Armadale Uniting Church

Sermon for Easter - 5

The Chosen People

Sermon for Easter 5

Martin Wright

Armadale Uniting Church, then Queen’s College Chapel, 20 April 2008

Acts 7:54-8:1a; 1 Peter 2:2-10

What would you think of a parent who took one of their many children aside and said to that one alone:  “You are my beloved, my chosen one above all the others; I will give you everything”.  Such things may well happen among us fallible mortals.  But surely God is not like that, God does not play favourites?

Christians and Jews have long understood ourselves to be “chosen people”.  It’s a claim which was no doubt offensive at the best of times—in our modern egalitarian society, it sounds frankly outrageous.  We’re taught, aren’t we, that all people are created equal, that the humanity we have in common is a much deeper bond than any religious affiliation, that nothing under the sun can make one person’s life more precious than another’s.  Surely anyone who believes they are a chosen person or people is living a delusion?  It must be time for us to move on and let this go the way of other outdated sectarian worldviews.

The question is raised for us all the more acutely as we see our congregations diminishing in size, and people we love and pray for turning their back on the church.  Has God chosen them and not us?  Or worse still, has God stopped choosing the church at all?

It may well be easier for us to forget the whole idea of being a “chosen people”; it’s certainly tempting to make us seem more “relevant”.  But, for better or worse, scripture will not allow us to take that route.  One way or another we have to deal with texts like the one we read from 1 Peter today:  “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, so that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.  Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people.” 

It might seem a bit rough for Peter to write to those early Christians that, until they came to the faith, they were “no people” at all.  They may well have protested that they had a perfectly good life before they became Christian.  But here Peter is drawing on the story of Israel, who were the meanest slaves in Egypt, forgotten people, certainly not a nation, until God called them out through the wilderness and into the promised land.  And it is only from the perspective of this new life that the Israelites can look back on the old and say, “Yes, we used to be nothing—what we were then is nothing to what we are now”.  Just so, it’s only once we have caught a glimpse of the new light revealed in Jesus Christ that we can see how dark it is without that light. 

When Jesus himself passed from the deepest darkness of death and utter defeat into the marvellous light of new life, that resurrection transformed everyone who came into contact with it.  We read many stories of the disciples getting a glimpse of their risen Lord, and realizing in that moment that death was defeated once and for all, that obliteration and emptiness were no longer the last word on human life.  That was good news they could not keep to themselves, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, they set out to spread it to the ends of the earth.  Only some responded, but it is through the witness of those few that the rumour has been kept alive even for us today, of a new light dawning in the midst of the people.  Those whom God chooses, he chooses to tell this story to all people, in words, and in lives lived in sacrifice and hope.  God chooses some so that he might finally reach all.

Take for example the story of Stephen, first of the Christian martyrs.  He was one of the few who heard the story of Christ crucified and risen and responded with the joyful gift of his whole life—and what better way to proclaim his trust in a God who is faithful even beyond death than to die willingly in that God’s name, words of prayer on his lips?  Now it’s easy in reading this story to see Stephen as God’s chosen one, and everyone else as God’s enemies, those who reject God by rejecting his messenger.  But however much truth there is in that, we mustn’t make the mistake of believing those who reject God to have been themselves rejected by God.  Stephen doesn’t die in spite of his executioners; he dies for their sake, so that they might get a glimpse in his death of what it might mean to live in this sort of hope.  His last words, echoing those of Jesus, are a prayer of forgiveness for those who are crushing him under the weight of their hatred and stopping their ears against his words. 

Among them stood Saul, the upright young Pharisee, fiercest of the persecutors of the church.  Even this man would shortly get a glimpse of the new light of Christ, and would in an instant turn from being the cruellest of the church’s oppressors to the foremost of her missionaries and theologians, one whose eloquence in defence of the gospel has never since ceased to move hearts for Christ.  Such is the mysterious way God chooses those whom we would consider least likely, even those we would reject out of hand, to be his messengers.

Christ himself was the least likely of all Saviours.  Born in a common stable, laid in grubby food trough, worshipped by the local riff-raff, living as a marginal troublemaker and dying as a common criminal—a stone rejected by the builders, who has nevertheless become the cornerstone of the whole edifice of salvation—a man rejected by mortals, yet chosen and precious in the sight of God.  And not only he himself, but all he came to save:  not the righteous but sinners, that is you and me. 

In the cross we have all rejected Jesus Christ, all turned our backs on him and fled.  But the miracle is that instead of rejecting us in turn, in this derelict and forsaken figure God has chosen us, every one.  In the cross and resurrection of Christ, our overwhelming “no” to God has been turned into God’s even more overwhelming “yes” to us.  So now there is no life so dark, through despair, fear, grief, or even comfortable complacency, that it cannot be illuminated by the light of Jesus Christ.

So don’t ask whether God has chosen you.  In Christ he has chosen us all.  Instead try asking what he has chosen you for—how he invites you to respond—how he is calling you out of darkness into his marvellous light.