God rejects? Homily for Tuesday, January 16, 2024

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Yesterday there was the observation that King Saul had a fundamental flaw. he cared too much about what others thought. Today we learn he should have cared more about what God thought.

God rejects?

This is an interesting reading and we begin with something we probably don’t think about very often. God rejected Saul. God rejected Saul. That’s not a pleasant thing to hear that God could reject anyone, but he rejects Saul as king.

There is something though that I think we should hang on to before we dismiss this idea too readily that God can reject. There is a belief about salvation that it doesn’t matter what we do because ultimately God will save everyone. It’s called universalism.

So in other words it doesn’t matter really how I live my life because in the end God will save me anyway. Or it doesn’t really matter that I help the poor because in the end God will forgive all of my sins and save me. Whether I ask for it, desire it, or want it. But it’s not true and it’s not true because of the love of God. Now I’m not saying it’s not true that God could ultimately save everyone. That’s not my point. That’s not the issue.

The issue is that salvation is not automatic. We don’t get a go to eternal life free card that we can just carry around that enables us to live however it is we choose to live without any consideration for goodness, truth, other people. Isn’t that one of the first things we learned when we were growing up in our family?

We couldn’t do whatever we wanted. We wanted to. We really wanted to. We wanted to be able to do whatever we wanted. But at the end of the day sometimes our parents, if you had lots of siblings, probably your siblings more so than your parents, said you can’t live however you want to live. Saul gets rejected. And it’s interesting as I mentioned yesterday, Saul’s big problem was that he cared too much what other people thought about him.

But there’s also this point and he cared too little what God wanted of him. That’s really the challenge in the first reading at first is that God has chosen each one of us because we have been baptized. God has chosen each one of us and made us a beloved son or daughter of God. And with that comes an obligation that we have to become the person that God has made us to be.

We have to exercise always our choice to say I’m gonna live in the love of God. I’m gonna treat others the way they should be treated because that’s the way God tells me I should treat them. And so that’s the first lesson of this story. It matters. The second is that who God chooses and what God chooses them for is an absolute mystery. God does not always seem to choose the people that we would choose.

Let’s take a look at the Apostles for example. They hardly seem like the individuals that one would count on or rely on to build a good organization. The leader, the one that Jesus himself chooses, Peter, is impulsive. He lets his emotions oftentimes dictate what he says and what he does and he’s not always consistent. He’s not always the kind of person who can in fact recognize that maybe it’s okay to put your emotions in check for a little bit. He’s got two insanely ambitious individuals in James and John. They don’t just want to be followers of Jesus, they want to be at the right and the left hand of God the Father Almighty. That is really a desire for greatness. There is really something in them.

I remember reading once a little joke about the person that seemed to have the most acumen when it came to running an organization because he was pragmatic and he was practical and he knew what needed to be done, Judas Iscariot. He could not understand why Jesus was doing the things he did and I’ve always thought that the reason he betrayed Jesus was because he thought that would get Jesus to do what seemed so obviously needed to be done to Judas.

I don’t think it was because he didn’t like Jesus. In fact, I think his reaction to what happened indicates that he had deep affection for Jesus. And then there’s this interesting choice of King David. I find it very interesting because at the very beginning when Samuel is choosing he’s told don’t pay any attention to appearance. Pay no attention to that. God sees the heart.

But what’s the first thing that’s mentioned about King David or the soon-to-be King David? He was a youth, ruddy in appearance, handsome to behold. What do we focus on? His appearance. The very thing that I guess we weren’t supposed to pay attention to now is what’s noticeable about David. I don’t know what to make of that. I just make it as an observation. But here’s what we know about King David. Even though he fails, he’s got a heart. He’s got a heart. He will go and do what needs to be done.

He is a courageous man. He will go right into battle. When no one else is knowing what to do about Goliath, boom, David is right there ready to do that. And that’s the story of his life. Now it does sometimes get him into trouble.

What about us? What has God chosen us to do? Who is it that God has chosen us to be? Can we think about the kind of person that God has made us to be? Can we think about how it is that God wants us to interact with people all around us? Let us ask the Lord today that we might make a splendid appearance in the best of ways, our faithful witness to the gospel.

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