Sermons

Third Sunday of Epiphany
Sunday 24 January 2010

David Paton-Williams

Readings: 1 Corinthians 12 v12-31a; Luke 4 v14-21

How do you react the idea of being chosen?

Were you the person who was always left to the last when people at school were choosing teams for games?

In which case the whole idea of choosing one might imply rejecting another.

Or perhaps you were one of the ones who always got chosen early on - so the idea of being chosen might communicates the sense of being special, being somehow better at something than someone else?

Either way the idea of being chosen doesn't sit easily with a lot of our beliefs and values today.

Not surprisingly many thinking Christians reject the whole idea being part of "a chosen people" - wanting nothing to do with that way of thinking or speaking about faith.

The idea that God has chosen some may suggest that God has therefore rejected all the rest. It can sound elitist, exclusive, arrogant, intolerant. Blind to the value of other people's traditions of faith.

We are God's chosen, God's favourites, our path is superior to yours, we are right and others are wrong.

On the political level we may wonder how much the idea of the Jewish people as God's chosen nation underpins many of the exclusive, abusive policies of the nation of Israel. While I share all of those concerns I want to explain how the idea works in the Bible - or at least how, at its best, it works in the Bible - because there are examples of it working in all the wrong and harmful ways.

Both Isaiah and Paul have the sense that they have been chosen.

But they are chosen not because they are any better than anyone else, not of any more value than anyone else, and not because they were more right than anyone else.

For them, being chosen meant being chosen for the sake of others.

The idea of being chosen starts from the belief that the life of faith has to be modelled for us by other people.

It doesn't drop out of the sky in some universal revelation. It isn't fundamentally about something we understand with our heads.
It is about something we live with all that we are.

In Isaiah the prophet is reflecting on how the whole people of Israel had been called to be a light to the nations - revealing the reality and love of God to the world.

However, they had fallen short of this and so the prophet found himself called to play this role for the sake of the people of Israel.
Showing them what God was like and what God wanted of them so that they could take up their God-given role in the world once again. And Paul did much the same thing. Having been brought up as an orthodox Jew he rejected the radical new sect which claimed that the messiah had come. But after his own encounter with Christ he realised that he was being called to take the light of Christ to the nations.

Both Isaiah and Paul were chosen, not for their own sakes but for the sake of others.

If that still seems too particular for you, then think about the belief that all people are made in the image of God, that each of us is meant to reveal something of God through the way we live our lives.

Each of us, every single person who has ever lived, has something particular to reveal about God - and in a wonderful kaleidoscope,
each person is needed in order for as much of the reality and love of God to revealed as possible.

However, we know that our lives are not like that so much of the time and that our fear and pride and selfishness etc, get in the way, and we reveal to the world all sorts of others things rather than God's love and reality.

We need others to model for us the life of faith, what it means to live life in harmonious relationship with God, exploring deeper into the reality of his loving purposes for our lives.

We see this above all in Jesus.

The impact of Jesus wasn't just in what he said but how he lived. And because of what they saw of God in his life, others discovered in him a deeper sense of God, a deeper knowledge of God, in their own lives.

He was God's chosen one - for the sake of them, the first disciples, so that they could discover just how valued, special and loved they were as well.

They then were chosen for the sake of others, so that others could catch faith from them, so that others could learn from this imperfect community of believers something about what it meant to live life in openness to God and trust in God.

And so it went on.

This morning the children of Scramblers and Climbers made one of those paper chains you remember from your own childhood parties.

And the chain reminded us of how we were linked in so many ways with others.

Think of the chain in your life. Think of who it was who helped you to catch the faith.

They were chosen by God for your sake. Just as you have been chosen for the sake of others.

If, before the days of email, you wanted to send a message to your friend many miles away, you needed a postie to take your letter for you.

God wants to communicate his life and love to everyone - and in order to do this he does it through particular individuals, because that makes it real - ours is a faith about a God who becomes flesh in particular people's lives.

A God who doesn't descend upon people in a universal revelation but works through the concrete particular lives of his children for the sake of the rest of his children.

Choice - God's choice - isn't about some being favoured over the rest in any way.

And what Paul began to discover was that there isn't a chosen people marked out by their observance of the Jewish law, any more than there is a chosen people marked out by faith in Christ.

There aren't boundaries around a group because then people tend to begin to think of themselves as different, special, uniquely privileged.

Being chosen isn't about a group but a process. It's the way God works.

He has chosen others for your sake and he chooses you for the sake of others.

So that together we can make God's love known in the world.

So think tonight, who do you have to be thankful for? Who has God chosen to use to bring you a blessing?

And who God has chosen you to bring a blessing to. Who are you linked with in this chain of love and light
that is God's will for us all.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay