Choosing A Path - Matthew 7:13-14

When I hear these words of Jesus, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.  For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” I automatically think of the poem by Robert Frost that many of us had to memorize in school (I will read it to you, because the recess of my brain that had it memorized have long since been erased and the info replaced with something else):

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both              

And be one traveler, long I stood            

And looked down one as far as I could  

To where it bent in the undergrowth;   

Then took the other, as just as fair,        

And having perhaps the better claim,    

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;              

Though as for that the passing there      

Had worn them really about the same, 

And both that morning equally lay          

In leaves no step had trodden black.      

Oh, I kept the first for another day!        

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

I doubted if I should ever come back.    

I shall be telling this with a sigh 

Somewhere ages and ages hence:          

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I don’t know if many of our young folks have to memorize that poem any more, but as I was considering the message for this week, I came across this movie clip that some may or may not have seen.    After seeing the clip, I was curious and decided to watch the entire movie, and though it is not a movie I typically would have watched, I was glad I did, because by the end of it, I realized that the movie as a whole illustrates this passage from Jesus.

Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns is about a single mom  of three kids, ranging from toddler to a senior in high school.  None of the children’s fathers have made an attempt to offer child support or any means of aiding.  Brenda struggles with day to day life…at the beginning of the movie she loses her job, the whole company shuts down, on pay day…leaving her with no money…her child care is due, her rent is due, and everything else is coming down on her…even as she is talking with her children about what is going on, her gas and power are turned off.  Throughout the movie, Brenda is presented with plenty of opportunities to do the wrong thing to solve her financial crises, but determined to change the way she has lived in the past, Brenda consciously makes the decision to do the right thing, no matter how difficult it may be and how many difficulties it will leave before her.  Her eldest son, Michael, on the other hand, a rising basketball star, gets fed up with the struggle, and turns to a so-called friend, to find a way to make money quickly…we see his “coach” cautioning him about being careful what road he chooses to travel down.  And here, I offer a spoiler alert, I am about to tell you how the movie plays out, if you are thinking about watching it.  Michael initially chooses the wide gate and easy road…he chooses to sell drugs to try and earn money to help out his mom…and the movie testifies to the truth of Jesus’ words, for that wide gate and easy road lead to destruction, for the next day, after having a change of heart and informing his friend that he wants out, a rival dealer starts chasing them down and Michael gets shot in the back running.

Whether it is Tyler Perry, Robert Frost, or most importantly, Jesus, talking to us, they all present us with the truth of our daily lives.  Every day we are presented with choices…all kinds of choices…from what type of creamer or flavoring we are going to put in our coffee to what we are going to wear to which route are we going to take to work or the store to where to eat supper to what show are we going to watch before going to bed.  And those are the simple choices…the number of choices…the number of decisions…the number of roads we face each day are almost innumerable, and many are trivial, having no lasting impact on the rest of our lives.  However, there are paths that we come upon, decisions that we face, choices that we have to make that have a lasting impact on us and those around us.  They shape who we are and who we will become.  Those are the decisions that we are focusing on today and through the season of Lent.

What is Lent?  Lent began this past Wednesday on what the church has traditionally called Ash Wednesday.  Lent consists of the forty days (not including Sundays) preceding Easter.  It is set aside as a period of self-examination, repentance, and sacrifice.  It is a time to examine where our lives are in relation to God and God’s Will for our lives.  It gives us the opportunity to realign our lives with God, get back on His path, where we might have strayed off on a different way.  This Lent we are going to examine how we can better walk the path of a disciple.  James Harnish in his book entitled A Disciple’s Path suggests that living out our membership vows will draw us closer to God and enable us to be better disciples of Jesus Christ, as we focus on offering our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness.

Before we go any further along this discussion, though, I need to make an important note—concerning the reason why we choose to walk the disciple’s path.  We don’t walk the path because we think it will save us or get us into heaven…it does not compensate for our sin.  The only thing that can bring us salvation, the only thing that can redeem us from our sin is the blood of Jesus Christ—the sacrifice of the only perfect One to have ever lived.  It is only His sacrifice, and God’s gift of grace through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit delivering that redemption to each of us that we are forgiven and saved from eternal condemnation, separated from God forever.  The question of walking the disciple’s path is how we respond to that grace, how we respond to the redeeming grace of God, what we do with the freedom that God that God has given us.  Choosing to walk a disciple’s path reflects our gratitude for the sacrifice that Christ made to give us the freedom to choose to walk the path.

The thing we need to note today though is that walking the path of a disciple…walking the way that follows Christ…is an intentional choice.  It is not a path that we simply wander upon.

What kind of choices are we faced with when it comes to choosing to walk a disciple’s path?

It involves the choices of what we do with our time…

It involves the choices of what we do with our abilities…

It involves the choices of what we do with our money…

It involves the choices of what we do with our very lives…

The choices are not easy. 

The world will tempt us with the wide gate and the easy road…it will be like Michael being tempted to sell drugs to make money…it will be the temptation cheat on our taxes in order to get more money…it will be the temptation gossip about our neighbor in order to make them look bad and ourselves look better…it will be the temptation to spend our money on ourselves rather than using it to feed the hungry…it will be the temptation to look down on someone because they are different, their skin color is different, their financial status is different, their educational level is different, rather than remember that we all stand equal before God…it will be the temptation to put ourselves in first place regardless of God’s Will, regardless of its impact on others, regardless of the implications on the rest of our lives.  Jesus says the end of this road is destruction.  Sometimes that destruction is readily seen, such as when Michael was shot.  It may be getting caught by the IRS and having to repay the money or spending a little jail time.  It may be the fact that one we are the hungry.  It may be that one day we find ourselves in the minority and have to face being looked down upon.  It may be that we have focused so hard upon ourselves, that we find ourselves completely estranged from, completely separated from, our God, from our Savior, and find ourselves completely lost.  We find ourselves on a road that leads to, as Christ put it, destruction.

Jesus tells us that the path of a disciple is a narrow path…we enter it through a narrow gate.  It involves making the tough decisions, it involves making sacrifice.  It is about choosing the path where God comes first, where His Will for our lives takes precedent in all that we do.  It is about choosing the path where the needs of those around us take precedent over our own wants and desires.  It is about putting ourselves last.  It is about surrendering all to Jesus.  It will be difficult at times.  We may feel like we walk the road alone at times, but we remember Christ has promised that He would never leave us alone, so he walks that road with us.  Yet, as narrow as it may be, as difficult as it may be at times, it is a road that leads us into life, it leads us closer to God, it draws us deeper into living as God created us to be, in His divine image.

Choosing the right path, even when it is difficult, brings life.  In Meet The Browns, others notice the struggle that Brenda is going through in trying to live right and honestly, and she finds herself, despite her struggles, with a newly renovated home, with the work done by family and friends.  She finds herself completely surrounded by love.

Robert Frost’s poem, while he says he saved the other path for a different day, really suggests that once we make a choice, it leads us to another choice, and another, and we can never truly go back, we can only go forward.  The beauty, though, of the two paths that Jesus shares with us, is that if we take the wide gate and walk the wide road, if we are travelling 90 miles per hour down the interstate heading straight for that sinkhole, with God, it is not a one way street.  God allows us to make U-turns.  God allows us to slam on the brakes, turn our lives back around, and head back to Him.

Back to the movie, Michael survives the gunshot.  The surgeons are able to remove the bullet, and it has missed all his vital organs.  Michael changes the path that he was on, and focuses his attention on recovering and training, and finds himself back on the basketball court by the end of the movie. 

Every day that God blesses us with is a chance to choose a disciple’s path.  My brothers and sisters, it does not matter where we are today.  It does not matter how closely we may have walked with God.  It does not matter how far and fast we have driven away from God.  We may have walked a disciple’s path our whole lives, we may have lived for ourselves our whole lives.  The question is, which path will we choose right now?  God is giving us the opportunity to choose right here and right now…the wide gate and interstate…or the narrow gate and His path…which will it be?  The one we choose will make all the difference.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.