Choose Life

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

First Presbyterian Church, Memphis

February 16, 2014

I’ve just started the fifth year of going into our county jail and listening to the women who are incarcerated. I call the process “Prison Stories.” I sit in a circle with twelve women and we listen to each other. There are stories told about kids, mothers, memories of childhood, experiences of abuse and neglect, stories about crimes, addictions, hopes and dreams. 

I went to the jail in January of 2010 because I had a theory. My theory is that if people are given a chance to tell their stories and to be heard (really listened to with respect,)  those people will find a way to be free. Free from whatever trap or limitation they have constructed in previous stories, free to ask questions, free to imagine new relationships, free to dream dreams, free to discover a new story, free to choose an improved future.

Initially the stories are something like this:

“I am not very smart; so school is not for me.”

“I’ve never felt loved, so I’ll give birth to a child who will have no choice but to cling to my side.”

“My daddy beat my mama regularly and my boyfriend beats me now. My kids are screaming in fear. Pain pills keep me standing.”

“Nobody has ever believed a word I have to say, so I no longer choose to waste time on telling the truth.” 

Early in my experience inside the jail I learned to provide choices for the women in the story sharing circle. Small things. Chocolate brownies or oatmeal cookies? Two or four? I bring paperback books to the classroom with me, about 20 of them. I display them on a table top and invite the women to “shop” for a book before the class gets started. Small things, but choices nonetheless. 

People in jail are not allowed many choices. You get what you get when it’s given to you. That’s part of the punishment. That’s being in jail.

We all want choices. Certainly Starbucks has learned to use our desire for choice to their business advantage and for their increasing profit. The more choices you’re given, the more special you feel. The more attention given to your special latte, the more you feel cared for. The more you feel special and cared for, the more often you will pull into that paved lot and pay high dollar to have your coffee needs met. 

Let me provide you with some context for today’s Old Testament scripture passage from Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is mostly devoted to Moses’ farewell speech before the twelve tribes  of Israel as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. Moses talks on and on really. He reviews God’s activities among the chosen people. He goes over Torah. And then he explains to the people that he will not be going with them to the Promised Land. They will be led instead by Joshua. Moses says, “I’ve laid it out for you, life and death, good and evil. Love God. Walk in God’s ways.  Choose to keep the commandments so you will live, truly live, passionately, joyfully, blessed by God’s presence and power. Choose life!”

This farewell address is twenty-six chapters long, far longer (I promise you!) than my sermon will be today. Moses’ spoke far longer than any contemporary congregation would choose to listen. 

His message was lengthy and his message has another, deeper, problem. Taken at face value, Moses seems to be saying that people who love and obey God will be blessed while those who do not love and obey God will be cursed. If you have read the book of Job, you know this is not always the way the story goes. In fact bad things happen to good people. And you, I am sure, can tell me stories about good things happening to people you would not refer to as particularly righteous. We can choose to love and obey God but beyond that so much is out of our control. 

Things don’t always work out the way we planned. In spite of our best efforts to be faithful, truthful, loving and kind- life can disappoint us and hurt us. We all live with questions about that. And we all look forward to our opportunity to ask God, face to face, why things are the way they are here in this reality.

My neighbor, Benjamin Liggett, is only sixteen years old but he has impressed me repeatedly. He’s easy to talk with, thoughtful and kind. He’s been nurtured well by his mothers. And he has the courage to nurture his own curiosity. He asks lots of questions.

Benjamin is a student at White Station High School and apparently a group of anti-abortion activists have been picketing there lately, standing on the sidewalk before and after school. They call themselves The Abolitionist Society of Memphis-MidSouth. One day this week Benjamin arrived at school and chose to engage the activists in conversation. He says he was just curious about what evidence they might site for their belief in God. The conversation, which was filmed by the activists and posted on their Facebook page, never turned to the issue of abortion. Benjamin asked questions about the existence of God and the adult activists did their best to belittle his curiosity. They told him there is no need to question God’s existence. They were patronizing toward his sincere exploration into their faith. If he didn’t buy their platitudes and empty phrases then he was simply someone who needed to be converted, someone who should be shoved into thinking the same way the activists were thinking. 

The video is posted on the Facebook page under this tag: “A self-professed atheist challenged a couple of abolitionists.” They say Benjamin rejected the gospel.  I am impressed, having watched the video, with how respectful Benjamin was in his attempts to connect, human to human, with those two men. When I asked Benjamin about the encounter he said, “I just couldn’t get through to them. It was annoying. I only wanted to know what evidence they have that God exists.” 

How hard is it for us, those of us who claim to live faithfully, to speak the truth? We have no real evidence, nothing that would stand up in court. What we have are longstanding relationships with tradition, spiritual disciplines, scripture, and a cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. We have our own experience with the one who created us and as we choose to engage with the creator, to love and obey God as best we can—we come to live in a meaningful partnership that increases the light of love around us. We are empowered in our best moments to be more patient, more compassionate, and more generous. But most moments are not our best moments. And there are no guarantees in life. And this is all we’ve got to offer the kids. So of course they’re going to ask us questions. 

Young people know that life is complicated and the answers to thorny questions are elusive. If faith is to be of any substance at all- then we must all be given permission to question, explore, experiment, learn, grow and develop. And we must feel respected along the way, reassured that God is with us, living in the questions and rejoicing in our courageous choices for life and love-- even in the face of our struggles to understand. 

In spite of our obedience and our love for God, things do not always work out the way we had planned.

Last Sunday Memphis lost one of its most faithful and memorable neighbors. Nina Katz passed away at the age of 89. David Waters wrote about her in the Commercial Appeal this week. A Holocaust survivor, Mrs. Katz became a voice for tolerance, diversity and literacy in Memphis. She was born in 1924 in Poland. In 1939, her parents, grandparents and younger sister were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp where they died. Nina was sent to a labor camp, a textile factory called Oberalstadt where she was among 800 survivors who were liberated by Allied troops in 1945.

Mrs. Katz said she had no idea why she survived. But she did. And she chose to make her survival count, make the remainder of her life meaningful.

Her family was all gone. But Mrs. Katz went to work for a United Nations organization helping people reunite with their families after the war. She met Morris Katz, a friend from her home town. They married and immigrated to the United States in 1949. They came to Memphis. To her horror, Mrs. Katz said, “I arrived at the peak of segregation in America and the familiarity was more than I could bear. I became immediately involved in equal rights among all people.”

She was one of the founders of “Diversity Memphis,” an organization dedicated to bringing people together regardless of their cultural, religious or racial differences. She gave speeches regularly at schools, churches and community events. She felt that it was her duty- to tell her own story so the stories of those to come after her might not include something as unspeakable as the Holocaust. 

Nina Katz chose life. She could have chosen bitterness and resentment. She could have hidden any light the work camp left inside her. She could have refused to ask any more questions of God or others. She could have chosen so many responses to all that she lost in those awful years. She chose life. And we in Memphis are so much better off because she was our neighbor, because of her choice.

In this most recent class of Prison Stories there was a woman, Tate, who has had long  and awful struggles with heroin addiction. Heroin is a lover, she told us, who will not go away. Once a person gets into a relationship with heroin, the high is something impossible to forget and almost impossible to stop pursuing. We listened to stories that involved the needle and its destructive consequences. 

Over the four months we spent together Tate grew more confident about herself and her future story.  She could look back and see the choices she had made and what those choices had cost her.  She looked into the future with hope—and understandably with some fear. Tate said it clearly, “There’s got to be something more in my future story than the next high. I’ve got to find a way to become the best woman I can be.”

She is choosing life.

As my neighbor, Benjamin, finishes high school and moves out into the world, I hope he will continue to ask questions. And I hope that the rest of us will be faithful in listening to his questions and learning from them. 

As we live our lives in the memory and the glow of Nina Katz’ witness among us, we long to be worthy of her commitment to our community. We long to be the best Memphis we can be, deserving of Mrs. Katz’ trust in us to carry the light and to tell our own stories.

You and I are the church. We come together this morning not as people who have all the answers. We come together today as people who need each other on the journey to the Promised Land. Courageous. Curious. Creative. We are a community of hope, free to choose life.

Amen