Wishers and Blessers--July 10, 2020

Wishers and Blessers--July 10, 2020

"May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this." [1 Thessalonians 5:23-24]

We Christians are not mere wishers. We are blessers. The difference is crucial--it is the difference between magical thinking and a confident trust in a mighty Lord. It is the difference between flowery words with no force and the potent invocation of a powerful God. 

And yet, at first blush, these two, wishing and blessing, might look very much the same. In fact, they might both use the very same words--the question is what we think our words are doing. When Paul, now beginning to wrap up his letter to the Thessalonian Christians, says "May the God of peace himself sanctify you..." what does he think he is doing? What power does he think his words have--and where does that power, if there is any, come from? Well, if Paul is wishing, there are two possible answers. When you wish for something, either your words have a lot of power in and of themselves, and by your sheer wishing willpower, you can make things happen as you want them to. This is sort of the Disney picture of "wishing up on a star," where, as the song says, "anything your heart desires will come to you." The power is in the strength of your wanting it--whatever it is--and your wish can make things happen by the latent force of your wishing. It's rather like Green Lantern in the comic books, who can use the power in his ring to create anything that his willpower and imagination can come up with. 

We end up sometimes inadvertently thinking the same must be how it works with God--that our religious wishing simply taps on God as a power source for us to get whatever we ask for. If Paul were wishing when he says, "May the God of peace himself sanctify you," he would be thinking that because he wished it, God must do it. God, in this way of thinking, is something like a cosmic genie, who will do great and mighty and wonderful things, but only according to the wishes of the wishers. And following that train of thought all the way out of the station, it means that God will only do things when summoned to do them--so that it's really our words and our saying them that make good things happen. This is one way of thinking of wishing. 

Hopefully, it is clear that this is not what we Christians believe, nor is it what Paul believes he is doing. In this picture, God is reduced to our butler--a very powerful butler, but a butler nonetheless. And really, it makes God a means to an end, and even almost just an abstract, impersonal force rather than a Person to whom and with whom we can relate. That seems pretty sad--if we imagine that God is just a force you can channel and put to work for you like harnessing electricity or magnetism in an elementary school science lesson. 

But there is a second sense in which we use the word wish--a sense that is even sadder, if you can imagine it, even more pathetic. Sometimes we use the word "wish" and mean practically nothing. We wish for something that we know is impossible, or a lost cause, or just to express a wistful hope. "I wish my estranged long lost love would come back..." we say, or, "I wish it would not rain so much--I had driving in this kind of weather!" or, "I wish I had a million dollars." These are words we say without thought or restraint because we know they have no power. And sometimes, if we are not careful, it sounds like this is what we believe about our words and God. Sometimes we through around such weak, timid words and attach God's name to them that it seems like we think we do not believe our God is capable of doing much of anything. We pray for things fearfully, hedging our bets by making our prayers impossible to sift through for a point--or we make our prayers sound like self-talk and coaching. "Help me to learn for myself that hard work will pay off, God..." or "Dear God, let me deal with my issues," we might pray--either lobbing vague requests so that we do not ever have to face the difficult question of asking whether God has actually answered our prayers, or masking advice to ourselves as prayers to God. Sometimes we pray as though we do not think anything will...or even could...come from our asking. And so we might be tempted to hear Paul's words that way, too. We might hear "May God sanctify you" as just empty pious-sounding words that sound religious but carry no force. We might think Paul is wishing for something either so vague that he wouldn't know if his wish were granted, or perhaps that Paul isn't really asking God for anything, so much as masking a bit of advice or moral teaching in the language of wishing. And that, too, is pretty sad. 

But like I say, Christians are not wishers--they are blessers. That is to say, when we are being faithful we do not do either kind of wishing. We do not think that our words, like magic, will make things happen the way a spell or a command of a genie would in the fairy tales. We do not wish, thinking that the power of our prayers is in how badly we want something or in our proper phrasing. But on the other hand, neither do we believe that our prayers are empty, flowery speech. We do not wish with empty words, just because it sounds nice to wish something pleasant for someone. We Christians believe that our prayer is more than simply wishing someone else a nice day or a merry Christmas. 

In other words, we believe in the power of blessing. And the act of blessing is not about the energy of our willpower or the emptiness of polite pleasantries. To bless is to call upon God, who will be the One to act or not. To bless is not to use our own power, as though our words were magical in and of themselves, but to invoke a powerful God to do what we ask and call on God to do. To speak blessing is to call on the God who is the Source of all life to bring others more fully to life—which means becoming more fully what we were meant to be. This is really what Paul is doing here in these verses--he is blessing his beloved congregation, not wishing things for them. He is calling on God, and Paul is under no illusion that what he asks requires no less than the living God to actually do. "The one who calls you is faithful," Paul says, "and he will do this." Paul is convinced that the words of benediction he speaks have power--but that power is not their own. The blessing has power only insofar as the God on whom he calls has the power and will to do what Paul has invoked. Paul believes his words mean something, and even that his words will do something, will accomplish something. But they accomplish something the way that dialing 911 accomplishes a rescue--it calls upon the ones who really do have the power to save, to rescue, to deliver. 

This is what we believe is happening in every act of blessing: we are calling on none other than God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We believe that our words have meaning and power, but not on their own. We are doing more than wishing people a nice day when we say, "The Lord bless you and keep you," and yet we also realize that those words are not a magic spell that by themselves will guarantee you sunny skies and good parking spots until it wears off. We are not wishers, after all. We are blessers--people who are convinced that our praying has power because the God to whom we pray has power. Today, let us us give up both the arrogant, prideful kind of wishing, and the apathetic pleasantries kind of wishing. And instead, let us be people who bless... and who recognize that we are blessed. 

Go, bless someone else today. In fact, go speak and embody blessing to everyone who crosses your path today. 

Lord God, bless us, your people, for our work: give to us those internal things we need to be faithful--courage, discernment, love, and wisdom--and give to us those external things that will let us thrive and do your will. Bless us, O Lord, for we do not merely wish it--we ask it in the blessed name of Jesus.