You Are Chosen--July 17, 2024

You Are Chosen--July 17, 2024

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." [Ephesians 1:3-6]

You are chosen.  

By God.  

Just as you are, and apart from what you can "do" for God.

That's what it means to belong to the people of Jesus.  Letting it sink in takes some getting used to, because it means recognizing that we belong apart from our earning or achieving or God's need to get a "return" on God's investment, but simply because God loves us.  We belong, in other words, because God's love says we belong.

These words come from a passage that many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, and which I'm sure I've heard or read myself more times than I can count over the years.  And yet, every time I stop and actually consider what these words are saying, I am brought up speechless--both profoundly honored and deeply humbled at the same time.

I mean, on the one hand, the writer to the Ephesians here has just made the audacious claim that the Creator of the universe chose us--you and me, and all the members of Jesus' Beloved community--to belong.  We aren't just nameless faces in a crowd. We aren't just statistics on Heaven's annual report.  We aren't just paying customers or club members in God's eyes.  We are chosen.

And part of what that means is the assurance that you and I belong to God regardless of what anybody else says or thinks of us.  If you aren't the tallest, or the fastest, or the richest, or the most up-to-date with technology, it doesn't matter.  If you don't measure up to somebody else's cookie cutter expectations of piety or respectability, you don't have to worry.  If your list of failures and flaws seems like it's a mile long, you have not lost your place in the household--because your belonging never depended on what you do or what you've done in the first place.  It has always been a matter of the living God saying, "I call you precious.  I deem you beloved.  I claim you and choose you to belong.

The humbling part of that same truth is realizing that God didn't choose you or me because of our talent, our grade, our accomplishments, or our usefulness.  God doesn't say up in heaven somewhere, "I need winners for my team--now, who can I pick that would be an all-star?" Rather, God loves us even if we've been the last-picked losers all our lives long.  God doesn't think, "I need someone with power and influence to further my agenda!" and then start recruiting Important Up-And-Comers to run for governor or senator; rather, God chooses the anybodies who change the world from their ordinary routines simply by letting their belovedness make them stand out.  In other words, God didn't choose me because of something God needed--there's not some skill or influence or power or wealth that made me appealing in God's sight. God chose me... and you... and the whole lot of us, just because God loves us. And love is its own logic.

The other thing we will have to accept, once we realize how we have been chosen by God apart from our skill sets and resumes, is that we don't get to tell someone else they don't belong just because we don't think they fit.  God has a way of gathering unexpected people, and they will not always be on my personal list of pre-approved acceptable applicants.  I'm not going to be on somebody else's list of "worthy" people, either.  But, good news: God isn't running a country club, and Jesus isn't looking for pledges for a fraternity.  Nobody else gets to vote me out of the Beloved Community, and I don't get to vote anybody else out.  It's about God who has chosen us and who adopts us into the family.

In a culture like ours that tends to reduce people to their achievements or prestige, it's pretty surprising to hear that God doesn't choose people because they are "strong" or "influential" or "important."  But that's the good news: we are Jesus' people simply because God has chosen to love us--not for what we can "do" for God.

How will it affect your day today to know you don't have to try to impress or posture, but simply to let your belovedness flow through you to the people around you?

Gracious God, let us simply hear your claim that we are your beloved, and live as though it is true.