Part 2 of 3: Bless You
Pastor Anthony preaching on “Bless You.” Scripture focus is Numbers 6:22-27. Preached on August 15, 2021.
This is the second sermon of a three-part series on: “Words Have Power.”
Copyright 2021 by Rev. Anthony J. Tang and Desert Mission United Methodist Church.
As a Christian pastor, I am unapologetically Christian because I cannot be anything else than who I am and who I have been called to be. It doesn’t mean others are wrong or right. It just means that Jesus Christ is my Savior, our Bible shows me the ways of salvation, and I look for Truth wherever I can find it.
You have probably also recognized that I’m more than willing to quote something or to tell a story from someone who’s Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or atheist, for example. The reason is because I don’t believe that Christians have a corner on the Truth market. We all have the same creator and we all have equal access to what is true.
Does that mean I believe all or any religion is right? Of course not, there are some pretty unhealthy communities out there, including some Christian ones, and just because someone believes something is true, does not make it so.
Today, I’d like to share a story from Don Miguel Ruiz, who was a medical neurosurgeon before he had a near death experience that caused his life to change paths. His web site says, “Combining Toltec mythology and scientific perspectives, don Miguel has been able to merge ancient wisdom with modern physics and practical common-sense, forging a new philosophy for seekers of truth and personal authenticity.” (https://www.miguelruiz.com/don-miguel-ruiz)
He writes: “There was a woman… who was intelligent and had a very good heart. She had a daughter whom she adored and loved very much. One night she came home from a very bad day at work, tired, full of emotional tension, and with a terrible headache. She wanted peace and quiet, but her daughter was singing and jumping happily. The daughter was unaware of how her mother was feeling; she was in her own world, in her own dream. She felt so wonderful, and she was jumping and singing louder and louder, expressing her joy and her love. She was singing so loud that it made her mother’s headache even worse, and at a certain moment, the mother lost control. Angrily she looked at her beautiful little girl and said, ‘Shut up! You have an ugly voice. Can you just shut up!’
“The truth is that the mother’s tolerance for any noise was nonexistent; it was not that the little girl’s voice was ugly. Bu the daughter believed what her mother said, and in that moment she had made an agreement with herself. After that she no longer sang, because she believed her voice was ugly and would bother anyone who heard it. She became shy at school, and if she was asked to sing, she refused. Even speaking to others became difficult for her. Everything changed in the little girl because of this new agreement: She believed she must repress her emotions in order to be accepted and loved. (Ruiz, don Miguel. The Four Agreements – A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. California: Amber-Allen Publishing. 1997. pp. 34-35.) (https://www.miguelruiz.com/books)
Have you ever been cursed? Have you ever been on the receiving end of someone who used words of power to tell you not to sing, not to laugh, not to dance? Anyone ever tell you that you’d never amount to anything? Or have others ever talked over you to silence you? Or even just lie to you, using words to deceive or manipulate?
For those who have experienced such curses, those can be terribly painful memories.
My prayer is that those of you have ever been cursed have also known what it feels like to have been blessed.
The journalist, Sam Walker, wrote a book called The Captain Class, in which he hoped to answer the question, “What were, objectively, the most dominant sports teams in history, and what, if anything, did they have in common?” (https://bysamwalker.com)
In his book, there’s a section in which he writes about Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs from 1997 to 2016 and how everything he did was (in my words) to bless his other teammates. Sam Walker writes…
“On the court, [Tim] Duncan might have had the scoring ability to challenge Michael Jordan, who was putting up twenty-nine points per game at the time, but rather than focusing on taking every shot, Duncan often passed the ball to open teammates. He set picks for the guards, played aggressive defense, battled in the low post, and guarded the rim. His twenty-one-points-per-game average in his first season ranked thirteenth in the NBA, but he finished third in rebounding.
“His teammates, in honor of his selfless, no-thrills all-around game, affectionately dubbed him the Big Fundamental…
“In an era when the economics of the NBA made it difficult for teams to maintain steady rosters, most players of Duncan’s elite caliber believed it was their job to focus on scoring while their rotating cast of “support” players took care of the rest. Duncan took a different view. He helped the Spurs survive the roster churn by demonstrating a rare level of flexibility. He switched positions throughout his career, pivoting between center and power forward depending on the composition of the team. Sometimes his offensive metrics were off the charts, other times his defense predominated.
“Off the court, Duncan did something else that was unheard-of—he agreed to be paid less than his market value so the team would have more space under the NBA’s salary cap to sign better players…
“The best way to look at one’s teammates, Duncan said, is that ‘you’re helping them as much as they’re helping you.’
“When Duncan retired in 2016, his teams had won five NBA championships and had made the playoffs in all nineteen of his seasons. Individually, he managed to set the most impressive mark of all—winning more games with one team than any player in NBA history.” (Walker, Sam. The Captain Class – A New Theory of Leadership. New York: Random House. 2018. pp. 139-141.)
To be clear, Tim Duncan wanted to win basketball games. What he recognized more than most other players is that to accomplish this did not require him to be the best, but to help his teammates be their best selves. He worked to bless his teammates.
Now when I say, “bless,” I do not mean that Tim Duncan laid his hands on his teammates and called forth a holy incantation. I do not mean that he said, “bless you” as if his teammates had sneezed.
By bless, I don’t mean he used the word, bless. I mean he lived the word, bless.
This series is a series about words having power.
Last week, I talked about how sounds are the product of alternating high and low pressures of air that create vibrations moving through the air or even solid materials. Words are sounds, vibrations that are imbedded with meaning, symbolism, and power. And the truth is that everything vibrates, everything moves. Atoms and molecules vibrate, therefore, everything with mass vibrates. Light vibrates. Radiation vibrates. The universe vibrates. And when powerful words are spoken, they can resonate with the vibrations of our entire bodies, with our entire beings.
Our scriptures tell us that not only did God speak creation into being, but that Jesus is the Word of God.
In Mark 4, Jesus was the one who with a single phrase, “Peace, be still,” he stopped the wind and the waves from battering the boat he and the disciples were in. (Mark 4:35-41) Now, if Jesus had gotten up and had a frog in his throat, or if he had just eaten a saltine cracker, or if there was any reason he was not able to utter the words, do any of us think that the story would have been any different?
Take Luke 7. In it, a centurion seeks healing for his servant, but recognized the power of the word of Jesus when he said, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.” (Luke 7:1-10) The interesting thing is that in this Luke scripture, it doesn’t actually tell us that Jesus said anything other than to marvel at the centurion’s faith, whose servant was healed. Did Jesus say the words, “be healed?” I’m not sure it matters.
What I’m pointing out is that our scriptures do not tell us that Jesus spoke the Word of God, but that Jesus was and is the Word of God.
In our Numbers scripture this morning, God is speaking to Moses and instructs him to gather Aaron and his sons so that all of them would bless the Israelites, praying that God will turn toward them and shine upon them so that they may receive grace and peace and God will respond by doing it.
Now, this doesn’t mean that God will necessarily bless them in the specific way we want them to be blessed. And this doesn’t mean that God will necessarily give others what they want, which is often not a blessing. So, God will bless others in the way that God wants and they need it, but then perhaps you might ask yourself, “if that’s the case, that God will do it anyway, why do I have to do anything at all?” And the answer is this: because God wants us to be a part of the blessing, in the same way that God wanted Moses and Aaron and his kids to be a part of the blessing. And, I suppose, what Tim Duncan discovered as well, is that when we’re a part of other people’s blessings, when our lives vibrate and resonate to the word, Bless… we too are blessed.
To be clear, I am not saying that we are trying to create a space where we and everyone else is blessed. If we made that mistake, then new people who entered who didn’t already feel blessed might feel unwelcomed among us. No, the goal is not to be blessed.
The goal is to be a blessing.
So, imagine if you will, what it would look like if everyone around desired everyone else to be blessed? What would it look like to be in a space where everyone wanted everyone else to thrive? What would it look like if everyone wanted the best for each other? What would it look like if everyone, without expectation and without judgement simply wanted everyone to be who they were created to be?
Isn’t that how we see Desert Mission, our church? That our church can be a place where we surround each other with a community of blessing and that all of us can receive so many blessings, our souls, our cups may overflow so that we can carry our fullest selves back out into the world, sharing those blessings with everyone we meet.
And wouldn’t that be a glimpse of the kingdom of God?
