God’s Selection Criteria

God’s Selection Criteria
Matthew 1:18-end

Songs of Praise
Some while ago, Songs of Praise featured a young woman with a very powerful story to tell. My memory isn’t good enough to have much of an idea just when it was, but the story itself was one of those that lodges in the mind.

Her father had committed suicide when she was quite young, and she’d grown up believing he preferred to be dead rather than to be with the family. This had damaged her to such an extent that she’d got into all sorts of trouble, finally ending up as a drug addict in prison.

All she’d taken into prison with her was a Bible, as some sort of nostalgic link with happier days. She’d never read the Bible, and believed she was the sort of awful person, whom God would instantly throw on the scrap heap. But because time was hanging heavily on her hands, she opened the Bible at random, and this is what she read:

Come now, let us argue it out,
   says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
   they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
   they shall become like wool (Isaiah 1:18).

That verse leapt out of the page and hit her between the eyes. She began to read the Bible avidly, devouring what she read, and her life was changed.

She’s now an evangelist working amongst drop-outs and drug addicts, telling them the good news that they are not rejected by God, that he doesn’t throw anyone on the scrap heap.

Humans arranging the birth of Jesus
If the birth of Jesus had been left to human beings to arrange, I wonder what we would have come up with? Probably a committee to decide on the best parents, then a selection process and a short list until we arrived at the ideal couple.

I don’t suppose an unmarried mother and her carpenter fiancé would have stood a chance. In many ways, Mary represents much that has been rejected by human beings throughout the ages. She was young, unmarried, and pregnant, and that not even by her fiancé.

At this early stage in the story, Joseph seems to represent the conventional. He was as shocked as anyone else at Mary’s pregnancy, and his instant reaction was to ditch her.

And that’s exactly what would’ve been expected by good, decent people. Although Joseph was too gentle a person to demand the stoning of Mary, as was his right by law, nonetheless it was his duty to get rid of her. He decided to quietly drop her.

Adding the God ingredient
When you take it at face value, this story surrounding the birth of Jesus is pretty sordid. But that’s because the God ingredient has been left out. Once the God ingredient is added to the story, everything changes.

The circumstances are seen in a completely different light, and Mary, far from being the villain of the piece, is seen as the heroine. Once the God ingredient is added, there’s a total change in perceptions.

I wonder how many people at the time were aware of this change in perceptions? Fortunately Joseph, although a righteous man, was also a man who was open to God. He could hear God above the roaring of conventions, and so was able to respond when God suggested he move in an unconventional direction.

After his dream about the angel, Joseph was sure enough in his own mind to continue his relationship with Mary. Nothing in the circumstances had changed, only Joseph’s perceptions. But on the strength of a dream, he was prepared to accept a wife who on the face of things, may have been unfaithful to him, and to bring up a baby who on the face of things, might have been another man’s child.

An unconventional choice
This unconventional couple are unlikely to have been chosen by the Church to be the parents of the Saviour of the world. But God often chooses unlikely people to work for him.

Back in the days of the Old Testament, he chose Joseph, the arrogant and insensitive teller of dreams. Then there was Jacob, who cheated his own brother by deceiving his father. Moses, who killed a man in anger and then ran away. Ruth, who hoodwinked an unknown relative into marrying her. And even David the greatest king of all time had a man killed in order to sleep with that man’s wife.

So the pages of the Bible are littered with people chosen by God, but who are most unlikely ever to have been considered by human beings, and especially not by the Church. And it doesn’t stop with the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, Jesus chose a most unlikely group of people to be his special friends and to carry the message of Christianity throughout the world. Many of them were virtually uneducated. At least one of them was a fanatic guerrilla. One turned out to be a traitor. They were all cowards. And one particular friend was probably a prostitute.

After the death and resurrection of Jesus, it wasn’t so much these friends who carried the message of Christianity to the rest of the world. No, God chose a newcomer — a man who had a reputation for being more than a little rigorous in his persecution of Christians!

Unlikely messengers
The people chosen by God, and still being chosen today, to carry on his work seem most unlikely. Clearly the selection criteria used by God are totally different to the selection criteria used by human beings.

Somehow, God is able to see the potential within human beings long before it’s been realised, and to work with that potential.

Most human beings would find that approach far too risky. Most human beings are looking for proven qualities before they select. Many human beings are rejected, because they don’t yet have those proven qualities.

Many youngsters are rejected for jobs because the employers are looking for “experienced applicants”. The employers don’t care about potential, because nurturing potential is a difficult and time-consuming task.

God sees the potential
Fortunately for us, God was able to see the potential for good parenting within an unmarried mother and her carpenter fiancé, and was prepared to invest time and energy in nurturing that potential. At that early stage, Mary and Joseph had no proven qualities. But both of them were open to God, and it seems that that’s all that really mattered.

God never rejects anyone. He uses the most unlikely people for his purposes, and works with them and through them so that their potential is realised and they change out of all recognition.

It can be very scary being used by God, for he sometimes asks difficult things of us. How much easier it would have been for Mary if God had asked her to be the mother of his son after her marriage to Joseph!

All we have to do is trust
But anyone who is prepared to face the scariness, and wants to be used by God, only has to open their heart and mind and soul to him. God knows their potential, and will do the rest. All we human beings have to do, is to trust him and to dare to follow him.