Actions have consequences. That’s Newton’s three Laws of physics in a very unscientific summary. The problem is, we tend to see the word “action” as neutral and the word “consequence” as negative. Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think so.

We also have a very human tendency to hear negativity and criticism and “telling off” when choices of actions and their likely consequences are laid out before us by authority figures. So when we hear and read this Sunday’s Bible readings (Deuteronomy 30.15-20; Psalm 1; and Luke 14.25-33) it’s very easy to hear these as varying degrees of finger-waving admonition, or even threat.

However I wonder if that is to misunderstand. For example: if you touch that oven door, you will be burned! If you leave your shoelace undone, you will trip and fall. If you are cruel to a person or animal, they will no longer trust you. These are all true, and the consequences are indeed all negative and ideally to be avoided, but they are not threats. And the one speaking is offering a caution, a warning, most likely to help us avoid that unwanted outcome.

God is the same. He shows us the way to live together in community and harmony. We are never all going to like each other – that would be (I think) too big an ask even for God! Difference is sometimes too challenging to be comfortable.  And after all He designed us all in our diversity and variety to bring our differences to the community table, to help each other grow. But we can love each other, in so far as we recognise each other’s value and choose to do no harm to another.

God says, follow my ways and choose life. Choose a way of living that brings peace and reconciliation and abundance. The alternative is to choose death – not necessarily our own literal death (for as mortals that is inescapable), but rather a way of living that is destructive and damaging and may indeed bring about an untimely death for others or ourselves.

So when Jesus asks us to put God first, ahead of even our family and our own selves, what he’s really asking us to do is to choose God’s way of living and being – the way that will actually bring love and harmony and togetherness. The problem comes of course because so many of us refuse to listen. Humans have an unerring instinct for choosing what is bad for them, just as nearly every child will choose the chocolate and ice cream over the fruit and vegetables, even if it makes them sick. And then, like most children, we absolutely do not enjoy the natural consequence of our actions and choices.

What choices do we make – daily, or in a huge scale – that bring life and love, and what choices bring death and despair? And maybe, just maybe, how could we choose better next time? For the blessing and beauty of life with God is that there is always a chance for reconciliation, and restoration, and renewal, even if that has to be in the life to come rather than in the life we have now.

Revd. Talisker

Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash