ST ANNE’S DUNBAR GOSPELS

3^rd Sunday before Lent

CHOOSE LIFE!

(Readings: Deuteronomy: 30: 15-end; Matthew 5: 21-37)

One of the most iconic films of the 1990’s, Trainspotting, begins with Mark “Rent boy” Renton tearing down Princes Street, with these breathless words running through his head as he runs: “Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a ******* big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin can openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of ******* fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the **** you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing ******* junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, *****-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?”

That’s the Gospel according to Mark (with expletives deleted), a different Mark, a 1990’s Mark, which held up a mirror to show an Edinburgh (and a Leith) that most of us would prefer not to know about. And not much has changed.

This is making wrong choices big time, but Mark Renton says he chooses heroin. He says: we’re not stupid; we choose this because it’s the best high we’ve ever known. And I guess if life is dark and you’ve not much hope and maybe your parents were even addicts before you, then perhaps it’s not so hard to understand.

But in fact much of the stuff Mark Renton scorns as an illusion, maybe an addiction to things we think are going to make us happy, the radical young prophet Jesus would warn us against too. This Sunday’s Gospel continues where last week’s left off. Last Sunday: be salt, be light, be a city set on a hill, be different. Make sure your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. This week, he gets into the detail. Anger is a corrosive luxury you can’t afford. Just as storing up earthly treasures won’t do us much good (Mark Renton seems to agree on that), so we can’t afford to hold on to anger either.

So if you’re at odds with someone you do what you can to heal the breach. Jesus says: make the first move. Don’t wait for the other person to give you the apology you maybe think you deserve. Before the utterly holy God who’s forgiven me, dare I withhold forgiveness from anyone?

And if actual reconciliation isn’t possible then we can at least ask God to help us be reconciled in our hearts. Help me, Father, to let go of this situation that’s hurting me, don’t let me store up anger that can only poison my heart and keep me in the darkness. Choose forgiveness, choose setting other people free just as God has freed you. Choose life.

Similarly for marriage and divorce Jesus puts forward the ideal which exceeds even the Law of Moses. Jesus knows this is hard and if you remember his meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well who’d had five husbands and her present one isn’t her husband at all, you’ll know how tenderly Jesus deals with us. Inside of most of us there’s so much pain and woundedness as well as all the wonderful things about us that it’s little wonder we hurt each other and mess up, and break things that should be precious to us, and end up asking how on earth we got to where we are. Jesus knows all that.

Come and see someone who told me everything I ever did, exclaims the Samaritan woman in astonishment. And to the adulterous woman about to be stoned, after Jesus has shamed her judges with: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone... there is not a condemning word. Just: Go and sin no more. Choose life, choose what Paul calls “the more excellent way”, choose love.

So, if your right hand causes you to sin... cast it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Apply this not just to sinful thoughts and lust, but to any self-defeating habit that holds you back from choosing life. Self-condemnation is a good one for most people. That Greek chorus off stage that says “You’re no good really, you know. If people knew what you were really like they’d be horrified.” Well God knows what you’re like and he’s not horrified at all, so we need to push that chorus out, cast it away.

A bit like Jesus does in the desert - when the Devil puts before him all those choices which all look so attractive, all the quick-fix possibilities to escape pain - Jesus puts a roadblock on those thoughts, those temptations: This is what God says, scripture says, this is what I know. Or like Job, in the face of so-called comforters who just say: Oh for heaven’s sakes, Job, admit it’s all your fault, then just curse God and die – to all of that Greek chorus Job answers: I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the last, whom my eyes shall behold and not another.

That’s choosing life. Choosing it in the desert times; choosing it in sufferings; choosing it after you’ve got things wrong and need to start again and hardly believe that you can. Challenging your most insidious thoughts and temptations and doubts, like one of the saints of God, because that is what you are: This is what God says about me; I know that my Redeemer liveth; and here’s one from St Paul: for when our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. Choose life. The God who loves you; the God who lived and died for you, will not allow you to choose anything else.