There’s
a little rhyming couplet – you could hardly call it poetry – that most
people thought amusing until it got branded as anti-Semitic. It isn’t,
of course, and was never meant to be. Here’s how it goes:
How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews!
It’s no more than a playful
commentary on God’s mysterious election of the Chosen People, but it
could also serve as a commentary on a lot of God’s other choices that
are no less “odd” – as today’s scripture readings attest.
In the reading from Exodus, we find the
chosen people, the Israelites, camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai after
having been delivered by God from the hands of their Egyptian captors at
the waters of the Red Sea. Moses climbs the mountain while the people
remain below, and God gives Moses a most remarkable message to take back
to the people. “Tell them…you have seen how I bore you up on eagle
wings and brought you here to myself. Therefore, if you hearken to my
voice and keep my Covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer
to me than all other people, though all the earth is mine.”
I called that ‘a most remarkable message’ for
God to give to the people through Moses. It was. The Jews were, as
Deuteronomy tells us, the most unlikely of peoples to be God’s “special
possession.” They were “the smallest of nations” - nobodies, really,
without power or influence. But the Lord set his heart on them, chose
them, made an everlasting Covenant with them. And even though they would
sometimes fail to keep their part of the bargain – rebelling against God
and Moses when the going got rough, and the rigors of the desert began
to take their toll, and they would find themselves longing for the flesh
pots of Egypt – even then, God remained faithful. And we have to ask:
what was it that God saw in these people? How odd that God should look
upon them as his “special possession, dearer…than all other people.” But
God did and God does. “How odd of God to choose the Jews!” Any way you
view it, there is mystery here. Theologians call it the mystery of
divine election.
The story of the calling of The Twelve in the
reading from Matthew’s gospel is no less a mystery. How odd of Jesus to
choose those twelve! Couldn’t he have done better? Better than Simon
Peter whose name means “rock” but whose response when push came to shove
was more like sand or pebbles? Better than Philip who was so dull and
slow to understand, or Thomas who was so slow to believe? Better than
Matthew, a despised tax collector? Better than Judas who betrayed him?
And the others among The Twelve weren’t exactly Fortune 500 candidates,
either! How odd of Jesus to choose those twelve!
The reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the
Romans points to yet one more example of how truly mysterious – or odd -
God’s choices are. That would be God’s choice of us! “While we were
still helpless…while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” St.
Paul says. And that has to be the greatest mystery of all for, to
continue St. Paul’s thought, “Only with difficulty does one die for a
just person, though perhaps for a good person one might find courage to
die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners
Christ died for us.”
My friends, we may have become so familiar with
these mysteries that they no longer seem all that mysterious to us, but
mysterious they most surely are. By any human reckoning, they simply do
not make sense. Only within the economy – the strange plan – of a God
who “chooses the foolish of this world to shame the wise…and the weak of
this world to shame the strong” – only within the parameters of a faith
that finds in the crucified Christ not a stumbling block or sheer
foolishness but “the very power and wisdom of God,” can we even begin to
make sense of God’s surprising choices because this much is clear: most
if not all of God’s choices fly in the face of common sense. Think of a
whole long litany of saints who were the most improbable of choices but
who have profoundly shaped and formed the Church over the centuries:
Paul, Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Joan of Arc,
Therese of Lisieux, to name but a few.
Dear friends, this faith of ours is mystery
upon mystery, and if we find ourselves massaging or manipulating it to
make it more closely resemble common sense, we will have lost
everything. Our only response to any of it – including God’s utterly
inexplicable choice of ourselves – should be quiet and humble gratitude
- along with an eagerness to give back, to give generously because of
all we have been given. Jesus’ words to the Twelve from today’s gospel
says it all: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to
give!”
And it all starts here at the
table of the Eucharist where the greatest of all gifts is ours for the
taking. But only so that we can turn around and give as we have been
given!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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