John 21: 12-19

The Sum of All Our Choices

Dear friends,

Twice a week I volunteer at William Land Elementary School.  I simultaneously learn and help teach the new sixth grade math.  Every week I wonder whether I will embarrass myself by not being able to explain something obvious due to the atrophied small math part of my brain.  Sixth graders sniff it out in no time. But It is great when you can explain something and then you see the kids suddenly get it.  One thing you learn with the new common core math is that the designers want it to be applicable to daily life. You can make a graph about anything for instance.  You can also make an equation about lots of things in life. Let’s try an equation for the apostle Peter.  If we make a formula for who Peter is, it could be: P(peter)= x.  Now if we read the Bible we find out that we know Peter for his choices: his choice to follow Jesus at the lake. His choice to want to cut off someone’s ear. His choice to try and walk on water, his choice to deny Jesus and his choice to profess his love for Jesus.  So we could change p=x into P=c(choices)2.  Of course this is not completely correct, because there are a lot of things that define Peter that he could not control, like his education, his health, his family life as a child, the economic opportunities in his region, Roman oppression, and corruption. So Peter equals his choices plus variables.  So our imperfect formula becomes: P=c2+v2 (Variables).  Of course what I am doing will make a mathematician run screaming out of the room. 

                Poor Peter, he is so transparent in the Bible. He makes such a great, bold gestures and then shows such cowardice.  It’s like watching a reality show and thinking: thank God, that isn’t me. At the same time we’re thinking: actually Peter is me. We identify with his weaknesses at least as much as with his courage.  Whatever we see, we notice that he is a full rounded character, a believable human being.

                I do think there is a point here, friends. We are to a large degree the sum of all our choices.  I like reading biographies and the choices the subjects make are such an important part of who they become. 

The interesting thing about choices is that every moment there are fewer choices to make for anyone of us here, because we are using up our lives every day.  Therefore the choices in the glass of life are less and less all the time. This means that those choices take on more importance. They have more weight. Don’t worry, I won’t do a formula about that.

                In today’s text Jesus is exposing Peter’s choice of denying knowing Jesus three times. He is laying out Peter’s choices and then right after that He says that soon you will not have a choice. You will no longer put on your belt, for someone else will do that for you and you will stretch out your arms (which is code for: you will be crucified) and you will go where you do not wish to go.  Jesus is contrasting in the sharpest terms in our text Peter’s choice and Peter’s non-choice. I like that line: you will go where you do not wish to go.  In my pastoral ministry I have seen quite a lot of people (mostly older) go where they did not wish to go: hospitals, nursing homes, and then eventually the afterlife. I have seen that “going where we do not wish to go” in inevitable for all of us. And of course we are not being crucified. But all of us to a certain point carry some kind of cross. We all have to stretch out our hands helplessly at some point.

                Okay, before I depress you I would like to remind us all that through this text we are all called to take our choices seriously. We are called to living our life consciously. God does see our choices.  Being open to faith in God who come as Jesus Christ among us is one of those. You will make at least 10 choices even before you leave the parking lot today. We have living to do and truly living means making choices even if the choice is not to choose yet.

                Friends, we also have a choice to view our life a certain way.  We can choose guilt which really means regretting the choices we have made.  That means we see ourselves as the sum of all our bad decisions and we get stuck there.  We can also focus on all the great things we lost out on that others on Facebook on Instagram seem to have had.  That way we become the sum of our disappointments. We can also become the sum of our resentments or the sum of our insecurities. Or..the sum of our gratitude.

                Friends, you and I are slowly running out of choices.  Make them! Make them full of gratitude and joy and expectation and compassion. May God help us make the right ones! Amen.