May 17, 2009

Raise your hand if you have ever had this experience.  Sometime in your life, you were on a playground and some persuasive person said we’re going to play kickball.  Greg, Joe, pick teams.  Or you were in a classroom and the teacher announced a spelling bee or geography jeopardy and Mary and Linda were designated captains and told to select their players?  Who among us ever sat in chemistry class and, on the first day, was told to find a lab partner?  It seems to be a universal experience to find oneself in a group waiting to be called up.  We know the internal nervousness as we listen for our name.  The activity and our skill level determine how long we will be left unclaimed. 

If it was softball, I settled in for a long, humiliating wait.  If it was know your literary characters day, I knew I was going fast.  History, volleyball, random world facts and I was good to go.  Math IQ meant someone would roll his or her eyes and say, “we’ll take her.”  In each group, and with every task, we have a sense of our value.  We are aware of our “desirability.”  We always hope to be selected early.  We want to be seen as an asset.  Once chosen, we strive to make a contribution.  If we’re drafted early, we work to honor that trust.  If we round out the bottom of the team, we try extra hard to disprove the unflattering perception.

There is much power and depth of feeling in being chosen.  But, when we are selected, by whom, from what group, and for what purpose, matters to us.  Being asked to be the ninth bridesmaid in a cousin’s wedding whom we see every third Christmas makes us sigh as we think, well, there goes $500 for an ugly dress and a weekend of my life I’ll never get back.  Getting the most valuable player, the teacher of the year, or best team leader award brings a very different reaction.  To be accepted, singled out and acclaimed by people we respect is to be made easy in our innermost being.  All human beings desire and require affirmation.  All human beings come with an innate longing to be wanted and valued.  We need to know we have worth, that we matter to someone, that our being alive and moving in the world has a positive effect.  It is important to us that we are seen as contributors, as a precious commodity.  We want to be prized as a diamond not dismissed as dirt.  Every human being has this shared central unfailing desire.  Whether we’re born in the mansions of Newport or the ghettos of Mumbai, we want to be cherished by someone.  No one, no one wants to be the last one chosen every time.  We don’t even like it when it happens occasionally.

The drive to find acceptance, the quest for affirmation is a universal human experience and, when that core need is met, we relax.  We become comfortable in our own skins.  We locate both confidence and tolerance.  When we know we are valued, we rest from our striving, and from that place, we extend grace and kindness to others.  When we know that someone, enough someones who are important to us, care about us, we become collaborators rather than competitors.  When humans feel accepted, when they sense they are respected, their envy and jealousy and anger dissipate.  Lonely, alienated, last-chosen people are the folk who bring guns into Columbine.  People connected, cherished and affirmed are the folk who shield their friends and pull others to safety.

So, being chosen matters.  Someone important in your life saying, I see you for who you are, is an empowering experience.  Someone claiming, I know your good qualities and your weak points and I love you still, is a life-giving gift.  A person and a community sealing us as worthy, as beloved, as unique and precious transforms us.  With these positive messages resounding in our consciousness, we move forward encouraged.  We act with valor and determination.  We endeavor to do our best believing that our best is sufficient and powerful.  Being picked early and often grows our sense of well-being.  Being picked once by one who really matters has the same effect.

Jesus knew the power of “being chosen.”  He understood that lifting people up in clear, personal ways changed their perceptions of self and pushed them to new and better identities.  In the stories about Jesus’ ministry, there are accounts after accounts, incident upon incident where the Son of God speaks directly to one person and says I believe in you.  I trust you to be who God created you to be.  You are fine.  You are loved and you can go and be even better.  You can put down your destructive behavior.  You can commit this sin no more and move forward to a better life.  Reports say that even when he was speaking to crowds on a mount or on a plain or from a boat off the shore, people heard him speaking directly to their heart.  Jesus didn’t orate in esoteric, abstract terms.  He didn’t say I came for humanity.  He said I’ve come for you! Jesus made his connections direct and personal.

In his long discourse we’ve been reading in the Easter season, Jesus gives his disciples final instructions.  He presses the central points of his mission on them so they will be well versed and prepared to carry his message on when he returns to his father.

This morning, in the middle of his treatise on the importance of expansive, empathetic love, Jesus makes this claim, “You did not choose me, I chose you.”   “You did not choose me, I chose you.”  Before I was the rage of Palestine, before I was the next great thing, the prophet of the age, the threat of Jerusalem, before I had Pilate undone and washing his hands, I picked you.  Out of the world of choices I had available, I selected you.  I saw you for who you are, warts and skills together, strengths and foolishness, and still I chose you.  I knew you would succeed and fail.  I knew you would represent me some days and desert me others.  I knew you were brave and petty, determined and dense.  I knew you through and through and yet, I trusted you.  I loved you and called you and made you my own.

Can we image what those first followers felt when they heard this claim?  Did any other part of his speech stick?  Did they just get stuck on the “me, me, me, he picked me” statement?  If so, can we blame them?  How amazing would that be; to be in a room separated from a throng of fans, people who had traveled for days to get a glimpse, a snippet from the man of the hour and have him say, you didn’t come after me, I came after you?   How affirming would that be, to be picked personally and early by Jesus?  “I want you on my side.”  “Come, stand by me.”  “You’re with us.”  That would be a good day!  Think about going home after that.  “Anything good happen today?”  “Yeah!  I got picked by Jesus to be on his team!  We’re going all the way this year.  I don’t know about trophies or tee shirts, but I’m pretty sure the award is going to be awesome!”

Heaven and immortality aside, what a marvel to hear Jesus say, “I know you, I love you, I trust you, I charge you to go for me, to be my voice in the world.”  Could there be greater affirmation than that?  What other recognition would one require?  What other accolade, honor or accomplishment could touch that endorsement?  Personal striving and insecurity must have died that day.  Deep, deep peace and confidence must have overtaken internal anxiety and unease.  History tells us, Christ’s selection was not misplaced.  Following his Ascension, the disciples, the ones he chose, organized themselves and departed for the ends of the earth.  They took his teachings and life story to villages and metropolitans, to Jews and Gentiles, Europeans and Africans, priests and pagans.  They carried his word.  So effective, so committed were they in their work that 2,000 years later the world knows their story and power of the man who believed in them and sent them out. 

The claim Jesus made that night in the upper room would be a compelling story, an interesting anecdote in its right, but his statement was not a pronouncement reserved for that one group, that one time.  His words were meant to be remembered and passed on to us as well.  Jesus says to us “You did not choose me, I chose you.”  I came for you.  I died for you.  I am connected to you – specifically.  As I knew the 12, I know you.  I love, cherish, trust you as I did the early disciples.  Know that you are claimed for my side.  Go now, and serve the world like the first ones chosen.

Therefore dear ones, we set ourselves to the task of

Relishing his confidence in us,

Being all he believes we can be,

Taking his words further and deeper into the world by our speech and in our actions,

And so

Proving his choice - worthy and wise.

Amen.