Genesis 12:1-3
Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your
country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show
you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you,
and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I
will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in
you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’
Luke 6:20-26
Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 ‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 ‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
22 ‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they
exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of
Man. 23Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your
reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the
prophets.
24 ‘But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25 ‘Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
24 ‘But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25 ‘Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
26‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for
that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
It
has been a lot of fun, and no small challenge, working on this sermon series,
and I hope it proves valuable to all of you.
Or at least to some of you.
This
morning’s request comes from Joanie, who asked me to do some thinking and
speaking about blessing. What is a
blessing? What does it mean to be
blessed?
They’re
great questions, because the idea of blessing, or being blessed, is one which
we find throughout scripture. There are
490 occurrences of “bless,” “blessed,” or “blessing” in the Bible.
So
we ought to be able to get a clear picture of what it means to bless and to be
blessed…right?
Sure.
It
means a lot of things.
The
first occurrence of blessing is in the first chapter of the Bible. When God created human beings, Genesis tells
us, “God blessed them, saying ‘be fruitful and multiply.’”
So
the first blessing is a promise of tiny humans.
And I will say that I now know definitively that tiny humans are the
best blessing there is. At least that’s
how it works in my house.
And
blessing is often tied to fruitfulness, by which the Bible means first
“procreation.” Fruitfulness comes to
mean bearing the fruits of the kingdom of God, which is a more inclusive
blessing. But in Genesis, it means “have
children. Have lots and lots of
children.”
The
blessing to Abraham and Sarah, for example, reiterated a few times, is that
they will be the parents of a nation. In
Genesis 15, God says to Abraham, “‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if
you are able to count them.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘So shall your
descendants be.’ 6And Abraham believed the Lord; and
the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” That final part, which Paul recounts in
Romans 4, hints at an important facet of “blessing” in scripture. It is often transactional. We will talk more about that in a moment.
First
I want to review a few more ways that blessing happens in scripture. Blessings are bestowed by lots of
figures. By God, for sure. But in the stories of our parents in the
faith, in Torah, especially, children are blessed by their parents, or whole
families.
When
Rebekah leaves her family in Aram to go to Canaan and marry Isaac, her family
blesses her with these words:
‘May you, our sister, become
thousands of myriads;
may your offspring gain possession
of the gates of their foes.’
thousands of myriads;
may your offspring gain possession
of the gates of their foes.’
Okay,
so maybe not the words we would use, but it’s a blessing. May you have a large family and safety.
One
of the great blessing stories from the time of the patriarchs and matriarchs
comes from the next generation. Isaac
and Rebekah have twin sons, Esau and Jacob.
Esau was born first, but Jacob had a hold of his heel when he came out—a
harbinger of things to come.
Esau
was the favorite of his father.
Isaac
was his mother’s favorite.
When
Isaac reached the end of his life, it fell on him to “bless” his oldest
son. By now “blessing” seems to have
acquired a fuller meaning. This blessing
would confer the birthright to Esau, thus allowing him to inherit the bulk of
his father’s considerable possessions.
Rebekah
conspires with her son Jacob to pretend to be Esau and receive the blessing,
and Jacob does it. He steals his
brother’s blessing, and once it is given, it is permanent. Jacob becomes Isaac’s heir, and the rest is
history.
The
story only becomes more interesting from there, but if we really want to
understand “blessing,” as it is laid down in the foundation of our story of
faith, we have to back up a couple of generations. Back to Abraham, or in this case Abram.
Our
Hebrew scripture lesson for this morning is small-but-mighty. The first iteration of the blessing given to
Abram and Sarai, later Abraham and Sarah.
Now
the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and
your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will
make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so
that you will be a blessing.
I
will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and will make your name
great. HUGE promise from God. You will be HUGE. And the important part is right after that.
Who’s
reading it? What’s the important
part?
“I
will bless you, and will make your name great…so that you will be a blessing.
Abram
is blessed by God SO THAT he can bless the world. God’s not just showering him with gifts (and
make no mistake, there is an implied showering to go along with the
fruitfulness which takes a couple of generations to manifest). God has hand-selected Abram, because God
believes that with a little TLC, they can be the ones to plant the kingdom of
God in earth.
And
a lot of things happen in the intervening time, but that is exactly what
happens. Abram and Sarai become Abraham
and Sarah, the parents of a people who make up over half of the world. There are seven billion people in the
world. 4.3 billion of them are the
descendants of Abraham and Sarah—the Jews, the Christians, the Muslims.
And
we are all here because Abraham believed God, and moved from his homeland and
did the things God commanded him to do, and God “reckoned it as righteousness,”
and made of him a covenant.
God’s
part was to be God.
Abraham’s
part was to be God’s person. To bless as
God had blessed him. To bless his
family, to bless the world, to bless God.
It
wasn’t always easy, being a blessing. As
you might know, God tested Abraham’s fidelity to the covenant in some pretty
tough ways.
This
is where the “prosperity gospel” people have it all wrong. Being “blessed” doesn’t just mean that you
get all the great stuff you’ve always wanted.
God is not Oprah.
Being
blessed means that you give yourself over to the covenant. You allow yourself to be God’s, and to adhere
to God’s commands. It ain’t all
prosperity. Look at the way Jesus
describes what “blessed” looks like:
Blessed
are you who are poor, hungry, weeping, hated, and despised. For you will be filled. You will laugh. And most important, you are worthy to enter
the kingdom of God.
Those
who have never wanted are not fit for the kingdom. Those who have never wept cannot enter. Because those of you who have wept…and
survived…have learned to laugh again. To
reach out to another person when you are in pain and say “help me, I am
weeping.” To rely on something more than
yourself, and to understand that no matter how things look today, they can
easily look differently tomorrow. So we
need each other. And we need God.
You
can’t enter the kingdom of God until you realize that you need God. That’s what blessing is. It’s not God playing “you get a car. You get a car.”
It’s
us realizing that everything we have
comes from God. If we have transportation,
if we have food, if we have people who love us and are there to dry our
tears—we are blessed.
And
if we realize that we are blessed, that God has allowed us to survive another
day, then we are ready to enter into the covenant of the kingdom of God. Perhaps even to bless someone who is still
hungry, hated, weeping.
God
blesses us and grants us the kingdom…and we bless God and build the
kingdom. We create a world in which all
who are hungry are fed, all who are weeping have someone to dry their tears.
Think
for a moment, about the ways that God has blessed you. Take just one of those things and either say
a little prayer of thanks to God, or share it with the people seated around
you.
We
are blessed. This church is blessed.
Now
let us bless the world.
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