October 6, 2005
Few
Pentecost 21/23A
For many are called, but few are chosen (Mt 22.14)
The Japanese name for Korea is “Chosen.” The U S Marine veterans who fought there in that mid-twentieth century misunderstanding rightly call themselves, “The Chosen Few.”
Now that I’ve succumbed to that homiletic temptation, what on earth was Matthew talking about that Jesus was talking about? Why was that aphorism that has stood so well and so perplexingly down through the ages attached to the story of a desperate and fickle king?
Maybe it was because Matthew was a bit fickle, himself, and was throwing his evangelical weight around. Maybe it was a hint to Luke not to take himself so seriously. Frankly, one may wonder, as some authorities do, whether Jesus ever said it at all. But there it is, in the scriptural canon for all time and as plain as day in the gospel this morning. Further, we believe the Holy Spirit has a lot to do with what is said there, including what Jesus says there, and with how the church interprets what is said there and, unlike Luke, we’d best take it more seriously than not.
“Many are called, but few are chosen.” I suspect there are no more important concepts about the life in Christ than vocation and choice, the very core of our Baptismal Covenant.
The Greek word for “church” is “ekklesia” which means something like “those who are called out.” The very characteristic of what it means to be a human being is the capacity, the freedom to choose. It is what is meant by being created in the image of God, what God means by imagining us into being.
Jesus realized that God had a special calling for him when he confronted the Devil out there in those early forty days in the wilderness. He still seemed not absolutely certain of that calling as late as his sweating blood about God’s will for him in Gethsemane. That he said Yes, may be the saving act, itself, rather, even, than the cross. Vocation and choice.
“Many are called, but few are chosen.”
Maybe that means that God calls a lot of us, maybe all of us, to be his church. Maybe it means not that God chooses only a few, for, after all, he’s called us all, but that only a few of us exercise the freedom to choose or not to choose his calling, actually, whether or not we choose to be human as God has imagined human to be. Maybe the church, the called, is where we work out that vocation and perfect it, which means to follow through on it as the chosen few.
Maybe all this is homiletic license, one of which I have, for better or worse.
[Visit Episcopal Relief and Development at http://www.er-d.org/ to make a donation to Katrina or Rita Relief or Episcopal Migration Ministries at emm@episcopalchurch.org to volunteer to assist displaced people with housing.]
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