Chosen by God
Pentecost 8, Proper 10
July 14, 2024
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Last Sunday was a wonderful day! We baptized little Alice Floyd. Today is a wonderful day as we baptize little Marin Motis. Sometimes I think I should bunch baptisms together, but, honestly, I’d baptize someone every Sunday if I could. It’s one of the very best parts of our life in Christ.
The decision to be baptized is huge, as is the decision to baptize a child. We place a lot of emphasis on that decision and the promises we ask the candidates to make, or their parents and godparents to make on behalf of a child. We take very seriously our collective responsibility as witnesses and our promise to “…do all in our power to support this person in her life in Christ.” “We will!” Then we renew our Baptismal Covenant with them.
All of these are serious commitments. The church provides a place for our children. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. Meg and I noticed on our first visit that there were many children’s tables in the Parish Hall, and that they were at the center of the room; so that everyone can keep an eye on them because they are treasures. And it goes on from there with children’s church, our Wednesday programs for children and youth, Camp Wingmann and the Care Center’s camps. VBS starts tomorrow.
We make them available and parents and the kids decide what they can do and how it all fits in their wider lives and activities. These are all critical decisions for Christ and his Kingdom.
But Paul reminds us in this passage from his letter to the Ephesians that as important as our decisions are, they are secondary in that God the Father “…chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” We were destined “for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.” Our choices are in response to him choosing us.
On one level that feels like sin and death have been chasing us and we’ve reached base, or we’ve gotten our children to base. Safe! There is some truth in that. But please remember, God’s mercy and judgment are perfect. He’s got the babies. He’s got his children.
Being chosen means a whole lot more than that. It’s a weighty responsibility. If we go back to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob struggled with being chosen by God. Jacob and his family were saved from a famine by moving to Egypt, but their descendants were enslaved for 400 years. Once they were delivered from slavery, they had to wander in the desert wilderness for 40 years. Then they had to conquer the Promised Land, and got in a lot of trouble for inter-mingling with the resident and neighboring pagans’ idolatry.
In today’s Old Testament reading, God has called simple Amos to literally call King Jeroboam II to straighten up. A plumb line is used to keep things straight. Here’s how Jeroboam II is described in 2 Kings:
He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he caused Israel to sin.
Jeroboam I, son of Nebat, had set up altars with golden calves in Bethel and Dan to distract people from worshipping the Lord in Jerusalem. Jeroboam II, 138 years later and no relation to Jeroboam I, continued the evil, yet he was “chosen.”
Israel got overrun and awash in the ebbs and flows of empire including but not limited to the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Macedonians and the Romans, the Ottomans and the British. Along the way they were largely dispersed and persecuted, most awfully by the Nazis and Soviets. Antisemitism continues to be a major problem around the world, despite the fact that there are less than 16 million Jews in the world. They are less than 1/5th of 1% of the world’s population and 86% of them live in either Israel or the United States.
As we move into the New Testament, John the Baptist was a pure and holy and true prophet. Jesus called him the greatest prophet. As we heard this morning, he was beheaded for confronting Herod; he was the first follower of Jesus to die. Likewise, Jesus’ Apostles were persecuted, imprisoned, beaten, tortured and killed. Paul very likely wrote this letter to the Ephesians from prison not long before his execution. The Church wasn’t legal in the Roman Empire until 313 AD.
It is estimated that more than 70 million Christians have been martyred since Jesus ascended. More than half of those, over 45 million, were killed in the 20th century by fascist and communist regimes in Europe and Asia, as well as dictators and sectarian conflicts in Africa and Asia. Estimates for this 21st century run from about 9,000 to 90,000 per year.
We are very blessed to live and worship in relative freedom. We should never take that for granted or fall into complacency. Having been chosen, we are to accept our responsibilities and keep our promises as best we can.
When we fail to persevere in resisting evil and fall into sin, we repent and receive forgiveness and get back on track.
When we fail to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, breaking of bread and the prayers; when we fail to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ by word and example; when we fail to seek Christ in all persons and fail to love our neighbor as ourselves; when we fail to strive for justice and peace among all people and fail to respect the dignity of every human being, we repent and receive forgiveness and get back on track.
We reaffirm those promises in a few minutes, each with the prayer, “We will, with God’s help.”
Archdeacon John will baptize his beautiful granddaughter with water, then I will anoint her and say, “Marin, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” This enacts what Paul noted, that we are “…marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.”
We are participating in a tremendous blessing by God. She’s safe! And we are setting her life on a path of weighty responsibility, one we walk with her and, with God’s help, bless the world around us.
AMEN!