1 Peter 2:9-12
But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it. Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they’ll be won over to God’s side and be with us to join in the celebration.
Recently I remembered a song from far back in my past, a hymn that came out of the liturgical renewal of the ‘70's - Anthem, by Tom Conry (© 1978, NALR). It is a song about those of us who call ourselves believers and features paired couplets: sower and seed, harvest and hunger, and so on, to describe our both/and role.
I’ve always liked this hymn and I’ve been thinking about it in terms of a Lenten meditation. The first couplet is actually a triplet: We are called, we are chosen, we are Christ to one another.
There are so many “callings” in scripture – and no two seem to be exactly the same. Some are quite specific – being called to a particular action in a specific time and place, like the Old Testament prophets who were generally called to speak a specific word in a particular situation. Others seem to be pretty general, such as Jesus’ invitations to the first disciples to simply “follow me.” Don’t ask where or why, just follow me. So just what are we claiming when we proclaim “we are called”?
“Chosen” is no better, and frankly I have never really cared for “chosen” as it is used in scripture since too often it is blatantly exclusionary – “we are chosen” (and you are not.)
In conversation this week with my husband, he said something (or I heard it this way) that puts it like this: We are called by God, and we can choose to say “yes” to that call – and in that choosing, we are in turn “chosen” – not excluding others, but simply being included in the number of those who have heard and in some way answered “yes”. I like that. It sounds right to me.
So, to what are we called? To what have we said “yes”? Well, I – against all expectations – have been called to preach and teach. That is my formal calling as an ordained minister. I’ve also been called – along with everyone else out there – to an long list of things such as patience and compassion and mercy and love. Called to trust God and follow Jesus’s path to the best of my ability. Called to care about others as God cares about me.
The third part of this triplet is that we are called to be “Christ to one another.” While it may prove darn hard to do, this one at least seemed easy enough to understand – at first. My thinking here lead me to remember something else I’d read in recent months – that would be Rob Bell’s Love Wins, (© 2011) – in which he enumerates all the different “Jesuses” he has heard described by people who proclaim themselves “Christian.” While he was looking for the merciful Jesus, what he too often heard from others was the condemning Jesus. The choosing-a-few-and-letting-the-others-burn-in-hellfire Jesus. The Jesus who, according to the placards, hates a good chunk of us. The Jesus who is obsessed with counting our sins.
I’m sure we can think of many others on our own -- some we've had presented to us as the real thing: The bloody, suffering Jesus still hanging on the cross. The Jesus who only loves whites, or straights, or Americans. The Jesus who inspired the genocide of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the war in Serbia/Croatia in the 90's.
Or maybe (I hope) the one we've met is the bread-for-the-hungry Jesus? The come-to-me-all-who-are-weary Jesus? The come-on-in-everyone-is-welcome-here Jesus? If I am to be Christ for others, which Christ, which Jesus is it I hope to be? I’m pretty sure I need to know before I set out to do anything. As Rob Bell says somewhere in response to a person who told him they had rejected Jesus, “Some Jesuses should be rejected?” I certainly want nothing to do with some I’ve heard preached in recent years.
One thing I have always remembered about this hymn because it struck me as amusing and sad at the same time. I was reading a magazine for church musicians and some self-important someone had written a review of the song. It was a scathing review, finding absolutely nothing worth liking about the piece – because the words talk about us instead of talking about God’s greatness – the composer violated this person’s idea of what a hymn must be and therefore was to be condemned to the outer darkness. Now in my way of looking at it, God’s greatness, God’s goodness is the ground from which all else arises in this enterprise we call church. I take that as entirely a given. It is the response of the people that requires the struggle and the hard work and the teaching. God knows who God is – we don’t need to tell him/her every moment. It is humankind who still stumbles around in the dark a lot and needs every bit of encouragement and direction we can find. I think a hymn which reminds us who we are striving to be is a perfectly reasonable thing.
The reviewer was so locked into defending, as he saw it, the glory of God – which was never under attack – that he missed all the goodness and hope and encouragement in this hymn. We can learn from this and try to be careful that we are not so locked into one aspect of Christ that someone told us was important that we miss all the rest.
Somehow -- again, against all expectation -- we are called, we are chosen people -- we are struggling, together, to be Christ-like in a hurting and needy world -- all while knowing ourselves totally unworthy to be making such a claim. But God says "do it" and the best we can do is join hands and -- together -- put one foot in front of the other, trusting our great God to lead us.
I’ve always liked this hymn and I’ve been thinking about it in terms of a Lenten meditation. The first couplet is actually a triplet: We are called, we are chosen, we are Christ to one another.
There are so many “callings” in scripture – and no two seem to be exactly the same. Some are quite specific – being called to a particular action in a specific time and place, like the Old Testament prophets who were generally called to speak a specific word in a particular situation. Others seem to be pretty general, such as Jesus’ invitations to the first disciples to simply “follow me.” Don’t ask where or why, just follow me. So just what are we claiming when we proclaim “we are called”?
“Chosen” is no better, and frankly I have never really cared for “chosen” as it is used in scripture since too often it is blatantly exclusionary – “we are chosen” (and you are not.)
In conversation this week with my husband, he said something (or I heard it this way) that puts it like this: We are called by God, and we can choose to say “yes” to that call – and in that choosing, we are in turn “chosen” – not excluding others, but simply being included in the number of those who have heard and in some way answered “yes”. I like that. It sounds right to me.
So, to what are we called? To what have we said “yes”? Well, I – against all expectations – have been called to preach and teach. That is my formal calling as an ordained minister. I’ve also been called – along with everyone else out there – to an long list of things such as patience and compassion and mercy and love. Called to trust God and follow Jesus’s path to the best of my ability. Called to care about others as God cares about me.
The third part of this triplet is that we are called to be “Christ to one another.” While it may prove darn hard to do, this one at least seemed easy enough to understand – at first. My thinking here lead me to remember something else I’d read in recent months – that would be Rob Bell’s Love Wins, (© 2011) – in which he enumerates all the different “Jesuses” he has heard described by people who proclaim themselves “Christian.” While he was looking for the merciful Jesus, what he too often heard from others was the condemning Jesus. The choosing-a-few-and-letting-the-others-burn-in-hellfire Jesus. The Jesus who, according to the placards, hates a good chunk of us. The Jesus who is obsessed with counting our sins.
I’m sure we can think of many others on our own -- some we've had presented to us as the real thing: The bloody, suffering Jesus still hanging on the cross. The Jesus who only loves whites, or straights, or Americans. The Jesus who inspired the genocide of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the war in Serbia/Croatia in the 90's.
Or maybe (I hope) the one we've met is the bread-for-the-hungry Jesus? The come-to-me-all-who-are-weary Jesus? The come-on-in-everyone-is-welcome-here Jesus? If I am to be Christ for others, which Christ, which Jesus is it I hope to be? I’m pretty sure I need to know before I set out to do anything. As Rob Bell says somewhere in response to a person who told him they had rejected Jesus, “Some Jesuses should be rejected?” I certainly want nothing to do with some I’ve heard preached in recent years.
One thing I have always remembered about this hymn because it struck me as amusing and sad at the same time. I was reading a magazine for church musicians and some self-important someone had written a review of the song. It was a scathing review, finding absolutely nothing worth liking about the piece – because the words talk about us instead of talking about God’s greatness – the composer violated this person’s idea of what a hymn must be and therefore was to be condemned to the outer darkness. Now in my way of looking at it, God’s greatness, God’s goodness is the ground from which all else arises in this enterprise we call church. I take that as entirely a given. It is the response of the people that requires the struggle and the hard work and the teaching. God knows who God is – we don’t need to tell him/her every moment. It is humankind who still stumbles around in the dark a lot and needs every bit of encouragement and direction we can find. I think a hymn which reminds us who we are striving to be is a perfectly reasonable thing.
The reviewer was so locked into defending, as he saw it, the glory of God – which was never under attack – that he missed all the goodness and hope and encouragement in this hymn. We can learn from this and try to be careful that we are not so locked into one aspect of Christ that someone told us was important that we miss all the rest.
Somehow -- again, against all expectation -- we are called, we are chosen people -- we are struggling, together, to be Christ-like in a hurting and needy world -- all while knowing ourselves totally unworthy to be making such a claim. But God says "do it" and the best we can do is join hands and -- together -- put one foot in front of the other, trusting our great God to lead us.
RSS Feed