Blessing vs Good Fortune
Link to video: https://www.facebook.com/stlukesferndale.org/videos/638810647011882
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
August 16, 2020—Proper 15A
Gen 45:1-15; Psalm 67; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28
I love the psalms. They constantly inform my prayer life, as they speak from the whole breadth of human experience and emotion; it’s all there, from desolation to exaltation, displaying the best of our humility, compassion and praise alongside the worst of our resentment, selfishness, and longing for revenge. In their verses, a person can find company in their loneliness, their longings and their endless cries to God. And there, too, they can find reassurance, from the experience of one who has so clearly felt lost, and then found again.
I really love the psalms. So I was grateful this week, when Rolf Jacobson at Working Preacher led my sermon right into the heart of today’s psalm. “May God be merciful to us and bless us, show us the light of his countenance and come to us. Let your ways be known upon earth, your saving health among all nations” (Ps 67:1-2).
It’s a psalm of blessing, a psalm that echoes and amplifies the priestly blessing from Numbers: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you” (Num 6:24f). It’s a beautiful blessing, and a beautiful psalm. And I was compelled to dive into it because of how desperately and faithfully I struggle with the concept of blessing.
And not just because so many of those #blessed posts are essentially bragging with a thin sheen of spirituality on top, though that doesn’t help. Still, even without curated social media content, I would feel cautious about the idea of blessing. Like all theological concepts, it is powerful and life-giving, but incredibly dangerous if we use it carelessly.
In his letter, James tells us that “Every good and perfect gift comes down to us from God our Father” (1:17). Which says something to us about God’s desires for his children to thrive and prosper. Which says something to us about good fortune being a gift, rather than something we earn by ourselves. Which leads us, in its best form, to gratitude and humility.
But it can lead other places as well. We could start there, and look at those who have less good fortune in this world, and testify that this is NOT God’s desire or dream for his children. Or we could start from the same place, and develop a theology that those who do not receive as many worldly gifts are clearly not as favored by God. Indeed, in biblical times, it was common to look at people with physical disabilities and think just this: that they had clearly sinned, or were under some kind of divine disfavor.
Our modern sensibility looks upon that worldview as hopelessly antiquated, and even cruel. But we have been much slower to reject the same perspective with regard to economic disadvantage. Followers of John Calvin, for example, used the doctrine of predestination to suggest that worldly financial success was a sure sign of God’s favor: proof that one was part of the elect! Thus was the Protestant work ethic born, which is great for a capitalist economy, but is pretty dangerous theology.
Because worldly success depends on so many different things. Not least among these is that the best predictor of good fortune is the accident of birth. Where were you born, and to whom were you born? The wealth, privilege and stability of your family of origin make a massive difference in your life and prospects. Which is not to say that one can’t improve upon these things, or that that isn’t incredibly admirable. It’s just to say that Christianity teaches that God’s favor can’t be earned. Not even by an astonishing hard-working immigrant story. And certainly not by being born into a stable family who enjoys the good fortune of housing, education and healthcare.
I think it might be useful to differentiate between good fortune and blessing. Something might well be good fortune, but depending on our relationship with it, it might not be a blessing. That’s a matter of how we receive it, what it brings out in us, and how it reorients us toward the world.
Blessing is, first of all, understood as gift. It is un-earned. Which invites us into a posture of humility and vulnerability, and honestly we might rather go back to having earned it. Because unearned gifts make us uncomfortable, in how very open-ended they are. It isn’t a prize we won, or a sign of our impressive divine favor. It is a gift, and it requires a response. And all we can do, if we receive it as God intended, is to be grateful.
Which is the point, and the power, of blessing. The purpose of blessing is that we be thankful. That we overflow with gratitude. Which is another way to say that the purpose of blessing (in fact, the nature of blessing, what it will bring out in us) is that we become generous.
“I will bless you, and you will be a blessing” (Gen 12:2). This was God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah, and it gets to the essence of God’s blessing. We are not blessed simply for ourselves and our own happiness. We are blessed so that we might bless the rest of God’s children; we are made to thrive so that we might be life-giving for others.[i]
These, I think, are the key differences between blessing and simple good fortune. First, that blessing leads to humility and gratitude for the gift, rather than tempting us to pride and the idea that we are God’s favorite. And second, that the purpose of blessing is that you might be a blessing to the world. Without that, it is simply that you are … fortunate.
Blessings come in many forms. Sometimes they look like the things we generally consider good fortune, but not always. I don’t mean to romanticize poverty, but the social networks that grow from a shared lack of material resources can be a blessing, as people watch each other’s children and loan money and give food and share the one car on the street. The opportunity to sing or dance or laugh together is a blessing. To cry together is too.
But many things commonly seen as good fortune can also become blessing: money, loving relationships, social capital. They are transformed into blessing when we can see them as an unearned gift and let go of our pride and entitlement. We are transformed by blessing, when our hearts open in gratitude, and that then overflows into generosity. When we recognize that we have been blessed, and that we are meant to be a blessing to the world.
“May God be merciful to us and bless us … that his ways might be known upon earth, his saving health among all nations” (Ps 67:1-2). May God bless you to be a blessing. May it be so. Amen.
[i] Rolf Jacobson “Commentary on Psalm 67:1-7” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4540