In a small textile town in North Carolina, more years ago than I want to remember, there was a house and yard in a neighborhood that collected children from six to sixteen years of age to play. The children would swarm, sometimes as many as two dozen, to play baseball, kickball, hide and seek, old man kick the can, prisoner's base. Usually someone would volunteer, or be volunteered, for captain, to choose sides. When it was my turn to be captain, to choose the side, I always wanted the best hitter or fastest pitcher. I always made sure I got the fastest runner or the quickest and best hider. I wanted to be on the side of the one who could kick the can the farthest. I liked to win. I wanted to win. I was known to cry if I did not win.

In that same town I remember my grammar school days. Some of us had a team in the Boys' Club Basketball League. One friend of mine who was very small was on the team. He was not very adept at playing basketball, but he was on the team. Yet he was never chosen to play very much. When he did play, he usually hurt the team. One year the team was runner-up in the league. At the banquet they gave each of us little silver basketballs. But we had one player too many. We had to choose who would not get a silver basketball. Several felt the runt ought not receive a silver basketball. However, the biggest guy on the team said he would give up his award for the runt. Later the team chipped in to buy a basketball for the fellow who gave his up.

In the matter of choosing, the world is not much different today. Always we seek the best, the brightest, the richest, the strongest, the fastest, the largest. All of us here in this Seminary

community are here after some sort of screening process, faculty and student alike. Our credentials have been checked. Our grades, interviews, publications, possibilities, potentialities, and worth have been weighed and measured. And after a rigorous screening process, still we are checked to see that we were correctly chosen.

We have just gone through a period of evaluation. People have been checking out our chosenness. Who can make the grade teaching or learning, publishing or producing papers? Who can pass ecclesiastical, colleague, student, or faculty scrutiny? It always seems that people seek to choose the best.

The congregation I served in Greensboro, North Carolina, is still looking for a pastor. They have diligently interviewed, read credentials, talked with people, looking for the best person for their pastor. Seniors here at our Seminary will be wrestling with calls to serve with congregations. Our choice may depend upon salary, size of congregation, many factors. But we seek the best opportunity for ministry. And that is pretty much the way our world operates.

Today's Old Testament Lesson reports an act of choosing someone for a task. God announces that a servant has been chosen for God's task. The name of the chosen one is not mentioned. None of the personal qualifications are given. "I have chosen you, whoever you are, to be my servant," says God. That sounds strange and weird to our ears and experience. It is strange, but then that is God's way.

God chose Abram in Ur, not because he was good-looking or rich or fertile or powerful. God simply chose Abram and told him to go to the land; there God would bless him and Abram would be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

God chose Moses to lead Israel from slavery. According to the story in Exodus, Moses felt himself unqualified to lead a slave revolt. Yet God chose Moses for that task. Deuteronomy says God chose Israel out of all the peoples of the earth, not because she was larger than other peoples or looked more beautiful or smelled nicer, but simply because God loved her.

Our Gospel for this day seems to be a fulfillment of our Old Testament text. Jesus is baptized and the voice from heaven says Jesus is God's beloved Son. Jesus is a nobody carpenter from a backwoods crossroad town in Galilee. Jesus' birth was unspectacular, in fact, ordinarily poor and common. Yet God says that this one, Jesus is pleasing to him, and the Spirit of God is placed upon Jesus to give him strength for his task.

We have been chosen by God. Our baptism, being washed in the flooding waters, is God's choosing us to be God's own people. We all know our weaknesses, at least some of them. But the fact is, we are God's people because God has loved us. God has set the Holy Spirit upon us. God has made us God's own. In spite of our frailties, our failures, our weaknesses, God promises to love us, to take us by the hand, to strengthen us.

Here this morning our God is doing precisely what has been promised. The one, who faithfully enfleshed the words of the servant in Second Isaiah, feeds us his broken body and his shed blood for the forgiveness of our sins, for the strengthening of our faith. Here the risen Lord meets us because he loves us, because he desires that we be strengthened, that we be upheld to be the servant people of God in the world.

In our text the servant is to bring forth justice to the nations. The servant is to be the mediator between God and all the peoples of the earth. The servant is to manifest God's saving and sparing action to all people. In weakness, in silence, in binding up, in giving sight to the blind, in setting free the prisoner, in being a covenant to the people, this one named Servant is to serve God by mediating God's saving love to all the earth.

This servanthood action cuts against the grain of the world of Second Isaiah, just as the servanthood action of Jesus cut against the grain of the world of his day. How could God act in becoming human, taking human flesh, accepting our lot, dying the death of a despised derelict? Surely God would come in power and might, with neon signs and lights flashing glory in the coming of the divine king. Brass bands would play "Hail to the Chief."

Yet our text for this day speaks of God's hidden, surprising act of grace, by which God establishes justice, creates peace and righteousness. An unnamed servant who suffers greatly, a nobody rabbi who was born in a stable, dunked in a muddy river. This one called a bunch of rag-tail outcasts to be his followers. This one lost the power-play game with the world and was executed on the capital city's garbage dump. But that is God's surprise. That is God's victorious way of coming to establish justice, peace, aad righteousness.

Isn't that same surprising action of God at work here in this Seminary community? God chooses us to be servants. God chooses us to live together here in the work of ministry, preparing ourselves to serve God's people, yet ministering to each other and to the Church and world as we prepare for ministry.

Professors fail to meet the expectations of students and their demands. Students fail to meet professorial expectations and demands. Burdens are not sometimes mutually carried. Often we seek to be served rather than to serve, both here and in the Church.

Yet the wonder is - God still loves us. God still comes to us to meet us here in bread and wine, the common everyday stuff of the earth. God still chooses to feed us, to forgive us, to free us to be his servants, because he loves us and has chosen us.

Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice to the nations ...
He will not fail or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth.
(Isaiah 42:1, 4, RSV)