but we see a spiritual weakling. He’d be the last guy we’d want to pick to be on our team if we playing for a spot in heaven.

As much as we see in Daniel an ideal, we see in this young man a picture of reality. A reflection of a weaker self.

Some people would take these two and put them before you and say choose: which one are you going to be? A Daniel or a rich young ruler? Go ahead, pick. And the choice is easy, when taken at face value isn’t it? The stories are pretty heavily stacked towards the right answer. Of course, we want to be Daniel.

But tested against our world, the choices don’t seem to be so clear cut, do they? If anything, the rich young ruler seems more like us than Daniel, not because he may be making the wrong choice (and we so often make bad choices) -but at least he appeared to struggle with it. And that’s what we understand—the struggle. He realizes what Christ hopes for us is complex. He expressed emotion—he went away grieving over the choice before him.

Daniel, on the other hand seems to be a brave, but flat character. We see nothing of his struggle, just a confident opening of the windows as he prays. We don’t see him weighing the options, the pros and cons, the testing of God’s voice, the choices the choices. He just acts.

Torin and I have had to make some hard choices in the last couple of weeks. And really they are choices that involve you as well. As you know, the Church of the Brethren has commissioned all congregations to take part in a study on human sexuality, which we are doing during Sunday School. It is a bible study, asking questions of one another to speak from our experience on issues of conflict, sexuality, exclusion and inclusion. The Standing Committee of the denomination hopes to guage the “temperature” of the masses.

Our congregation is within a district that has taken its own stand on human sexuality, and homosexuality to be specific, and because of this our standing committee members fear that most congregations won’t do the study. So they have added another element to this process to ensure that another perspective is heard. This will be a district wide forum on Oct 2 presenting two perspectives. As they state it, one person will be presenting “Traditional Sexuality: One man and one woman united in marriage for life.” And the other perspective “Welcoming, accepting, and blessing homosexual covenant unions.”

And who do you think they asked to present that “other perspective”? Torin was asked, and after prayerful consideration Torin accepted. With his permission I am sharing this with you and join him in expressing our confidence, and yet fear over this decision. Let me first start with saying that what Torin presents may not be your perspective, and that is ok. He is speaking from his own understanding, not on behalf of our congregation, or in your name. Something we hold dear as Anabaptists is that just because the pastor says it or believes it, doesn’t mean it is authority over you or your life. And yet, we feel we need to be honest with you about this decision in this way. If this is hard for you then please, come talk to us because your prayers and support for Torin, no matter your position, is important to us.

So you can imagine, this was a hard choice. It is hard because it might likely further label our congregation in negative terms in our district. But even more fearful for us is that it might leave some of you feeling alienated because of the way we understand scripture. It is hard because it puts Torin and my ordination under a new light of scrutiny, especially now in the year when our ordination is up for review. It is hard because Torin will probably feel like he is standing before the den of lions, because he accepted the invitation to open the window and reveal how he sees God’s intention and love for humanity. No doubt about it, this was a hard choice.

And think about it. When it comes to hard choices, don’t we like to clutch our possessions? And when I say possessions I mean those things we have that make us feel safe. Not only your car or home or IRA. It’s more than the things we can see, but things we emotionally hold close. I clutch my ordination which, in a worldly way, validates what I do. I clutch a desire for peace and harmony because I feel safe when there is no conflict. Maybe you clutch things like this too. Clutch the way of life you’ve always known: respect…reputation…standard of living…a general desire that people should like you. These possessions, while noble—they’ve got a hold on us, sometimes preventing us from making a choice that is risky, but faithful.

Again, the thoughts of that off-ramp angel: "Sometimes to do the right thing you must take a risk…Is our own personal safety always the important consideration?...[my] location forces me to make difficult choices." And as Karin Round continued her reflection on her choices, she said "I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me, too. I’d rather risk my physical safety than my peace of mind. I’d rather live my life acting out of mercy than save it by living in fear and hostility."

You might not be facing big choices like right now, but I bet sometime you have. And I’m certain that sometime you will. In those moments, when a risky choice needs to be made, the windows are poised to fling open to God, and you wonder what emotions might overtake you: grief over your possessions? fear, joy, relief? How do you stand when those choices come to you?


We played a game during children’s Sunday School last week as we talked about the choices Adam and Eve made in the Garden of Eden. The children stood in a circle with a long piece of rope encircling them all behind their backs. The rope was a symbol of God’s love, and they were all standing in God’s love. There was something in the middle of the circle that represented God, or what I was thinking, the heart of God. They stood a few steps away from the middle and we began naming choices, and with each choice they decided whether that decision would bring them closer to God, or move them farther from God: I helped someone who was hurting, I hit someone, I yelled at my mom, I gave my grandma a hug, choices like that.

So it was this back and forth dance, but what stayed the same? we asked. They were always in Gods love. No matter what choice they made, how far from God they took themselves, God’s love never let them go, even if other children were in different places.

And yet it is not simply a forward and back movement either when it comes to our relationship with God. We move around and around, seeing a different vantage point, getting glimpses of God’s heart in risky ways, comforting ways, ways we haven’t seen before—always encircled by God’s love, beckoning us to the center, but gracing us with the gift of movement, of choice.

I’d love to sit down with Daniel and the “rich young ruler” for a cup of tea together (you know me...everything goes better with a cup of tea). I’d love to hear them tell each other their story. I can hear Daniel clarifying his decision: “Opening the windows to God wasn’t as easy as it looked.” I can see the rich young ruler lamenting into his tea cup: “No one believed I could give up what possessed me.” For me, as I pour my tea with milk and sugar I might say, “I’m confident that I’ll always stand in God’s love. What terrifies me, is that I’ll be standing alone.”

And in the silences between stories you can enter your story into the conversation, your struggle. What would you say?

Here is what Karin Round said: “So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice.
I opened the door.” Amen, sister.