Chosen By and Choosing God

[Note: Today’s guest blogger is Theresa Tensuan-Eli. Theresa faithfully joins the livestream of Spiritus’ Sunday 9:30 mass from Ardmore, PA.  She is a member of the Across the Miles cohort and the circle that maintains the Prayer Line, and teaches writing and advises students at Haverford College.  Her husband Quinn is a professor and playwright, son Sam is a carpenter, and bunso Mira (who was baptized by Rev. Mary Ramerman) is a junior in college studying environmental humanities and biology. Theresa will also be facilitating a lenten program for us on Monday, March 31st called: Poetry, Prayer and Practice. You can register for that here. Thank you Theresa!)

The first reading for today comes from the Book of Deuteronomy, a name that comes from the Greek for “second law” and collects the pronouncements that Moses shares with his tribe as they are coming to the end of their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness (the first law being the famous Ten Commandments given by God to Moses to guide the Hebrews as they set out on their journey).  

Chapter 26 of Deuteronomy focuses on practices of tithing, and outlines expectations for the devout to set aside a portion of their first harvests as a gift that will be blessed and shared with those who are at the margins of the community – the poor, the strangers, the widows, and the orphans.  Verses 17-18 in the Douay-Rheims translation – a translation that predates the King James version, created at a school for English Catholics in exile – state that  “Thou hast chosen the Lord this day to be thy God, and to walk in his ways and keep his ceremonies, and precepts, and judgments, and obey his command./And the Lord hath chosen thee this day, to be his peculiar people, as he hath spoken to thee, and to keep all his commandments”

In reading through these lines, I was taken by what, as a teacher of writing, I would call the parallel construction of the verses: “Thou hast chosen the Lord this day to be thy God….And the Lord hath chosen thee this day, to be his peculiar people” – finding myself moved by the sense that both the human and the divine are making an active choice to be in relation to one another.

I was also struck by the term “peculiar”:  my trusty, two volume 1965 edition of Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary that I inherited from my parents cites Deuteronomy 26:18 in noting that it is the term used in Scripture to define the Jews as “being God’s chosen people.” The dictionary also offers a number of secular definitions for the word peculiar:

1. Having a character exclusively its own, unlike anything else, or anything of the same class or kind; specific; particular.
2. Singular; odd; strange.
3. Select or special; separate; distinguished.
4. Belonging particularly or specifically to one.

It is the second definition of peculiar – “singular;  odd;  strange” –  that first came to mind when I came across the word in today’s reading. I realize that there are many who might characterize those who are sharing the first harvest – not the excess, simply what you have in hand for your own survival – with complete strangers to be peculiar people indeed!

How odd.  How strange.  How wildly countercultural – particularly at this moment at which some powers that be are discounting the humanity of so many who are simply seeking to live in peace – that we would share with “strangers.”

And as I see how I might be rousing myself to a form of self-righteousness, I realize that this is a good time to take a peek ahead at today’s Gospel. Jesus’ words as conveyed in Matthew 5:44 urge us to, “Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you” (and back to the dictionary for a definition of “caluminate” – “to accuse falsely;  defame;  slander” – a synonym of “revile”).

Here, I realize that being caustic and dismissive gives me a little rush of adrenaline – something that feels like power when it’s actually just bullying – and that I have to actively remind myself that rather than brandish another shard of hatred, we are called to make the active choice to turn to the love of God – that divine and loving being who chooses us each and every day.  

In that spirit, I turn to the words of Jan Richardson who in The Painted Prayerbook offers this blessing:

“Blessing”

From all that is broken, 
let there be beauty. 
From what is torn, jagged, 
ripped, frayed, 
let there be 
not just mendings 
but meetings unimagined. 
May the God in whom
nothing is wasted 
gather up every scrap, 
every shred and shard, 
and make of them
new paths, 
doorways, 
worlds.