Who do we think we are?

We are the People of God!  Last week we talked about God working inside the Church and God working beyond the Church in his whole world.  The whole world is God’s.

However, right from the beginning of the biblical story, God has chosen people to whom he has spoken his word more explicitly and more intensely.  There have been chosen people and there has been a Chosen People.  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David and each of the prophets have had unique relationships with God and through them it was gradually revealed what God is really like.

All those people have been part of a Chosen People – Israel – and that People was led by them into a relationship with God in which they discovered that God was not as they originally thought he was and not what the other peoples around them thought he was.  This was a long process and clearly shows that God will not force himself on human beings.  He engages with them and woos them.

There is also a Chosen People of the New Testament.  This is part of our identity as Christians, as the Church.  This new People is centred on Jesus Christ whom the Old Testament was moving toward. 

Jesus choses 12 apostles.  The twelve is significant because there were 12 tribes of the People of God of the Old Testament each of them being named with the name of one of the sons of Jacob who was also given the name Israel.  It is not the twelve apostles as individuals that really matter – we know very little of most of them.  It is the twelve as a group corresponding to the 12 foundation stones of the Old Testament.  The group around Jesus are to be the new People of God.

So, when we ask ‘who do we think we are?’, a part of the answer is that we are the Chosen People of God of the New Testament.  We are a People in the midst of all the peoples of the world who are called into a more explicit and intense relationship with the God who is everyone’s God but whom we are privileged to know through and in Jesus Christ in whom God translates himself for us.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Published: 2 August 2024