Blessing

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
June 11, 2023

5 Proper A 

          Anita and Michael Dohn were medical missionaries from the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio to the Dominican Republic for over 14 years.  They are both physicians, now in the Cincinnati area, who heard the call of God, packed up their 4 young daughters ages 4 to 14, learned Spanish, and moved from Ohio to the Dominican Republic with a lot of faith and few resources to set up health clinics and train health workers in that impoverished country.  From time to time they would come back to the U.S. to raise money to continue their ministry and to connect with their supporters.  These are not hypothetical people.  These are people, Episcopalians, who I know, whose work the church I served raised funds to support, people who heard God say “Go” and they went.  And they were a huge blessing to the people of the Dominican Republic.

          So I think of Anita and Michael and their family when I hear God say to Abram “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”   Abram hears God say “Go” and hears the promise that God will bless Abram and make his name great, so that he will be a blessing.  And Abram goes.  But I have questions.  Where, exactly, is Abram to go?  How will he know how to get there?  What is this blessing that God will bestow?  And what does Sarai think about all of this?  When God tells Abram that God will give the land of Canaan to Abram’s offspring, of which there are none so far and Abram is 75, how does God think the Canaanites are going to feel about this property transfer?  So very many questions, and so very few answers.  Yet Abram is utterly undeterred by this lack of certainty.  He keeps putting one foot in front of the other, following where God leads.

          I also think of Anita and Michael when I hear Jesus say to Matthew “Follow me.”  Matthew is sitting in his tax booth when Jesus calls him.  Jesus is not issuing Matthew an invitation, nor was God offering Abram an invitation.  In both cases, a command is issued, “Go” in the case of Abram and “Follow me” in the case of Matthew.  In the case of Matthew, at least there is Jesus, a living breathing human being, to actually follow.  Jesus leads Matthew to a dinner party where many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and his disciples.  I wonder if Matthew felt more like one of the tax collectors or like one of the disciples.  Then the disciples, and presumably Matthew, followed Jesus to the home of the leader of the synagogue where the leader’s little daughter had just died.  But on the way, as the disciples followed Jesus, they witness a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years touch Jesus’ garment and be healed from her suffering.  The disciples and Matthew saw the woman’s great faith.  And when Jesus arrived at the leader’s house, he took the little girl who was thought to be dead by the hand and she got up.  Matthew has followed Jesus and in following Jesus he has experienced table fellowship with fellow tax collectors and sinners and witnessed two healings. 

          Sometimes God calls us to follow into unknown territory with nothing more than the promise of blessing to go on.  Anita and Michael Dohn are examples of such a call in our own time, following God’s call to a place where they could be a blessing but not knowing when they set out exactly how that blessing would play out.  But they, like Abram, were faithful and trusted God. 

For others of us, God calls us to follow Jesus into our own everyday lives, nothing exotic, but to follow Jesus rather than anyone or anything else. Rather than chasing selfish ambition or friends or popularity as we move through life, Jesus says “Follow me.”  The first place Matthew landed after getting up and following Jesus was at a dinner party after all!  But the guests were not friends, or influential people, or anyone Matthew might have chosen. The guests were other tax collectors and sinners.  And then Matthew and the other disciples followed Jesus as Jesus brought health and healing to those who were sick.

          Sometimes God calls us to do great and amazing things, like move to the Dominican Republic to make a difference in the lives of impoverished people there.  And sometimes God calls us to follow Jesus into our own ordinary lives so that we see what Jesus sees and respond with love to human need around us.  I think Anita and Michael would remind us that those are not mutually exclusive calls.  Wherever we are called, when we follow Jesus we are able to see as Jesus sees, and see the gay teen who thinks there is no place for him in a church, or the woman with mental illness and no place to stay, or the people in Hudson who have trouble paying the bills and putting food on the table or detergent in the washing machine, or the person who is job insecure or battling addiction.  We will witness great faithfulness, like the woman who touched Jesus and was healed, as well as great need, like the little daughter of the leader of the synagogue.  When we follow Jesus, wherever Jesus leads, whether to an impoverished country or down to the coffee shop, we are able to see as Jesus sees, be a blessing to the world, and, in my experience, receive a blessing as well.

                                                                                      Amen.