Sermon for Lent 2A - Genesis 12:1-4a

It seems to me that when Christians use the word blessed, we mean something different than what God had in mind when he said to Abram, “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

I searched on Amazon this week for “blessed” merchandise. I found: 

• A T-shirt with #blessed in script on the front.
• A set of 4” tall wooden letters that spell Blessed - available in green (just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, the advert told me), red (labelled for Valentine’s Day), white (for First Communion), and also in pink, blue, black, purple, and yellow (no holidays designated) 
• And, finally, especially for the vegans among us, I found Blessed Vegan Protein Powder, although it wasn’t clear to me if it’s the vegan or the powder that is actually blessed.

People say they are blessed in many different circumstances. You might hear a football player say it when they score the winning touchdown, or a baseball player when they hit the game-winning home run. After a disaster, you might hear a home owner say they are blessed, if their house is still standing, when all the others in the neighborhood have been destroyed. And I’ll admit it - I’m uncomfortable with what I sense all these scenarios are trying to convey.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and start with Abram’s story.

We meet Abram first at the end of Genesis 11. He is the son of a man named Terah, born in a place known as Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram marries Sarai, and together with his father and his nephew Lot, they leave Ur and settle in Haran. It is while they are in Haran that today’s Genesis passage about blessing takes place. God says to Abram, “I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing….” 

Then, following this promise of blessing, God calls Abram, Sarai, and Lot to leave Haran and continue on to Canaan. All sorts of things happen to them. A famine causes them to flee to Egypt. They experience ongoing infertility (despite God’s promise of offspring). A son is born when Abram forces a relationship on Sarai’s slave Hagar. And, let’s just stop to note that Abram’s actions are not a blessing to Hagar.

Later, God makes another covenant with Abram that comes with new names - Abraham and Sarah. And finally, in their very old age, Sarah gives birth to their promised offspring - a son they name Isaac.

So given all that happens to Abram - he thrives and grows rich, he becomes the forefather of a nation, and to this day, we know his name - we could definitely call Abram #blessed.

But what does blessing mean in this context? My working definition of blessing is that it is a declaration of faithfulness to another person. And that faithfulness is shown by truly seeing that person, accepting them as they are, with all their faults and foibles. It is shown by honoring them and loving them. When God promised that he would bless Abram, God promised to faithfully see, accept, honor and love him.

Note that blessing is not is a promise that we will all live happily ever after. Bad things will still happen. But blessing does mean that, no matter what we are going through, God is faithfully present with us, seeing, accepting, honoring, and loving us in the midst of whatever we are facing.  

Not only that, God’s blessing of Abram also comes with responsibility. God blesses Abram so that he will bless others. God’s expectation is that the blessing conferred upon Abram isn’t for Abram alone. It’s meant to be passed on. Abram is to approach others with that same attitude of faithfully seeing, accepting, honoring, and loving them, that God has shown to him. 

There’s also a part of this promise God makes that makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I need to be name it. God goes on to tell Abram that he will bless those who bless him AND curse those who curse him. What makes me uncomfortable is that it sounds like God is ready to pounce on people for failing. And that doesn’t ring true with how I experience God. But, in actual fact, things play out differently. Let me explain.

Notice that God is setting up a series of reciprocal relationships here. If things work according to plan, God will bless Abram and Abram will bless God. Then Abram will bless others. They will bless him back. If this unfolds the way it’s supposed to, the world is filled with people who faithfully see, accept, honor, and love one another. 

But if the people Abram meets fail to reciprocate Abram’s blessing, then they find themselves under God’s judgement. That’s what the cursing part means.

Things mostly didn’t work out the way God intended. Abram didn’t always bless God, despite repeated promises to do so. He didn’t always bless others. Others didn’t always bless him. And yet, despite the threatened curse, God kept coming back and remaking the offer. God gives Abram and others repeated opportunities to try again. Eventually, as we learned in the reading from John’s gospel this morning, because God loved this world so much, he sent Jesus.
I kept coming back to this text this week because I have such a love/hate relationship with the word blessed. Our society seems to think that blessed means lucky, rather than being faithfully seen, honored, accepted and loved by God - and then passing that blessing on to others. 

Our society also seems to miss the “…so you will be a blessing” part. Whatever ways I happen to be blessed, that blessing isn’t for me to bask in and hold selfishly. If I feel blessed to have a loving family, then my obligation is to help other families be equally blessed.

This question of what it means to be blessed and how we bless others came to the forefront for me yesterday as I was in the midst of writing this sermon. Along with all of you, I learned that our country is now at war with Iran. The news that we are at war is always hard news. This news hit me, and many in our congregation, particularly hard, because more than 20 of our siblings in Christ are from Iran. 

I know that many of our Iranian siblings still have family and friends in Iran. I know that the recently escalating violence in Iran has led to the deaths of some of their loved ones. I know that they fear for their loved ones’ safety and well-being, even more now than before. 

While their views are not univocal, they have no love for the Iranian leadership. They long for Iran to return to the way it was before a strict sharia theocracy took over Iran during the 1979 revolution - a theocracy that has become ever more conservative in the 45+ years since it was established. 

In a congregation that is politically diverse in a variety of ways, we come to this moment with different views about what is happening and how our government should proceed. 

This war, the broader political moment we find ourselves in, and the diversity of viewpoints about all of it, pushes us to ask what it means to be blessed, in order to bless others.

What does it look like - right now - to receive God’s promise of faithfully seeing, honoring, accepting, and loving us? How do we bless others? How do we bless those with whom we disagree?  

There are thing we can do to be a blessing right now. We can donate to organizations that are helping people on the ground in Iran. A quick look today didn’t show many options yet. But I know that there is also grave need in the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, related to the war, so that could be a place to start.

If you are inclined to advocacy, you may want to follow the work of the Episcopal Public Policy Network, which does governmental advocacy on a variety of issues as directed by the resolutions of our General Convention. 

Each of us can pray - for a speedy resolution to this conflict and for the safety of the loved ones of our siblings from Iran. As I hear from our Iranian siblings, I’ll share more ideas of how we can bless and support them. 

In this country, blessed is a word that has become divorced from its biblical meaning. It’s taken on a sort of Calvinistic implication - if something good has happened to me, it’s because I am blessed, with the converse true as well. I call on each of us today to remember the biblical meaning of the word blessed. God saw Abram. God accepted, honored, loved, and was faithful to him, as Abram was. In return, Abram was called to bless God and those whom he met. Abram was to pass God’s blessing on. 

Blessing isn’t something to be grasped tightly. It was always meant to be shared. We bless others to make the world a better place, to fill the world with God’s love. God’s call to Abram is for us, as well: I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. Amen.