I love comedies, even the ones that I think are brilliant but actually flop at the box office. About ten years ago, a film called “The Guilt Trip” came out about an overbearing Jewish mother played by Barbara Streisand and her son played by Seth Rogen, as they embark on an unexpected cross-county road trip together, getting on one another’s nerves but also growing in the process.
At one poignant moment in the movie, Streisand turns to the son, an organic chemist, and blesses him with these words: “Just remember one thing,” she says. “If all the little boys in the world were lined up, and I could only pick one to be my son, I would pick you…every time.”
To be chosen, every time. After all these years, I still hold on to these words of fierce, motherly love. What would the world be like if each and every one of us knew we were claimed by a love like this?
Years ago, as I looked down upon my own babies and finally understood the depths of loving another, I often wondered: if I am capable of this kind of love, how much more must God love them? How much more must God love me? How much more must God love us?
The writer of Ephesians, perhaps the apostle Paul writing from prison or one of Paul’s later followers, in one, long, tumbling Greek sentence helps to answer this question.
The message to early believers, at its core, is, “You, too!”[1] “You, too, belong in Christ’s family!” “Indeed, you are chosen…every time!”
Imagine Jews and Gentiles of the ancient world, hearing these affirming words of the early church, each in their own contexts and with their own particularities, being invited and included into this new movement of God to bring all people into unity under Christ.
You, too. In Christ, you are chosen, every time.
This is a hard concept for many of us, me included, to accept. Culturally, we are hard-wired to believe we need to do something or be something to deserve love. We live in a world where being chosen for something tends to mean more about our individual selves – something we have, or have done, or have achieved – rather than about the one who chooses us.
· A teenager gets chosen for an elite hockey team because of her skill, her hard work, and her command performance during tryouts.
· A wealthy investor is chosen to be president of a board because of his access to capital and his connections to influential people.
· A kindergartener is chosen to be the lead in the school play because of his outgoing nature and obvious talent.
We are used to associating being chosen with some special quality we have or something special we have done! But in the many stories of God choosing people in the Bible – whether it is Miriam, Abraham, Sarah, Deborah, David, Jeremiah, Esther, Peter, or Paul– the way God goes about choosing people is fundamentally different. Almost always, God chooses people not for their faultless characters, nor their accomplishments, nor their potential, but because they are open to the witness of God.[2] Because they are open to the blessings that God bestows.
And so, when God chooses Moses for important work, Moses cries, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11) When the angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah with news that Elizabeth would bear a son, he exclaims, “How will I know that his is so? I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years!” (Luke 1:18) And when God chooses Mary to be the very mother of Jesus, she asked, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34) We might also wonder, how can this be, O God, that I would be chosen by you, that you could use me, exactly as I stand before you now?
But in Christ, the math we have internalized to organize our lives and judge our worthiness no longer adds up. That God knows us and loves us and adopts us as children is about what God did before the world was even created, and not about anything we could do to micro-manage our way into God’s grace. One translation of Ephesians helps to focus our attention away from ourselves and towards God. It reads: “How blessed is God! What a blessing God is! Long before God laid down earth’s foundations, God had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago God decided to adopt us into God’s family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure God took in planning this!)” (Ephesians 1:3-6, The Message)
It’s not about us, it never was. It is about the blessings of God. And together, we have always been included. We have always been loved. We have always been chosen, every single time.
As Christians and Lutherans, we mark our adoption into this new life in Jesus Christ in the sacrament of Baptism. Baptism is a tangible and powerful testimony to the spiritual blessings God lavishes upon us, freely and unfailingly -- these same blessings that pour out of our text today -- riches of redemption, forgiveness, grace, and the inheritance of eternal life. When we reaffirm our baptisms, we are reaffirming the life-giving promises God makes to us, in community. We are reminding ourselves that we are chosen by God, every time, to be a blessing to others. We are reminding ourselves that we are chosen by God, every time, to open ourselves up to the witness to Christ in the world.
In this way, Baptism is not so much about who is in and who is out. It is not really about where we stand as individuals. It is about praising God with our whole heart as a community for the awesome gift of being known and belonging to Christ, exactly as we are. It is about receiving this gift and letting it work its way into our hearts, as individuals and as a community. It is about believing in our own belonging so much that we can lavish the gift of belonging on those around us who do not know.
I think this ancient letter to the Ephesians, written so long ago, might remind us in important ways to put God back in the center of things. It challenges us to be a people who return, in all that we do, to blessing God – for it is God, and not the works of our hands or hearts, who blesses us with every abundance, on earth as it is in heaven.
All praise and honor be to the One who chooses me, and you, and us all, every time.
Amen.
[1] I owe this insight to a commentary on the text by William Loader, accessed at: https://billloader.com/lectionaryindex.html
[2] I owe this insight to a reading of Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation for Friday, July 2, 2021, accessed here: https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/