You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last...
- Today we baptize two young people. Today we see the action of grace in a number of lives and in fact, in the lives of every one of us. When we see these two young people baptized, we renew our baptism with them.
- We are reminded of Jesus' message of grace, namely You did not choose me but I chose you.
- It is not a case of our choice or our work but the choice and the work of Jesus. It is truly all grace. And that is what we celebrate here, now and always.
- It is not a case of being worthy of this choice or of being chosen because of some particular skill or ability or virtue. At the bottom of it all, it is a choice made out of love.
- Someone may ask “So why doesn't Jesus choose everybody?” The best response that could be given to that question is “How do we know he doesn't?” It could be that Jesus has chosen everyone and that there are some who do not know it. And it could be that they don't know it because no one has told them.
- If Jesus has chosen us, what are we chosen to be? That answer is simple and the simple answer is found in John's Gospel today: “I have called you friends...” Each of us has been called to nothing less than friendship with Jesus Christ and all that it means.
- Because of this friendship, we know of and experience the love of God for all that God has created.
- Because of this friendship, we know of the promises of God and we know they apply to us.
- Because of this friendship, we know that Jesus' words call us to service in his name.
- Choosing goes far beyond that. We've discussed what we are all chosen to be, but what are these two young people and each and every one of us chosen for? Again, the words of Jesus tell us this: I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last...
- We have been chosen to bear fruit, and again the fruit is not of our own choosing and it might not be in the place of our own choosing. Honestly, it is quite often a surprise.
- Last week, the reading from John's Gospel spoke of the well-known and easily-imagined “Vine and branches” illustration, showing how each of us only bears fruit if we are attached and nourished by the vine that is Jesus. We can do nothing apart from the life of Jesus, but with Jesus' own life in us, we can do far more than we could imagine.
- Maybe the fruit we would bear is showing others the love of Jesus and his choosing by what we say and do. We might do this as a parent of a child, teaching them their first lessons on prayer and faith. We might do it as a teacher, enlightening minds to the wonders of creation or history or human thought. We might bear fruit by feeding people and in that, witnessing the value of sharing what we have with the poor and suffering. We might bear fruit in ways we might never imagine or realize until we look back and see the growth in the crop we'd planted and nurtured.
- All of this might not be for us to choose. As disciples and friends of Jesus, we might accept the Word and plant it, trusting in the Father's grace to see to the growth, a growth we might never see in its fullness.
- Even this we might be assured in one very special thing: the fruit of love we bear -whatever it might be- puts us in a direct line to the love Jesus bears for the world and even further to the love of the Father that formed and sustained the world.
- It's amazing, isn't it, what a little seed of the Gospel can do. Not that we choose, but that we've been chosen. Not that we love but that God has loved us. Not that we've sought out God, but that God has searched for us and found us, each of us.
- Let us continue to celebrate this choosing in how we live and how we continue to serve and bear fruit... and, as today, in how we baptize.
You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last...
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