Thursday, January 11, 2018

Blessings



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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