As undergraduates, you see, we used to poke one another in the ribs and giggle during the university prayer. Solemnly intoned much too often, it was a prayer that asked God to bless all who had contributed to the institution and to “raise up to the University, we humbly pray thee, a never-failing succession of benefactors.” I used to imagine God's response, picturing God pouring plump middle-aged men and women onto the campus. In their fur coats, clerical collars, and fine suits, they would parade around and fork over large sums of money to the latest capital campaign. In my youthful idealism, I felt that this was a tacky blessing to be constantly bothering God about in our official prayer.
Of course, now that I am a plump older woman in a clerical collar, praying about my own parish finances, I am not as easily amused by the phrase. I still wonder, though, how often we in the Church do confuse saints and benefactors. Don’t we often see the Church as an institution held up by virtuous pillars of saints, by men and women carved in rigid stone who guard the status quo, by benefactors with their names on brass plaques for giving of their treasure, time, and talent to keep the institution going? Don’t we often think of blessing as something that we cajole out of God, through words or good deeds, like a university negotiates a bequest from a powerful donor?
Our Gospel reading for this All Saints’ Day does its best to shake up this common idea of blessing and of sainthood. Luke’s Beatitudes tell us what it means to be blessed. They certainly make it clear that blessing is not marked by a never-failing stream of wealth—or even by a secure stream of happiness, for that matter. The saints that Jesus sculpts around his baptismal font are poor, hungry, weeping, hated, scorned, and cast aside. They're people who can turn to those who hate them and offer them blessing. They're people who seem to give more than they are ever given in this world.
Luke doesn't offer us the easier spiritual take on Jesus' Beatitudes that Matthew provides us in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew's Jesus blesses the “poor in spirit” rather than society’s poor. Matthew's Jesus blesses those who hunger for righteousness, rather than those who don’t get enough to eat. But Luke is talking about the real world that we know and participate in. I can’t help but pull back uneasily from Luke’s stark blessings. I don't want to bless those who hate me. And I see myself much too clearly sitting among those whom Jesus curses: the rich, the filled, the joyful, the acclaimed. One of my favorite prayers is that evening collect that asks God to “shield the joyous.” I want God’s blessing to shield me, not to throw me to the wolves! Why do God’s blessings here have to be so totally backwards, so dismally painful?
Think for a moment about the saints, the blessed ones, among us. Pick your favorite saint from the list that the church has handed down throughout the ages. Or think about a special child of God with whom you have shared a pew or a friendship. Isn’t it always the case that those who have blessed us the most have at some point experienced the most profound pain in their own lives? Think of St. Francis of Assisi who heard God’s call as he lay ill and hopeless as a prisoner of war, and who had to give up his wealth and his heritage before he could serve God. Think of the famous women mystics like St. Julian of Norwich, St. Teresa of Avila. They were gifted with magnificent visions of God, yet they suffered terrible physical or psychological ailments and extreme rejection by others. Think of St. Paul, with his terrible “thorn in the flesh,” or of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who grew up black in the Jim Crow South and endured countless threats before being murdered. We can’t deny it. There is something about suffering that opens us up to God, and there is something about prosperity that lulls us into a dangerous sleep.
There's a wonderful book about some of the female Christian saints called Enduring Grace. There's even a copy in our library, if you're interested in reading it. The title is a play on words: This book shows how God's grace "endures" in the world through the lives of these holy women. Yet it also shows how, in their personal suffering, they each "endured" the grace of God's difficult blessing. This word "grace" appears several times in the Greek of our Gospel lesson, too. Grace is love that is freely given; it's love poured out without calculation, without expecting or receiving anything in return. It is love given to enemies, to those from whom we can expect no love back. It's the love that God in Christ shows us on the Cross. Grace is the love that God freely gives us, so that we can give it freely to others.[1]
The blessing that God offers us, you see, is a moving, swirling love. It belongs to the dance of Love that is the Trinity itself. It demands transformation and movement. It cannot survive in hearts and souls that refuse to be torn open. It suffocates in customs or in institutions that refuse to break. Christian Sharen points out in his work on blessing that our blessing always connects to the need of another. From the beginning of creation, God blesses with love and goodness everything that God has made. Blessing in the Scriptures always multiplies as we pass it on, bearing fruit in and through the suffering that is inevitable in this world.[2]
So what about that baptismal font at Sewanee, ringed with straight-backed saints who hold in the holy waters? I’m thinking that the Church would do better with Frederick Buechner’s more fluid image of blessing. Buechner describes the saints as handkerchiefs dropped by God during God’s “holy flirtation with the world.”[3] Imagine the movement of a flirtation, the quick give and take, the strong, dynamic energy passing back and forth between two people. Imagine God looking for a relationship with you and me, with our world. Imagine God testing the waters, reaching out and touching, withdrawing in a blush. Into that movement, God drops grace-filled blessing. It flutters down into our lives on the wind of the Spirit, like a handkerchief.
“Pick me up,” the blessing begs. Pick me up and pass me into a waiting hand. Please don’t stuff me away into your dark pocket. Look up, like Jesus looked up into the eyes of his disciples, and pass blessing on, no matter the cost.” And we saints stick out a trembling hand.
[1] See "Graceful Life," at https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/11/2/graceful-life-salts-commentary-for-all-saints-day.
[2] Christian Sharen, “Blessing,” in The Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, Bonnie Miller-McLemore, ed., Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2012.
[3] ] Frederick Buechner, quoted in a sermon by Samuel Candler, http://day1.org/2379-saint_carlton_is_lowest
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