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.