March 4

Many are called but few are chosen

            Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.  He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’  But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.  Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Matthew 22:1-14

            “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  The fascinating thing about this parable is that being chosen has everything to do with how you respond to the invitation.  The people on the first guest list are called and they refuse so they are not chosen.  The man who showed up but was unwilling to comply with the invitation was called, but he was thrown out so he was not chosen.  The men and women in the streets, both good and bad, the healthy and the weak, the educated and the ignorant…everyone who the master’s servants were able to find and invite were called and, because they said yes, they were chosen.

            In Alaska we have an IDD waiver, a program where Medicaid will cover medical, therapy and prescription costs.  In order to be chosen, there is a…let’s call it “lengthy” process.  The application is exhaustive and requires lots and lots of supporting documentation.  After the application is submitted, your name goes onto a waiting list.  Each year there is a lottery where a handful of names, somewhere between 50-200, are pulled from the entire state’s waiting list.  Once you are approved for a waiver, a Plan of Care must be drafted which requires an official care coordinator, which involves another waiting list.  The POC must be approved by the state and then once it is approved, contracts must be completed between the family and the care providing organizations.  When parents were coming to me asking about services and the IDD waiver, I would tell them that if they were starting from ground zero, it would be at least a year before they would begin receiving services…potentially over three years.  I would tell my care providers that it was to be expected that parents would be a little frazzled because they had been wrestling with the system for years in order to get the therapeutic services that we were offering.

            “Chosen” is not something that we are offered here in this life very often.  It is something that we have to fight for and struggle for and provide supporting documentation for in order to prove that we are truly worthy and not trying to scam the system.  “Chosen” in the Kingdom of God is a different matter all together.  “Chosen” means that we are willing to accept the invitation that God has for us.  We are willing to go where He sends us and stay where He places us and do what He has prepared us to do.  “Chosen” means living a life that is faithful and coming home to an incredible party at the end of that season.

            Death is not the end, it is simply the doorway into the more enduring and more perfect season of Life.  Everyone crosses through that door at their appointed time, so those of us who remain on this side of death are here for a purpose.  If we are still alive, we still have a role to play and opportunities to respond to God’s invitations.  If we are still alive, we still have the opportunity to choose into being “Chosen.”  That is true for you.  That is true for me.  That is true for our children.

            Our kids may not have access to the same job opportunities or educational opportunities or recreational opportunities as their typical peers.  They do, however, have the same access to God’s opportunities.  He offers them the chance to choose Him, to impact their world through faithfulness, to change lives around them.  There was a severely disabled young woman at one of my churches.  She could not speak or walk or see or talk.  She would laugh during the prayers and the sermons and her laugh lifted the hearts of everyone who attended.  There was a purity of spirit about her and it was clear that when you spent time with her, you were in the presence of angels.  She was “Chosen”:  blessed and set apart until Jesus called her home, her work on this side of death completed and ready to run into the arms of her Heavenly Father.

A moment to reflect:

What invitations does God have for you?  What Invitations does He have for your child?