Community Class BLog

Written By:  Marilyn Shepard

1 Peter 2 – 4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— ⁵ you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶ For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion,    a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him     will never be put to shame.” ⁷ Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” ⁸ and,“A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for. ⁹ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

My Takeaways

My first thought for the lesson titled “The Chosen Race” was dodgeball.  Do you remember that horrible game from Elementary School where the biggest and strongest kids got to throw a ball at you as hard as they could?  That game sucks.  But anyway, I thought of dodgeball, and the wonderful team captains who got to pick their teams.  And, yeah, so I was never athletic.  I played dodgeball like I described it, hiding in the back trying not to get hit…or figure out how to get hit by the ball so that it wouldn’t hurt. 

And what I also remember is listening to the team captains call every name but mine… and that feeling that came with it of not being chosen.  And even though I hated dodge ball, I also felt bad at not being good enough.

So, this particular game, I wound up (through no fault of my own) being the last of my teammates left standing.  What a horrible thing to happen.  My opponent was the toughest, most athletic girl in the class.  I remember wondering just how am I going to lose without really getting hit.  And it seemed to take forever for me to lose in spite of my best efforts.

So yesterday, when Jeff asked “how do we identify?”  I realized that in that particular moment of my life, I identified as an unchosen loser.  And sometimes feelings like that stick with you.

But anyway, that’s kind of how I define being chosen.  Being the absolute best. Best athlete in the NFL, best musician, best actor or actress.  And along with being the best, you have all the wonderful things that come with it, money, fame, fortune, prestige.  All the things that make life easier and better.

Sadly, if I’m not careful, it’s kind of how I define being chosen by God.  Because if you are chosen by God, you should have a great life with everything you want and no hard times.

That idea seems to be prevalent everywhere.  If you are on top or successful as an individual or a nation that you are somehow chosen, and that God chose you.  That people somehow look at themselves and think; I am chosen and you are not.  And that gives them the right to hurt those who are deemed unchosen.  (like aiming a dodgeball at them and throwing as hard as they can).

I watched an episode of 20/20 about the Gilgo Beach murders of 4 young women.  The women were murdered around 2011, but according to the show, their murders weren’t priorities because of their profession of being escorts.  They were kind of set aside.  Just as they were devalued in life, they were also devalued in death.  And as I watched this show, I was picturing these women as “living stones, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him.”  It’s a moment when I realized that the “wisdom of this world” is very hurtful and painful to anyone and everyone who suffers.

This Bible lesson was actually dealing with some of my favorite verses, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” yet, I couldn’t get past the title of the lesson, The Chosen Race.  During the lesson, the statement was made about unification of the church, and my first thought was how simple that should be for everybody else to do.  We, as Christians, believe that Jesus was crucified for our sins and on the third day he rose from the dead.  That’s what we believe, and yet, little things get in the way of that cornerstone belief.  What difference does it make if I believe it doesn’t matter how you get baptized and you believe you should only be immersed. Or if you believe the Old Testament has a lot of parables, and I think everything is absolutely true.  Yes, I still think the snake talked to Eve.  It shouldn’t matter, and I don’t know why other people (not me) have problems with it. 

As I think about everybody else’s “wrongness”, I find that there are a lot of statements out there about Christ that I don’t believe, don’t support, and can’t unify around.  I’m not sure what to do about that.  I don’t know how to put that together to have a unified church.

What does it mean to be chosen? Does God set apart nations or people?  Does he choose them to have an easy life?  Does he really intend for us to choose ourselves as special and others as not special?  Is that truly how it works in the eyes of God?

I’m thinking about Israel and how as a nation they were “chosen.”  And yet, in spite of that, they were slaves, their country has been destroyed and rebuilt over and over, they were murdered in the Holocaust, and they remain a group that faces antisemitism on a daily basis. 

There are all kinds of prophets in the Bible who were chosen by God, and yet their lives consisted of hardship and pain.  And even modern prophets, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., suffered and were murdered for their beliefs.

I think of John the Baptist who was chosen to prepare the way for Jesus.  That was his calling, his mission, and yet he wound up in a jail cell questioning everything he believed.  “Are you the one we are waiting for?”  If being chosen led me to a jail cell, I’d ask questions too.

One of my favorite verses says, “He chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”  Nowhere in that verse is a promise of an easy life or a life without pain.  Nowhere in God’s call to a nation or a person does he promise fame, fortune, prosperity.  He promises that we are perfect in his sight.  He promises that he sees us, that he loves us and that he knows us.  We are each, holy and blameless. That’s his promise.

Each of us, all of us, are living stones, chosen by God and precious to him.  Each one of us.  No matter what I think of a person, of a person’s choices, of the way a person’s life has turned out. No matter. 

Because God chose all people, he chose me just as he chose you. Just as he calls me beloved, he also calls you beloved.  Just as I am a living stone, so to are you.

And each one of us, each and every beloved person, has the foundational opportunity to be used in the building of a unified spiritual house set apart to bring glory and honor to God.  Hallelujah!