WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 07/02/05

1 Peter 2:4-12 “Almost Chosen People”

1) Exceptional America

President Abraham Lincoln, in an otherwise forgettable speech to the New Jersey Senate in February 1861, said he was happy to be “a humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty” to lead “this, his almost chosen people.” The sense that these United States were, and are, in some sense, if not a chosen people at least an “almost chosen people,” has a long and distinguished history.

Historian Paul Johnson has pointed out that this sense of God’s calling, which the earliest settlers of the American Colonies were so clear about, came from their English homeland, where people had for centuries believed that England was “The Elect Nation” whose calling was to Christianize and civilize the world. So the settlers came to colonize these shores “for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith,” as the Mayflower Compact expressed it in 1620. Governor John Winthrop, in a famous sermon aboard the Arabella en route to Provincetown, said “we shall be as a city on a hill, and the eyes of all people are upon us.”

That sense of God’s calling, anointing, and choosing this people in many ways came to fruition in the Revolutionary War, which some historians call “the political and military expression of the religious movement” of the 1730s called “The Great Awakening.” General Washington, the most clearly Christian among the Founding Fathers, was clear that his military mission was one that God approved and supported.

In more modern times, that sense of calling has diminished but by no means disappeared from the American consciousness. It was prominent during the Cold War when “Christian America” was pitted against “godless Communism.” Today there are those inside this nation and outside who, for good or ill, see “Christian America” involved in a prolonged cultural, religious and political battle with “jihadist Islam” – a conflict which they otherwise call “the War on Terror.”

What is called by historians and those in public affairs “American Exceptionalism” remains a strong part of American national self-image. According to this, we are a different nation from all the others; our motives are good, we have no evil designs for empire or dominance over anyone, we are on the side of freedom and democracy and human rights everywhere. Because we are well-motivated, we can be trusted. Our use of power and influence is always designed to benefit others, and the causes of freedom and democracy everywhere.

This high moral tone to our foreign policy has often expressed itself in ways that seem strange to outsiders. When President Woodrow Wilson represented the United States at the Versailles Peace Conference that ended WWI, one commentator said that “the president was like a Nonconformist minister, perhaps a Presbyterian... who thundered commandments from the White House, and could have preached a sermon on them or prayed to the Almighty for their implementation, more than he could explain their concrete application” to his European colleagues.

To this day, Europeans are wary of and distrust what historian Paul Johnson calls “the quasi-religious character of American public rhetoric.” This is a tone, you have to understand, that has little or nothing to do with the rise of “the religious right” that so scares secularists today. 140 years ago, Lincoln in a message to Congress called the Union and the freeing of slaves “the last, best hope of earth.” In 1997, President Clinton in his Second Inaugural said “America stands alone as the world's indispensable nation.” President George W. Bush, in his Second Inaugural, in fact unexpectedly said that the USA “moves forward with confidence in the triumph of freedom... not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills” – a sentiment I think that is not shared by many of his supporters in “the religious right”.

But in this President Bush was consciously reflecting the wisdom of Lincoln. America is indeed exceptional in being the most religious, the most Christian, nation in the industrialized, technical world (or at least in its Western version); America has certainly used its military and economic power for good in notable instances, including WWI and WWII; but the USA does not determine the outcomes of all events, it does not rule the world. As President Bush said, “God moves and chooses as he wills.” President Lincoln, perhaps more memorably, said in his Second Inaugural of the Civil War that was not yet over, “Each [side] reads the same Bible and prays to the same God; each invokes his aid against the other... the prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes...”

We are at most, then, as Lincoln said, “an almost chosen people.” What ought that to mean for us as Americans? What sort of self-reflection ought that to prompt on an Independence Day weekend? Because of one thing we must be sure: Governor Winthrop was right when he said America would be like “a city on a hill, and the eyes of all people are upon us.” If America is exceptional in the modern world in being a largely Christian nation, then to many people in the rest of the world what they experience as “Americanism” is also what they perceive to be “Christianity.” Why are we surprised then that people in, for example, Arab Muslim nations, are confused about Christianity when what American culture seems mostly to export is sex, violence and self-indulgence?

Perhaps we should look at what it meant Biblically to be God’s “chosen people,” and discover what responsibilities such a calling brings with it.

2) God’s People Israel

Deuteronomy 10 gives one brief summary of God’s calling of Israel, and its consequences. “To the LORD belongs heaven and earth... yet he set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and chose you, their descendents, above all nations... He is your God.”

When they were few in number, and of no distinction or value, God chose them to be his people. What were they to do with that? Two things, mainly: to become a people “holy to the LORD” – that is, people dedicated to him; people who loved him with all their hearts and souls.” Secondly, they were chosen and called so they could be “a light to the Gentiles,” to proclaim and show to people everywhere the character and the mighty acts of the one true God.

Of course Israel often forgot their calling, but never their sense of being chosen. So time and again God sent his prophets and preachers to remind them of the responsibilities that went with their privileges of being a chosen people. “Love and serve him, ” but also - especially notable in this Deuteronomy passage - “care for the orphan and the widow” (the most vulnerable members of society who had no male protector or providers), and also “love the alien” among you, because “you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.”

Those are commands worth pondering for a chosen or even an “almost chosen” people. What are we doing with vulnerable people? Or with “the aliens” in our midst? Are we treating either the way God would treat them? If we had a direct line to heaven and God dictated Congressional legislation on needy people or aliens, what would it be likely to say? You have to wonder whether he would have something to say about tens of thousands of people living on the streets of our cities, too many of them children. Would the LORD say “well, they should get a job and not be a burden to other taxpayers”? How would the LORD deal with 11 million “illegal immigrants”? Send them home? Build walls to keep them out? Give them a path to work and citizenship? Would God “reward law-breakers”? How would he deal with “those people”? Would he remind us that “you were all aliens once”?

3) God’s People The Church

But of course we live in a different era from OT Israel. God’s people are now a universal gathering of those who have come to Jesus Christ in faith, something called the church. To them Peter writes that “you who have come to the living Stone - rejected by others, but chosen by and precious to God – are now a chosen people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people belonging to God.” Is this a deliberate echo of the OT words to Israel? – of course!

Then what does our Lord Jesus Christ require of his “chosen people,” the church? Of course they are to “declare the praises of God who called you out of darkness.” The Church of Jesus Christ is now “the light of the world,” the lamp set on a stand, the city on a hill. All Christians in all places at all time are now called to proclaim the greatness of God and his wondrous acts in Jesus Christ.

But the new called and chosen people have other responsibilities. They are to build “a spiritual house” where “spiritual sacrifices” are offered to God – no stone Temples required in this age, but communities of Christ-led people in whom and among whom his Spirit dwells, and who love him and serve him and worship him in gratitude for all he has done.

How does that work out in daily experience? In part by living as “strangers in the world.” If you are one of God’s chosen people, how you live should show that, in a way that is distinctive, persuasive, attractive, undeniable. “Live such good lives among the pagans that – though they accuse you of doing wrong – they may see your good deeds and glorify God.” You and I and all God’s “chosen people” are to live in such a way that God is glorified.

And any nation that wants to be seen as exceptional, “almost chosen,” ought to portray such a quality of public life that “the pagans” and their criticisms are silenced, and God is glorified for the good things we do. That would surely mean that we took care of the least and the most vulnerable in our society; that no-one was homeless or hungry or unable to afford medicines; that cutting government assistance programs and corporate payrolls was not rewarded; that no company’s value increased because it had succeeded in getting rid of a third of its hourly workforce; that no executive profited handsomely while his company declined; that no revolving doors connected legislators and lobbyists. An “almost chosen people” would be a society where 1/3 of babies were not conceived out of wedlock; where one half of marriages did not fail; where 1 million pregnancies were not terminated each year; where most young people did not have sexual experiences before the age of 17. And it would be a place where laws were respected and obeyed at every level, from the teenager on the street to the chief financial officer of a major corporation to the government officials who are entrusted with power by the people.

An “almost chosen” people would function so justly - caring for its poor, its fatherless, its elderly widows, its rootless aliens – caring so well that no-one would have room to criticize. It would be very careful in how it ever talked about or projected itself as “a Christian nation,” lest it should in any way dishonor the name of Jesus Christ.

Let us pray that our “almost chosen” people will grasp that God in his grace has gathered a group of aliens and made us a prosperous nation, and that we should respond individually and collectively by “living such good lives among the pagans” that their criticisms are silenced and God is glorified.

Let us pray...