Blessed in Song

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Will you pray with me? God of mercy, you promised never to break your covenant with us. Amid all the changing words of our generation, may we hear your eternal word, which does not change. Then may we respond to your gracious promises with faithful and obedient lives through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. We have two readings today. Psalm 103 is on page 482 of your Pew Bibles. And Ephesians 1 is on page 940. Psalm103. Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul and do not forget all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. And as far as east is from west, so far he removes our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made. He remembers that we are dust. As for mortals, their days are like grass. They flourish like a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting for those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children and to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, O you, his angels, you mighty ones, who do his bidding, obedient to his spoken word. Bless the Lord all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will. Bless the Lord and all his works in all places in his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. And then from Ephesians, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful to Christ Jesus, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God of the and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. This is the word of the Lord. [00:04:19] Speaker B: Nora Gallagher is a writer and also a preacher in residence at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara. She's often taught week long seminars on writing for clergy and other graduates of Yale Divinity School. Participants, it'll often be about 20 some odd people will bring with them writing samples and for this week long seminar they will workshop them, go over the pieces of writing and see how they could be improved. Well, Gallagher was preparing for one of these seminars and a manuscript she received concerned her a lot. It was submitted by a rector, episcopal rector on the East Coast. The article was entitled Celebrations. And as Gallagher read this article, she noticed several things. First of all, this particular writer, this rector, was referring to celebrations as blessings. But it wasn't clear exactly what blessings meant to this writer, which meant celebrations was also unclear. The Bible was quoted, the Book of Common Prayer was quoted, the Oxford English Dictionary was quoted. But Gallagher observed, it was like this writer was kind of flying around a subject and never really landing at the end of the article. Gallagher had no more idea what celebrations meant than before she'd started reading this manuscript that the rector had written for her church's newsletter. So they finally gathered to discuss this piece of writing and Gallagher asked this particular rector with the 20 or so other participants, do you of anything to say before we dive into offering feedback? And this rector said, yes, I have something to share. The article is a lie. The article is a lie. A collective gasp went up among the participants. She goes on, it was a lie. I'm not sure what celebrations are and whether I even like them. I like some of them, but others not so much. And I'm not sure they are a blessing. And, and you know what? I'm not really sure what blessing means. The truth is I was asked to do this article one day before it was due. I wrote it as if I was asleep, looked it over, hated it and submitted it. And the whole class burst into applause. It was like truth had been spoken. You know, so much of our lives can be lived behind cliche. Whereas Gallagher describes it, words can have a deadening force when they're separated from the real world, when we want them to do more work than they can actually do. And they don't ever touch down on actual experience. When this rector actually shared what was going through her mind and heart as she was writing this article, it was like the cliche fell it and they saw who she was. Other students then noted things they had said that weren't necessarily clearly described and that they might even not have been sure what they meant. One student was asked, hey, in that piece of writing, you refer to being saved by the blood of Jesus, what do you mean? She said, I have no earthly idea. Blessings. You know, when I hear. When I first read that piece from Gallagher reflecting on that class, it felt like a kind of a gut punch because in full confession, I have to tell you, I have used the word blessings especially or blessing or bless in a way that kind of threw it around without fully understanding its meaning myself. So tempting as clergy to do, you know, to take a word that sounds sacred and throw it around as if it can do work on its own and not fully appreciating where it touches ground, where it connects with you and me and the world that we live in. I wasn't sure what to do with blessing for years and what especially pushed me to finally examine it. I remember talking to a woman from another Christian denomination and I asked her, how are you doing? And she said, blessed, I'm blessed. And I thought to myself, you know, I have no more idea how this woman is doing than before. I asked the question, if that is what blessing is about, it's got to be something more. I've got to get behind this so called screen of cliche and discern what this word actually means. And it wasn't just that woman saying she was blessed that pushed me to finally examine blessing. It wasn't that time when I was serving on jury duty wearing my clergy collar and someone went up to me and said, father, will you bless me? Which did happen. It's because this word bless is all over our scriptures. It is all over the place. You'll find it more than 650 times in your pew Bible. It's all over Scripture. You'll find it occurring seven times in Psalm 103 alone. The word bless serves as a kind of unifying theme for Psalm 103. If this Psalm were a piece of classical music, you would say bless is like the opening motif or melody. Then bless is what's developed and interpreted and expanded on through the body of the psalm. And then it's recapitulated at the end with blessings. The Lord blesses this unifying theme to this psalm. And you can't Avoid bless and blessing if you want to get at the meaning of Psalm 103. And yet by its very use of the word barak, that is Hebrew translated as bless in Psalm 103. As we see the word employed in this psalm, in this song of scripture, I think we get a window into the words true meaning. It's like the screen of cliche falls and we see Barack bless in how it's used. It was the linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his work Philosophical Investigations, who made this famous argument. He said, if you want to get at what a word really means, look at its use. It's like a game, he argued, like chess. You'll find out what each piece means by how it's used in the game. So with language. So let's look at bless as it's employed in Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, O my soul, all that is within me, bless God's holy name. Now, bless there is in the imperative, it's used as a command. But the psalmist is telling themselves, telling their inward being, bless the Lord. And in so doing, they're actually uttering the phrase bless the Lord. They're sung or spoken for. The psalm writer is singing an actual blessing, uttering an actual blessing as they are telling themselves to bless the Lord. It's a call and a response, an imperative and an indicative, an invitation and an answer at once, bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless God's holy name, call and response, and a blessing is spoken. It happens as the psalm begins. And yet this use of bless in the opening line of Psalm 103 raises a question. Can a person truly bless God? Isn't God already blessed? Isn't God in fact the source of all blessing? So what are we doing? Why would the psalmist call themselves and all creation to bless the Lord when God is blessed time and again In Scripture, as with Psalm 103, Barak or bless is used to mean honor another, respect another, lift another up. That's what Barack is doing. When it's employed here and elsewhere in Scripture, it can mean action or speech that honors. Years ago, in my seminary days, my good friend, the Reverend Dr. Grace park, now Grace park seminary student back then, who you'd heard preach, she twisted my arm into helping her in ministry at a church she was serving, the Korean Woodland Hills United Methodist Church. That's a big title. It's a great experience for me. The food was fabulous. It's great to learn about the Methodist tradition. But what I found especially powerful is a practice I saw observed in this Korean Christian community. And that's the practice of bowing, a simple bow, but how powerful it is. I thought about that, how you lower yourself ever so slightly, and it's a move that elevates another saying. I lift you up by placing myself physically a little lower. And then the other person might, well, reciprocally, or at the same time, honor you by bowing. We know that in Jesus time there was an even more dramatic expression of the bow. People would actually prostrate themselves, put themselves as low as they possibly could physically, to try to say to another, you are elevated, you are highly esteemed. I recognize and I affirm your high standing. That's what we see people do to Jesus, especially if they wanted to be healed or receive something from him. They wanted to say, you are honored. And it was action one would especially do with a monarch or someone of high social standing, because it would say, I affirm and acknowledge you are in this high role, and I lower myself to lift that particular honor and exaltation up. Barack can also be translated as salute. Salute. Some of you have experience in the military, and you know that when you go before a superior office, you salute them. It's a way to respect that officer, acknowledging and enforcing by your actions the rank they hold in the superior office. Officer then extends a reciprocal salute, even if they are of lower rank, to say, I honor and respect you in return. There are all kinds of ways, aren't they, that we humans, in our interactions, subtle or direct our words, honor or dishonor others. When we pay attention to someone or are distracted or dismissive of another, when we go up to another person to either shake their hand, to embrace them, or to say something kind to them, or if we ignore them, if we say something about how wonderful they are or how terrible they are, we are doing this kind of thing of what Scripture calls either blessing or cursing. So many ways that we can do that. And Psalm 103 begins saying, let's start in the blessing, in the giving of honor, in this whole circle of respect, with giving respect where it is most due. Let's give it to the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of all things. Let's give it first and foremost to the one who is truly highly exalted. Let's acknowledge that no human ruler, no celebrity, no person of wealth or social status is truly the end all, be all, the one we follow, the one who truly directs our lives. No, our allegiance, our greatest respect is to the very God who we have come to know in Jesus Christ. The God who created all things, all creation, pronounced them good, created a garden for humans to enjoy with creation and to steward it with care that God, Psalm 103 begins inviting us to acknowledge that God is the one to be respected. And rather than bless as cliche in Psalm 103, it's like the word bless tears down a kind of shroud or wall or veneer. And we see reality, we see the one who truly rules all things, and that is God. Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless God's holy name. But as the psalmist sees that and affirms God's honor and glory and value, you notice they see something else too. They see how this very God, who is honored, exalted, blessed, has chosen to honor, exalt and bless the psalmist. How hast thou blessed me, the psalmist writes. Let me count the ways. And the psalmist does that. You've forgiven my iniquity. You've lifted me up from shame to honor. You've healed my diseases. You've lifted me up from infirmity to wholeness and health. You've redeemed my life from the pit, that lowest of places, and given me a crown. More than that, you have made me to soar like an eagle. You see the imagery? It's from the very pits, all the way to the skies. That's the image of what God does. That means to honor, to lift up, to barak, to bless. And that's what God has done to the psalmist. And the psalmist recognizes that God has done this to me. But then the reflection that the psalmist goes through extends from themselves to the community, to God's people. The psalmist realizes, God hasn't just blessed me. God's blessed a people. And God reflects. And the psalmist reflects on how God freed a people from enslavement, delivered them from the ravages of empire, and led them out to a place where they could be community, share things in common, and live the way God intended them to live. This almost reflects on the gift of a covenant, a law to guide a people, to show God cared deeply about them and was to mentor and guide and direct them in their life to come. And the psalmist also recalls how when the people strayed from that path, strayed from the commandments, God didn't give up on this people. No God saw fit. This God who is to be blessed, chose to bless them with forgiveness and the remission of sin. The psalmist celebrates. You've lifted up a people. You did not deal with us according to our sins, but like a parent having compassion on their children. So you have had compassion on us. And I love that imagery because it seems to me one of the greatest forms of respecting or honoring another is welcoming them into one's family. A number of you have welcomed me into your home for a committee meeting, a book group discussion, a dinner, a meal. And every time I cross that threshold of your home and enter that intimate space where ordinarily only your immediate family or you will reside, and I get to share that space for a while, I get to feel like part of your family. It's like I'm lifted up, I'm honored, I'm blessed. And that's the imagery we get in Psalm 103 that the Psalmist feels, not only that the psalmist themselves, but the people of God have been welcomed into God's family. It's like they've crossed a threshold and they are now family with God based on what God has done and forgiving them and welcoming them in. And it is an honor, it is a blessing. But I would argue the blessing extends even further. This sense of God throughout Scripture, who blesses a people. We know from back in Genesis 12 was actually a blessing meant to be extended through this people to all families and nations. We read that when God said to Abraham and Sarah, I bless or Barak you, God also says through you, all nations, all families of the earth will be baracked too. That is will be blessed. It's a blessing that extends to a particular people so that ultimately it can be extended to all people. That's the kind of image of God we get in Genesis 12. And that's an image we can hold on as we read in Psalm 103 of a God who blesses a people to bless all people. And then in the New Testament we read of how God blessed Jew and non Jew alike, Hebrew and Greek alike, all categories of people alike in a new way. Through Christ we are lifted up from shame by the forgiveness we receive, by God's work in Christ in Him. The book of Ephesians proclaims we're adopted into God's family, made family with God through Christ, by his life, his teaching, his death, his resurrection for us. By uniting us with God, he makes us family with one another and with God through Christ. The Greek word used for blessing in Ephesians is the same word from which we get eulogy in English, something you give at a memorial service. It's a form of putting in a good word or giving a good word about Another, it's with our words, honoring another person. And that's what, according to Ephesians, God has done in Christ. In that divine word that is Christ spoken a word of honor and blessing. And that word says, you, beloved by God, you're God's child. You're blessed, meaning you are honored, esteemed and valued with Christ. We can say, as the book of Ephesians calls us, to say, not only blessed be the Lord, with Psalm 103, we can see blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our honored and exalted God, the one who honored a people with freedom, a law and a land, then honored the world in a new way in Christ, pouring out love through him to all creation, to all the wondrous works God has done. What a blessing that is. What an honor it is. Bless the Lord. That's how the song begins, and that's how it ends. By the end of Psalm 103, not only has the psalmist invited themselves to bless the Lord, they've invited God's people to bless the Lord. Then they've invited all creation. They've even invited the angels in heaven to praise God. It's like a grand chorus builds and then it returns to just one solo voice to end the song. And that voice says, bless the Lord, O my soul. That's how we should use the word blessing. Not as cliche, not as a scream, but to acknowledge what is real at the heart of it all. Above it all, animating it all, is God. And that God has honored you and me and all creation, if we have eyes to see it, that God has lifted us up from the pit to a crown to soar with the eagles. We honor that God who is so much greater, holy and more wondrous than we can imagine. And that God has honored us, especially in what God has done for us in Christ, in our Savior's preaching, teaching, evil, banishing disease, healing, justice seeking, and ultimately in his death and resurrection. He brought God's way near and he lifts us up to life everlasting. Savor that blessing that God has given you. And as you go out into the world, as you interact with colleagues or family members or people, remember that the God who honors you has called you to honor others. And be especially mindful of that category of people. God is particularly mindful of that has known dis honor that is beaten, broken down, outcast, marginalized, left beaten and broken by the side of the road. Don't miss that neighbor. See them, honor them with your words and actions. And in so doing, you will bless the Lord as well. Praise God for how God has lifted us up. And may our voices begin and end with those great words of Psalm 103. Bless, honor, exalt, respect. The God who creates, redeems and sustains it all. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.