Praying Down Blessing
Acts 8:14-17
A man was at the horse races when he noticed a priest making the sign of the cross over a horse lined up for the first race. That horse went on to win the race. So as the next race was lining up he watched the priest make the sign of the cross over another horse. This time he bet on that horse and that horse won. Three more races he followed this plan and every time, the horse that was blessed won.
By the time he got to the last race, the man had won $20,000. He bet the whole bundle on the horse the priest blessed. The gates opened, the horses were off - and the one he had bet on took a few steps and fell over dead.
He was stunned. He searched all over the grounds to find the priest. “I don’t understand,” he said. I saw you bless every horse I bet on win. Then that last horse just died!” The priest replied, “That’s the trouble with you Protestants: You don’t know the difference between a simple blessing and last rites.” Today we’re looking at what it means to be people of blessing. Would you like to know how to pray down blessing – to know the experience of God’s presence so powerfully in your life that it transforms everything about you?
This Sunday we pass from the Christmas season to the Season after Epiphany or what is often referred to as Ordinary Time. The Christmas lights and poinsettia are gone. From now until the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday there is only ordinary time. However, when Rev. Robyn and I were looking through the lectionary readings for this season we discovered that all of the readings had some themes in common. One of those commonalities was the recognition of the mystical in the ordinary – the unexpected in the normal routine – the blessing in the mundane. Although the season may be called ordinary, the experience of the Holy is anything but.
The season after Epiphany was initially developed in the church calendar to explore the ways in which the good news of God’s in-breaking grace was progressively revealed to more and more of the world. The Christmas story begins essentially as an inner-circle Jewish story. You may remember that after Jesus’ resurrection (in the first chapter of the book of Acts) he told the disciples to take the good news to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the farthest reaches of the earth. Each Sunday during this season after Epiphany we see the boundaries of who is included in the conversation stretched further and further outward. More and more communities become part of the epiphany. Last Sunday this edge included the Magi traveling to discern astrological mysteries. Today, the apostles in our story are surprised to learn that the Samaritans have received the good news of the gospel message with such enthusiasm that they are ready to go deeper in their faith. The leaders of the fledgling church travel to Samaria to pray with them that they might receive Holy Spirit. Our scripture lesson might seem fairly bland and mundane. But with the “complicated” relationship that existed between the ancient Jews and Samaritans, it is telling that it took the power of Holy Spirit to bridge this gap. It took people taking the opportunity to pray down blessing to heal the rift.
It is interesting to me that in scripture this experience of receiving Holy Spirit is called both “praying down blessing” and “baptism by fire.” There seems to be something that we need to pay attention to here.
Ed Searcy of University Hill United Church talks about it in this way. He says,
You’ve heard of a ‘baptism by fire’? That’s a Jesus baptism. No sprinkling of water. In fact, no water at all. When Jesus baptizes, it’s with the rush of gale force wind that’s the power of God’s energy coming to stir up everything. Jesus baptizes with a fire that burns away the chaff of life. The unnecessary parts are incinerated.
No one looks forward to a baptism by fire. It’s human nature to run the other way, to delay, to hope it will pass by. Finally, it becomes clear that the only way home, the only way to wholeness, the only way to life is through the fire. It takes all the courage one can muster to walk into the fire, trusting that it will not destroy everything.
I’ve noticed over my years of being a pastor that lots of folks want to pray down the blessing. We’re all up in the blessing! But blessing comes when we’re willing to walk through the fire in faith.
Blessing doesn’t happen because everyone thinks alike or agrees about everything. There’s an old saying: If you ever meet anybody who thinks like you do, you’re lucky; if you ever meet two, you’re blessed. You’ll never meet three. Blessing happens when we’re willing to move heaven and earth to be part of the movement of God’s grace.
Today I want to encourage you to pray down blessing. It is a marvelous exercise! Pray that God will use you to make your world a better place. Pray that God will heal the divisions of our world. Pray that God will give you the heart and words and inclination to be part of the solution. Then pray that you’ll have the courage to step into the fire for that is where the blessing is to be found.
Where did we get the idea that blessing was easy? Have you ever read the Beatitudes – particularly Luke’s version? The Greek word translated as blessed, is makarios. We 21st century folk have diminished the idea of what it means to bless. Makarios is not the same “blessing” we employ when someone sneezes, for instance. To be blessed was to be conferred with God’s keeping… It was a world-altering affirmation. So when we hear that we are blessed when we are poor and hungry and thirsty and persecuted and when people say bad things about us – this is not a throwaway list of bedtime benedictions. These are the way we walk through the fire without it consuming us. How? By recognizing that even in the most consuming of fires, we carry God’s presence with us into those flames. There is nothing inherently blessed about poverty, persecution, conflict, hunger or any of the other realities noted in the Beatitudes. What makes them blessed is when we use the experiences of life that most assume would destroy or consume us as opportunities to recognize God’s presence through the trial.
We live in a state where the marriages of many couples in this room are considered null and void. There is nothing blessed about being a second class Minnesotan. There is blessing when we recognize God’s presence with us motivating us to change that legal dilemma. Some of us live with cancer, HIV, addiction or some other debilitating condition in our bodies. There is nothing blessed about being sick. There is blessing when we recognize God’s grace sustains us and gives us a voice even when many would have given up on us.
The Samaritans in our scripture reading were ready to go deeper in their faith – to walk through the fires of life with God’s presence. As a result, Acts tells us that they received an outpouring of God’s grace so amazing that a local sorcerer wanted to buy the rights to it from the apostles. What do you think someone would be willing to pay for the power of Holy Spirit operating in your life right now? Know this. It is priceless. We’re not talking last rites here. We’re talking about the power of blessing.
I’ve watched the many struggles we have endured to reach the blessing. It is not always pretty. It is usually messy and it is always complicated. But there are few things better to experience in life than knowing the power of blessing as you emerge from the fire.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Lord of the Seas, January 2010.
http://sermon.uhill.swift-web.co Searcy, Ed. “When you pass through the waters,” January 14, 2007, University Hill United Church Congregation.
Christopher Levan, Living in the Maybe: A Steward Confronts the Spirit of Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 118-119.