This word was given me to share with those attending the closing service of New Room 2018. I share it here in an abbreviated form so that if you were there, you’ll have this word to remind you in the dark places of who you are: You are chosen.
I fell apart last year. I think I can now say with some confidence that I was on a spiritual threshold, and those can be so painful. In that moment of birthing from one spiritual room to another, it can feel like insanity. It feels dark. I was there last year for several months, waiting for relief. I was seeing a counselor who kept me duct-taped together. He asked me one day to make a list of “I am” statements. He wanted me to be grounded in my identity while I was reeling emotionally, so he told me to just start writing. “I am _____.” Fill in the blank, he said, and keep doing it. He was looking for about 2000 “I am” statements.
The first hundred or so sounded like my personal PR campaign. They were all positive statements, if shallow, about myself. Somewhere around three or four-hundred I got honest. I began to say things I’d never admitted out loud (or on paper) before. Things like: I am embarrassed by failure. I am competitive. I am envious of others’ success.
On one particularly dark day, I wrote, “I am suspicious of God.”
On another day, just as the light was beginning to dawn in my life again, I wrote, “I am an artist.” That was one of the most profound realizations, and resonated as most true. I am not an engineer. No wonder most church growth books don’t work for me (and no wonder I’m no good at systems). I am an artist, and I approach ministry and life from that place. What freedom!
The statement that held all the other statements together was this one: I am a mixed bag. We all are. Most of us are a mixture of strong and weak, good and trying, sinful and saved. And in that way, we are in good company. Jesus seemed partial to mixed bags. Peter was among his favorites. Peter, who presented as a fisherman, fell to his knees at the miraculous catch of fish Jesus orchestrated and exhaled, “I am a sinful man!” From that place of humility, he was able to see Jesus as he was when Jesus asked, “Who do people say I am?” To which Peter replied, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus answered, “And you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” From sinful to faithful … and then just a few paragraphs later, to satanic.
What can hold all those seeming inconsistencies together? Only Jesus. Only when our “I am” is connected to his “I am” can we have any hope of knowing ourselves as we truly are.
It makes sense, then, that having learned this lesson through his own season of sanctification, Peter could now tell others who they are. In 1 Peter 2:1-10, the apostle tells his first-century audience and then all of us who follow Jesus that we are all a mix of chosen and rejected, precious and peculiar, disobedient and destined. Ours is to find our place in those tensions by connecting to Christ.
You are chosen by God, rejected by humans.
Not long ago, I found myself in a children’s classroom listening to a lesson on the free gift of salvation. The teacher was doing a good job of explaining an abstract concept. She even had a neat little visual aid to go with it. In that class, there was a little boy who is powerfully bright and resilient, who absorbs everything, who lets very little get past him. He was listening to this teacher explain how we can’t add anything to our salvation, that we can’t work our way to heaven. And this little guy was listening and trying hard not to interrupt, until he just couldn’t help himself. Eventually, he broke in to say, “Yeah, its free … but you have to take it.” Which is Wesleyan free will perfectly expressed in eight words. But that was lost on his teacher, whose point was that you can’t add anything. So she said, “ Riiiighhhht … but its free.”
“But you have to take it.”
“But you can’t add anything to it,” the teacher insisted.
“But you have to take it.”
“But its free,” she said, now a bit more desperately.
“But you have to take it,” he said, more forcefully.
I don’t blame him for being unwilling to let go. His point was worth the fight. This is how John Wesley explained our chosenness:
“By the free love and almighty power of God taken out of, separated from, the world … Election, in the scripture sense, is God’s doing anything that our merit or power have no part in. The true predestination, or fore-appointment of God is, 1. He that believes shall be saved from the guilt and power of sin. 2. He that endures to the end shall be saved eternally. 3. They who receive the precious gift of faith, thereby become the sons of God; and, being sons, they shall receive the Spirit of holiness to walk as Christ also walked. Throughout every part of this appointment of God, promise and duty go hand in hand. All is free gift; and yet such is the gift, that the final issue depends on our future obedience to the heavenly call.” (italics mine)
In other words, “It is free, but you have to take it!”
We are chosen, and we choose. The gospel is full of biblical tensions like this. If you want to be first, you have to be last. If you want to find life, you have to lose the one you’ve got. If you want freedom, you must surrender. So Peter, who is both a sinful man and a rock in the Church of Jesus Christ, chooses this refrain in his letter to the early church to tell us who we are. We are both chosen and rejected, precious and peculiar, disobedient and destined.
Chosen by God but rejected by men, Peter says. And every day we have to decide which one wins. Which one of me will show up today? Chosen me or rejected me? Peter has a word for us. Reject the spirit of rejection. Choose your chosenness. Chosenness is your gift, but you have to take it. Choose your chosenness.
You are precious, my friend. But you are also peculiar.
If you carry the spirit of Christ, how could you not be precious? When the Holy Spirit is deposited into us, we become tabernacles of God. We connect to that identity by faith, also a gift from God. These are gifts to be guarded, held as holy … to be honored even when they put us at odds with the world around us.
In the NIV, 1 Peter 2:9 translates as, “chosen people, royal priesthood, holy nation, God’s special people.” The KJV gets right to the point: “You are a peculiar people.” When we do it right, it will be uncomfortable. We will seem peculiar, out of step with the status quo. When we do it right, we’ll look a little funny to the folks around us.
You are disobedient … but you are destined.
One of the best movie lines ever is the line from the old movie, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” The move is half animation, half real people. Eddie Valiant is the real-life detective and Jessica Rabbit is this animated version of voluptuousness. One day they are together and she is telling him how hard it is to be her — how misunderstood she is — and in a sultry-and-sinful voice she explains, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”
Which is a brilliant line, because she is actually an animated cartoon figure. But the line is also theologically profound (which I’m sure is exactly what they were going for). This is the human condition. We are drawn that way — toward disobedience. Never get too far from acknowledging that you are saved by grace, that on your own you are a “sinful man.” You are a mixed bag, a mess … but you are God’s mess. You are a person with a destiny, a purpose. You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, created to declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Scot McKnight asks a profound question: Who is capable of this calling? No one. Not on our strength. We are holy only by association. Our identity must be in Christ.
You are chosen and rejected … precious and peculiar … disobedient and destined.
You are a mixed bag, and so am I. And as we are, we are chosen. Chosen. As you go, remember that you are chosen. Remember who you are and whose you are and remember, too, that your chosenness only works when your “I am” is tethered to his “I am.”
