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I was once at a meeting where a woman representing one of the great helping agencies of our community was singing the praises of a man whose compassionate work helped many people in our County – especially among the Hispanic population. She didn’t realize that the Julio G. she was raving about was the same Julio G. who belonged to our church. And as she went on and on about what a positive impact Julio had in the lives of so many people, I found myself chuckling a little bit.

You see, a few years ago, my good friend Julio thought he was moving from Michigan to our community in Tennessee just to work on his golf game and enjoy the life of retirement. Never in his wildest dreams did Julio ever imagine that God was actually calling him here to become a saint! Well, a missionary, if not a saint!

And Julio was not alone! Sunday after Sunday dozens and dozens of people gathered at our church, people who discovered a higher significance and deeper purpose for their lives than anything they might have ever imagined when they were planning their move to Tellico Village.

All of which leads me to say that, of all the high and lofty things I believe as a Christian, the most recent – and possibly highest and loftiest belief of all – is this:

God hoodwinked us all into coming here!

Oh, we had our plans, but God had His plans, too!

There’s more to our being here than what meets the eye!

Oh, we all have our own theories about how we got to be here, but today I want to invite you to consider a whole new rationale.

In our Scripture text from John 15, Jesus reveals to the disciples a powerful and life-changing truth. I like to imagine the conversation going something like this:

Jesus says to Peter, “Pete, what made you decide to become one of my disciples in the first place?”

And Peter thinks for a moment, and then answers, “Well, I remember the day you came by the seashore on one of your recruiting trips. I’d heard people talk about you and all the great things you were doing. I’d even heard you speak a couple of times up at the Community Church, and each time, I felt something stirring inside of me. You see, I’ve been a fisherman all my life, but I’ve always felt called to something higher. And when you came along with your Gospel, I somehow knew that was it! So that day, when the choir started singing “Just As I Am” and you gave the invitation to “come and follow me and I will make you fishers of men”, I made the decision. It was the right time in my life, the right feeling in my heart. All the pieces just seemed to come together. It just made sense to me to go and follow you.”

And then Jesus softly smiles, puts his arm around Peter’s shoulders, and gently says. “Pete let me tell you a little secret. You did not choose me. I CHOSE YOU!”

Isn’t that a powerful idea? In the midst of a world in which we think all the choices are our own, God is at work behind the scenes. And just at the moment we come to believe that we have made a choice, we learn that it was really God who did the choosing!

“You did NOT choose me. I chose you!”

 Is it possible that somewhere underneath all the thinking, all the planning, all the dreaming, all the preparing that went into your decision to come here, there was a deeper steering current moving in your life? Is it possible that the real reason you arrived here in this beautiful spot in East Tennessee is because…GOD CHOSE YOU – and quietly led you here without your even suspecting God was the inspiration behind it?

The late Henri Nouwen, one of the great spiritual writers of our generations, said that one of the key gifts we humans need to accept from God is the gift of being chosen.

Did you hear that?

In fact, in order to live a spiritual life, we have to claim for ourselves that we are chosen people!

Do you realize what this means?

When you know that you are chosen by God, you know that God sees you as a special person. God has noticed you for your uniqueness, and has expressed a desire to know you, and come close to you, and love you, and work with and through you.

To be chosen by God means that, from all eternity – long before you were born and became part of history – you existed in God’s heart. Long before your parents held you, or your friends acknowledged your gifts, or your teachers, colleagues and employers encouraged you, you were already chosen! The eyes of God’s love had seen you as precious…as of infinite beauty…as of eternal value.

I chose YOU!  Do you know that about yourself today? You are a chosen person!

Now, one caution here. The fact that you are chosen does not mean that others are rejected. I remember trying out for various athletic teams when I was a kid. Remember those days? I was very fortunate in that whenever I checked the list of who should report for the first official practice of those who made the team, my name was there! But I still remember to this day the sad disappointment and disbelief of some of my friends who desperately scanned the list – upward and downward, and several times over – never to find their name. Some were chosen, some were not. Of course, I got to experience the pain of not being chosen on other occasions – like the night at the dance when the woman I loved – Maryanne, the goddess of our 6^th grade class – stood up at the start of a “Lady’s Choice” and walked across the room in my direction. All of a sudden, the camera went into soft focus as she came toward me – running in slow motion – dark brown hair bouncing on her shoulders – as Frank Sinatra himself materialized in the room singing “Strangers In The Night”.

And then that little rat walked right by me and asked my friend Gary to dance! I was crushed! Still am!

That’s how it works in the world, you know. To choose one is to reject others. But that’s not how it is in the Kingdom of God. To be chosen as God’s Beloved is radically different. Instead of excluding others, it includes others. Instead of rejecting others as less valuable, it accepts others in their own uniqueness. The choice is not competitive, but compassionate.

So having said that, today I want to invite you to stand up with God’s children everywhere and claim your chosenness! Try on these words today by saying with me, “I am chosen!” 

Can you do that?

“I am chosen!”

And then go one step further and affirm with me that, “I did not choose God. God chose me!”

That’s how you got here, you know! That’s how we got to be this church! God chose us to become His partners in the work He is doing here in this little part of the world.

Now, I want you to hear this because we are about to engage in a process of planning for the future of our church. Of course, we all have our own ideas of what the church should be and what the future should look like. A church of eleven hundred members has at least eleven hundred different opinions about all that. Here at Tellico, there might be something more along the line of four or five THOUSAND opinions though, because we tend to be VERY opinionated people!

And that would be important…IF the life of faith was only about the choices WE make.

But it’s not. We did not choose Christ. Christ chose us!

That’s why Jesus was so insistent that the disciples learn this lesson about what it means to be chosen people.

So as we begin this exciting journey into the future, I want to ask you to tenderly and lovingly embrace and celebrate the choices God has already made for us.

God chose to lead us here. God chose to make us a Community church. God chose to grow us into a large and strong congregation. God chose to assemble the vast resources of our membership – tremendous human talent, vast life-experience, strong financial assets, broad religious foundations. I’ve never seen more quality people and resources gathered together under one roof in my whole ministry. Is it as amazing to you as it is to me?

And if God has made all these choices, then we need to ask the key question.

Why?

Why has God chosen us and done all these things?

Well, listen to Jesus’ answer to the question in John 15.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you…and appointed you to go and bear fruit…fruit that will last.”

God has made all these choices, first of all, so that we will GO! We have been chosen to actively reach out to those beyond us with the amazing love of God in Jesus Christ. The posture of Christians is always pointed outward toward the larger community. That’s why people like Julio do what they do.

Now I know that there are some who would prefer their church to be a shrine instead of a church. A shrine is a beautiful religious place where people go to take care of their own spiritual needs. A shrine is a place where you go to receive some blessing and have a nice religious experience for yourself.

But a church is different. A church exists to go out and bless others. In fact, nowhere in Scripture are people ever called to go to church! Did you know that? Instead, the church is always called to go to people! In fact, the reason we gather together for worship and education and fellowship and nurture is to strengthen and equip each other for the work of going out to others with the love of God.

God has chosen us to GO!

And it’s so important that we do. There are people all around us who don’t know that there is a God who loves them. There are people going through living hell in their life right now without any clue that God has the power to bring heaven into their hell and to lead them to a better place. There are people who bear the deep, deep wounds of self-rejection and have no idea that they are chosen people with so much to offer to both God and the world! There are people who are facing death without ever having truly found life!

“GO!” says Jesus. “I’VE CHOSEN YOU TO GO TO THOSE WHO NEED ME!”

And then Jesus adds a second thing. Go…and bear fruit!

Bearing fruit, of course, is a biblical code word for recruiting people to the cause of Christ. In nature, plants and trees exist not just to display their own beauty, but to reproduce themselves. So a tree becomes a forest, and a plant becomes a garden, and the whole world comes alive with God’s beauty.

Have you ever planted the seeds that produced another Christian? Have you ever experienced the joy of leading another person to make a commitment to Christ? Have you encouraged someone to read a book, or see a movie, or go to a service where they might have an encounter with the living Christ? Have you ever shared with another person what God means to you and what God has done in your life, and then shut up and let the Holy Spirit work as you listen to that person tell their story? Have you ever inspired someone to do something Christ-like for others?

You see, God not only tells Julio to GO to others, but also to go and produce a hundred other Julios who will multiply the power of the Gospel in Loudon County!

I wonder if there’s someone in your life right now who needs Christ, and who God needs to help build the Kingdom? Would you ask God to help you lead that person to a faithful commitment to Christ?

Go, and bear fruit.

 And then one more thing. Go and bear fruit – that lasts!

One of the most amazing claims on our lives as chosen people is that we are asked to orient our living, our thinking, and our planning out into a future that lies beyond our own lifetime. I was thinking about this one summer as I listened to the organ playing at a worship service we attended back at my first church. A good thirty years after I first heard that beautiful George Stephens tracker-action pipe organ leading the congregation in worship, I reveled once again in its rich and soul-stirring sound. And I remembered. I remembered my visits inside the case of that old organ when technicians came to tune it during the years I served that church. When they were finished, they would always write in pencil inside the case the date and the nature of their work. And that penciled entry would join a long list of other notations scribed by craftsmen who’d done work on the organ all the way back to 1865!

And I was grateful for the faith of the people who provided a gift that was still so beautifully bringing glory to God and inspiration to people more than a hundred years after they were gone.

Our church, 2024.

What fruit of ours will still be blessing the world a hundred years from now?

“Go and bear fruit – fruit that lasts!”

God has chosen you – each and every one. You are special – unique – important – and greatly beloved of God!

And God hoodwinked us all into gathering here in one of the most beautiful places in the world – or there in the place where you live up in Michigan! And God has done that so that you can help Him accomplish great things for the Kingdom.

Now all God needs is for you and me to claim our chosenness.

Will you say it again with me?

“I am chosen!”

Now go in His name…and bear fruit that lasts!