"Be A Blessing" sermon

“And You Will Be A Blessing”
Alison Longstaff, February 17th, 2008
St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church
New Dundee, Ontario
Genesis 12: 1-4; John 3:1-17


“And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;”

Of all the promises made in the Bible, this one is, perhaps, one of the most overlooked. And yet this promise of God to Abram—this promise of God to each of us from the very beginnings of our spiritual journey—is that Abram will be a blessing. That we will be a blessing. God promises to make Abram’s name great, and to make him a great nation, and to bless him—which is the part of the promise we tend to notice—fame and power and success. But perhaps the most important part of the promise is that God will make Abram a blessing.

You see, the Bible isn’t just a history book, it is God speaking to all people of all time reminding us that life is a journey. This book of our lives reminds us that God desires to give us every good thing, and that most of all, He wishes to transform our lives so that we may be a blessing.

If we look at the final book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, it begins and ends with grace. It begins with “Grace be unto you and peace” and ends with “the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Amen.” Grace. God’s goodness. God’s loving-kindness. God’s blessing. The grace by which we are all blessed and transformed, and the only means by which we can be a blessing to others. It is the crowning jewel of our journey home. It is the real promised land. To be a blessing is the promise, and blessing and grace are at the finish line.

So here we are at the beginning with Abram in our story. He is seventy five years old. If it was you or I, I imagine at seventy five we are not so much in the mood for catastrophic change and upheaval. I’m forty six and would really rather not ever move house again, let alone move internationally. But as Abram was to live to one-hundred and seventy five, I guess this was more like his mid-life crisis. He was a mere sprightly seventy five!

In Swedenborgian theology, “Haran,” and “living in Haran,” is talking about early or primitive spirituality. It is the place we all start, the place we are born into but not meant to stay in. It is a relatively primitive and surface spirituality. It is not very developed yet. We are in Haran when we go to church because our parents make us, or because it is a habit, or because we want to see our friends, or because we like to be seen going to church. We live in Haran when we do not yet have a personal sense of connection with God or any real feeling of a need for God. It is our ancestral home and we are comfortable there. We all stay there until it is time to leave. We all stay there until God senses we are ready to move on and gives us a call and a promise.

In Swedenborgian theology, “seventy-five” means “not very holy.” Seven times ten means VERY holy, and five means, “not there yet.” We are not super-spiritual people when God first starts moving across the surface of our consciousness. But at some point in each of our lives, God starts to call us to do our spiritual work. For some of us, a mere whisper is all that is needed, for others a megaphone and some dynamite, but eventually, we are all called by God to do our spiritual work. Abram’s call to his journey is a reminder that God calls each of us to our spiritual journey.

God called Abram—notice that he is still called Abram here, not Abraham—the “H” sound is added to his and Sarai’s names only after they have gotten some of their spiritual journeying done, to show a mark of new holiness and a deeper level spirituality in their lives. “H” or the breath of God has entered their quality of being and so is reflected in their names. In any case, God called Abram to leave his family and his home and everything that was familiar in order to achieve the promised blessings, in order to become AbraHam. Even so with us, our spiritual journeying frequently involves stepping out of our comfort zones in order to become the blessing God would have us be.

This is where I bring in the detail that next Sunday is “bring a friend Sunday.” Raised in a tradition where the mind-set was, “we are the one true right religion and everybody should become one of us,” I remember carrying a somewhat acquisitive energy on “bring-a-friend" Sundays. There were good and innocent things about that, and some icky things about that too. The good and innocent things were, that it is natural and normal to want to share the things we love with others, and to want them to love them too. It is natural and normal to desire to have the people we love belong where we belong, so that we can enjoy more activities together. The icky thing about my energy at that time was that it was driven by a deep insecurity. I desired more and more people to join my church, because it would prove that my church was indeed the right and best church. I liked feeling more secure in my rightness, and I would feel more secure, the more members the church acquired.

Well, God finally got out the dynamite to move me from that attitude. I certainly needed to move from a shallow spirituality: “it is about being right” into a more mature one: “it is about God’s love.” God called me out of a personal “Haran.” Since moving on from that denomination, and since deciding that God is truly big enough to care for and save people in all traditions, I’ve really had to re-examine the purpose of “bring-a-friend” Sunday, no matter which church I am in. If it isn’t about being the best and the rightest denomination and recruiting people in, if it isn’t even necessarily about Christianity being the best and the rightest, what is the point of inviting people to church at all?

You may laugh, but this is a serious question for anyone newly journeying from Haran. Abram may have thought his call was so that he could be the biggest and the best, “And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great;” . . . but God had another idea in mind the whole time: “And so you shall be a blessing.” Maybe our call to open our doors and hearts to new friends and strangers is the same, not to grow big and strong and show how great we are, but because we love to love other people—because God calls us to be a blessing.

It’s funny how long it took my brain to wrap around that one. “I’m to welcome people to church, because I, and my church, am/is to be a blessing?” It isn’t to get more people to join? It isn’t so people can see we are the best and want to become part of our congregation?

The truth is, if we are a blessing to those who come, if we extend genuine Christian hospitality, if we welcome and include and nourish and affirm and give respect to the stranger, we WILL draw new people in. It will be a natural side-effect. If this congregation grows in its desire to be a blessing, it will grow in numbers and become known as a pretty great little group. But the point is not to set out to be big or great, the point is to LOVE our neighbours, to be a blessing to each other within the congregation, and to the neighbours and strangers we encounter coming in the door. And the point is to love other congregations as our neighbours, not compete with them. Our job is simply to love God above all and to love our neighbours the way we want to be loved. It is the message again and again in God’s word. If we do these things, all the rest is added. All the rest—growing membership and prosperity may indeed be added, though it won’t matter, it will just be wonderful gravy on the lovely roast or yummy icing on the already delicious cake.

Now, I have a story to tell you. I was a stranger here not so long ago. My first Sunday here I wandered in and didn’t know a soul. I had told Bonnie I would be coming, but I don’t recall if we had even ever laid eyes on each other yet. Bonnie was lovely and welcoming, as was Jerry, but both of them were busy and I was pretty much on my own. I’ll never forget one lady who introduced herself, and spent some time talking to me. It was such a kindness! Such a relief! I was surrounded by strangers and I’d managed to find the coffee, and was fumbling along trying to talk to people, when this friendly woman reached out to me and spent some time with me. She was a blessing.

Her name and face will always be the first one in the congregation I remember because she saw me and welcomed me and made me feel more at home. I thought, “now there’s a friendly lady who knows how to reach out to strangers!” What’s interesting is, later I made a point of thanking this lady for reaching out to me, and she admitted that she considers herself shy and tongue-tied and no good at small talk! Well, she has a lot in common with Moses then, because regardless of how she views herself, God used her to reach out and welcome a stranger. I affirmed her doubly for her courage. It must have taken a lot to step out of her comfort zone to welcome a stranger. And it certainly meant a lot to me.

The truth is, scarcely a one of us really feels comfortable in a crowd making small-talk. And we tend to compare our insides to others’ outsides. Others look comfortable and at home and relaxed, while I feel neurotic and insecure, so they must be comfortable and happy and I’m the only one who wants to run home and hide. Meanwhile someone else is looking at me thinking I’m the comfortable and relaxed one.... So next Sunday, or even this one, there’s no excuse deciding you’re just shy and no good at small-talk. God may just be calling you to remember a stranger and extend a hand of welcome and inclusion. God may be calling you to be a blessing. Isn’t it what you would want if you were the stranger? So go up and say, “Hello”!

I remember going to my mother when I was a teenager, terrified of going to another painful highschool social event. I was agonizingly shy, and I hated standing in the crowds wondering what on earth to say to people. I never could think of anything smart or funny, and I suffered.

My mother said, “Look for someone who looks lonelier than you feel, and ask them questions about themselves.” It was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten. I was to look for the stranger; I was to reach out to someone else, not to entertain and dazzle them, but to welcome and include them. I was to draw the other person out of themselves and hear about them, not show them how interesting I was. And the thing was, this advice did not just become a shallow formula for surviving awkward social events, it actually helped me meet some wonderful individuals and make some lasting friends. It has become a tool that has stood me in good stead for years and has helped me become really good at forgetting how shy I really am. It has helped me love other people. I have discovered that I genuinely enjoy hearing other people’s stories, and I have discovered that seeing the other as a blessing, tends to make me feel richly blessed too. Most people today are quite surprised to find out I am innately shy.

So here comes “bring a friend Sunday.” With it comes the opportunity to feel really uncomfortable and awkward as well as the opportunity to be a blessing. Like the woman who welcomed me on my first day, you may even accomplish both at the same time—you may feel like you are socially inept even as you are being a welcome presence of comfort and friendship to a lost and lonely soul. The truth is, every time we open ourselves to God’s call to leave our comfort zone for the sake of others, we open the space for the holy spirit to rush in and do its magical work. Every time we leave Haran because God called us, Abram can become AbraHam, a whole new being in God’s plan, touched by the holy spirit, destined to become a great nation, and most importantly, to be a blessing. Or, to be far less grandiose, “If I could do it, you can too. So get off your butts and be friendly.”
Amen.