Blessed to be a Blessing

Preaching text: Genesis 12: 1-9

Preached at Community of Christ Lutheran Church on June 11, 2023

A clear word from God sounds awfully good right now. If God would just speak clearly and undoubtedly to the next pastor for Community of Christ, to the call committee, to the synod office, to the person who knows someone who knows someone who would be a great fit. But as our ancestor in the faith Abram’s story bears witness, even when the Lord speaks directly to you, the directions can be vague. Go from what you know, towards what you do not. God only says, “I’ll show you where, I’ll bless you, and through your descendents, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 

Instead of a hidden answer we must work really hard to decode, God’s calling is much more like a posture of listening and responsiveness, moving forward together without knowing definitive answers, because what we do know is that God will bless us with love, so that we can bless others. That’s the plan, without the details. 

Theologian and pastor Frederick Buechner wrote (I’m paraphrasing) that where your great passion and the world’s great need meet, that’s your calling from God. Sometimes that fits what you do for a living, and sometimes work is just the way to pay the bills, but your God-given calling may be to roles such as parent, spouse, friend, or relative. How many times have those roles caused you to change your life completely? 

—

There are also times, when you feel like a bit player in someone else’s storyline. When you have no say in the uprooting and major life changes. Trailing spouses, children, the people displaced when you move in, the congregation waiting for their next pastor. One person’s decisions can impact so many others! Abram’s directions from God sent many people packing: 

• His wife Sarai, the next generation: his nephew Lot’s family
• Slaves of the household, the people they had acquired, who certainly had no choice
• And then the people who were already living in Canaan, in the land Abram was promised by God.
• All were displaced by Abram following this call from God. 

It may seem like God is only interested in the main character, Abram. And that makes everyone else feel overlooked, or undervalued. But while Abram might be the leader, the plan involves not him, but his descendents, numbering as many as the stars in the sky. The ones whose patience and flexibility and trust and moving forward because they have no choice, are the opposite of insignificant. 

God knows that generalities don’t get things done; there’s a diffusion of responsibility if we’re “all” supposed to do the job—we assume someone else will do it. So God chose one particular family to start with. A flawed family, for sure. Later, God chose to join the fray, in the flesh, through Jesus. But what if none of us—even Abram, even Jesus—are the main characters? We are each part of God lovingly tending to the world. We are a part of a movement, not a singular hero story. That story doesn’t wait for the new pastor to arrive. 

But if we want to consider ourselves grafted onto this family tree through Christ, then we too are “blessed to be a blessing”. Say it with me: “Blessed to be a blessing”. That’s Abram’s calling and ours. We listen, we discern, and when necessary, we pick up and move, change the way we’re doing things, re-orient ourselves, because God has chosen us to be the good news to our neighbors near and far. “In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.” 

• Not just the ones I like? 
• Not just the ones I know or feel attached to? 
• Not just the family unit I’m a part of? 

What does living as a blessing to others even mean? A while ago I introduced the practice of “Dwelling in the Word” during the education time here. It’s a process of reading the same Scripture several times, with silence in between, and noticing what stands out to you. Then hanging onto a word or phrase, and letting it rattle around in your mind and heart for a bit. Often, if we do this in a group, themes bubble up of what stands out to several of us. We can ask together, “What might God be saying to us today?” “How are we blessed, to be a blessing?” 
As we read through some of the “ancestors of the faith” stories for the next 4 weeks, we’ll pay attention to how we can become the ancestors our descendants need, by reckoning honestly with their stories of faith. We read about the ancestors of the faith not just to know who we are in relation to those who came before us, but who we are in relation to the next generations. We’re not just trying to leave a positive impression of ourselves, but to give the next generations the will to seek God and to attempt to live into “blessed to be a blessing.”