Sermon 9.27.26 To Choose is Difficult, Choose Anyway
I’d like to begin today by saying something really quite obvious: Life is about making choices.
Profound, I know.
And yet, how often we have to be reminded how important our choices are for the living of our lives.
We are surrounded by systems that have power over so many pieces of our lives, and it can sometimes feel like our choices don’t matter,
But the Prophet Ezekiel reminds us today that we have choices, and that we are responsible for making the best choices that we can.
Ezekiel begins with a proverb that must have been old, even during his time, which is usually dated to the 6th century BCE.
He begins his remarks, “the parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
Now in my house, and maybe yours too, this would mean something different than what Ezekiel means.
For us, it would mean someone was hangry and it’s time to make noise somewhere else or make someone a sandwich.
For Ezekiel, however, it means something akin to the question that Jesus receives when he heals the man who was lame from birth in John chapter 9:
“Who sinned, this man or his parents?”
Ezekiel, just like Jesus, who follows his lead, says that everyone is responsible for their own choices, their own sins; everyone has to choose righteousness or to choose transgression for themselves.
The people think that this is unfair, “why should I be held accountable for the things that I do, there are all of these systems or people with power pushing me one way or the other, so that I barely feel like I had a choice to begin with.”
But equally (and I think that we would all agree with this as people in a society that is all about the individual and individual choices and expressions),
if it were the opposite,
If everyone was held accountable for the choices of their parents, we would think that was unfair too.
Just like being a parent, no matter what God does, it’s “unfair.”
And so, I’m moved to preach to you this morning: “To choose is difficult, Choose anyway.”
In the 1960’s there was a wonder drug that was developed in Germany and used quite extensively in England.
Finally, women would not have to deal with the nausea of early pregnancy.
For anyone who has seen the British television series Call the Midwife, or is familiar with he word Thalidomide, you know where this is going.
In the United States, the pharmaceutical company that was keen to roll this drug out, was based here in Cincinnati; the William S. Merrel company.
At the time the Food and Drug Administration was usually a rubber stamp.
Technology was on the rise, modern medicine was unquestionably good, progress was all around, Captain Spock was in space, the future was ours.
Only, there was a hiccup in the approval process, and the drug was not approved.
A two year battle for approval transpired in a process that usually took only a couple of weeks.
Very soon after the drug was introduced in Europe, it started to become clear that, when given to pregnant women, Thalidomide had a very severe side-effect.
It caused Phocomelia; In English, what that means is that it caused the limbs of many of the babies to remain unformed.
In Christian Ethics, when we talk about making a choice, there are two fundamental requirements: Freedom and Knowledge.
This means, you have to be free to choose yay, or nay without coercion or power structures forcing you one way or the other.
And, you have to have knowledge, meaning you have a clear understanding of what is at stake and all relevant information about the choice has been disclosed to you.
Now, if you’ve ever signed a contract for your phone, or for Google terms of service, where the knowledge is buried in 3,000 lines of legal jargon,
You know that there is a difference between the definition of knowledge for ethics as opposed to legal liability.
That’s the system we live in; plausible deniability.
With the case of Thalidomide, while we see how sour grapes can affect children,
It looks like nobody had a choice.
Doctors didn’t know the extent of possible harm before prescribing the drug.
Women in the 1960’s weren’t asked if they wanted to receive it, they were just told it was best for them, trust the doctor and your husband.
And while, the drug was never approved by the FDA here in the United States, there were at least 1,000 women who received the drug, many of whom never knew that they took it, because there was no record, no informed-consent, sometimes there wasn’t even a name on the label of the drug.
So, you may be asking yourself, or wondering, “so where was the choice, Fr. Chris? With this system that was so positive, so sure of itself. With these women, whose patriarchal society told them to just do whatever the men said. With this wonder drug whose side-effect nobody was aware of?”
Systems make us feel that we have no real choice, that we’re stuck with whatever sour grapes our parents ate.
But, there were choices that were made with freedom and with knowledge, even in this situation.
There were people who worked out their own salvation with fear and trembling, as the Apostle Paul calls for the Philippians to do.
The first such choice was made by Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey.
She was the doctor at the FDA, who refused to approve the Merrel company’s version of Thalidomide in the United States.
That couldn’t have been an easy choice.
She was one of the only women to receive a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Chicago. She was in a profession dominated by men.
She was working in a branch of government that up to that point had no real power.
Formed in 1938 to combat the snake-oil salesmen selling poison as medicine, the organization that would become the FDA was still fairly early in its existence and its mandate was still being formed.
Take into account also the pressure of the fact that more than 20 countries had already approved Thalidomide,
And making the choice to halt approval, halt profits, halt potential relief for hundreds of thousands of pregnant mothers.
And yet, her choice saved hundreds of thousands of children from the side effects of the drug.
As difficult and heroic as that choice was, there are also a few other choices that I want to talk about.
You see, this sermon could just turn into a hero story, which Dr. Kelsey surely deserves.
But, in order to really plumb the depths of our topic of choice, I think we need to go further.
First, there were and still are the choices of the families, whose children were affected by this drug.
When we bring children into this world, we don’t bring them into a world that is a blank slate, nor are they a blank slate when they arrive.
Each child will have some benefits and some detriments that have nothing to do with a choice that was made.
Whether it is a birth defect as was the case with Thalidomide, or an allergy, a diagnosis on the autism spectrum; some kids are naturally athletic, others may have mechanical skills, some of us are introverted, some extroverted.
Many of these things just come to us hard-wired, some may be taught.
Then there is the consideration of privilege.
I was reading an article written by NPR journalist Khari Thompson in response to an essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones this week.
Both are black mothers.
Hannah-Jones’, who authored “the 1619 Project,” wondered in retrospect if she had raised her daughter right.
As an advocate for public schools and black education, Hannah-Jones had sent her daughter, now entering college, to predominantly black public schools in New York City as a political statement.
She wonders now, as her daughter grapples with the choice her mom made for her, whether she made the right choice, whether she “sacrificed” her daughter for her own desire to fight the system.
In response, Khari Thompson, shares the other side.
Her parents, having moved to the suburbs to increase their status and rank and that of their children, put Khari in predominantly white private schools growing up.
She was one of only six or seven black children in all of her schools growing up.
For her part, Thompson grapples with the fact that for the most part private schools were created in the 1950’s and 60’s in order to cement segregation into the education system during integration.
More concretely, she had to deal with both the overt and covert racism aimed at students of color. Kids on the bus would try to wedge quarters in her hair, they would tell her to smile so they could see her, when they went into a dark room.
(and this didn’t just happen in the 90’s, I have a friend who just 5 years ago, when he was in kindergarten at a white private school had a kid walk up to him and ask him to say vinegar, after he said it, this other kindergartner told him, “now say it without the ‘v’.”)
This isn’t some far off distant past. There was an emotional cost to the rank and status that Thompson’s parents were trying to give her by putting her in a white private school.
In both cases, Thompson concludes, there are trade-offs for black parents; a guarantee of a good education, or being supported by people who make you feel seen in a good way.
God forbid a child could go to school and get both.
What we see, I think, is that there is no easy choice.
We are all affected by systems, some of us more than others, because all systems privilege or benefit some at the expense of others.
And, although it is trendy now for parents (especially my white friends) “not to choose things for their children;”
I’m going to let them decide if they want to go to school, or church, or sports, or play video games all day, or watch any youtube videos they want.
That is still a choice, and our choices affect our children.
Nevertheless, they will still have a certain degree of agency in choosing how they live their lives.
Just as we all have shown resilience in overcoming those things that would have held us down, our children will be able to choose.
Many of those children who were born with Phocomelia, went on to live happy and productive lives.
It was one more thing that they had to deal with, the stares, the snide jokes.
They didn’t choose their body composition, but they did get to choose how to live life, and I would wager that many of them lived with a kind of courage that only comes from adversity, just as many of you have come through the racism and systems of oppression that tried to hold you back.
And this, I hope, is the second lesson of Ezekiel for us today. No matter the sour grapes that our parents had to eat, we can still thrive.
Their adversity can make us stronger, if we get the chance to overcome the trauma.
Which leads me actually to one final choice.
Oh here we go! This couldn’t just be a hero story about an awesome female doctor,
Or a resilience story about people overcoming adversity.
There is one more choice that this story asks us to contend with and that is: what’s our next choice?
You see, systems of oppression often give us the false sense that everything is okay if we have heroes, who give us a momentary victory, or miraculous cases of resilience in the face of challenge.
If everything turned out alright in the end for a couple of people, then we can be satisfied. We got the feels, the prickly skin, the warmth of knowing that if sometimes pulling yourself up by your bootstraps works, then it should be universally so.
I think that this is how chief priests and elders of the people think in our Gospel lesson today: the system works well for them.
“We made the choice, we committed to God, we said yes, when God called us.”
What they don’t know is whether God is still speaking, still calling them to act and make choices that benefit and heal the poor and needy; whether John’s message of repentance should apply to those of high rank and status, who seem to be blessed in the eyes of their society.
The next choice is always the hardest.
Am I ready to make the choices necessary to try to change the system?
Today, there are men and women in their 60’s and 70’s in the United States, whose parents never knew that Thalidomide was the reason for their birth defects.
They hear from insurance, or from doctors, they couldn’t possibly be victims of Thalidomide. Dr. Kelsey made sure that no U.S. babies got the drug.
And yet, at least one thousand clinical trials, or “soft-launch” cases certainly occurred with no labels and no proof other than the birth defects.
As to the education system. The old saying that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in our nation probably doesn’t hold a candle to the real segregation that still persists and is growing in our educational system.
The school to prison pipeline is only growing, because as long as you can put a black face on the posters for underachievement and failing schools, the majority of our nation is A-Okay the Faustian bargain of status and rank that the 1950’s and 60’s (and now private equity and school vouchers) put into place to maintain segregation in schools.
The next choice, the one that is always in front of us, the choice that John the Baptist gave to us so many millennia ago: “is it too late, or can we choose better for next time?”
As election season approaches and the big questions of whether we continue the same path that we have been treading, or choose differently, we are being asked once more: “What is your next choice? What will you do with the information you have now?”
Will you run away, when God is calling you, or will you (despite everything) turn out to be faithful?
No matter what the sour grapes of the past are, no matter the heroes, who saved us from catastrophe, or the few who overcame adversity, we each have to make the next choice;
To work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
Just as Jesus made his choice to face Jerusalem and the hard wood of the cross, we can either follow our Savior into His way of sacrificial love for one another,
Or run away, because the next choice seems to difficult.
To choose, my brothers and sisters, is difficult but you have to choose anyway.
I pray that you will choose faithfulness
I pray that you will choose what you believe God wants you to do.
I pray that you will look to the heroes and those who showed resilience for the strength that you need, not just to celebrate their choices, but to make your next choice.
Amen.
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