You can be sure that those chosen last would be stuck in left field, where the daisies grew tall and few balls ever came their way. Ignoring their sniggers, Abram hobbles out to left field as fast as his arthritis will allow, and stands there grinning a toothless grin, looking less like a ball player than a grizzled groundkeeper well past his prime. If it's success God is after, God would be well-advised to pick again. The sixteenth-century Reformer John Calvin taught that the Church of Jesus Christ begins here, in left field, with Abraham and Sarah, God's unlikely draft picks. The reason the church begins here, said Calvin, is because it's built not on power and native ability, but on God's promise.
Calvinist theology is covenant theology.
What counts most is not the innate potential or moral virtue of the players, but the reliability of the promise. God's promise comes first, and the church follows. That's an unconventional way to build a team, I admit, but this is an unconventional God, this God of the Bible, this God whose covenant love establishes the church. It seems from Mark's Gospel that when Jesus comes along to expand the covenant, he begins with folk descended from Abraham and Sarah in more ways than one. In the first seven chapters of Mark, however, it looks to some as though Jesus might be departing from the pattern established with Abraham and Sarah.