Benediction

Last week I went to visit a shut-in couple, with communion.  I had heard that she was hospitalized while I was on vacation, and wanted to check in on both of them.

It has been a tough year for her.  She has been hospitalized three times already, one time on Easter weekend, when she fell and had to have many stitches.  It has been a tough year, and we talked about that, and about their children, and their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren.  Their large, friendly dog sat at her feet.

At the end of the communion service, I gave the traditional benediction, the one I know by heart:

"The Lord bless you and keep you.
 the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. 
the Lord look upon you with favor, 
and give you Peace."

Afterwards, she said to me, "You know, whenever I hear those words, I feel calm and comforted. I don't know what it is."

And I said, "it's the benediction. The words are doing what they are supposed to do."
I said, "God gave those words to the people of Israel when they were wandering in the wilderness. We still say them today."
And she said, "Well, it seems like we are wandering in the wilderness today too."
I remember that I replied, "But we are on our way to the promised land."

I suppose I thought it was my job to say it, to complete the circle, to say another word, a final word.  We are on our way to the promised land, wherever that is.  I am not sorry I said it, but it sounded a little too glib, like I was trying to make a dissonant chord resolve.  

But she told the truth, that we are in the wilderness, that we are not there yet.  She was the truer preacher, even though I suspect that her wilderness looks different than mine.  She worries about the floods and the fires, and thinks perhaps that we are in the End Times.  I worry about the floods and the fires, and I  think that we are abusing the earth, and wonder when we will repent and treat it as God's sacred creation rather than a commodity.  We are afraid of different things, I believe, but it is the same wilderness and we are wanderers.

All we really have, on the way, is the promise of the benediction, that the Lord blesses us and keeps us, that God's face shines on us and looks upon us with favor, that God gives us, in some strange way -- peace.  Peace in the wilderness.  Peace for the wilderness.  Peace even though we don't know where we are going.  Peace for the meantime.  Peace for mean times.  I worry that these are very mean times.  I'm sure she does too, but for different reasons.

For some reason, the benediction is enough.  The words do what they are supposed to do.  They give us what we need in the wilderness.  Because we do not live by bread alone.  We live by these words.  In the wilderness.  And we put them in our mouths, and they are sweet, and we live again another day.

To Begin the Three Days: Eat Standing Up

Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday, the beginning of the Great Three Days leading to Easter.  As usual, I am not ready, despite forty days warning, although I will say that I'm doing better tonight than I was this morning.  I am preaching on Maundy Thursday, which will also be first communion for a few of our fifth graders this year.  I have my sermon all written, or, more precisely, mostly written, and Holy Communion is a theme:  bread and wine, body and blood, room at the table.

Despite this, I couldn't help taking some illicit glances over at the Exodus reading, the instructions for preparing the passover feast.  There is the year-old lamb, or goat, and there is the unleavened bread, and there are the instructions for spreading the blood on the doorposts.  And then there is the curious instruction to eat with your staff in hand, your sandals on your feet, your 'loins girded' -- as if you are about to take flight, according to Exodus.

Of course, this makes a certain sort of sense, in the context of the story.  They had to be ready to go as soon as the word came down that Pharaoh had given in to the demand:  "Let my people go."  They were on full alert, waiting and listening for the word that would set them free.

Of course, it is fascinating to me because in our day and time, we eat 'on the go' more often than is healthy for us.  We are urged to sit down and eat together more often, to take more time, to not be in such a hurry.

But this meal was meant to be eaten in a hurry, by a people who were setting out from slavery to freedom.  They were waiting for a word that would set them free, but also set them into a future they knew almost nothing about.

There is something profoundly disorienting about this.  This particular story of eating-in-a-hurry is not about meeting our own deadlines and setting our own agendas:  it is about waiting for a Word from outside ourselves to call us to action.

There is something profoundly disorienting about Lent, and the Three Days.  I never feel ready, even when I am prepared.  I never feel prepared for the bread, the body and blood, placed in my hand, the violence of the cross and all that it means.  I never feel ready for the empty tomb, the stone rolled away, the Word I have waited for, that calls me to action, to travel a way not my own.