Our small group has been reading a wonderful book by Barbara Brown Taylor, titled An Altar in the World. It was a book about paying attention to world around us, about recognizing that God was present in the most unlikely of situations, in small things and big ones too. Taylor took a spiritual disciplines approach and each chapter was titled “The Practice of ...” and included such items “Waking up to God” and “Wearing Skin” and “Saying No” and “Feeling Pain” and many more. Things that aren't really considered spiritual practices by most of us, suddenly were doorways into the experience of the presence of God. It was a great book and I think our small group really enjoyed it.
I say “was” because we finished it. The last chapter was this week’s session and it was entitled “The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings.” A great way to end the study and the book, with a benediction. It surprised me a little bit during Aldersgate’s recent Followership Retreat (that’s what we called it, instead of a Leadership Retreat) when I asked the attenders what they like about our worship experience someone actually said that they liked the benedictions. There was a feeling of being gathered up and sent off, made complete somehow by the word that provided an amen to the hymn that is worship week by week.
A blessing, on the one hand, is casual comment recognizing the presence of another. Sneeze in public and a total stranger will bless you. Spending time around Southerners blessing someone is a way of empathizing, even when the person being blessed isn’t present. Tell of a difficult time in someone’s life and you will get a heart-felt “bless their heart” when you are in the South.
Blessings are prayers of support as well. Even “good-bye” is short hand for “God be with you.” We invoke that presence when we wish one another well, when we part from those we know and love. And when that parting is going to be for a long time, the words almost choke in our throats. Not because we are reluctant to confer the blessing, but because we know that our words are inadequate to convey such power and presence and hope. And for a moment we wish we had a better way of blessing those we love.
One wonders about the tone in Jesus’ voice as he conveyed yet another blessing on those he called and now will leave behind. It is Ascension Sunday this week, when Jesus said his goodbyes and was taken up to his place alongside the Father in heaven. Here is Luke’s version. Or his first version, because he retells the story in part two, the Acts of the Apostles. But this is the ending of the Gospel bearing Luke’s name.
Luke 24:44-53 Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you-- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." 50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
“While he was blessing them.” It sounds like something he was used to doing. A habit, a way of being. There are some people that are just like that. When you are with them, it feels like you are being blessed. Even if there are no formal words to that effect, no pronouncement or prayer, just being with them feels like God is smiling on you. Maybe that is what was remembered here.
They were talking together about a lot of things. Jesus wanted them to finally understand. They spent most his earthly ministry with mouths hanging open and heads being scratched. The most common response to most of Jesus’ teaching, even from those closest to him, had to have been “huh?”
But the waiting had to be over. So, he taught them. About himself. He told them plainly, he looked back at everything that was written about him and he pointed it out with painstaking detail. Luke says “he opened their minds.” For some of them it took a crowbar or the mental equivalent, I am sure. Maybe it was mystical powers, maybe it was divine patience, maybe it was drawing pictures, or maybe it was the ability to move them beyond themselves long enough to see something significant in front of them. It is kind of curious that Luke messes up the Greek in this passage. We cleaned it up for him in translation, but what he wrote was that Jesus opened their mind, not their minds. I know, the grammar instructor would have pointed out the need for the plural word there, to match the plural object - they, their needs minds, so we supplied it.
But what if it wasn’t an accident? What if he meant it? That part of what Jesus showed them was that they needed each other to figure this stuff out. He was telling them that on their own they would be hopelessly inadequate to the task of understanding, but that together - one heart and one mind - they just might make it. Maybe a part of what he opened in them was the recognition of how much they needed each other.
Then he gave them a task. To be witnesses to the world, and proclaimers of repentance - getting people back on track, and forgiveness of sins - doing it without judgement or division, but with love and with compassion. And then because that would be beyond the capabilities of all of them - and all of us - he promised them help. In fact he gave them a task and then told them to wait until they received the help they needed to do that task. Wait until they were clothed with power. Which means that this power won’t come from within, it isn’t something they could generate for themselves. It has to be given, it has an outside origin. It was like a blessing. While he was blessing them, he withdrew and was carried up. As if the task of blessing was incomplete, at least for now. There was more to come. More they needed. A further blessing.
When I told you about my small group finishing the study, I should have pointed out that they finished it. I wasn’t there this week. I was with my brother and sister while we cared for mom and dad. It has been a difficult time with far too many unanswered questions. Mom had a particularly bad day this week, and told my sister that she wasn’t sure how much longer she could do this. “This” is rehab from the broken hip, but also the struggles with her mind and who she is and who she was, not to mention all the worries about what might be next. After many tears and few words my sister and my mom sat in the darkening room and held hands, while dad expressed his grief by going for a walk.
Alerted by my sister, I arrived a little later and came and sat with mom, while she and dad went out for some air. By the time I got there, the tears were gone and instead there was a peace. She smiled as she took my hand and said “I love you” about a hundred times in the hour or so we sat together, interspersed with “I am so proud of you.” I told her that it was her love that made me who I am, and that I couldn’t be more proud to have her as my mother. And then, out of nowhere it seemed, she said “I’ll always be there. Right behind you.”
It sounded like goodbye. At least to us, and it broke our hearts. But maybe we were wrong. Maybe it was blessing. Not an ending, not a parting, but something new. Physically she is improving and could be with us a lot longer, who knows. Something is changing, slipping away into something new, and we don’t quite know how to handle it yet. She doesn’t and we don’t. But as I held her hand in that room that seemed to close in on us, she began to glow. Like her love for me became visible for a moment. And I pray that mine for her was just as evident. It was a benediction, a good word in the silence of that moment, and in that love we were both clothed with power.
Shalom,
Derek
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