Sixth Sunday of Easter May 5, 2024 Homily
The Scriptures today, among other
themes, contain the theme of CHOOSING, or CHOICE.
Making choices is something we do all
the time. Mostly small choices. Regular or decaf? Vanilla or chocolate? ABC, NBC or CBS news? * Making choices can be fun. Or it can be difficult, even painful,
especially if the consequences of choosing are serious.
For the most important choices of
life, for our eternal relationship with God, who does the choosing? Naturally we think that we make the
choice. But that is not so. Our Gospel today clearly has Jesus declare: “It
was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.”
Our relationship with Jesus Christ is
not a choice we made.
Rather Jesus chose YOU.
And ME. We have been chosen by
The Lord to be His Disciples. As Jesus
says in the Gospel today: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you
ask the Father in my name he may give you.”
So, if you think that you chose Jesus, and chose to be a
follow Christ, get over it.
You have been chosen, and you have not
been chosen because of your stellar character, nor your moral uprightness, nor
your good looks, nor any quality of yourself, but because Jesus Christ chose
you to go and bear fruit that will last.
You have been chosen to do something, to accomplish something, to “go
and bear fruit that will remain.”
How you respond to being chosen is up
to you, but Christ Jesus does the choosing, not us.
Well, who gets chosen? The morally upright? The good people? Those with the right spiritual pedigree? Nope.
TWO TWO TWO May 5, 2024
In our first reading today St Peter
and some fellow disciples go to the house of Cornelius, who is NOT Jewish, but
a Gentile. One of those others, the
pagans. One of “them.”
Peter is urged in a vision to go there, and once there, Peter
preaches, and the Holy Spirit comes down on all who were listening, and the
pagans begin to glorify God and exult in tongues. And our Scripture reading states: “The
circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the
gift of the Holy Spirit would have been poured out on the Gentiles also.” Why were they astounded? Because the Holy Spirit was choosing people
that they would never have considered, much less chosen. But the Holy Spirit is not confined to our
criteria, our likes and dis-likes.
The Holy Spirit is very independent,
and frankly, a little contrarian.
Those that are chosen by the Holy Spirit may very well not be
the ones we would have picked. The
uncircumcised pagans didn’t follow all the rules, they had many gods, they ate
pork, they didn’t know the law, they spoke a different language. They were different.
None-the-less, the Holy Spirit fell
upon all who were listening to the word, and the gentiles began speaking in
tongues and glorifying God. //
We do not decide who gets
chosen. It may be immigrants. It may be Q-Anon devotees. It may be Aggies. Whatever, it is the Holy Spirit, not us, who
chooses.
Finally, how are we to respond when
we are chosen? Should we feel good about
ourselves? Smugly wait for our
redemption? Let everyone else know that
we are among the favored chosen? Of
course not.
THREE THREE THREE April
05, 2024
Jesus tells us what we are to do. “It was not you who chose me, but I who
chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, …” If you are indeed chosen then you have
been given a commission, an appointment, a job to do. Namely, “to go and bear fruit that will
remain..”
The fruits of the Holy Spirit, according to St. Paul in his
letter to the Galatians are: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22-3). This is the fruit that remains. That is what we are to produce. So be fruitful!
And then
Jesus sums up the whole reality of being chosen in a succinct statement: “This I command you: love one another.” That is the essence of being chosen. Love one another. AMEN.
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