YOU'VE BEEN CHOSEN!

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"You did not choose me, but I chose you" (Jn 15:16)

The word "choose" seems fairly neutral: you choose a pair of shoes, you choose which train to take or what to order from the menu. But in the New Testament the word "choose" is much more significant. The Greek verb for "choose," eklegomai, refers to "a special choice based on a significant preference, implying a favorable attitude toward what is chosen." 

Very often in the bible the one doing the choosing is God. For example, when Paul is preaching to the Jews in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia, he says "The God of this people chose our ancestors..." The Jews saw themselves as God's "chosen people."

In the accounts of the Transfiguration of Jesus, you remember the voice speaking from the cloud. Mark and Matthew have "This is my son, my beloved," but Luke has "This is my son, whom I have  "chosen." 

Often, then, "chosen" means "blessed" or "beloved." So, when Jesus says in this Sunday's gospel passage "I chose you," the expression is far from neutral, as if Jesus were simply saying "From a pool of millions of possibilities, I randomly picked you."

Rather, the expression "I chose you" carries a number of beautiful connotations: "You are unique, you are special to me, I love you just the way you are, there's nothing you could do that would ever make me stop loving you."

When I take "I have chosen you" personally and believe that I truly am "chosen" and "beloved," by Jesus, then everything changes:

I'm filled with a joy that radiates outward toward others as I come to realize that not only am I particularly chosen and personally loved by God, but so is every other person in the world. My way of seeing and interacting with others is completely changed.  

Love becomes a normal way of seeing the world and everything in it -- including myself. If I find it difficult to love myself sometimes, I can now ask  "Who am I to despise someone whom God loves so much?" 

My way of experiencing evil and suffering changes as well. Suffering is no longer a futile, horrible absurdity, but rather, in the context of my being personally loved by God, is somehow a part of a mysterious loving plan that is way beyond my feeble ability to understand. But my suffering is now a share in the suffering of Jesus who loves me and chose me and who conquered evil and suffering and death. 

When I stop valuing my "chosen" status, and choose other ways to try to fulfill myself, this is what we call sin. But I know that I am still Jesus' chosen and beloved no matter what, and that he is always ready to forgive me and let me start over.

Imagine for a second a world in which each person is aware of being uniquely chosen and loved by God, and treats everyone else accordingly. This is Jesus' dream, "the Kingdom of God." Let us each do our share of the work of building his Kingdom on earth, we who have been chosen to go and bear much fruit.