Choosing Love: A sermon for 4 Advent

​Twenty-five years ago, I saw a film called “Sliding Doors” that has stuck with me ever since. In the film, as best I remember—but don’t hold me to the details because, I repeat, it’s been 25 years!—there is one pivotal moment that determines everything else that happens.
 
As the film begins, Gyneth Paltrow is rushing to catch a subway train in New York city. From there, the film tells two totally different versions of Gyneth’s story. In one, she catches the train, and ultimately falls in love with a fellow passenger named James. In the other version of her story, Gyneth misses the train, and so misses James and the chance for a relationship with him. In that version of Gyneth’s story, towards the end of the film, Gyneth and James briefly meet, but there are no real sparks. I was rooting for Gyneth and James, so that scene made me sad.
 
At the time, and ever since, I was fascinated by how trivial that first pivotal moment seemed, that moment when Gyneth did or didn’t catch the subway, and yet how monumental that moment was.
 
And I occasionally ponder on the pivotal moments in my own life, the moments that determined the course of things to come, the moments that brought me here as opposed to all the other many places I might have ended up.
 
I can’t know the seemingly trivial moments like Gyneth just making or just missing the subway.
 
So I start with obviously pivotal moments, some of my major life decisions. We have all made some of those.
 
A big one for me was the decision to pursue ordination. But that decision unfolded slowly, over the course of a couple of decades. I first thought about ordination in high school, again right after graduating from college, and yet again when I was in my mid-thirties. That last one stuck, but even then it wasn’t obvious it would. I entered the ordination process unsure of whether I really wanted to become a priest or whether I would be able to make it happen even if I did.  
 
A better example of a pivotal moment in my life came when I asked Carrie to marry me. I was slow to act. But I did eventually pop the question. And suddenly we both found ourselves at a crossroads, with two quite different paths in front of us.
 
I made that pivotal moment harder on both of us because my proposal was so pitiful. Out of the blue, while we were just hanging out, I asked her what she thought about getting married. No romantic setting. No stirring declaration of love. Not even a ring. Just the question itself.
 
Carrie later told me I had already waited so long that she was considering asking me to marry her. Still, with that pathetic a proposal, she told me she needed time to think it over.
 
For a day or so, I waited, unsure what my future would look like. I don’t have any idea what my life would have been like if she had refused. But it certainly would have been different.
 
I think about pivotal moments, moments of decision when a lot is on the line, because that is what Mary faced when Gabriel showed up with the stunning news about her conceiving and bearing a child who would be called the Son of the Most High.
 
Mary’s immediate reaction was perplexity. I get that!
 
On the day Gabriel showed up, Mary found herself at a crossroads, at what may be the most pivotal moment in all of human history, not to mention in her own life. Accepting the angel’s announcement, agreeing to bear God’s child, would mean letting go of any kind of normal life and taking on all the responsibility and all the heartache of serving God’s purpose.
 
Luke tells us that Mary pondered. I imagine Mary pondering how Joseph might react. I imagine Mary pondering about life as an unmarried teenage mother. I imagine Mary pondering about raising a child when she was so young herself, and without any sure source of support. I imagine Maery pondering what it would be like to parent God’s own child.
 
Mary had a million reasons NOT to do what the angel was telling her to do. But after just a minute or two of conversation, Mary said yes. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Mary’s yes is one of the great moments in the entire biblical story, the moment when Mary takes her place in the line of great heroes and saints who have dedicated themselves to doing God’s will, no matter what the cost.
 
We are in that same line with Mary and the other heroes and saints of our tradition.
 
Probably few of us have had quite such an obvious moment of decision as Mary did that day. But we, too, are confronted with moments when we have had to decide if we will answer God’s call or not. 
 
For most of us, the first moment of decision came when we were babies receiving baptism, and our parents and sponsors had to speak for us. Thankfully, we get a chance to reaffirm the commitment they made on our behalf, in a formal way, every time we renew our baptismal covenant.
 
We’ll do that again when our Bishop is with us next February. Bishop Fisher is no angel. But like Gabriel, he will ask us to take our place in the line of saints, to play our part in God’s mission. And we will respond, if not in these exact words, “Here we are, servants of the Lord; let it be with us according to your word.”
 
But we don’t have to wait until February to follow Mary’s example. Between now and then, we will have plenty of opportunities. They won’t be formal, like what we do in Church. Mostly they won’t happen in Church at all.
 
Instead, like Mary, we will suddenly find ourselves confronted with a moment of decision. And that moment may seem trivial, like Gyneth catching or missing the subway on one fateful morning.
 
Throughout this season, all of us will experience the trials and tribulations that come with being with family or being absent from family. We’ll experience the petty annoyances that come in a busy time, with lots of cars on the roads, and crowds in the stores, and pressures on us to do or buy or whatever. Repeatedly, we will act and react.
 
And in those moments of acting and reacting, two paths are open before us. God’s way, the way of Christ, the way of the cross, which sometimes takes courage and which may involve sacrifice. And the way of the world.
 
In the movie, Gyneth doesn’t realize that love hangs in the balance. But that was true for her, and it’s true for us, too, in our own moments. Because choosing God’s way means choosing love. And ignoring God’s call means choosing against love. That’s the choice we make, day after day.
 
And mostly our choices aren’t hugely important, pivotal moments when our entire future is on the line. But over time, our choices matter. Our choices shape us. Our choices form us into people of love, or not.
 
In our moments of decision, it can help to imagine Gabriel standing before us, inviting us to choose God’s way. It can help to remember the example of the Virgin Mary, who said yes to God’s messenger.
 
My prayer for us is that, in those moments, with God’s help, we choose love.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.