Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Genesis 12:1-9

I’m going to guess that the last time you used the word “blessing” it was not to talk about God’s favor or protection, as I talked about that being the Webster dictionary definition, but to say something after someone sneezed. Do you know that people have been saying “God bless you,” after someone sneezes all over the world in a variety of cultures and languages since the time of Jesus? Maybe they were even saying “God bless you,” during the time of Abraham and Sarah! According to Wikipedia, people believed that sneezing did all kinds of things to you, from stopping your heart, to the potential of falling ill with the plague! The kind, polite gesture of saying, “God bless you” after someone sneezes can be a positive reminder that even when life gives us hiccups or “sneezes,” God blesses us. It can be a very simple way to bring God into the conversation, wanting God’s favor upon that person and wanting that person to know God is with them. Often, though, like a lot of our common phrases, we don’t think about what it really means or what we’re saying.
Today we’re talking about blessings and God’s blessings for us because God talks about blessing Abram a lot in Genesis chapter 12. Five times, to be exact. And if you think about it, we don’t know why God chooses Abram and Sarai to bless in this way, with land and children to be exact. Abram is already seventy-five years old, Sarai about ten years his younger. They seem like an odd couple for God to work through in this dramatic way. There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly special about them. Abraham and Sarah, in fact, are known as the parents of all three major monotheistic world religions – Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. All three of our traditions recognize Abraham as their founder, because Abraham first recognized God as one God. But that question of WHY God would choose older folks like Abraham and Sarah, from Ur, Mesopotamians, may be something we have to wait until we get to the pearly gates to ask God.
That question could lead us to a large question of why some people appear to be blessed by God more than others. Right now, we deal with almost constant sibling rivalry in our household. If Erin has a ball, then Grace wants that ball. Not another ball, that ball. If Grace gets a cookie for dessert, then Erin needs a cookie for dessert – a bigger one, preferably. As adults, we can treat God’s blessings in the same way, leading us to covet what others have and be angry at God for why we don’t have those things. Why does my neighbor seem to have fewer health problems, or more grandchildren, or more spare time, or a better relationship with her kids, or…the list can go on and on. In fact, it could really bother us if we hear someone gloating on Facebook or to a coworker that they’re so blessed because they just got a raise, or a second home in the Hamptons. Even here at church, there’s a lot we’ve been doing together to focus on our new priorities: hiring a nursery attendant, a new accompanist, starting Wednesday children’s programming, and adult discipleship groups. We can quickly focus on what’s still not right and be angry at each other or even God for why we’re not growing faster or why our church isn’t “perfect.” I know I can get caught in that trap of seeing and thinking the worst.
It may be helpful when we’re caught in the temptation to dwell on what we lack in terms of God’s blessings to remember the rest of Abraham and Sarah’s story. God promises that they will have many descendants and land, but Abraham and Sarah never actually get to settle that Promised Land that God shows them. They are buried there, that’s it. The land is for their descendants to be a blessing to others. And Abraham is one hundred years old, Sarah ninety, before they have one son, their only son, Isaac. That means they wait twenty-five more years for God to fulfill the promise that they’ll have numerous descendants, and even when they die, they’re not sure how God’s going to make that promise happen. I’m going to guess that over those years of waiting and basically camping in the wilderness as nomads, there were times that they did not think they were particularly blessed by God at all. It was probably hard for Abraham and Sarah to take God’s long view, that God’s ultimate plan and promise would be better than they could ever imagine, not just for them, but for the whole world! And then, if you remember, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac on the mountain to prove his loyalty to God. Of course, God spares Isaac and rewards Abraham’s loyalty, but Abraham and Sarah in their lifetimes here on Earth do not get to see all of God’s blessings and promises to them completely fulfilled. They learn to trust. They learn to follow. They learn to wait with hope. They learn to bless others with the blessings they’ve been given, even if those blessings look smaller than they originally thought in the short term.
I think we can learn from Abraham and Sarah to take the focus off of what we lack and instead consider that we all ARE blessed by God, uniquely given all kinds of good things from God not because we deserve it, but because God loves us all so much. Our blessings may be small, but they’re not too small to share. God promises Abram that “All the families of the Earth will be blessed through you.” It’s fair to say without Abraham’s faith in a loving, generous and all-powerful God, we wouldn’t be here today. We are blessed because of Abraham’s faith still today. And that heritage, that legacy, is ours to share now. God continues to bless us so that we bless others, so that all the families of the Earth will be blessed through us, too. The beauty of God’s generosity is that God gives each of us different gifts to share so that together we can see how God’s amazing promises to us play out for the good of all.
Here in worship, we could take a few minutes just to recount how many of us are sharing our blessings with each other so we can enjoy today just in this hour, and that’s just one hour of this whole week that we see each other as blessings: bread bakers, coffee makers, readers, musicians, people who are good at talking to other people, pray-ers, financial gifts, handy guys and gals who have spruced up this space, computer whizzes, left-brained types to count and record our monetary offerings, story tellers, the list goes on. You know that every week we say that we are blessed to serve God and share our faith with all. This is what the story of Abraham and Sarah is about: receiving God’s blessings and trusting that what God gives us is enough, even when it doesn’t seem like much, and then turning around and serving God and sharing those blessings with all. We are blessed. That doesn’t mean we’re better or more special than others, it means we have enough to share. And what God has given us is too good not to share. Amen.