SCRIPTURE (from
“The Story” book page 13; Genesis 12:1-5)
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him;
and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set
out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all
the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired
in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived
there.
The grass withers and the flower fades but the Word of the
Lord endures forever.
SERMON—introduction
There’s an old wives’ tale that suggests that if your ears feel
like they’re burning, it’s because someone’s talking about you. And apparently,
if it’s your LEFT ear, someone’s saying good things but if it’s your RIGHT ear,
someone’s saying something not so nice.[1]
I’m pretty sure this is all a bunch of baloney … but for the
purposes of today’s sermon, I gotta ask: were your collective LEFT ears burning
this week? Because I was talking about you … and rest assured, it was all good
stuff!
Tina, the pastor from the Paris Church, and I were pondering
what part of this week’s chapter from “The Story” we might use for worship. And
we ended up talking about how a lot of people from both of our churches have
lived here forever.
#1
In my mind, as I thought about you--picturing where each of
you usually sit on Sunday morning--I was pretty sure that most of you have
lived here or somewhere nearby your whole lives. Or, if you were born somewhere
else, you’ve now lived here for a significant part of your life. This has
become home to you.
And whenever you find a place to call home, more often than
not, you are reluctant to leave it. I’m not talking about vacation; I’m talking
about uprooting the life you’ve come to know and moving somewhere you’ve never
been before. I’m talking about packing up your house and your family and moving
across country to a place you’ve never seen before, don’t really know anything
about, and don’t really know what to expect.
Leaving behind your friends and family and friends who are
like family. Leaving behind your social network and those who support and
encourage and love you. Leaving behind your doctors and dentist and the
plumber, electrician, and car mechanic you’ve come to know and trust.
What would it take to get you to leave this place and stay away? What kind of a promise would God have to make to you get you to start a completely new life with no looking back?
So, if God asked you to do this, what kind of promise would
he have to make to get you to go? What kind of promise would make it worth the
long hours of packing up a household; to make it worth traveling for a
seemingly endless number of days; to make it worth going to a place you’ve
never been before?
What kind of promise would God have to make to get you to do
this?
#2
This is the promise Abraham and Sarah received: 2 “I
will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name
great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and
whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed
through you.”
As far as promises go, that’s a pretty darn good one.
For Abraham and Sarah, it was exactly what they needed to
hear. They had longed for a child, and God promised them not just a son but
that their family will become a great nation, as numerous as the stars in the
sky and the grains of sand on the beach. This promise fulfilled their deepest
longing.
Not only that, it also offered them the chance to make a difference in the world. God says to them, “…you will be a blessing … and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
That part of the promise fulfills another deep longing that people of all times and places have--to know that you matter, that you can make a difference, to know that you are a blessing to others.
As part of God’s family of faith, we are a product of this
promise. We are part of this great nation. This promise is for us too--this
promise of blessing when we are obedient and willing to follow wherever God
calls us.
And the tremendous results of this blessing are ours as
well, this ability and capability of making a difference. We have been blessed
in order that we might bless others, to make a difference in their world.
Through Abraham and Sarah, “all peoples on earth will be
blessed through you.” Through us, all people on earth can be blessed.
#3
Even if you haven’t seen it, you’ve probably heard of the
movie, “Pay It Forward.” A young boy’s teacher gives their class the assignment
to “think of something to change the world and put it into action.” The boy
decides to do this not by paying back favors people have done for him but
rather by doing new good deeds for three other people. His theory is that if he
helps three other people, then maybe those three people will help someone else
and that person will help someone else … and so on and so on until the lives of
people he never met before are being changed.[2]
This movie inspired a whole movement of random acts of
kindness, of people blessing people and asking only that they “pay it forward”
to someone else.
But being a blessing to others comes with some risk, just
like following God always comes with some risk.
Some people are so broken and hurt that they may not want to
be blessed … but maybe that’s exactly what they need. The point is not to force
a blessing or a good deed on someone, but rather to offer them grace in the way
that God has offered you grace--freely, gently, lovingly.
This is the EXTERNAL element of blessing--this doing
something for someone else like paying the toll of the car behind you or paying
for the coffee of the person behind you or helping someone with a big cart of
groceries to their car. This is how you can change the world, one person at a
time.
But the act of blessing someone also has an INTERNAL
element--a way of naming again and again how God has blessed us and calls us to
bless others.
Really, it’s a way of worshiping God, of responding to the grace he has given to us and wants us to share with others. We receive grace in order to share grace with others.
This is God’s way of changing us … making us more holy and righteous, showing us how we really can change the world … which all starts by changing one person at a time. And that first person can be you. And then me. And then someone else.
Changing the world all because of a promise--we have been
blessed in order to bless others.
SERMON—conclusion
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You’ve probably figured out by now that you’ve got a mission
this week, if you choose to accept it.
In your bulletins you see a little business card and it
simply says, “Blessed to be a blessing.” This week, I’m asking you to worship
God by blessing someone else, someone you know or a stranger; it doesn’t matter.
But don’t do it because you’re a nice person; don’t do it because
you always do nice things for people. Do it as an act of worship, as way of
remembering the grace God has given to you and wants you to share with someone
else.
It can be something extraordinary that will blow someone’s
mind; it can also be something small … because you know, sometimes it’s the
littlest things that make the biggest difference.
On the bottom of the card, there’s a website address. I’m
praying that the people we bless this week will be curious enough to plug that
into the internet. And once they do, they will find a little explanation of who
we are and why we’re doing this and an encouragement to take that card and pass
it along to someone else.
They’ll also going to find this blessing, which I’m going to
give to you right now. Let’s stand, if you don’t mind, while you receive this
blessing from the book of Numbers, chapter 26:
May the Lord bless you and keep you;
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious
to you;
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you
peace.
Consider yourselves blessed; now go bless someone else!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
Amen
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