No Rewards Or Punishments – Only Consequences

Some of you might remember the 1985 Michelob light beer commercial. Its catchy jingle told people, “Who says you can’t have it all?” While it was trying to sell us a product, it really represented a deep sentiment of the 1980’s that told us that we did not have to choose between things. We could have everything we wanted without having to sacrifice anything.

Well, our scriptures beg to differ, and start us on our Lenten journey with a stark reminder that choices are fundamental to the spiritual life.

In our first reading from Deuteronomy 30, Moses is reminding the people about how God delivered them from Egypt and is reminding them of the need to stay vigilant to the terms of the covenant (the commandments and the lessons that they have learned in the wilderness). He says, “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.” He exhorts the Israelites to not be “led astray and adore and serve other gods,” lest they will perish. He concludes, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live…”

And in the gospel from Luke 9, Jesus says that anyone who wishes to follow him must “deny themselves and take up their cross daily.” He goes on to remind people that it is folly to gain the whole world and yet lose themselves in the process.

There is a weight to these readings and a seriousness about what is at stake if we’re not careful with our choices – personally and collectively. And while the scriptural tradition is, of course, concerned with ethical individual behavior, its main focus is on collective ethics and how social and economic systems are organized. The tradition is ever asking, “How are the least among you doing?”

The impacts of our collective choices are not always easily seen (or they make take some time to become apparent). Policies or practices that we enact today might have impacts that we do not anticipate. I think about something like the widespread use of DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) a chemical pesticide that was developed to assist agriculture production. In the 1950’s and 60’s it was seen as a “miracle” for what it could do. It took about 15 years, however, before we realized just how toxic this chemical was and the devastation that it was causing.

The 19th-century thinker and orator, Robert G. Ingersoll was quoted as saying, “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are only consequences”.

Our ancestors in faith knew this in their bones, and so they said the words we hear today to remind us that actions have consequences and that alignment with this tradition requires choices. Not everything leads to a fuller life. You cannot, in fact, have it all.

The world we inhabit today is the result of the consequences of decisions that we have (collectively) made, and every action (and inaction) has consequences – whether we can see them or not. As adrienne maree brown often reminds her readers, “We are living now inside the imagination of people who thought economic disparity and environmental destruction were acceptable costs for their power.”

In order to live into a different world, we will have to imagine it. And imagining it might require us to see where we may have gone off course.

Lent is a time to think more deeply about the consequences (or effects) of the way that we’re living our lives right now – for ourselves and for us as a collective. It is a time to imagine a different future for ourselves and for those who will come after us. And it is a time to act differently.

What is interesting about Lent is that it assumes that we have lost our way and need to commit to return. It does not ask, “if” we’ve strayed so much as “how much” and do we even know the way back.

I have always loved the poem by David Waggoner called lost. It reads, 

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

During this Lenten season, we commit to being still and reflective so that we may be found – by the world, by our God and by one another – in order that we may more clearly recognize and choose life in its many forms.

Do one thing today that supports a choice for life.