The Lutheran Hour
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"Chosen for What?"
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Text: Romans 15:7
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You can see it in his big brown eyes. There’s a gleam that says, “Pick me! Pick me!”
Hassan and his family immigrated to the United States from Afghanistan a few years back. He is only seven, but already a boy displaced by wars and warlords. And maybe that’s why there’s an anxious, yet hopeful look in his eyes. Although, the look isn’t all that different than what you’d see on the face of the short kid at recess when captains pick teams. It is the dread of not being chosen.
Hassan is that kid who so wants to be picked, to be selected, to be chosen, that he will raise his hand even before he knows what he’s being chosen for, because whatever comes from being chosen has to be better than being left out, right?
There’s a scene from the Toy Story movie, the first one, when Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody are trapped in a tall arcade game, the kind with one of those scooping claws dangling down. There are other toys inside the game cabinet with them and they’re talking together.
If you don’t remember the Toy Story movies, that’s the general idea: toys that talk. There’s Woody, the Wild West Sheriff, and Buzz, the space ranger action figure. And they’re on a mission, and they end up trapped in this arcade game, the one with the claw, you know, the kind that were popular in the 80s, modeled after those giant hydraulic claws you might see hanging from a crane at a junk yard, or the city dump.
So, Buzz and Woody are inside this arcade game, and with them is a community of friendly, three-eyed, green-alien toys. And Buzz Lightyear, who still doesn’t realize he’s a toy, but thinks he’s an actual space ranger, follows Star Command protocol and asks them, “Who’s in charge, here?” On cue, they all look up reverently, point, and say, “The clawwww.”
Just then, the claw above springs to life. The toys freeze, stunned silent. The claw descends and takes hold of one. Of course, this never works in real life because in real life all these games are rigged, but in the movie, the small green toy taken into the claw’s metal talons says, “I’ve been chosen.” (Chosen for what, you say?) Little does he know that the claw operator is the movie’s villain, a toy-torturing, child-warlord named Sid.
But for now, the three-eyed little green guy is as gratified as a first-round draft pick at recess. It is enough for him to know that he has been chosen.
Sometimes the desire to be chosen, even if chosen for something bad, is stronger than the dread of being left out. That seems to be the state of mind that seven-year-old Hassan frequently inhabits, at least during after-school tutoring time. The tutoring program Hassan attends is run by a ministry whose mission it is to welcome immigrants. The ministry was started by some Jesus followers from a church body that was made up mostly of immigrant families just a few generations ago. And so, they started this current outreach effort because they wanted to welcome others as their families had been welcomed, generations back.
Hassan and his immigrant family live across the street from where the ministry was based, a building everyone calls, “The Peace Center.” The Peace Center was so close to Hassan’s house, he could walk over anytime there was an activity, and he did, often dropping in unannounced. They had to tell him repeatedly that he is welcome here, but there was only room for him to come on Thursdays for after-school tutoring. There wasn’t room for him to come every day.
Last summer, The Peace Center had the opportunity to move to a better building a mile away, which was good for the ministry, but unsettling for Hassan, who could no longer simply walk over, but would have to wait for someone to take him. During the move, a very somber Hassan revealed his dread to Miss Amy, a ministry staff member at the Peace Center. “Miss Amy,” he said, “now that we have this new building, I can’t come over whenever I want to. I will have to be chosen.”
Author Daniel Nayeri, who immigrated from Iran with his family when he was around Hassan’s age, described what it felt like for him to be an immigrant: “I am ugly, and I speak funny. I am poor. My clothes are used and my food smells bad. I don’t know the jokes or the stories you like, or the rules to the games. I don’t know what anybody wants from me.”i
I, personally, can’t relate to Daniel and Hassan on all counts. Maybe you can’t either. But we all know what it’s like to feel out of place, to feel the dread of being left out. When I was in the second grade, my family moved onto a naval station in Virginia. It was career broadening assignment for my dad, who was in the Air Force.
Our family knew Air Force culture, but the Navy felt like a foreign country. Sailors and Marines have a different mindset, compared to the Air Force. There’s some truth to the joke that Marines sleep under the stars and sailors navigate by the stars, and the Air Force, we look at the stars to decide which hotel we’ll stay in.
Those six months my family lived on the Naval Station were like being in a foreign country. I didn’t know the jokes or the jargon or the rules, which is why I was so grateful that Chad, a Navy kid who lived across the street, chose me as his friend. Maybe it was because his dad was out at sea for six months, and he could relate to feeling displaced, and he could see that we weren’t so different.
Author Daniel Nayeri concludes his description of what it felt like to be an immigrant by observing that he is like a lot like you. He says, “I don’t know the jokes or the stories you like, or the rules to the games … or what anybody wants from me. But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw. Like you, I want a friend.”ii
I’m not sure if the Bible ever describes us as toys made by God, but God is likened to a craftsman, a craftsman who works with clay (Isaiah 45:9, 64:8). And we are His clay. Clay God makes into things;—pots, vessels, maybe even action figures. The Book of Genesis depicts the creation of the first human in just this way;—God forms an action figure out of the dust and breathes life into him. And Adam becomes a living creature.
“Toy” is probably too trivial of a word to describe the relationship between us and God. But the image might encourage a little humility because we aren’t God’s equals and never will be. We aren’t even real in the same sense that God is. God is the Maker and we are the thing made. We are God’s creation, I am, you are … God’s property;—not a toy that talks, but clay enlivened by the breath of God, to be God’s co-worker, God’s co-creator, adopted son, adopted daughter, loved by God, chosen.
You have been chosen. You were created, not by accident, but with intention, made carefully by the God who loved what He saw, by the God who wants a relationship with the ones he made;—not like a puppet-master/puppet relationship, but something more like Geppetto and Pinocchio, a father to child relationship, a friend to friend. There are no puppet strings attached to you from God, but rather the unbreakable bonds of love and loyalty. In this relationship, God has given you the gift of responsible action, which opens up the possibility that you can act against God’s intention, against God’s will. We all can, which, if you keep reading in Genesis, is exactly what happened.
Early on, collectively, we got it into our clay brains that God can’t be trusted, that either He’s holding out on us or asleep at the wheel, and we need to make ourselves into something more than just creatures. We need to become like gods. We need to take care of ourselves.
When you believe the lie that you must become your own god, the world starts to look different to you. It might even resemble a rigged arcade game. And you can play it in a couple of ways: one option is to huddle in the corner and wait to be picked for something good, but never knowing for sure if it’s not some conspiracy hatched by an elite cabal of toy-torturing socio-paths behind the controls, chaired by a guy named Sid. Or the other option, if you’re not the cowering type, is to try to take control back and rig the game in your favor. If you believe that this is the world you’ve been chosen for, chosen into, then either cowering in fear or becoming the bigger bully could make good sense to you.
But here’s the good news of the Bible: that’s not how things are because that’s not how God is. God is good and God has chosen you for something better. God made this world good and for good and God is still committed to making good on His choice. That’s why God gave you His Word, His Personal Word to take on a body of clay, to be made a creature even as He remains the Creator. That’s why the Word of God, the Son of God was born and given the name Jesus and the title, “Christ”;—Christ which means “the Anointed One,” chosen by God for a mission, chosen to do the work of welcoming us back.
And doing God’s work got Jesus in trouble. His work, His love and loyalty to God His Father put Him in in the cross-hairs of conspiring religious elites and power-hungry warlords, and the evil spirit of Sid inside us all;—that child, scared of being left out. All this led to Jesus being rejected, tortured, left to die on cross. God, however, stayed true to His choice. God raised His Chosen One from the dead and when He did it, God chose to undo the damage we’ve done. God chose to satisfy the anger He rightfully feels over the damages you’ve inflicted. God chose to start over with Jesus, and in Jesus, God chooses you.
God welcomes you. And if by grace you believe it, if you surrender your life to this promise, if you trust Jesus when He says, “I pick you. You’re over here with us,” then you are set free from that dread of being left out. You can stop cowering in the corner. You can stop trying to rig the game in your favor. You can become what the Bible calls, “strong,” strong in the faith.
It’s a phrase used by one of the early followers of Jesus, a man named Paul. He uses the phrase in a letter he wrote to Christ-followers living among the ancient Romans, who prided themselves in their strength. But Paul redefines what it means to be strong. To be strong is to trust in God’s free and gracious choice to give you a place with Jesus, a place no one can take away. To be strong is to let this confidence in Christ infiltrate your whole life. To be strong is to let faith subdue your fears, even the fear of being left out.
And when you’re strong like this, strong in the faith, then you have a special assignment, a new obligation. You have work to do. Listen to how Paul says it in the 15th chapter of the letter to the Romans. He writes:
“We who are strong [in the faith] have the obligation to bear with the failings of those without strength, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please our neighbor, for the good, to build them up, because Christ, God’s Chosen One, He did not please Himself, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who have insulted you [O God], have fallen on me’ (Psalm 69:9). You see, everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that by the endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we would have hope.”
Paul continues,
“Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you this same mindset together, following Christ, so that with one heart and with one mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Therefore, welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed you, to the glory of God” (Romans 15:1-7).
There’s a climactic scene in the third installment of the Toy Story movies, Toy Story 3. The entire movie is fraught with the dread of being left out. At the beginning, we meet the old gang again: Sheriff Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and all their friends, even the little three-eyed green spaceman they rescued from Sid. But now the little boy who used to play with them is all grown-up and heading off to college. So, the old toys get donated to a childcare center. On the surface, it appears they’ve been chosen for the good life, but we learn that there’s a conspiracy.
Among the toys, the place is ruled by another bully, a big purple bear named Lotso, who himself is so ruled by the fear of being left out that he’s rigged the game to protect and to please himself.
Buzz, Woody, and the others escape. Furious, Lotso hunts them down. They end up at the city dump. The toys get separated, but eventually Lotso traps most of them. And now they’re stuck on a pile of mulched trash, on a runaway conveyor, descending into the fire of a burning incinerator. There is no escape. No way out. It’s the end. But this is the fire that will test their true strength. So, they find each other’s eyes, take each another’s hands and link arms. Different as they are, they welcome each other, friends to the end.
Just then, high above them, a portal opens, light breaks through, and down drops a giant, hydraulic scooping mechanism;—The Claw;—powered by one of those green, three-eyed little guys who escaped along with a couple of his compatriots. And they scoop them up to safety because…they’d been chosen for this.
In a way, being saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus is just that simple. On Judgment Day, when Jesus returns to judge the living and dead, He promises to “scoop” you up out of the fire of hell, you and all who trust in Him. It is just that simple. And there’s more involved. There’s more involved because the fire of God’s judgment is a refining, purifying fire, and we will pass through it. As the Bible says, we “will be saved … as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). The fire will test each person’s work.
We can endure this test because the strength we have is not our own. Jesus is with us and in us and for us. He found our eyes, took our hands, linked up arm-in-arm, and chose us as friends. We do not have anything to fear. But we do have work to do, work that will endure the test, work for those without strength, to build them up, to keep Christ’s circle open and our hands outstretched to give everyone a place to belong, to welcome them as Christ welcomed us. That’s what you’ve been chosen for.
Seven-year-old Hassan dreaded the thought of having to wait to be chosen to get a ride to the new Peace Center. Like us, sometimes he struggles with being a creature. And he’s seen enough to know that people sometimes let you down and leave you out. And even if it’s not intentional, it still hurts. Hassan has learned to be skeptical when humans are behind the controls. But he’s also learning something about God. Over summer break, when the after-school tutoring program was paused and the move to the new building was in progress, Miss Amy made sure Hassan had a ride to one of the summer programs in the new building.
When Hassan entered the new Peace Center that day, there was a bustling host of volunteers from all over the city, moving boxes, tables and chairs. Drills, hammers, paint brushes all in motion. God’s people at work.
Hassan takes it all in. Then he freezes, stunned silent for a moment. He looks up reverently and points, “Miss Amy, that’s our painting from the old Peace Center.”
Hung on the wall only two minutes earlier is an enormous, seven-foot by seven-foot painting of fishermen at work in their boat, straining at the nets to scoop up a miraculous catch. A man with a beard and dark skin wearing a white robe and a gleam in his brown eyes stands at the center.
“Who is that in the picture?” Miss Amy asks Hassan.
“Jesus,” he answers.
“Who is with Jesus?”
“I don’t remember all their names,” he says.
“Ok, but who are they?”
“Jesus’ friends,” he says, smiling.
“You’re right,” she tells him. “And you know what? You are Jesus’ friend, too. You’ve been chosen.”i Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story). Lantern Paperback, 2020, 16.
ii Ibid.
Reflections for December 7, 2025
Title: Chosen for What?No reflection segments during Advent.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry” from The Hymnal Project of the Michigan District LC-MS. Used by permission.
“Lift Up Your Heads, You Everlasting Doors” by Stephen P. Starke & Paul Liljestrand.
“On Jordan’s Bank” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.