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Bible

Many are Called but Few are Chosen

Another thoughtful offering from my liberal friend (yes!) Harry, with whom I disagree on many things, but who is still a welcome inputter into my inbox and mind! Rowland.

Barely Chosen to Play Right Field

Harry T. Cook

10/12/08

Matthew 22: 1-14

Leave it to Matthew to abandon grace for retribution. In one of his attempts to wrap a pithy saying in a midrashic story for effect, Matthew gave John Calvin and other predestinationists all the biblical warrant they would ever need to determine who would be “in” and who would be “out” of luck come the end of time. The saying is “Many are called, but few are chosen,” which a biblical studies student of mine once brilliantly compared to the difference between a venire and a seated jury. All of them were called to duty. Only 12 were finally needed, yet any of the unchosen ones could have been chosen, for all were worthy. That’s a far cry from the predestinationists’ vengeance tragedy of arbitrary divine choice of some over others for the enjoyment of paradise and the consequent consignment of the rest to perdition. It reminds one in a grisly way of the disembarkation of Jews from the cattle cars at Auschwitz only to approach Herr Docktor Josef Mengele who, with a flick of the thumb left or right chose which of them would die sooner and which later. As with almost any biblical passage, many possibilities of rational interpretation present themselves, some more attune to pertinent scholarship than others. The terrible story told in this passage concerns a king who had given advance notice of a wedding banquet for his son and now sent runners to summon the invitees. Some of them are depicted as blowing off the invitation, which more than irked the king. For reasons unexplained in this ham-fisted story, others of the invitees killed the invitation bearers, who were in turn killed by the outraged king who had their cities burned for good measure. In the context of the late first century, it is not difficult to follow Matthew’s mind. The son in the story is Jesus; the king is God; the invitation bearers are the apostles; the reluctant guests are Gentiles lukewarm to Jesus Judaism; the killers of the invitation bearers represent post-Temple continuing Judaism struggling both against the Jesus movement and the depredations of Rome.

Therefore what is called a “parable” is really an allegory. It’s too obvious and too unnuanced to be a classic parable. Also, its moral (“Many are called but few are chosen”) doesn’t really fit with the story. The moral would fit better with Luke’s version of the story, which features the lame and the poor being invited to the feast in place of those who were too busy to come. In Luke, it’s kind of a “look what you missed” kind of ending instead of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Yet the saying remains: “Many are called but few are chosen.” I have always admired that student of mine in days gone by who came up with the venire/jury interpretation. My own is less creative, but the saying in question here always reminds me of the good-weather recesses of my grammar school days when the boys ran to the ball field that had been hacked out of the farmland which bordered our four-room school house. I was the fat kid who batted – if you could call it that – left-handed, and could be counted on to bobble any grounder or drop any fly. Most days I remained on the side lines, having been called by the recess bell to the ball field but seldom chosen by team captains actually to play. Occasionally though, to even the teams, one of the captains would relent and, with a shrug of his shoulders, let me play right field to which few balls were ever hit. I was soon unchosen after a couple of strike outs or bloop pop-ups. But in the classroom, I got all A’s. So school wasn’t a total washout.

© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

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