THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2002
Fr. Dan Weir preached this sermon on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 9, 2002.
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:1-3)
The story of Abram - or Abraham, as he would later be called - is a turning point in the Genesis story. The earlier chapters of the book trace the story from God's creation of a world that is good through the accounts of the fall of that creation due to human sin. The narrative ends with the story of the Tower of Babel. God's work of creation has apparently failed and the peoples of the earth are divided and at odds with one another. An all too familiar picture, even now at the beginning of the 21st century.
And the Hebrew Scriptures tell us that God does something extraordinary. Faced with the human sin, God calls one family to be the means of God's blessing all of humankind. One family - and not a complete one at that - really only an old childless couple - hardly what we would consider to be the promising candidates for the job. But that old couple, we are told, are chosen.
My friend Jay Phillippi, Youth Missioner for the diocese, often says, "God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called." Abram and Sarai are hardly qualified for the job, but God calls them anyway and blesses them, giving them everything they need to be a blessing to all of us, a blessing to all the families of the earth.
God's choosing does not end with Abraham and Sarah - any more than it ends with the calling of Matthew the tax collector - yet another unlikely candidate to be a means of blessing for the world. God continues to choose, to call all sorts of people - including folks just like us - to be part of the blessing business in the world.
To be blessed and to be a blessing - that's God's call and God's promise. All too often folks want to accept only half of the call, half of the promise. All too often folks want only the blessing, want to receive all the good things that God has to offer - and not just material blessing, but spiritual ones as well - but don't to become a blessing to others. In the words of Bishop Jeffrey Rowthorn's hymn, "Yet we hoard as private treasure all that you so freely give." And while we might want to point our fingers at the Pharisees who criticize Jesus for sharing the Good News with tax collectors and sinners, we Christians are not without fault either. The Good News is a blessing to be shared, and not just with folks like us, but with everyone.
To be a blessing to others means sharing with them the Good News of God's love. It means welcoming them into this community of faith so that they might find here what we have found here:
- comfort and support in times of difficulty
- guidance in times of doubt
- opportunities to make a difference in the world
- hope for the future
- strength for each day's faithful living
I have spoken often about the importance of relationships over the past six months, and not without reason. I believe that the Good News is all about relationships. Our relationship with the God who loves us so much that he takes human flesh and dies for us. Our relationships with one another. Our relationships with our neighbors, and not just the neighbors we can see, but also those neighbors who live in Buffalo or in Manhattan or in Afghanistan. It's all about relationships, right relationships, as I said in my sermon last Sunday.
In one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya, played masterfully by Mandy Patinkin, gets separated from the band of clumsy kidnappers that he had foolishly joined. He ends up back in the village where he had joined the kidnappers because the leader of the group had told him, "when all else fails, go back to the beginning." As Christians, we often have to go back to the beginning, we have to go back to what is a given: Jesus came to call not the righteous but sinners. The problem with Pharisees, then and now, is that they don't see themselves as sinners.
Paul, in this morning's reading speaks of God's promise coming to us through the righteousness of faith. In the previous chapter he makes it clear why this is so: "the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith."
It's all a gift, but to receive that gift, we usually have to let go of something. Abraham and Sarah have to leave Haran. Matthew has to leave his tax booth. What is it that we have to leave?
God is calling us to a great adventure, to what is the greatest adventure of all - to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. Like those first called, we won't get there all at once - Abraham and Sarah, after all, journeyed on by stages. But we won't get there at all, if we don't set out. We may have lots of reasons - or should we say, excuses - for not setting out. We may not feel like we're religious enough, but then by any conventional standards, Matthew is certainly no shining example of Jewish faithfulness, collecting taxes for the Romans. Or we may feel that we're too old - been there and done that - but then Abraham and Sarah at 75 aren't exactly in their prime when God's call comes.
Whatever we may feel, whether the prospect of this journey excites us or fills us with uneasiness, be assured of this: God is not calling us to journey alone, but as companions with one another - as those who share the One Bread of the Eucharist, and as compadres, as those who are beloved children of the One Father.
Let's journey together.
