There is one line in today’s gospel reading that is meant to give us great comfort, and yet, if we pause to consider it carefully, it is also a statement we probably would find hard to accept. Jesus says, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” He said this as a part of his final testimony to his disciples on the night of his arrest. What Jesus said to his disciples then he says to his disciples now: “You did not choose me but I chose you.”

That we have a sovereign right to choose is basic to our understanding of human being and freedom. I am not a person and certainly not free if I do not have choice. In our society, the right to choose is the highest good, the noblest ideal, the most cherished of freedoms, and our most basic right. “Choice” has been the word of choice in every election of recent memory. It is the key concept underlying raging national debates about everything from health care policy to abortion and guns. “Choice” and “rights” are bound together so intimately that they can neither be separated nor distinguished. Our basic right is freedom to choose. We might want to ask if perhaps we kid ourselves into thinking that we have this great power of choice. If we think about it, we might find that most choices are made for us—but that’s a political debate for another day and a different forum.

The topic here is about faith. Is faith merely our choice? The Christian tradition has spoken about this differently, that while we are no puppets on strings, nevertheless our faith is basically a gift and a work of the Holy Spirit that becomes truly ours as we live into this faith and make it our own, whereby Jesus’ choosing us and our choosing to follow him converge. But we must keep the priorities straight: We were chosen by God long before we choose to acknowledge him as Lord.

Based on Scripture, the tradition uses the word “election” to indicate choice. To elect something is to choose it. The Bible, OT and NT, is predicated on God’s election of Israel to be his own. As when we go to the polls and are given an opportunity to choose from among various candidates, so God chooses Israel from among all other candidates to be his own.

There is one 20th century theologian who stands apart for the attention he gave to this matter of election, or choice. Karl Barth wrote the following, specifically with regard to the passage from John’s gospel that we are considering today: For Christians “there is a recurrent temptation to regard themselves as those who elect in this matter. It is their faith and their love, their confession, tradition and hope, which is its proper substance. Its grounding in the name of Jesus Christ can then appear as a free concession. We may perhaps decide upon it very seriously, but by thinking that it is something which we ourselves can and should decide, we show that we no longer realize with what name we have to do…There is no doubt that an election does take place: but it is an election upon which, just because it is our own election, we can only look back as upon something which has taken place already. In the act of electing we are not confronted by two or three possibilities, between which we can choose. We choose the only possibility which is given to us…Those who choose the name of Jesus Christ choose the only possibility which is given to them…They elect, but they elect their own election…Their election is election of the name of Jesus Christ. The Reformers…knew well enough what they were doing when with one breath they challenged [human beings] to this decision and to that extent undoubtedly appealed to [human] freedom, and then…described predestination…as the proper object and content of the decision of faith…It is only in the decision of faith as ordered and understood in this way that we really have to do with the name of Jesus Christ…And it is only in the decision of faith as ordered and understood in this way that the truth can emerge and become certainty.”

In one and the same breath Christian faith is rooted in free choice, i.e., election, and also in God’s prior decision about us in Jesus Christ. What we choose to believe is that we have already been chosen by God in Christ to be his.

In the 16th century a debate about this took place between Luther and the renowned Erasmus of Rotterdam. Erasmus had read with disapproval one of Luther’s early works in which Luther claimed that everything that happens, happens by absolute necessity. Against this assertion Erasmus wrote a little book entitled Discourse on Free Choice. Luther at first dismissed Erasmus’ little book as so much worthless trash, but because it was so popular, he felt he had to respond, and so Luther wrote a reply, On the Bondage of the Will, considered now to be one of Luther’s more difficult but also one of his more important works.

Luther had always maintained that the basic human problem is that we are sinners because we refuse to let God be God. This is what sin is really and always is all about, that we want to play God. Sin is when we put ourselves in place of God. The faithful trust that God is somehow mysteriously behind everything that happens—literally everything. Granted, this is hard to believe, and actually is a terrifying thought; but as terrifying as it is to believe that God is involved in everything that happens, it is also our greatest comfort when we consider the cross. That God brings life out of death and shows his power in weakness and his glory in shame is the hope to which we cling even in the face of calamity, misfortune, tragedy and death. God is in control and God fulfills his promise of everlasting faithfulness and gives life and blessing through the injustice, humiliation, pain, abandonment and the shame of the horrible and ugly cross, is the foundation of our faith.

When Luther asserted that everything happens by necessity, he was merely confirming the traditional claim that God is omnipotent. God’s omnipotence means that God is all-powerful, almighty, in control as the creator and redeemer of the world, the Lord of both the living and the dead. If God were not omnipotent, then God would not be God, and our hope would be in vain. If everything does not happen by necessity, then God would not be in control and would not be the Lord, and all bets are off. Hence Luther’s disdain for Erasmus’ ideas about free choice in matters of life and death, and thus Luther’s judgment that Erasmus’ proposals were rubbish.

Jesus makes one more point that we should think about. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you…You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Both faith and love are about losing yourself, forgetting about yourself. Not only are we confronted here with a new understanding of faith, but we are also given a new understanding of how we are to behave. As our choice of Christ is rooted in Christ’s election of us, and as our faith in God is based on God’s election of Israel, so is our behavior grounded in God’s commandments, especially Jesus’ command that we love one another as he has loved us. This means that the very concept and nature of love is defined by the love of Jesus. Thus both in our faith in God’s election of Israel and in Jesus’ choice of us to be his own, and in our love for one another in response to Jesus’ command, do we allow God to be God. As our faith is in Christ who first loved us, so our love is an expression of Christ’s love for the world. Thus our behavior will be judged according to how we act in the name and according to the command of Christ. “I appointed you,” Jesus said, “to go and bear fruit.” “For the love of God is this,” 1 John says, “that we obey his commandments.”

Just as it is a fallacy and the height of arrogance to think that we have a sovereign right to determine our salvation, so it is perverse and foolish of us to think that we can determine right and wrong. The way ahead may not always be clear, and the proper course of action may not be obvious, but we will not fulfill the commandment to love if we do not first at least consider and take seriously God’s command.

-Amen-