The Blessing Jar

Rev. Brian Weinberger

Annual Theme • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

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Welcome to worship today and and to our Annual Theme weekend. The whole point of an annual theme, as I discussed in my video I sent out with the monthly newsletter, is to get the church behind an idea and a focus for the year. This last year our theme was called the Tapestry of Grace where I encouraged everyone to find the ways in which our story weaved into the story of this church. I truly do appreciate all of the people who came together and took the idea as a part of their goal for the year.

This year we are going to focus on a new theme and a new idea for the year and as I stated in my video we are going to spend the year with the Blessing Jar. But before I talk too much about that yet I wanted to share some of our thoughts behind this idea and why it is so important to me.

I know that some of you have friended me on Facebook and what you may or may not have noticed is that I do not post much if at all on Facebook. My main dealings with Facebook are to help update the church’s and youth group’s pages and I interact with some game groups that I am a part of. I still check Facebook and other social media sites on a regular basis, but for the most part I do not actively engage in them. This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but there is a clergy Facebook page for ELCA clergy to be a part of and a few years ago I began to follow it on a regular basis. I thought it might be helpful to stay connected with other pastors living in a small town in Washington at the time. I soon discovered that more often than not I would come across very negative posts and/or comments other pastors were making on someone’s post that were very negative. That combined with everything else I was seeing turned me off to the majority of social media. I still see it’s benefits and the good that it can do, but it became too much for me.

It wasn’t too long after that, that I read several articles about the negative effects of spending too much time on social media which I also alluded to in my video. We used to complain about how magazines created unrealistic images for us to achieve and it is no surprise that social media is doing the same thing if not more since it is at our finger tips at any moment. It gives us this fear of missing out on what may be happening with our friends or with the different brands or topics that we follow. The final one I want to touch on is that it creates unrealistic expectations. If people aren’t complaining about life on social media then they are posting every wonderful thing that is happening and we begin to think that either everything is going great or that everything is going wrong and there is no in-between.

Social media isn’t the only place though, because as well all know, traditional news has always seen profit in spreading news that is catchy and usually involves a tragedy and a scandal. Again, I read the news each and every day to see what is happening in our world, but it too can affect us and the views that we have on the world. We see how unhealthy our political system is right now no matter what side you learn toward. Both sides are on a whole focused on their way is the right way and the other therefore must be wrong. Politics has also taken to social media so it too is right in front of us all the time. We hear of wars, and sabotage and natural disasters and unrest all over our world and I think it can be too much for us to handle.

Which is why I think it is so important to spend at least this year, 2019, on focusing on the blessings that we have in our daily lives. Fortunately there is a place in which we see how much we are blessed and have to be thankful for and that place is the Bible. The beginning of the book of Genesis we hear the story of creation and at the end of every day what does God say? God says that everything God created in that day was good. We don’t read in the story that God didn’t like what was created or that when Adam named the animals God thought Duck-billed Platypus was a stupid name for the creature. And we don’t hear Adam tell God scorpions and black widows were the worst things in the world God could have created.

The very first thing that God did before he ever asking Abram to do anything is God blessed him. Before Abram did anything God blessed him. There was no contingency placed on it. God blessed Abram and then continued to watch over and bless him the rest of his life as well as those who came after him. And God continues to bless us today. In fact did you know that the word “bless” in some way shape or form shows up 650 times in the Bible? Clearly the idea of being blessed and offering blessing and seeing our blessings are something that is important to God and toward one another.

Of those 650 times the word bless shows up 3 times in just one verse in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. In this section Paul blesses God because God has blessed us with the spiritual blessings that we have been given. Clearly Paul sees that there are so many things our lives that we should be grateful for and that we should see our very lives as a blessing from God. In fact, in Paul’s journeys to spread the good news of Jesus Christ, he was beaten, imprisoned, and chased out of town, but he counted none of that as loss in his life because he was blessed by God to be given the chance to know Jesus Christ and to share the good news of salvation that we inherited from him. Paul chose not to focus on the negative in his life but on the positive things that God was doing in him and through him.

It isn’t always easy to see the good in life. I already pointed out all the different ways that we see negative things in our lives that it can sometimes hide the blessings we have. Take the lepers in our story from Luke. Jesus sent them to go to the temple to present themselves. The only reason they would be able to present themselves is if they were made clean. Only 1 out of the 10 lepers realized that he had been made clean and came back to thank Jesus for being made clean. For the blessing that Jesus had bestowed on him.

Today I want us to let go of the negative we see each day. Whether it is here in church, in our homes, in our work or school, or out in the world. Instead I want us to remember our blessings. Even if you can only remember 1 out of 10 blessings that happened to you that day at least you will have that 1. The more you focus on the blessings that you receive from God and one another the more easily you will be able to remember them. It doesn’t matter if they are great or small. A blessing is a blessing and they are all worth remembering.

To help you do that, the church staff and I have purchased a jar for you that we would like you to take home. This is your blessing jar. It is for you to take and use. Write down a blessing each day and place it in the jar. No matter how difficult a day may be for you I hope that you can put a blessing in it to know that amidst all the chaos we remember that God is in the midst of it blessing us daily. I also have a large jar here that we are going to keep here in the church. If you have a blessing that you would like to place into this jar then I encourage you to bring it to church and help us fill it. I hope that we need to find a bigger jar than this so that we can see how much we are blessed and active and alive God truly is in each day of our lives.

My prayer for us is that we can truly and literally count the blessings that God bestows upon us each day. As you go forth from this place may you feel God’s presence and know God’s love for you and how that love turns into daily blessings. We are people who have been blessed by the one and only God, the God who saw this creation and said that it was very good. See the good in this world that God sees and count the many blessings God shares with us each and every day.