Baseball great Yogi Berra once
famously said, “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” Of course, he also
once quipped, “I never said half the things I said,” so sometimes what Yogi
Berra actually said is up for debate.
Our readings today present us
with “fork in the road” situations; we are required to make choices: In Joshua,
whether to “serve the LORD” or the gods of foreign nations and faiths; in
Ephesians, whether to act in our relationships among one another with the love
with which Christ loves us; in John’s Gospel, whether or not to continue to
follow Jesus when his teachings and those of the Church he has founded become
“difficult.” When have we been faced with situations in our lives when we have
had to make choices, practically, morally, or otherwise? Does this not happen
to us constantly?
Are we not all here because we
have chosen to be here? Our reasons for being here at this Mass at Our Lady of
Sorrows vary: Maybe we are here out of a simple joy and love for the Mass.
Maybe we are here with friends or family. Maybe we are here because the time of
this Mass allows us to sleep in just a bit longer before we drag ourselves to
Mass (that is not necessarily a bad thing), or because “Mom, Dad, or somebody
made me get up for Mass,” or some other sense of obligation, or maybe some
other more or less noble motive. The point is that we have all made a choice to
be here. And, from the choice to be here to worship as a Catholic community of
faith to simpler everyday choices like what to eat or wear, we are constantly
making choices.
But relatively few of our
choices are of the magnitude of the “fork in the road” moments faced by the
people of Israel in Joshua’s time, the early Christians addressed by the letter
to the Ephesians, or Jesus’ disciples in John’s Gospel grappling with what
Jesus meant by making eating his flesh and drinking his blood essential for their
eternal life. Each of these groups of people featured in our readings today
also faces great pressure in making the choices they need to make. Would it be
fair for us to wonder whether these people may have been tempted to evade
making choices at all, or tempted strongly to make the wrong choice?
We hear first today from the
end of the Book of Joshua. By this point in the Book of Joshua, the people of
Israel who had been led by Moses and his successor, Joshua, back to their land
have conquered this land for themselves from the Canaanites with relative ease.
They might have thought, and probably many of them did think reasonably that it
would be just as easy to maintain the land they had conquered as it had been to
take possession of it. Sure, there are nations more powerful than Israel
surrounding Israel and who worship other gods than the LORD. It would be
tempting for Israel, in this situation, to bow to these surrounding nations and
their gods to avoid being invaded and overtaken by these more powerful nations.
Still, Joshua, in his last address to the people of Israel before his death,
gives Israel a choice: “If you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day
whom you will serve.”
When Israel could have chosen
the easy way of alliances with pagan nations and worship of their gods, they
choose freely under Joshua’s leadership to be different from these other
nations. The people of Israel choose freely to take a risk of angering these
other nations by trusting solely in the one LORD they know to be the true God,
and not to trust in alliances with worldly power to save them.
A similar choice to the one
put before the Israelites under Joshua is put before Jesus’ disciples in John’s
Gospel. We have arrived at a decisive point in our relationship with Jesus as
his disciples. Jesus has repeatedly claimed that he is God, the one LORD the
people of Israel have worshipped since the time of Moses and the gift of manna
in the desert. Jesus claims to be the true food from heaven to which the manna
only pointed. Jesus claims that the only way to eternal life is to eat his
flesh and drink his blood. By this point, the people hearing Jesus are outraged.
Most of them turn away from Jesus and return to the way they were living before
encountering Jesus. His own disciples ask a very legitimate question, one
perhaps many of us have asked about particular aspects or teachings of our
faith: “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it”? How can this man claim
to be God, and how can he claim that the only way to eternal life is to eat his
flesh and drink his blood?
Jesus’ disciples are at a
fork-in-the-road moment, and they have only one choice: To take the fork. And
our salvation depends on making the right choice.
“Do you also wish to go away”?
Jesus asks his twelve closest disciples, his Apostles, as many if not most of
his followers to that point turn “back and no longer [go] about with him.”
Jesus knows that, even among these twelve, one will betray him outright, maybe
not at this decisive point that is difficult for Jesus’ disciples to commit to
following him, but at another fork-in-the-road moment not long thereafter.
Might we imagine that even Simon Peter, the leader and usual spokesperson for
the Twelve, may not have been so sure if he and the other Apostles in fact wanted
to “go away” from Jesus at this point. Peter answers Jesus with a cautious,
introspective kind of question at first: “Lord, to whom can we go”? Did Peter
pause before continuing to answer Jesus, as if to say, “I need a second to
think about this”?
We cannot know fully what was
on the mind of Peter and the other disciples, only that this could not have
been an easy question for him to answer on their behalf. I imagine Peter,
looking up at the thinned-out crowd after many had turned away from Jesus, complaining
and disputing among themselves. And yet Peter makes a decisive choice; the
right choice. He answers Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life. We have
come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter answers “yes” to
continuing to follow Jesus, not because he is the perfect disciple, but because
he freely chooses to allow Jesus to strengthen him and the others who continue
to follow Jesus. Peter freely chooses to continue to walk with Jesus, at least
until the next fork in the road.
My sisters and brothers, this
is all Jesus; all God asks of us (or at least all Yogi Berra asks of us): “If
you see a fork in the road, take it.” There will be points in our lives, if
there have not been already, when we must choose and there is no intermediate option
between “yes” and “no”; between serving the LORD and serving other gods,
ourselves, or worldly goods and pleasures as gods; between continuing to follow
Jesus, who has the “the words of eternal life,” as difficult as his way and
words can be to follow, and not.
There will be points in our
lives, as the letter to the Ephesians reminds us with the imagery of a faithful
marriage, when to love another person, let alone God, will be a difficult
choice. Our readings call us beyond the attraction-infatuation stage we might
experience at first in a relationship with somebody, and even with God. Love
becomes a choice. Being Church, a community of faith in worship and actions of
kindness and mercy, eventually becomes not mere infatuation but a choice. It
becomes a difficult choice in love when any members of the Church, especially
in leadership, idolize and abuse power and prestige. They walk among the crowds
who turn from Jesus; who make the easy but wrong choice; who refuse to walk
with Jesus beyond the fork in the road.
Will we, then, continue with
Jesus beyond the fork in the road, at least until the next decisive moment?
Will we choose to be Church? Will we choose to serve the LORD faithfully? Will
we choose to love as Christ loves us and “gave himself up for” us? Will we
choose to let the words of Simon Peter be ours: “Lord, to whom can we go? You
have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are
the Holy One of God.”
