Who does God choose?
We’ve heard two stories today about God choosing.
First we heard the story of God using Samuel to choose a new King for Israel. Then we heard the story of God using Abraham’s chief servant to choose a wife for Isaac.
Who does God choose, and How does God choose?
There are lots of ways of choosing aren’t there?
Line up against that wall and me and Johnny will take turns to pick teams for a game of playground football.
Dear Sir, you have been targeted by a top firm of head-hunters for consideration for the post of Director General of the BBC
Oh hi Jackie, I’m sorry you missed the committee meeting yesterday, you’ve been volunteered to run the BBQ at the Trinity Harvest Garden Party!
There are lots of ways of choosing, but how does God choose?
Let’s just have a closer look at those two stories and see what we can learn…
God tells Samuel to go off to Bethlehem, to Jesse’s household and choose a new King. What does Samuel think of God’s plan? Think for as moment – this is high treason – Saul is King, and Saul is going a bit mad. He suffers from violent mood-swings and paranoid fear for his own safety. Would you go off and anoint a new King knowing that Saul might easily find out?
And then think about the people of Bethlehem, and in particular, Jesse’s family. Remember who Samuel is – the one who is coming to visit. Samuel is the most revered religious leader in the country, and he has the King’s ear, he is a powerful man. Only recently he has summoned King Agag of the Amalekites and chopped him to bits with his sword in front of the altar at Gilgal.
Think what Samuel must have looked like, his mother Hannah had promised that his hair would never be cut and his beard never shaved – just like Samson. By this age he must have been a fearsome sight!
Straight away we realise that God’s choosing isn’t always a comfortable thing, it isn’t always something we are prepared for, and it is often something that terrifies us! When God chooses us, when God calls us there might be all sorts of frightening consequences, it doesn’t always feel right!
Many people live by that very simple philosophy don’t they? Perhaps you do – if it feels right, if it feels good – then I’ll do it. How easily that becomes, “God will only choose me to do things I am comfortable with.” Or “God will only choose me to do things that don’t threaten my peace of mind or my settled pattern of life.”
Unfortunately, God’s call, God’s choosing can be very unsettling, and very uncomfortable.
God’s calling might involve us in dispute with powerful people as we protest in favour of the poor and downtrodden. God’s calling might have us go to places and meet people who scare us out of our skin – that’s certainly possible. Or maybe, closer to home, God’s choosing might call us to share our Christian faith with a neighbour or a friend, a colleague or even a stranger – scary and unsettling as that might be.
And then, of course, you remember the rest of the story. Isaac invites Jesse and his family to come up and attend the evening sacrifice with him. And Isaac has Jesse parade his sons one by one. It’s a fabulous story isn’t it? Seven sons are wheeled out, one by one, but Samuel isn’t prompted to anoint any of them King. Oh, there is another one – but he’s the youngest, he’s out in the fields tending the sheep. Surely it couldn’t be him??
God chooses a shepherd-boy to be King of Israel; God chooses fishermen to be church leaders; God chooses women as the first witnesses to the resurrection; God chooses a child as an example of greatness. Years later, other shepherds from Bethlehem would be chosen for greatness – chosen to be among the first to hear of the birth of God’s Son, in Royal David’s City.
It’s a trick God plays all the time – to choose the ones we least expect. And God uses the trick so many times that it isn’t really a surprise anymore, is it?
Scholars recently unearthed a long-lost parable of Jesus, translated from the Dead-sea scrolls. It goes like this:
A king, close to death had three sons. The oldest son said, “It’s obvious that I shall inherit my father’s kingdom for I am the oldest and I am the strongest.” The middle son said, “It’s obvious I shall inherit my father’s kingdom, for I have made powerful allies through my marriage and I am the cleverest.” The youngest son said, “I have no chance of inheriting my father’s kingdom for I am the youngest, the weakest and the ugliest.”
When the king died and his sons gathered for the reading of his Will, this is what they heard. “The inheritor of my entire kingdom shall be my oldest son, because that’s what usually happens.” The end.
Does that sound genuine to you? No? Of course it doesn’t, because we expect Jesus to do the unexpected. We know that’s how God is, don’t we. We know that’s how God is except in one very crucial area – our own lives.
Who is the person you least expect God to choose? Who is the person you least expect God to call? It’s you, it’s yourself – whoever you are! And that’s the point. That’s why God does it over and over again – to try to ensure that it gets through our thick skins and establishes itself in our brains – the truth that God has chosen us, God has chosen you – just when you least expected it!
Samuel anoints David, but it is years before David is King. No matter, he knows God has chosen him for service, and that carries him through thick and thin.
What of our second story – the story of Abraham sending his servant to choose a wife for his son. How would you set about picking partners for your kids? Maybe you already have! Take some advice from me – the best approach is to be utterly and completely disapproving of your favoured choice, and to ban your child from seeing them or having them in the house. They’ll be engaged within weeks!
There are ways of choosing, but how does God choose?
The wise old servant sets off to find a wife for Isaac. I don’t know whether Isaac has slipped him a secret list of attributes before he goes, but the servant seems to ignore all conventional considerations. He devises the following test: He will go to the well with his ten camels and girls who were collecting water if they would let him have a sip of water from their jars. The one who offers him a drink and then goes on to water his camels too is God’s choice.
The servant could have done it a different way. He could have arrived in town and made his grand announcement that his rich master Isaac was looking for a wife from back home, is anyone interested? No doubt he would have had a flood of offers and he could have lined them all up and checked teeth, girth, sewing skills…
It could have been just like that line up of seven handsome young men paraded before Samuel. But God had said to Samuel, “Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is. I do not judge as man judges. Man looks at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”
The wise servant’s little test reveals what is in Rebecca’s heart, she has an open and generous Spirit within her – God’s Spirit. It is God’s Spirit within her that prompts her to respond in such a generous way. How much water does a thirsty camel drink? The servant had ten thirsty camels to be watered. Rebecca probably has to go back and forth to the well several times, all in aid of a complete stranger.
It reminds me of Jesus and the parable of the sheep and the goats – “Lord, when did we see you thirsty and in need of a drink?” In other words, “If we’d known it was you, Lord, of course we would have helped out!”
But what impresses me about that parable is that the “sheep” also act incredulously. They too ask, “Lord, when did we ever see you thirsty and offer you a drink?” The point is this – that they were never looking for reward, they would have offered a drink whether it was the Lord or not, they had within them a generous and open Spirit – the Spirit of God. I once heard someone preach on that parable and he concluded that we should try to be like the sheep and look for Christ in all those in need.
No, no. no. no. no. no. no!!!! The sheep were never looking for Christ, they never had reward on their minds, they were simply responding with open and generous hearts wherever there was human need.
So, there’s more to God’s choosing than meets the eye, there’s more to God’s calling than meets the eye. It seems that God’s calling comes to us all, it seems that God’s choosing comes to you and me – the most unexpected of people. It seems that God’s calling, God’s choosing can put us in uncomfortable situations in unfamiliar places alongside unlikely characters. It seems that God’s choosing was never designed to fit in with all our plans for the future.
It seems that it isn’t God’s choosing or God’s calling that are in question, it is our response that is crucial, and this is where God has played his master stroke.
I’m not up to it … I’m too young … I’m not good with words … I’m too old … My child-bearing days are gone … they’ll just laugh at me … I’m just a weak sinner … excuses, excuses, excuses … give me time to establish a firm financial footing for myself … let me wait until I’m free from personal ties … I am a man of unclean lips … excuses, excuses, excuses … All of these are excuses that God’s chosen people have offered to God’s call through the Bible. And that is just the point. “It’s all true”, says God, “ I agree! You are weak, tongue-tied, too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too bald, too useless to achieve anything I call you to do, IN YOUR OWN STRENGTH! But I am not asking you to do anything in your own strength, I am calling you to serve me in my strength – by the power of the Holy Spirit. I have chosen YOU, I am calling YOU, YOU are the one I want. Come, follow me, and let’s see what we can do!”
Let us pray…