St. David's United Church

St. David’s United Church
Rev. Dan Chambers
January 31, 2010

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 139

Original Blessing

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,

and before you were born, I consecrated you…

Jeremiah 1:5

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Psalm 139:13-14

I so vividly remember when Janet was pregnant and we went in for an ultra-sound.  She had to drink about fifteen gallons of water in thirty minutes, which wasn’t any fun, then she went into the examining room and they put a bunch of cold glop on her stomach, which wasn’t delightful.  But then the most amazing thing happened: the technician moved what seemed to be a magic wand over her round hill of a stomach, and somehow, incredibly, we saw the outline of our child on a screen.  It was a strange image, but among the shadows and lines, it was clearly life, life directly connected to Janet, being knitted together cell by miraculous cell.

Some people have an experience like this and it arouses a “holy” wonder as we come so near the natural miracle of life.  In the fierce, fragile and terrible beauty of creation there is something both wonderful and sacred.

The scripture reading from both Jeremiah and the Psalms remind us of something easily forgotten: God is with us always.  Even before we were born, God consecrates and blesses.

{Read Jeremiah 1:4-10, and Psalm 139:1-14)

It’s a tender scene, and universal.  A parent singing a child to sleep.  Humming a quiet lullaby.  Chanting a prayer.  Maybe a grandparent holding a young one wrapped in a blanket, rocking in a chair by a fire.  Or singing a favourite song while reaching over the bars of a crib, stroking the baby’s fine hair on her soft head as she finally drifts to sleep.

It was my father who sang us bedtime songs in his pure, tenor voice.  He did a lovely rendition of “O Danny Boy,” which once I learned that the song was about a father saying farewell to his son who’s about to go to battle, my eyes would well with tears every time.  He had quite a variety of songs in his repertoire: he sang “’Dem Bones,” “Down by the Old, Mill Stream,” and “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, I’d eat ivy too, wouldn’t you…”  He’d sing the somber, morbid “Streets of Laredo,” or “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” or “Home on the Range,” or a rousing version of “What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor.”  I admit, he had a rather curious bed-time song selection, but we didn’t know any better and we loved hearing his voice.  I suppose he could have sung just about anything, which he did, and we still calmed down and felt safe and surrounded by love.

Lullabies are a kind of love song to our young: usually tender and calm, sometimes silly and funny but a way of connecting and reassuring all the same.  The image that springs to my mind from the passages of Jeremiah and Psalm 139 is of God humming a sacred love song to us even before we were born; like a grandmother humming while knitting, or a quilting bee singing while stitching, or a bread maker singing a favourite song while kneading the dough, so I can imagine God chanting a holy tune as we’re being “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  From even before the beginning we’re blessed.  Perhaps we find ways to bless each other now so that we remember our original blessing from before time.

I admire how blessing is woven into the Jewish Sabbath.  Each Friday night, after the Sabbath meal, the child goes to the elder who puts their hands on the child’s head, and gives a blessing.  Rachel Naomi Remen, an oncologist, counselor and author, writes of her grandfather’s blessings when she was a young girl.  I usually don’t read something of great length in a sermon, but this story is so lovely and true, I want you to hear a significant piece of it.  She writes,

After we had finished drinking our tea, my grandfather would set two candles on the table and light them.  Then he would have a word with God in Hebrew.  Sometimes he would speak out loud, but often he would close his eyes and be quiet.  I knew then that he was talking to God in his heart.  I would sit and wait patiently because the best part of the week was coming.

When Grandpa finished talking to God, he would turn to me and say, “Come, Neshume-le” (which means, “beloved little soul).  Then I would stand in front of him and he would rest his hands lightly on the top of my head.  He would begin by thanking God for me and for making him my grandpa.  He would specifically mention my struggles during that week and tell God something about me that was true.  Each week I would wait to find out what that was.  If I had made mistakes during the week, he would mention my honesty in telling the truth.  If I had failed, he would appreciate how hard I had tried.  If I had taken even a short nap without my nightlight, he would celebrate my bravery in sleeping in the dark.  Then he would give me his blessing and ask the long-ago women I knew from his many stories – Sarah, Rachel, Rebekah, and Leah – to watch over me.

These few moments were the only time in my week when I felt completely safe and at rest.  My family of physicians and health professionals were always struggling to learn more and to be more.  It seemed there was always more to know.  It was never enough.  If I brought home a 98 on a test from school, my father would ask, “What happened to the other two points?”  I pursued those two points relentlessly throughout my childhood.  But my grandfather did not care about such things.  For him, I was already enough.  And somehow when I was with him, I knew with absolute certainty that this was so.

That’s what a blessing is.  It reminds us that we are already enough.  Yes we make mistakes, yes we can improve in a great variety of ways, yes, we have deep flaws that will likely never change, but unlike the James Bond movie, The World Is Never Enough, a blessing takes us back to that old truth that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” that even before we were born God blessed us.  Contrary to all outward appearances, we are enough.

Imagine.  At five or six years of age, it was this child’s favourite time of the week – to be blessed by Grandpa.  She felt known.  She felt accepted.  She felt his blessing was something genuine and real.

I’ve often wondered, how can we bless?  A few paragraphs ago, as I was writing the sermon, my daughter Colleen bounced into the room, kissed me on the head, and said, “Bless you, Po.  I love you.”  She did not know what the sermon was about.  I had not talked about the scripture or the theme or anything.  It was actually a little weird, because at that moment, I had been contrasting the richness of the Jewish tradition and their intentional blessings with our lack of at-home rituals.  How do we bless each other? I wondered, feeling a sense of inadequacy that I don’t do this intentionally enough.

Then, as if scripted, Colleen appeared, “Bless you, Po.  I love you.”  Well, she gets it, anyway.  And I felt like it was absolutely enough.

How’s this for a belated New Year’s resolution?  Try finding a way to bless people.  Give it particular focus from…ohh, what’s a good stretch of time?…how about from today until Easter.  See how it goes.  How will you do it?  Sometimes you might use words. Sometimes it might be more an intention of the heart, and it might affect the way you look at another person when they speak, or how you touch them, or what you do for them.

When I was recovering from knee surgery a year and a half ago, or when Janet’s mum was ill last fall, you blessed us with dinners lovingly prepared, beautiful flowers or an encouraging card or call or e-mail.  Your kindness carried with it a blessing.

Back to Rachel and her grandfather:

My grandfather died when I was seven years old.  I had never lived in a world without him in it before, and it was hard for me.  He had looked at me as no one else had and called me by a special name, “Neshume-le,” “beloved little soul.”  There was no one left to call me this anymore.  At first I was afraid that without him to see me and tell God who I was, I might disappear.  But slowly over time I came to understand that in some mysterious way, I had learned to see myself through his eyes.  And that once blessed, we are blessed forever.

Many years later when, in her extreme old age, my mother surprisingly began to light candles and talk to God herself, I told her about these blessings and what they had meant to me. She had smiled at me sadly.  “I have blessed you every day of your life, Rachel,” she told me.  “I just never had the wisdom to do it out loud.”

(Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings, 22-24)

May we find a hundred ways to kiss the ground and bless this life.  May we find the heart to bless others in our life.  Sometimes may we be wise enough to use words.  Sometimes, we might bless with a song that awakens a long ago love song hummed from the One who knew us before we were born.  May we remember that once blessed, we are blessed forever.

Amen.