Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on January 19, 2014
What does it mean to be chosen?
This question’s been on my mind since I put pen to paper
last week to write last Sunday’s sermon and has continued with me into this
week’s sermon preparation. After all, we have as our Gospel lesson today the
call of the first disciples in John, surely a moment where these brave young
men are chosen. But what does that really mean?.
Last Sunday, I talked about Peter’s transformation. I
called him a bigot at first, too caught up in the idea of what he thought it
meant to be chosen. He had to recognize that God might be willing and even
eager to spread his blessings and grace beyond his own people. I struggled with
doing that, using such harsh language. After all, Peter’s people are the Jews,
a people who have within the last century suffered catastrophe the likes of
which few can even comprehend. Feels a little like kicking someone when they’re
down.
But the sort of arrogance that Peter had fallen prey to
(and had to be liberated from) was hardly unique to the Jews or really to any
people. It pretty much happens to any group or nationality the moment they
believe they are “chosen” or “destined” or whatever word you want to use.
We Americans have been guilty of this. We are the “city
placed on the hill,” the beacon of democracy and freedom, the ones with the
manifest destiny to claim the North American continent, and so forth. As a
result, we have often seen by people in other countries as snobbish and
self-important.
I read an article a while back about how Europeans don’t
seem to understand why Americans are so proud of their American-ness. I found
some irony in the thought that Germans or English or Italians see us as too
full of ourselves. For all our flaws, real and imagined, it is to Rome that all
roads lead, the sun does set on our Empire, and I’ve never heard an American
politician refer to us as the “master race.” Obviously, our friends across the
pond have had their moments of inflated and arrogant nationalism as well.
We all make this mistake. We confuse chosen-ness for
superiority.
What does it mean to be chosen?
Isaiah was chosen. Called to be a prophet to God’s
people. Was this because he was the most qualified? The most righteous? The
most holy? Isaiah speaks of his own calling in the sixth chapter of the Old
Testament book named for him and calls himself there “a man of unclean lips.”
Paul was chosen. Called to be an apostle and disciple of
Jesus. Again, was this because of his devotion to Christ? His close adherence
to Jesus’ teachings? Oh, yeah, he was an enemy of the Church, stood by cheering
as Stephen was martyred, and was sent to Damascus to arrest and probably
torture any Christians he found there. Nice guy.
Then, of course, there’s Peter along with James, Andrew,
and John in our Gospel lesson. They’re chosen. There’s John the Baptist also.
He’s chosen. Again, why and what does that mean? Here is a crazy man (or
seemingly so) and his followers, hardly paragons of propriety. None are
wealthy. None are famous. None are highly educated.
These were all chosen, but the thing they seem to share
in common is not excellence or superiority. If anything they are mundane,
ordinary, even villainous. If these are our examples from the Scriptures, then
perhaps being “chosen” has less to do with who and what you are and much more
to do with what God wants to do with you.
Isaiah is called to be a prophet, to remind the people of
what God has done for them and to bring them back to following him. He
describes himself in our first lesson as a sword and an arrow, recognizing that
what he has to say is going to be unpleasant and perhaps painful to people who
don’t want to hear the truth. He and his message will not be popular. He will
be “abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers.”
Paul the persecutor of the Church had it easy. The
freedom and the power to bind, arrest, and perhaps even murder with impunity.
Paul the apostle is himself arrested, bound up, shipwrecked, and nearly
murdered himself on numerous occasions.
And the cast of characters in our Gospel text? John the
Baptist is beheaded. James is the first of the twelve to be martyred. Andrew
and Peter are both crucified. John dies alone, the only one of the twelve to
die of natural causes.
Each of them was probably better off not being chosen at
all. It was not a path to worldly riches or power or glory. There was nothing
that made them better than others, if anything they died among the least of
these. But there’s a reason for that. Being chosen isn’t about you, it’s about
the one who chose you.
Each of these men were chosen to do this.
An arrow showing the way to God. Showing the Christ. He is what really matters.
Charlatans in the church will tell us that our being
chosen means the world is our oyster, that faith is the path to worldly
success, that prayer is the means to riches, and devotion the path to power. If
that’s what you believe, I’m here to tell you it’s a lie. The Way is not Easy
Street. Being chosen is not cause for arrogance or self-superiority. It is to
diminish so that others can see God through and in you. It is to be less so
that all can see that God is more.
Each of us has also been chosen. We were taken to a font,
washed in the waters of baptism, and God said to each of us “You are given the
mark of my cross. You are mine now.” In that moment, we became servants of
something more important than ourselves. We became disciples and apostles of
Almighty God.
The question before each of us is what does God want to
do with us. Only you can answer that question for yourself in prayer,
discernment, and contemplation. But know this. Your life and perhaps even your
death is meant to serve that purpose and it alone.
That is what the apostles and prophets did. But they and
we have a model to follow. Our Lord also was chosen. He too came to represent
something more important than himself. He too lived and died in service to
something more than himself. And what was so important that God would die for
it? You and me and all the world.
That’s what matters to him. It’s the core of God’s whole
plan. It’s why he chose the Hebrews to be his people. It’s why he called
prophets like Isaiah. It’s why he called disciples like Peter and Paul. And
it’s why he called you and me. We are chosen to participate in God’s great plan
to save the world.
And it’s not because we’re special or full of expertise
or particularly devout. Like so many others, we’re rather ordinary, perhaps
with a bit of villainy hidden away in our closets. But that’s not what matters.
What matters is God’s plan for salvation. What matters is saving the world.
And you and I have our part to play in that. After all,
we’ve been chosen. Amen.
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