The Practice of Speaking a Blessing.... Col 4:2-18

Count your blessings, name them one by one
Count your blessings, see what God has done
Count your blessings, name them one by one
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

A wee blast from the past for many of you, I’m guessing!

That was one of the staple choruses we sang in Sunday School when I was a child, and we all liked it because of its jolly tune, and we all lustily affirmed in song that it was indeed a good thing to count your blessings. But the truth is, we rarely did. We counted on them rather than counting them. In other words, we took them for granted.

And it’s the idea of blessing that we draw this series of sermons to a close with this morning. Over the past ten weeks, we’ve been trying to earth our spirituality – to discover an altar in the world of our daily living – and we’ve covered a lot of ground in that time.

We’ve reflected on the importance of paying attention, of waking up to God. We’ve thought about what it means to be embodied – to be a wearer of skin. With the children on Thinking Day, we remembered how creation speaks to us about God, not just the immense vastness of the universe, but in the small and the local. At the start of Lent we remembered that at times, it’s good to get lost because you learn things about yourself and God you wouldn’t otherwise learn. We’ve thought about prayer, and vocation, and the practice of learning to say ‘no’ when we need to.

And this morning, we end with blessing; most especially the practice of speaking a blessing. And that’s a good place to finish, both logically and liturgically.

So what is a blessing?

At its simplest. I guess a blessing is something good that comes into our lives. Love, children, grandchildren, a new friend, a new opportunity, appreciative or insightful words. The daily blessings we forget to count like food and shelter. We aren’t owed these things, they come to us as gift, and as the hymn says, all good gifts around us are sent from heaven above.

And blessings that come our way arrive in different shapes and forms. They can be tangible, or intangible. They can be something new, or something old re-discovered and experienced in a new way.

When I started to think about this, I remembered going back to Ireland last autumn with two friends who’d never been there before. And I remember one day in particular when we did a big swathe of the North Antrim coastline in glorious weather, and standing out on the clifftops at Carrick-a-Rede and the Giant’s Causeway, and seeing those familiar places fresh, through their eyes, was a lovely blessing.

Sometimes the blessing’s already there, waiting to be received. All it takes is for you and I to notice it and receive it with gratitude.

When we bless a child in a service of baptism, or we bless our food before we eat it. are we doing something that changes the nature of the child, or of the food? Is the child going to do better because it’s been baptised? Is the food going to taste better and be safe to eat because we’ve prayed over it and given thanks?

Or is the blessing already there, and our speaking of it, our noticing of it, is what matters? God we thank you for the blessing of a new life with all its potential, and we ask that this child of yours would grow up into all that you desire for her. God we thank you for the blessing of this food; for the everyday miracles of nature and farming and cooking that allow us to have this meal on the table before us.

There’s something about receiving or giving a blessing that involves seeing things right. I see the good that’s before me not just as it is, but as something that’s gifted from God – a blessing. And I speak my blessing of gratitude right back to God for his generosity.

And we all know that there are times when the blessing comes so well hidden that we don’t recognise it as such until much later. We speak about a blessing in disguise – a set of circumstances that none of us would ever choose, but which, in the long term, can still manage to yield some good. Often it’s only with the benefit of hindsight that we can see how a blessing has quietly grown up in the dark soil of disappointment or loss or worry.

Count your blessings, says the wee song. But it’s not just as straightforward as that. Before you can count them you have to notice them, however they happen to arrive, and that isn’t always easy.
So that’s a word or two about blessings in general; but our focus today is on the importance of speaking a blessing.

Barbara Taylor writes movingly of the last few days of her Father’s life, surrounded by his family at the hospital bed.

At one point, when the crowds had thinned for a few hours, she saw her husband, Ed, a beloved son-in-law, kneeling on the linoleum floor and putting his head under his father-in-law’s bony hand, which he held there for a few moments as the old man murmured something over him.

What were you doing, she asked him later? “I asked him to bless me” he said. “I asked for his blessing.”

Now only Ed could say why he wanted to do that, or what he was expecting from it. But I think what we’re seeing in his actions is a primal desire that all of us have – the need to be seen and valued for who we are – to hear words that affirm us in our place in the world.

I can’t put words into Ed’s mouth, but if it were me in his shoes, I’d want to know that I had pleased this man I loved, that he trusted me with what was most precious to him, that he willed the best for us all in the future. And I would want him to know that I valued and respected him enough to deeply desire his blessing.

As human beings, we crave words that affirm who we are, yet we’re often so scared to offer those words, or to receive them. As a general rule, we’re profoundly embarrassed to say or do things that deeply affect us, because we don’t know if we’ll be able to stay in control of our emotions.

I see this every time I have a wedding rehearsal. There comes a moment when I get the couple to turn to one another and take each other by the hands and recite their vows. After all the preparation and fuss that goes with a wedding, for the first time, they are a foot apart, looking one another in the eye and saying some of the most significant words they will ever utter.

And they always do one of two things – they start laughing or they start crying. It’s too much! They’ve been together for years, and it’s still too much. Which is exactly why we do it at the rehearsal – to begin to deal with the powerful emotions of really speaking the truth to one another.

And therein lies the paradox. We need the blessing of giving and receiving such honest, affirming words, of really speaking the truth to one another. But we’d rather run a mile than do that. We hate letting our defences down and becoming vulnerable. And so, more often than not, the things we need to say remain unsaid, sometimes until it’s too late to say them.

“Perhaps” says Barbara Taylor “we have a corporate agreement that we will not embarrass one another, even if that means never going very deeply into the things that matter most to us.”

And do you see where that leads, in time? That conspiracy of silence?

To a culture where we see and appreciate less and less. To marriages where both partners feel undervalued because appreciation’s hardly ever vocalised. To children growing up unsure of their place in the world because they’re rarely praised for the good they do, or lovingly reprimanded when they do things wrong. To churches where we take one another for granted and are quick to criticise and complain but slow to praise.

I chose this passage from Colossians today, with all its difficult names, because it struck me how Paul takes the time to affirm these men and women in their work.

Tychicus – a faithful worker and fellow servant.
Onesimus – a dear and faithful brother.
Aristarchus, Mark and Joshua who have been a great help
Epaphras who prays hard for you all.
Luke, our dear doctor, and Demas, who send you greetings.

Remember what I said earlier about the relationship between seeing and blessing? Well in these closing remarks in his letter, Paul is blessing these folk. He’s saying “I see you! I’ve thought about you! I appreciate you!” He takes the time to see, but then to say that he’s seen. He blesses them.

That’s the thought I’d like us to take away from today. Who in our lives do we need to express our gratitude to? Who do we need to bless a little more? Who are we inclined to take for granted?

Could be the person who puts tea on the table each night, or does the washing, or brings the bacon home. Could be the person who does the job no-one notices until it’s not done. Could be the person who’s been going the extra mile, and over time we’ve come to expect that extra mile and maybe a bit more.

You alone know.

But may God help us all to begin seeing where we’ve stopped seeing; to overcome the conspiracy of silence where we’re paralysed by embarrassment, and to bless one another with life-giving words that affirm not just what we do, but who we are.

Tom Gordon is a Church of Scotland minister working in a hospice in Edinburgh and I remember him telling us a story about an elderly man called Frank who was dying. He and his wife Mary had been together for many many years, and they’d had a good marriage. But as Tom spent time with Mary, he began to realise there was something going on in her above and beyond the usual upset at losing your life partner.

As the weeks unfolded, Mary finally managed to get it off her chest. They’d had a good life together, her and Frank, and he’d been a good husband to her, but in all that time he’d never once told her that he loved her. And that was her only regret as she looked back on their time together. He’d never said what she most needed to hear from him.

Tom waited for the right time and brought the subject up with Frank, and as you’d expect, at first he was upset. “She must know that I love her – I’ve been with her all this time and we’ve done everything together. Of course I love her!”. But as they talked it through, Frank came to understand that what was so obvious to him in his heart and mind, still needed to be vocalised for Mary’s sake.

And the following day, he was able to find the courage to say the words that Mary needed to hear before he slipped away.

                                     o0o

Count your blessings, name them one by one.

Good advice, but maybe there should be a second verse to go with it.

Speak your blessings, name them one by one
Speak your blessing over what's been done.
Speak your blessings, name them one by one,
And folk will be grateful that you’ve found your tongue.