Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no.
We as a people do not go around making oaths very much. For most of us when we are asked to truthfully answer a question, we just answer it.
Our yes means yes, and our no means no.
It is a simple thing really. Answering a question, making a yes or no choice. While Jesus was talking about oaths, Sirach…the Old Testament reading also asks us to make a decision, give an answer, “Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.”
And with this message the stage is set for us. Ambiguity is not to be found anywhere. From Sirach where we hear it’s up to us, we can choose evil or good to Saint Paul speaking about where to find Wisdom which will not be given to others but only to those who love God… to our Gospel, where Jesus explains to us…it is not enough to just manage our actions but we must take ownership and custody of even our thoughts and emotions …we must choose not only what we do in this life but we must also choose and tend to what we spend our time thinking about.
Sirach makes it seem so easy. Choose life, Choose love. Once we do that all will flow from that decision.
But for most people the practice of choosing and sticking to decisions are as meandering as the rio grande river. Relying only on our own will power, our own wisdom, we will never make it out of this life and find ourselves in Heaven with our Father but will find ourselves in Gehenna or hell.
Self-made men and women, those who think they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and shove their way to the house of God are misleading themselves.
We do not do well left to our own devices and own will power. Don’t believe me.
How many people wake up in the morning and say to themselves, today I am going to eat too much and I choose to gain a couple more pounds today…you know just to make sure my slacks fit tightly around my waist. No one says that. Most of us in America and the world if you believe the news want to lose weight, we know it is the right thing for our health and happiness but we fail.
But it is February 16th and while the gyms in Austin had a banner sign up of new subscribers to their facility in January, the crowds are already dwindling. Jenny Craig and Nurtrasystems are finding people falling off the wagon already.
No, if our diets are any reflection, we don’t do well at all only using our own will power.
No one wakes up and says I think I will get good an drunk today, miss work and have a massive hangover tomorrow. Yeah that sounds good. And no one stands before the priest and says yes to marriage and later thinks I can’t wait to hurt my wife and betray her trust. Make a real mess of my marriage. And I am certain no one ever wakes one morning to the idea that making a shamble of their life filled with lies and bad choices is a good idea.
But if we look at the rate of alcohol abuse, failed marriages, or failed lives…..it is easy to see that a lot of people don’t do a very good job at promises made to others or themselves. None of us seem to be able to just gut it out, stand up on our own two feet, force ourselves to make a choice and stick to it. No matter how much positive thinking we do, or how smart we think we are, or how much we insist we are in control.
I do love to read this part of Sirach, “before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” It sounds like it is all a simple yes or no and my heart wants to say, Yes! We only need to choose! It is true!
But I know different.
We stink at sticking to decisions we know are best for us when all we have to rely on is ourselves. So when we read Sirach and are discouraged knowing we cannot really choose once and for all a yes or a no perhaps it is because we read only the part that says we can just choose… and fail to continue to hear about how God’s wisdom is also mentioned. This is important folks. And Paul picks up the message of God’s Wisdom in his letter to the Corinthians which he says it is revealed through the Spirit…capital S as in the Holy Spirit. Now we are getting somewhere.
Now! we see that we are not alone in this. That yes the choice is ours and the choice is simple. But we are not alone, we do have help.
Paul tells us we need the Wisdom which only comes through the Holy Spirit. It is the key my friends. Without this Wisdom, we might say yes to love and life but we will find we often fail and our journey is filled with a lack of hope, a feeling of despair and a loss of faith and trust in God.
We simply cannot say yes every day to what we know is right. Not by ourselves. We cannot build our marriage on wisdom we hear from this world, whether it is movies and dramas that show how the beautiful and wealthy do it or the guidance given by those in power.
They didn’t have the answers when Jesus taught his disciples and they do not have the answers now.
You cannot find Wisdom by reading about it or researching and intellectually gathering…not this Wisdom. And you cannot listen to really great preaching and get it. But people try. Preachers try to convey God’s Wisdom and people try to hear it in the preacher’s words.
But as Paul says, it has to be given to you…not through your ears or eyes but through the Spirit.
So how do we get it? This Wisdom to know how to say yes, this courage and strength to stick to our convictions. So our yes means yes and we choose life and goodness and God when tested. We do this by ensuring we have created a place in ourselves the Spirit can reside.
As children of God, as believers and baptized Christians, as followers who are focused not on things of this world but on our true Father in Heaven this is the most important thing we all must understand to find peace and love and growth in maturity as Christians.
We must ensure that our hearts, our minds, our very thoughts are aligned with our objective. A unity with God. We will have thoughts of fear, of anger, of pride and of selfishness. The evil one will tell us to give up, he will whisper we aren’t worth it, God really doesn’t and couldn’t love us. He will tell us the end is near. Give up and give in to sin. He is a liar. We are loved by God. We cannot live by fear but hope, we cannot hold onto death but life. We cannot live with a spirit of scarcity but realize we are blessed with abundance.
We must evict thoughts leading to despair, death and hate. Yes we must consciously analyze what message we are playing in our head. Ask ourselves if our thoughts are thoughts of lust, hatred, superiority and pride or thoughts of love and forgiveness.
Do our thoughts and actions meet the requirements given in the commandments? Do the thoughts that drive our behavior find their root in loving God and others…really loving. Do we find time for prayer throughout our day and particularly when we find the wrong message being played in our head.
If we want to find peace and love and God’s Wisdom then we need to make a place in our hearts and life for the Holy Spirit to reside. It is really as simple as that. And it is the only with the help of the Holy Spirit we will find strength to say no to sin, to build better marriages and lives.
Jesus tells us today the importance of what we think and dwell on, what we spend mental cycles thinking about. That is what will color our actions and lives and allow a place for the Holy Spirit to dwell.
And our lives will be reflections of what we dwell on, what we allow to ferment in our head and color how we think. This is not some pop psychology on positive thinking. Do not confuse this with that. This is about ordering our lives beginning with our internal life and thoughts to focus on those things we know are virtues and commandments that God has given us so we can enjoy the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
Our actions alone will not save us. Even attendance here every Sunday will not save us. For it is what is inside of us that is what Jesus was most concerned with.
Do not think just because we never followed through on our thoughts to hurt another, to commit adultery, to damage another’s reputation that we have passed the test. The Gospel says more is expected of us.
Sirach tells us we can choose life and love and hope or death and hate and despair.
Paul tells us we can have the Spirit to guide us, to help us push sin out of our lives.
The Good News today is Jesus tells us how to prepare for the Spirit, what it looks like when we have the Holy Spirit and Wisdom in our lives.
We will still need to work at it. We cannot just say yes once. For we need to say yes every day, at every choice we make and every action we take. We must say yes to love and life and hope every day so that when we stand before our creator we will have a lifetime of yes’s representing our lives.
It is only by taking on the task of aligning our desires and focus on the commandments to love God with all our heart, strength and power and others as ourselves that our lives will be full of love and peace and joy.
It is a yes or no kind of question.
Before us are life and death, good and evil. Whichever we choose shall be given to us.
But we need to ask God for his Wisdom and strength and give our answer every day in our thoughts and actions.
Deacon Tony Pynes 