What beautiful and rich stories we have in this morning’s readings!! Other weeks, when I sit down to work on a sermon I am often searching for just one reading that helps to illustrate our story here at St. Mary’s as well as our call out into the world. Today we are blessed with riches and have several stories from which to choose. Like Abram and Sarai I am going to venture into uncharted territory and try to link our lessons together.

What beautiful and rich stories we have in this morning’s readings!! Other weeks, when I sit down to work on a sermon I am often searching for just one reading that helps to illustrate our story here at St. Mary’s as well as our call out into the world.  Today we are blessed with riches and have several stories from which to choose. 

 

Like Abram and Sarai I am going to venture into uncharted territory and try to link our lessons together. 

 

Today we begin with Abram and Sarai’s story, called by God to leave the land of their fathers and go forth to “the land that God would show them.”  In return God promised Abram that God would bless them and would make of them a great nation.  Abram and Sarai took their belongings, and their nephew Lot and set off for the land of Canaan.  What faith it must have taken to leave all their security behind and set forth into unknown territory.  It’s not like God told them to go to Florida and he’d bless them with orange groves – they did not know where God was leading them. 

 

In response to their faith, God promised them several things.  First that he would make of them a great nation.  Now Abram was 75 years old when God called them and Sarai was 65.  Promising them that God would make them a great nation meant that that would be accomplished through their children and they were childless.  While Abram might still be able to conceive children, it seemed quite unlikely for Sarai.  But even with this it was 25 more years before Abram and Sarai were blessed with a child.  Talk about miracles!!  Not only that they were able to have a child, but that they were able to keep their faith for 25 years before the promise came true.  It makes me wonder how often I have felt that God was not listening, was not answering my prayer when things did not happen in my time frame.  We’ve all heard it said that God’s time is not our time, but here we have in our own history one of the first stories to illustrate that point. 

 

One other promise that was made to Abram and Sarai – the parents of three of the great world religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – is that God would bless them – and in the tradition of the times – blessing them would bring blessing on their descendants as well.  But God did not bless them for themselves alone.  As a matter of fact, when Abram stopped in the land of Canaan – the land that would eventually be given to the Hebrew people – it was still full of Canaanites.  God did not remove the Canaanites and give the land to Abram, but rather promised that the land would be given to future generations – not to Abram himself.  God did not bless Abram and his descendants for their own benefit, prosperity, or welfare alone.  Rather God blessed Abram and Sarai so that they – and all their descendants – could be a blessing to others.  When God chose these people he did not intend that they build fences and keep their blessings and relationship with God to themselves.  God intended that these blessings and the relationship that precipitated them be shared with all the world – with all of God’s creation. 

 

We are never blessed to keep it to ourselves – rather we are blessed to give it away – to let our blessings leak out to everyone around us.

 

This openness – this sharing of blessings is exactly what Jesus showed us in how he lived his own life.  Sadly, over the many years since God called Abram and Sarai, since God spoke with Moses the Jewish people had mostly forgotten God’s call to share the blessings that God had bestowed on them.  The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes had all built fences in order to keep some people in and others out.  Certainly the Gentiles and the pagans were outside the fences, but so also were other Jews who were not keeping up the standards that these leaders had decided on.  The law that God had given to Moses was not being used as a way to show God’s people how to best live; it had been made to be the bricks that build the walls to divide those on the inside from those on the outside. 

 

Jesus was a good Jew, but the law for him was a way of life – a way of freedom.  Jesus exemplified the concept of God’s people as blessing to all others.  It was in this context that Jesus called Matthew to be one of his followers.  It was as a blessing to those on the outside that Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors.  It was as a blessing that Jesus raised the leader of the synagogue’s daughter; it was as a blessing that he healed the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.

 

The story of the healing of this woman is remarkable.  First, it appears in all three synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke.  And to the Jews who originally heard this story there are strong links back to the Torah and to the prophet Malachi.  In the book of Numbers (15) God told Moses to have God’s people attach tassels or fringe to the corners or hems of their garments.  They were to attach these tassels so that they would remember to obey God’s laws and not the standards of the culture that would surround them.  To this day a fringed prayer shawl is worn by observant Jews to keep this commandment.  Jesus was a good Jew and would have worn these tassels.  From the prophet Malachi came a belief that the tassels that the Messiah wore would have special healing powers.  So when this woman touched the fringe of Jesus’ cloak she was not only looking for healing, but in so doing, declaring to the crowd that she believed that this man Jesus was the Messiah, God’s anointed one.  And healed she is.  She’s been bleeding for 12 years and has used up all of her money trying to get well – to no avail.  But merely by reaching out to God through Jesus – and touching the hem of his robe – she is finally healed.

 

In addition, because she was bleeding – according to Jewish law – she was ritually unclean – and therefore an outcast from all of society – including her family.  Can you imagine what kind of courage it took for her to plunge into this crowd and touch – even the hem of the cloak – of a stranger – and not just any stranger – but a man – a Rabbi!  Like so many of the people Jesus healed – she must have felt that she had nothing else to lose.  She was at the end of her rope. 

 

If we take miracles and rank them according to just how miraculous they were – this one would have to rank somewhere very near the top of the list.  The healing of this woman was not an intentional touch of Jesus to heal, but rather a clandestine action by this woman to, in essence, steal healing from Jesus.  This is emphasized in the Marcan version – where Jesus feels the power in him be drained by her touch.  But Jesus, always a blessing to those around him, does not chastise her, but rather tells her to have courage, take heart, to go in peace – her faith has made her well.  The healing of this woman has not only been of her body, but of her whole life.  She can once again rejoin society, be a part of her community, and rejoice in the power of faith.  We can only imagine that she went and told everyone about this miracle – and because she had been ill for so very long everyone would have known that it was a miraculous healing, indeed.  And so her healing, her return to wholeness of body, mind, and soul would have continued the blessing that she had received.  Her blessing would have truly leaked out to be a blessing to many others.

 

Like Abram, Sarai, the bleeding woman, the synagogue leader, his daughter, and even Matthew – we have received blessings from God.  Take your own blessings out into the world and share them with others – share them with those you love – and with those who seem the least likely – the least deserving.  When you walk through the world sharing the blessings God has bestowed on you - you will leave a wide path of blessedness wherever your journey in life leads you.  And this path of blessedness is what the kingdom of God looks like here on earth!