The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 24, Year A, October 16, 2011, St. Mark’s Church Antioch

“For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you…” (1 Thess. 1:4).

Christians are “chosen People”: not in the sense that they’re better than other people (what a lot of us think when we hear these words), but rather in the sense that they’re not self-selected but elected by God. That’s right: elected, chosen, with all the enormous weight that goes with being designated by God. When a President is elected, there’s a sense that the office goes beyond any one individual, and that the choice rests with the People. That’s the sense of what Saint Paul is saying in our second reading this morning: it’s God’s choice that matters, and no virtue or capacity of our own. The role we play as God’s chosen People, the office we’re assigned, has nothing to do with self-importance and everything to do with service.

Today we have some great examples before us, in our candidates for baptism and confirmation, folks who truly have been chosen by God. I hope none of you will be offended when I say that you are no different from any of those whom God loves, but that you have been chosen by God to play your role here today. You are receiving God’s grace; you are witnessing to God’s truth; but this is through God’s choice and not your own. Your wills have been moved through your own free choice, and that choice has brought you here today, but the Mover all along has been God.

This is a significant moment for our confirmands and for our baptismal candidate on a personal level, but it’s not about them as individuals. The man who said, “It’s all about me” had it dead wrong. When the Apostle Paul writes to the Church in Thessalonica he’s convinced that God has been at work in the formation of that community, and that it’s God’s choice to gather them to be his People in that place. The Church is not an aggregate of individuals, but something more. God does not choose individuals, but he does choose a People.

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul this morning, we find this in the First Letter of Peter, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). In other words, when God sent Jesus Christ to be the Savior of the world, he was also choosing a People to be his own, to be the Body of Christ in the world. Implicit in God’s action was his choice of us, his Church, the community of faith.

God’s choice leads to mission, which will take us out from this baptismal font, from this altar rail, into the world that is the mission field. Election has to do with service, with ministry, doing the will of God and not our own will. God has not chosen his People to puff them up, but to send them out. The wind that blows from God, the Holy Spirit, fills our sails and sends us forward.

Remember how our second reading began, with Paul remembering “before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 1:3). It’s in mission and ministry that our faith, hope, and love will be called upon. God’s choice is not an end in itself but is for the sake of the world; God’s choice requires our response and our participation in the mission he calls us to. That mission is supposed to make a big splash, in the first century and in our century as well. So in our reading, “For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place where your faith in God has become known” (1 Thess. 1:8). Change that big splash to a big noise that sounds forth like the blast of a trumpet. We’re supposed to make a noise in the world, to make a difference, and to do that we’re going to need all the faith, hope, and love that we can muster to do the work that God’s called us to do.

Let’s come back to our confirmands and to our baptismal candidate before we finish up. God is giving you grace, in baptism and in confirmation; God is making you his witnesses by letting you witness to us this morning. This is your time in the spotlight but it’s for the sake of the Church. You have been chosen, elected, designated by God. You are inspiring us with your leadership. But God is giving all of us, the Body of Christ, his grace through receiving the Body of Christ here at this altar. And we’re being sent forth together into the world in order to do Christ’s work. Part of what bears us forward is the wind from God that is his Spirit, that Spirit which fills you today and which inspires us through you.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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