Blessed to be a Blessing

Image Credit: Abraham (1908) by Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874 – 1925). Source: Wikipedia

 

Second Sunday in Lent
1 March 2026

 

Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

 

Mike Huckabee is the current ambassador of the United States to Israel. He is a Baptist minister turned Fox News talk show host, turned politician who previously was governor of Arkansas and twice sought the Republican nomination for presidential elections.
In an interview last week, Huckabee was asked whether he agreed that according to the Bible, the descendants of Abraham had a claim to land that ‘essentially constitutes the entire Middle East.’ Huckabee answered, “It would be fine if they took it all.” He then added that the State of Israel was not looking to expand its territory and has a right to security in the land it legitimately holds.¹

Huckabee is to be counted among dispensationalists who believe that the Holy Land will be ground zero for events surrounding the second coming of Jesus Christ. Dispensationalists follow a particular reading of Daniel 7 to 9 in which they believe history to be divided into dispensations or eras, based on how God deals with humanity. In this view the Bible functions as a jigsaw puzzle of prophecies, with Israel at the centre and human history following a predetermined divine script.

This is neither Lutheran nor biblical but has entered at least American popular culture with Hal Lindsay’s Late Planet Earth and the Left Behind novels.² And while dispensationalism only gained popularity in the 20^th century, it originates in the 19^th and it is perhaps no coincidence that the promise of land made to Abraham in our first reading is the same promise settlers to the Americas claimed as they dispossessed the native populations they found here.

Our first reading from Genesis 12 is important to dispensationalists for two reasons. The first is the promise of land, and secondly because they derive from Genesis 12:3 the imperative to uncritically support the State of Israel as if Abraham and the State of Israel could simply be equated. Genesis 12:3 reads as follows, 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.
This explains the staunch evangelical support for Israel, regardless of what Israel does. And it explains why in 2018 the first Trump administration moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, whether Trump and members of his administration are Christians, dispensationalists, or otherwise.

It is important to note that for dispensationalists Israel is only important as the catalyst for the Second Coming of Jesus but that dispensationalists have little regard for Jews who they expect at the Second Coming to have to convert or be destroyed. This stands against the promise of Romans 11 where Paul says that all Israel will be saved. (11:26)

The problem with dispensationalism then is not only that it is not biblical but also that it practices no moral discernment. Dispensationalists support the State of Israel unconditionally and without moral discernment of its policies and practices.³
Because dispensationalists are so interested in “the end”, i.e. in the Second Coming of Jesus, and in devising a time table to discern the arrival of “dispensations”, they miss what is important in the story.

Let us hear again what God says to Abraham, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ²I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³I 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.’ ^4a

In the uncertainty of leaving for a place that Abraham has not yet been shown, God promises him land, to become many, that is progeny, and his name to be great. These things are important not in and of themselves but in relation to the uncertainty of leaving everything behind in the same way as centuries later the disciples followed Jesus and left families, friends, work, and anything that was familiar. And so these promises made to Abraham are about belonging, and this belonging is the result of being known by God. Though these promises are dependable and trustworthy, they are not chips to be cashed in for hard currency.

The centre of the promise to Abraham is not land to possess but to be blessed to be a blessing. In the centre of God’s promise stands this, I will bless you, (…) so that you will be a blessing. And so that Abraham and the readers of Genesis would not forget the central importance of receiving a blessing in order to be a blessing unto others, this is repeated at the end, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. It is repeated for emphasis.
Notice the universal thrust of the promise: All the families of the earth shall be blessed through you.

And so the problem with a dispensationalist reading of our passage is that it turns the promise into a possession. Land and ethnicity are important, for we all live in a particular time and place but they do not supersede the promise and commission to be a blessing.

It is important for us to see that there is an arc to the biblical story. We cannot read Genesis 12 detached from what is before nor from what comes after. What comes before is the story of creation and fall, and a new beginning after the flood. Ever since things had gone south God has been wanting to repair creation and the relationship with the world God had spoken into being.

The calling of Abraham tells of another go at a new beginning, of the attempt to repair creation and relationship. Scholar Sylvia Keesmaat says, “Just this place was going to demonstrate something to the rest of the world.”⁴
In the arc of the story, this is followed by the freeing of Israel from Egypt, the making of covenant on Mount Sinai, and the proclamation of the prophets who always call the people back to faithfulness to God. And so the story of the call of Abraham shows us the faithful persistence of God.

Restoration means to become open to the blessing of God, to let God’s blessing flow through us. And blessing itself is a proleptic, anticipatory experience of the presence of God as our first ancestors experienced it in the garden and as we will experience it when we see God face to face. (This is what the Prosperity Gospel has gotten all wrong.)

It maybe helpful for us to see not only where Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews mention Abraham, both refer to his trust in God’s promises, but also to where Jesus mentions Abraham.⁵

The first mention of Abraham in the Gospels is by John the Baptist who addresses the religious authorities who have come to the Jordan as “brood of vipers”. He then exhorts them to [b]ear fruit worthy of repentance and not be presumptuous and say to themselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”, for, so says John, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.⁶
This is echoed in John 8, a chapter that reveals Jesus’s identity as light of the world, as being “from above”. In this chapter the conspiracy against Jesus is gaining momentum and Jesus replies to those who had believed in him, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did …” (v.39).
Here Abraham’s parentage is determined not by genetics but by a way of life.

When in Matthew, after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus comes down from the mountain and heals first a leper, then the servant of a centurion of the occupying Romans, Jesus remarks on the centurion’s faith by widening the circle when he says, I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, ¹²while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ The point of this is not a replacing of Israel with Gentiles or with the Church, but a remembering of the prophets who constantly reminded God’s people that what matters to God is how they treat the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger in their midst, in other words: To be a blessing.
This again is echoed in the parable of The Beggar at the Gate, also known as Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16), when Lazarus is immediately, following his death, found in the bosom of Abraham while the rich man is told to read the Law and the Prophets.
Later in Luke, Zacchaeus, by his acts of repentance and reform, becomes a son of Abraham. (19:9) In Luke 13 a daughter of Abraham is someone liberated from oppression. (Luke 13:16)

Seeing how the Gospels define Abraham’s descendants we can return to the beginning of the story, which is God’s desire to mend the universe that we have broken. The world will not be repaired through a literal reading of God’s promise to Abram and Sarai, or through the uncritical support of any state actor, for while God has made covenant with Abraham and his descendants, the blessing given to Abraham is given to him in order that the world would be blessed, that God’s people would participate in God’s healing work of restoration, not the borders that Israel occupied for seven years under King David, but – as we learn in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, and from Jesus – to love “the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and to “… love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22) In the parable of the Good Samaritan we learn that a neighbour is one who is different from us.

We know that what God says to Abraham, God says to us, and I will bless you (…) so that you will be a blessing. (…) in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
That is the calling of our baptism into Christ.

Thanks be to God.