Passing on the blessings

 Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

 This story from Genesis, of Abram and Sarai moving, and moving, and moving, waiting, and waiting, and waiting, became my story while I was at seminary and later as I sought a call to my first congregation.  

Attending seminary is a process filled with lots of questions, few immediate answers, and a lot of waiting. First, there is the wait for the candidacy committee to grant permission to enter seminary on the program you want, then acceptance at the seminary into your program. Once school has started, there is the wait to be assigned to a field education church, the wait for internship assignment. All of this is besides the actual coursework of Greek, Hebrew, theology, history, pastoral care, and ethics!

Time and patience did show that the decisions made by others for me were right, and worth the wait. I have been blessed by the results of the decisions and the resulting relationships that were begun while at seminary.

… Although this text uses the earlier names of Sarai and Abram, I’ll use the names we know them by, Sarah and Abraham. They were waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a baby that never came. While they were still waiting, God met somehow with Abraham and told him to pack up his family and belongings and move to an unidentified location. “When you get to where I want you to be, I’ll tell you to stop traveling.”

Scripture doesn’t say how the family responded to this news. A question without an answer! There is no description of a conversation between Abe and Sarah about this possibility. One day they are living with the extended family in Ur, and the next, they are ready to caravan out west, to God only knew where! And here’s an interesting side note: in Geneses 11, the storyteller says it was Terah, Abraham’s father who instigated the move west. More questions without answers!

… And here even more questions without answers: Don’t you suppose Matthew had a lot of questions about Jesus? He must have weighed what he knew about Judaism with what Jesus was preaching. He must have seen Jesus heal sick or broken people. Was he waiting for Jesus to get closer to his tax booth before deciding to follow? … Or was he thinking he was certainly not worthy of following Jesus? Once he is invited to follow, Matthew is excited to invite Jesus to meet some of his coworkers. He must have thought, “If I am welcome, then my friends should be welcome, too.”

The synagogue leader has been waiting and praying for his daughter to be healed. Was she really dead, or only sleeping, as Jesus tells the crowd? The woman with the hemorrhage has been waiting 12 years. Suddenly, she knows she has been healed. How does Jesus know she touched his clothing?

… At this point, we need to look back at the story from Genesis. What is the purpose of sending Abraham and Sarah west, away from their families? … Verse 3 says “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” So, their travels are not just to bless the immediate family, Abraham and Sarah, Lot, and their assorted family members and slaves. It is so God’s blessings will be spread wherever they go.  

Why has Jesus become human? So that all people on earth will know how much God loves them and wants to have a relationship with them. This sounds like a continuation of the original plan, begun with Abraham and Sarah, doesn’t it? So that all people on earth will be blessed.

In the case of the stories in the Gospel, Matthew and the other diners, the daughter and her family, and the woman with the hemorrhage are all blessed by their encounters with Jesus, as are the onlookers to the events.

… The Apostle Paul puts a slightly different spin on the story of Abraham and Sarah. He credits their faith in God for their journey west and for the way they waited so long to have a child. Abraham was as good as dead at 100, and Sarah’s womb was long past the ability to have a child – yet they had faith that one day, their long wait would be over. Along the way, we get a few stories of Abraham asking God questions. I’m sure, “How much longer must we wait for children? And a challenge to God – “You’d better hurry up and make this happen, because the way it’s going, I’ll be dead before I have a son.”

Paul gives them credit for their patient (mostly) waiting, in faith. And we, the generations since Abraham and Sarah have been blessed because of God’s power in finally giving them a child.

… So, waiting and questions for Abraham and Sarah, for many of the people whose lives Jesus touched, and for us. Paul works out a theological, or maybe logical, way to connect Abraham and Jesus. For Paul, the blessing is that we all are made right with God because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The thing with the story of Abraham and Sarah is that we are not supposed to be the end recipients of the blessing, we are supposed to pass on the blessing to others. We aren’t very good at that in some ways, and we excel in passing on the blessings in other ways.

I invite you to pay attention, this week, to how you are blessed. What kindnesses are given to you by someone else? How do you pass on your blessings to others? What kindnesses do you do for others?

The kindnesses may be indirect, through community work, serving on a board for example. But they may mean more if they are one-to-one. Handing a bag of food to a hungry person, or buying a rose from a corner vendor, or letting a person with three items go ahead of your full grocery cart. When we do something nice for someone, it blesses both of us. So, this week, see how many blessings you can count. Amen