November 6, 2005

Glynn Cardy

Ordinary Sunday 32     2 Thess 2:1-5     Luke 20:27-38     Mark 10:13-16

Blessings. One of the things priests do is bless. It's probably the most important thing we do. And it's probably one of the least understood.

Let's begin at the beginning: God is love. Always was. Always will be. God loves us. Always has. Always will. There is nothing we can do to change that love. No matter how naughty, wicked, or depraved we are God loves us. It is unconditional. Another way of saying this is that God has blessed us, and keeps on wanting to do so.

This is the paramount truth of our Christian existence, celebrated at baptism. The call, or challenge, of baptism is to live into that blessing of love and imitate it in our own lives. "Become what we are" as the Anglican theologian F.D. Maurice once said.

When a priest says a blessing upon a congregation, on a couple, or a baby there is no spooky, magical stuff involved. The priest is simply declaring what is, namely the love of God. The priest is publicly stating, and the gathered community is concurring, that God loves each and every one of us.

There is a story in the gospels of the disciples trying to prevent adults bringing children to Jesus [Mark 10:13-16]. Jesus rebuked the disciples, then took up the children, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. We need to remember that in the 1st century children had no rights. A child was a nobody, a non-person in the Mediterranean world, unless the father on the family accepted it. If the father didn't accept the child it was dumped, condemned to slavery or worse. By touching these children Jesus, in a parental role, was designating them for acceptance.

Jesus wasn't blessing the children because they were cute, or because they were innocent, or trusting, or showed potential. Jesus blessed them to declare that God unconditionally accepted them. It was a radical move in a society where people were categorized and condemned. Jesus proclaimed that God's love was for the powerless, as much as it was for the powerful.

To bless or not to bless is therefore on one level not a moral decision. Jesus was not making a comment on the morality of children. Just as by dining with tax collectors and sinners he was not making a comment about their morality. He was rather making a comment about God's morality. God loved them. Once that love had been experienced they were then free to respond however they chose.

"Hey, Glynn, what about a murderer? Should a priest bless a murderer?" My answer is simply "Yes." The priest is not making a statement about the person's morality. The priest is simply declaring God's love, and that God wants the very best for him or her. Of course offering a blessing in some situations is not easy. And I can think of one or two times in my own experience. Yet we do it. In season and out, we proclaim the love of God.

"What about buildings?" you might ask. "Is the priest saying that God loves buildings?" My answer is that the essence of the blessing is the same - God's love for us extends into the environments we live and work in.

There is, at this present time, an Anglican international fuss about blessings. The Diocese of New Westminster, Vancouver, after much debate, authorized a public Rite for the blessing of same sex unions. Conservatives have roundly criticized this. The recent Windsor Report, commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, criticizes the lack of international consultation prior to the decision to proceed. I hope the fuss is centred more on the public Rite than on the blessing. The public Rite could, if you have a conservative imagination, be mistaken for marriage. And marriage, in both the laws of state and church, is exclusively heterosexual.

The blessing, however, is a different matter. Any couple, gay or straight, saintly, sinful or somewhere in between, should be able to come to a priest for a blessing. The priest is not judging the morality of the couple. The priest is declaring the unconditional love of God.

I would consider it a violation of my ordination vows not to bless someone who asks for it.