“A Life of Blessing”
June 7, 2026
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
Last week, we heard Jesus telling us, all of us, to Go, go into the world, go to spread the good news that God is with us and loves us, go and make the world more like the one God intended. It is a rousing call. (I have to admit that Natalie Sleeth’s anthem “Go ye, go ye, into the world” has been the soundtrack of my week. I just can’t make it stop!) But after the excitement dies down, one wonders, how exactly am I supposed to go? What do we go do in the world?
And I think our Scripture readings for today point us in the right direction. Abram and Sarai are called out of their ordinary lives to “Go” into the unknown world. They are told they are blessed. And they are told in them all the families of the world will be blessed (where we get the idea of being blessed to be a blessing). And it struck me this week that this is how we can think of what we are going to do in our world. We are to live a life of blessing.
That can take so many forms. We know there is more than one kind of blessing (a blessing of health, of financial security, of food security, of work that has meaning, of friendship, of family, of church family, of a place to call home, of settling into our true identity, of being sure of God’s love, the list could go on and on). With all these types of blessings, it makes sense that a life of blessing isn’t just one path, it is so many paths, all with at least one commonality—that along those paths, blessings are strewn like seeding a field, or sowing a garden, or dropping pennies for others to find.
And the greatest example we have of living a life of blessing was that of Jesus. Jesus saw blessing, healing, saving, as his life. I think Jesus would have shook his head at our partisan world, where the cry “separation of church and state” has come to mean “hey church, don’t meddle in politics” instead of “hey state, don’t tell us how to worship.”
For him, there was no separation between different spheres of life—all of it was life, and life (and death) was God’s domain.
In the telling of the story through Matthew’s eyes, we have come to a very important part—the calling of Matthew himself. Matthew, a tax collector. Matthew, probably not one of the most popular people in the village, or the surrounding area. Because Matthew was collecting “tolls” (shall we call them tariffs?). He might have set up his toll booth on the road out of the village and towards the market. So everyone selling anything—fisherman and their daily catch, farmers and their crops, herders and their livestock, merchants taking wares elsewhere—everyone selling anything had to stop and pay a toll to the empire through Matthew. (And there was some suspicion that the tolls were inflated so whoever the tax collector was would get a cut!).
Jesus has railed against tax collectors in his sermon on the mount, but here Jesus finds Matthew at his job, and calls “Follow me” and Matthew does. I can imagine that this might not have gone over so great with the rest of those who had been called earlier and were following Jesus—so many of them were fishermen! But in Jesus’ world, the blessing goes out not just to those who are “well” but to those who are “sick”—in other words, Jesus came to call all of us.
And they sit down to eat. Now there were very strict laws about eating, about cleanliness and uncleanness. You were not supposed to eat anything that was unclean (the kosher laws). You were not supposed to eat if your body was unclean (so you had to wash). You were not supposed to eat with those who were unclean (like the riff-raff of society—which would have included tax collectors because they were doing an “unclean”/unrighteous thing with their lives—but would also have included women who were bleeding, and anything that was dead.)
Jesus sits and I’m sure he raises up the prayer that thanks God for blessing us with food for our bodies and food for our souls. And he might even have mentioned that it was such a blessing to be together.
Well, this just didn’t sit well with the religious authorities who seem to be constantly around, judging everything. “Look at him,” they sneer. “He eats with tax collectors and sinners.” In other words, he eats with the unclean, he makes himself unclean, he can’t be trusted, he can’t be “of God.”
And Jesus doesn’t seem to get mad. It’s almost as if he expects the criticism (he does say that he comes to heal not those who are well but those who are sick, even if they don’t know it!). With this very subversive act, of eating with everyone, Jesus has pushed the buttons about Jew and Gentile, about slave and free, about clean and unclean, about sick and well, about black and white, about gay and straight, dare I say about Republican and Democrat. In Jesus’ world, (as Paul would later say) all those divisions get blurred, because we are all called, we are all blessed, we are all called to be a blessing.
The gospel distills the argument into Jesus saying “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” I imagine that Jesus might have elaborated what he meant to his disciples. The religious authorities were using the Levitical codes of clean and unclean to condemn what Jesus was doing. But Jesus knew his Bible. Jesus knew that you don’t just take a single passage from the Scripture, and think you can divine what God thinks. Scripture needs to be read in context, and needs to be set alongside of other Scripture. And that is what Jesus does. He takes the very book that the religious authorities are holding up, and says, “yes, there are the cleanliness codes in Leviticus, but it also says in Leviticus, ‘Love your neighbor as your yourself’!” Might that be the “mercy not sacrifice” that Jesus tells the authorities to go learn?
What does this tell us about a life of blessing? Well, it says to me that a life of blessing might include rattling the cages of those who are in charge if they are not living with mercy. It says to me that a life of blessing might insist on opening the table to people that we might not want to invite into our inner sanctum.
It says to me that a life of blessing is not a solitary adventure, but a shared journey. It says to me that a life of blessing is enhanced by knowing our Scriptures and wrestling with understanding them deeply. It says to me that a life of blessing is complicated, in a good way.
Yes, complicated because it seems Jesus can never sit down to a meal without having someone interrupt it. In this version of the story (also told in Mark and Luke), a leader comes to Jesus because his daughter has just died. But he believes that Jesus can heal even this—"touch her and she will live.” And Jesus has compassion on him. He is going to this leader’s house, and there is another interruption. A woman with a flow of blood for twelve years, comes up to him in the crowd, and reaches for the fringe of his garment—because she says to herself “if I only touch his garment, I will be well.”
And here is another thread in a life of blessing—and that is faith, an almost incredible faith. Faith that Jesus can raise your daughter from the dead. Faith that Jesus can stop the illness that has been plaguing you for what seems like forever. Faith that could say to mountains move over here and they would go. Faith that we have any way of changing our world. Faith that our lives have meaning and purpose. Faith that God loves us from the moment we were knit together in our mother’s womb, to the time that we become part of the dust of the stars. Faith that we are called to be a blessing because we are a blessing.
Can you see how it all becomes intertwined? How clean and unclean become irretrievably intermingled? How blessing and faith hold hands? How loving God cannot happen without loving others which cannot happen without loving oneself as well? How we need to follow the Spirit instead of our best laid, well-constructed, oh so perfect plans? How we, and our ridiculous faith, are as much a part of the healing as Jesus’ touch and power?
I find it interesting that in the Matthew version of the story, the woman who is bleeding, who is losing her life’s blood, who is losing her life (because she is unclean, always unclean), isn’t told that she is healed. And we aren’t told that the flow stops. She is told that she is well—that she is whole. And Jesus says to her, “take heart,” know the truth, live your life as a blessing. Jesus says, “daughter,” part of my family, part of God’s family, one who carries some of me in you. Jesus says, “your faith has made you well”—not, I wave my hand and everything is better; not, I have healed you; but your faith, your belief, your trust, your journey, your willingness to take a risk, to reach for the moon, to dream dreams and see visions, to partner with the Spirit in this life, to bless yourself as well as blessing others—that, all that, says, Jesus, along with God’s love, has shifted your reality, has opened your eyes, has made you well.
Isn’t that what we all wish for in this life? To be well, to be made well, to pass on that wellness to others? Is that what a life of blessing looks like? Not that there won’t be troubles or obstacles. Not that there won’t be heartache. Not that we won’t have to face injustice or all the other evils of this world. But that God’s love is stronger, stronger than any illness, stronger than any force trying to smash us down, stronger even than death itself.
For we are called, we are made to be a blessing. And in living a life of blessing others, we are blessed. We are made well.
May it be so for all of us, Alleluia, Amen.
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Poem about topic of Becca's 6/7/26 sermon
“To Be of Use” + Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.