A Reflection for II Epiphany All Saints’ Episcopal, Southern
Shores, NC
January 14, 2018 Thomas E. Wilson,
Rector
1 Samuel
3:1-10
1 Corinthians 6: 12-20 John 1:43-51 Psalm 139: 1-5, 12-17
Blessings
Samuel, in the Hebrew
Testament lesson for today, has a dream that he is hearing a voice. He shares
the dream with Eli who understands that God is speaking through the dream. Eli
instructs him to stop, be still, and listen to God. He is told to say “Speak, Lord for your servant is listening”.
Sometimes we can only hear the blessing when we stop and reflect enough to
listen to the deeper messages. It will
be a difficult ministry for Samuel but, in all of it, he gives thanks to
God.
The Psalm read for today is
part of the Jewish mystical tradition of meditatively looking at something
deeply, being still and seeing it as holy, then saying a blessing about it and
blessing God for that blessing. This Psalmist was looking with awe and wonder
at his body and saw it as a gift from God.
Paul, raised in that
tradition, wrote to the church in Corinth to remind them that they,
collectively as a body and individually as bodies, were made in the image of
God and were God's Holy Temple, God's gift of blessings to the world and to
each other. The church in Corinth finds the blessing of God makes life more
difficult, and they can't just go along with the norms of the city of Corinth.
Paul has a difficult time in his ministry of Grace, but he ends his life in thanksgiving for all
he had received in following Jesus.
Jesus, also raised in that
tradition, said the blessing not only with words but in his very life as in the
reading from John's Gospel. He gathers
his disciples, calling them to a life of blessing where they will participate
in the healing of the world. It will a difficult ministry for all of them, but
at the end of their lives, they give thanks and bless God. In his Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus says that blessings are even in the middle of adversity; Matthew
remembers nine of those blessings and Luke remembers four in which Jesus says
that, even when we mourn, we are realize how much we have been blessed. There
is a Jewish prayer that says, “As long as we live, they too will live; for they
are now are a part of us; as we remember them.”
Today we are gathered in
Eucharist, which means to give thanks for all the blessings we have in this
life. Theologian Martin Israel writes about the mystical tradition: “There is
nothing in this world that is unholy; there is only that which has not yet been
blessed.”
We use the word “blessing” in
many different way; when someone sneezes we say, “Bless you”, when Jews greet
people they say the blessing “Shalom”,
Muslims say “Salaam”, the Hindus say “Namaste”, in English we use Hello, a
variation of Hail, meaning good health, long life. Animals have instinct, but
humans bless. The name that the scientists, like Carl Linnaeus in the 18th
Century, came up with for human beings is “Homo Sapiens”, meaning humans being
wise, but in my theological taxonomy, it should be “Homo Benedictus” meaning
humans blessing.
When I first came down to the
south, I soon learned two Southern expressions -“Blessing someone out” and
“Bless His Heart”. The first is a way of yelling at someone without cussing
which would be “cussing someone out”. The other is a way of getting a dig in on
someone while pretending to be polite.
We went through a terrific
snow storm for the Outer Banks. It would have been considered a small storm in
other parts of the country. The accent you hear is from upstate New York where
we were used to interruptions like that, but here on the Outer Banks, it threw
us into a tizzy because we don't have the infrastructure to deal with it. So we
spent a lot of time blessing out the weather, griping about it, throwing a pity
party and “blessing out”, maybe crossing the boundary into “cussing out”, the
weather.
Yet after a couple days we
remembered it as beautiful and realized that it had some moments of blessing -
giving blessings in the middle of situations that might not be perceived as
blessed. During that storm we were wise and told people that they did not need
to see church as an obligation, but they could safely stay home to worship God
there and blessed that decision. But
there were people giving other blessings. We had Matt Octavio's people give
time and energy to clear off the parking lot as a gift to the church. We had
Gil Anderson shovel off the steps as a blessing to this church and Tess Judge
spread the salt to melt the ice as a blessing. We were able to stay open not to
prove that we were better Christians or to get more money to pay the bills of
the institution, but to provide a time and place for blessing. As we gave
thanks, we had people who don't usually come to this church be welcomed here as
we blessed them with warmth, prayers, and refreshment for the soul and body.
Each of the services had small numbers in the congregation, but there was
nothing small about God's blessing.
Our church sees as its
mission as the blessing in everything we do. The attempts we have to raise
money to pay the bills is always tinged with blessing as we give a tithe of
money away to be used as blessing. Yet even in the events themselves like
Lobster Fest and Holly Days, we understand that the true meaning underlying
what we do is to be a blessing to all who come. I think of the cast-off jewelry
that once had been given in love as a blessing, but now the recipients have
died and the family did not share the feeling that it was still a blessing, so
they donated the items to the jewelry booth. The people at the booth take these
gifts that had once been blessed with love and lovingly restore them to
beauty and make them available to be
used as blessings for others. Yes it makes money, but I have to say, knowing
how much time and energy went into the restoration by the dedicated people, the
amount falls below minimum wage per hour. But you know blessings operate on a
different market system that are less concerned with what we get than what we
give.
Blessings are part of a full
life and are necessary in this world which seems too obsessed with receiving
the outward signs of blessing than giving grace-filled blessings. I remember my
father who spent World War II in the South Pacific as an artillery officer
working with geometric sines and cosines to lob shells at enemy positions. It
was his job because he loved his country. But after the war, he turned the
sines and cosines to building roads and bridges to make the country he loved a
better place. I remember how he would see beauty in bridges, finding ways if
possible to save the old elegant ones by moving them to another place of less
traffic and replace them with things of beauty for the improved road. I
remember how he would stop on the side of the road on family trips and tell us
about how the cuts and fills had been made to make the highway a thing of
beauty and how a particular tree had been spared in the intersection. He would
have been a hundred this year; he had seen enough ugliness that he wanted to
give blessings.
It thrills me to see how
often we see members of this church give blessings. I see this in deaths in the
church as the community gathers around, not to fix things but to show that the
person who died is honored by giving blessings to help the surviving family. I
see it when we have artists and musicians come to share their art and talents
and how we bless them with a venue for their blessings. I see it when we
welcome our homeless friends, and we bless them with food, warmth, and respect
as they bless us with their presence.
I think back to how in these
years here I have been blessed by you as I was welcomed and you allowed me to
say blessings over bread, wine, people, and situations. Bless you!
Blessings
Looking deeper it is seen as
blessing
touching us in the neighbor
of soul
forming a fabric of the
larger whole
seeing as divine action of
caressing.
What if find the blessing
frustrating
of our own desires to be
holding on
and seeing troubles encroaching
on
our valued pleasure; blessing
hating?
And yet all blessings for
good or ill
can take us further into
heart of God
if we'd return blessing when
awed
to take time entering to
state of still,
realizing blessings are part
of love
coming from creator of all
above.
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