The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Sermon: Sunday March 1, 2009
I Lent Mark 1:9-15
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa



“God is not something people choose for themselves. (Being chosen by God) does not grant access to all the answers but means contending with hard questions, thankless tasks, and usually a harrowing journey.”

These words were written by an individual to set a context of their experience of being drawn into a community of faith and coming to a decision for the first time in her life to “join” or become part of a church. Kathleen Norris, author of “The Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace”, describes her journey that propelled her to overcome her fears of being part of a church, to be patient with the boundaries that churches sometimes unknowingly present to un-churched people, and to come to a point of making a decision to become part of a community of faith. Kathleen Norris describes the experience as not so much having made a choice, but of coming to an understanding that God has chosen her, AND everyone else she was about to join in this new journey in her life.
She writes, “All Christians are considered to have a call to what is commonly termed, ‘the priesthood of all believers’; all are expected to use their lives as to reveal the grace of the Holy Spirit working through them. It’s a tall order, to literally be a sacrament, and it helps to remember Jesus statement, “You did not choose me, I chose you”.
She continues,
St. Bonaventure wrote, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”

By now you may have figured that I would like to focus this sermon today on the idea of choice. Surely by now you are in full awareness that we have embarked on our journey into Lent. You know this because at the very least, there is a prediction of 3-6 inches of snow, the normal weather prediction at the beginning of every lent. You also can see of course that the liturgical colors have changed to purple. If you had the opportunity you bore on your head the ash that reminds you of God’s calling you into being out of the very dust of the earth and your inextricable connection to one another and to the God who made you. We began this morning in penitence, asking God’s forgiveness through corporate confession. You have been invited to a season of self-examination and prayer. You may also be well on your way to establishing and living into your Lenten discipline. This discipline conversation may involve these questions: “What shall I give up? Or what shall I take on? This endeavor of course comes with the memory that such efforts find their meaning in the purpose of becoming more intentional about removing the obstacles or providing a path toward growing closer to God and neighbor.
I said in the beginning this sermon would focus on choices. I am aware that often our Lenten disciplines lead to an exploration of choices. If you are a list maker often such exploration leads to a list far more robust on the side of bad choices rather than good ones. Today, this first Sunday of Lent, with deference to our inclination to make disciplines about delving morosely into the bad choices we have made, I instead want at least for us to consider a bit not so much the choices we have made, but rather what it means to be chosen.
St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes choices in one way, Christ another.” We live in a world and in a culture that values deeply choice. In fact, having the opportunity to make choices is a core value of who we are as a free people. I suggest however that the spirit of having choices has also grown into all aspects of our lives from consumerism to moral decision making. We have so many choices about us that I suggest we are sometimes numbed by the choices that are about us. I remember escorting a young African man who had just arrived in Austin Texas to begin study to the grocery store. I will never forget watching the incomprehension on his face as he considered the possibility of so much food in one place, and then the deeper mystery when he realized there were choices of the same kind of food. He was frozen in his place, numb, and unable to move forward to make any decisions about food.
In our Lenten journey you may be pondering the choices you have made, and sometimes making a list of things we “ought to be doing” or “ought to have done”. I suggest sometimes an exploration of such a list may lead to a level of “frozen incomprehension” as it did my African friend on his first visit to a grocery store. So I offer another way to look at this Lenten journey and the issue of choice. I suggest to you as you take this journey to remember as you consider those things that are in the way of a holy and faithful life that you remember not so much of your choosing and choices, but that God has already chosen you!
The account of Jesus’ Baptism in the Gospel of Mark depicts the moment of Jesus Baptism. A voice descends from heaven, “This is my beloved Son with you I am well pleased”, In other words, Jesus, I have chosen you! Jesus is blessed with an understanding of his being chosen and immediately propelled into the wilderness where he will face with temptation what it means to be chosen by God. He will emerge from that 40 days and 40 nights knowing the course ahead will have him contend with difficult questions, be full of thankless tasks, and often be harrowing. He will go however, and as Mark would have it, be about proclaiming the immediacy of the Kingdom of God.
I have a fantasy each time I preside at or participate in a baptism. In that fantasy I can see the face of the individual emerging from the waters of baptism and I can hear a voice crying from heaven Bill, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Mary, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Jane, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! In other words, whoever you are, child of God, I have chosen you! Now into the world with you, knowing I never said it would be an easy ride to be chosen, so face the demons in your life, and know that wild beasts will be your companion in this world, But go broken as you may be full of limitation and often not getting it right, but go knowing I have chosen you!
Kathleen Norris, quoting St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”
Some on this Lenten journey may ask of you; Have you chosen Jesus today? Some may ask what choices you have made instead of choosing Jesus? My grandfather was a lifelong Roman Catholic but not a churchgoer. Every Christmas Eve he celebrated Mass with the Pope on television and by his bed stand after his death sat a well worn crucifix that I prize to this very day. I can remember profoundly just a few days after my grandfather’s death being approached by a well meaning member of my community of faith knowing of my grandfather’s lack of church attendance, she stated, “I certainly hope your grandfather chose Jesus.” Working through the insensitivity of what I firmly believe was a statement not designed to offend, I knew inside of me what the response was to that statement. I do not know how my Grandfather chose Jesus, but one thing for sure I knew, I knew Jesus chose him!
I submit to you that our Lenten journey be an opportunity not so much to do an accounting of our disappointments and poor choices as a vehicle for understanding the depth of our faith, but rather to ponder the depth of what it means to be chosen by God. God chooses us with our limitations, our transgressions, our dirty little secrets, our imperfections and our brokenness. What God does with such weakness and vulnerability, well, is the whole point of the story isn’t it! It’s called Grace!
This Lent let us lay vulnerable before the God who has chosen us. Let us lay before God what he already knows: That we are too quick to judge and condemn rather than to forgive. That we are too quick to reject those who differ from us in opinion, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and even beliefs in God. That we give in to easily to apathy or selfishness when it comes to giving of ourselves for the healing of the world. That we too often hoard our resources, our money, our food, even our thoughts and feelings. That we too often allow our Eyore complex to have the day rather than go give Charlie Brown a say.
Lay all of this weakness before God, it will be familiar to him. He knows you already because he has chosen you! Because he has chosen you there is no time to let it weigh you down, instead, watch what happens as the God of our collect for the day does what God does, taking the weaknesses of each of us, and finding the might to save us! Amen.