The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, First Edition. Edited by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore.© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

CHAPTER 7

Blessing

Christian Scharen

Improvised Blessings

I wasn ’ t really tuned in to what my daughter, Grace, was doing. At ages 9 and 12, our two children are able to occupy themselves if we parents have work to do. This

Memorial Day weekend, we were up at our northwest Wisconsin lake cabin, cleaning and mowing, getting everything ready for the summer season. Grace was singing in the living room where I was sweeping, and as I listened to her song I realized she had taken the words of a kitschy “ Bless Our Cabin ” plaque hung above the door for an awkward adaption of our table blessing. In order to have her creative effort at adapta-tion make sense, I need to pause and introduce the table blessing itself.

Our family always begins meals with a song of blessing, and this current one is a favorite. We learned the song at a Wednesday night church supper where it was taught by our minister of music, Mary Preus. We loved it and cornered her after the meal to sing it again so we could begin to sing it at home. John Bell, who is well known for his work as a minister and hymn writer with the Iona community in Scotland, translated the song, originally written in Spanish by Argentinean Methodist Bishop Federico J. Pagura, and adapted an Argentinean folk tune for the music (Bell and Adam 2008 ). The English lyrics begin by blessing God for our bread and then connect this to asking God to give food to the hungry and, in a tidy reversal of logic, hunger for justice to those who have food. It concludes with the same opening line, asking God to “ bless to us our bread. ” We love the logic of the prayer – the way it ties our fullness to the emptiness of others, and acknowledges the ways our fullness can make us empty in other ways: the lack of hunger for justice, as a case in point.

Grace had taken the song sung day after day at the table and improvised a song that took account of her joy in being at the cabin. “ God bless to us our cabin, ” she sang. But the next part came less easily: “ Give cabins to those who are . . . cabinless? ” she sang, her upward infl ection implicitly asking me as the nearest other person

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what I thought of that solution to the lyrical transposition. What Grace was doing, in her beautiful childlike way, was feeling joyful for the blessing of this long - time family retreat. Its blending of present fun with deep memories of joyful times spent with loved ones, some who have since died, welled up in her. “ Give cabins to those who need space for playing, ” I tried, and we laughed at our goofy efforts to make the song work.

Yet the logic of our table prayer led her to implicitly question the simple imperative directed at God by the plaque on the wall. She sensed that something was missing if we said only “ God bless our cabin. ” This everyday example sets up the rest of this chapter, which follows the moves of practical theology (Cahalan and Nieman 2008 ). I begin with the way blessing is reduced to God - assured individual happiness in the dominant culture of North America today. I then turn to biblical sources to recover a more robust notion of blessing that has a purpose beyond itself, that is tied in substantial ways to those who suffer and to a God who desires that all have the blessing of enough. Lastly I will refl ect on the daily practices of Christian life that form habits of improvisation that can extend the logic of blessing in daily living. This chapter therefore portrays a living practical theology, a way of living faith and of refl ectively engaging its shape for the sake of a way of life that truly is life.

A Common Culture

The opening vignette with my daughter offers in compact form much of what I want to say about blessing, including the relation of blessing to the injustice of current dis-tribution of goods many consider as their blessing . That such a plaque is on the wall in our cabin, when we do not at all agree with its theology or implications, is material evidence for the total ubiquity of such imperative forms of request for God ’ s blessing on our lives. As philosopher Charles Taylor has so carefully described, older social forms endure into the present but their meaning is transfi gured through the shifting back-ground understandings given in any particular age (Taylor 2006 ). For example, while the common phrase “ God bless you ” extended to another person who has just sneezed might have meant in medieval times “ May God protect you from an attack of evil spirits, ” today it likely means something more like “ I ’ m socially appropriate and this is what people do when someone sneezes ” or perhaps “ I hope you ’ ve not caught a cold. ” Similarly, forms of the imperative such as “ God bless our cabin ” refl ect the way we in the United States (at least, and I think a similar logic is being extended globally, at any rate to urban centers) share certain common cultural assumptions about who merits blessing.

In recent decades, the notion of a common culture has come under question, with scholars accentuating the social reality of difference and cultural diversity (Taylor et al. 1994 ). While the many differences in the United States do have their power, another at least equally powerful force impacting our lives is the way our institu-tions form common cultural values within us. Such forces rooted in powerful insti-tutions help me to account for the ubiquity of the logic expressed in both our kitschy “ God bless our cabin ” sign and its equivalents, including “ God bless America. ”

82 CHRISTIAN SCHAREN

Drawing from the work of German sociologist and philosopher J ü rgen Habermas, sociologist Robert Bellah (1998) has argued that the power of a common culture in the United States powerfully shapes the patterns of our daily lives. He recounts a senior seminar he taught at University of California, Berkeley, that was roughly divided between African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Anglo - American students. While identity politics and multiculturalism might lead us to think difference would dominate, Bellah reports that what “ was remarkable was how easily they talked because of how much they shared. ” Education, he continues, which is largely tied to the state, and media (television, the Internet), which are linked to the market, are “ enormously powerful purveyors of common culture, socializers not only of children but of all of us most of our lives ” (Habermas 1987 ; Bellah 1998 : 615). Of course there are exceptions, especially in socio - economically, ethnically, or linguistically marginal-ized communities, but they persist only through hyper - segregation (for instance, Native American reservations). While families and religious communities might provide a buffer space from such dominant infl uences, the ubiquity of the power of the state and market too often leave little ground for a critical perspective.

In the United States the state and market have always worked cooperatively on the level of polity and law: our nation was founded to protect individual rights to “ life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ” In providing an umbrella term for the content of our common culture, Bellah turns to the infl uential work published with four col-leagues in the mid - 1980s titled Habits of the Heart (1985) . In this careful examination of American culture they isolated a particular strand of our common culture for par-ticular focus and concern: utilitarian individualism. This cultural tradition has deep roots in our nation ’ s intellectual history, especially through the work of English phi-losopher John Locke (1988) , whose infl uence on the founding of the United States is hard to overstate. Yet utilitarianism ’ s cold calculation – think “ A penny saved is a penny earned ” from Ben Franklin – gave way to a more romantic, anti - establishment feeling of expressive individualism popularized by author Tom Wolfe (1976) in his aptly applied label for the 1970s as “ the ‘ me ’ decade. ”

Bellah reports that while one might imagine his students to have some depth of connection to particular elements of their own ethnic and cultural traditions, instead what they bring is shared in common: “ Oprah Winfrey, ER, Seinfeld, Nike, Microsoft, the NBA and the NFL. ” A shared focus on what I like and what is happening now leads to a kind of thin sense that this is what matters: the pursuit of my life, liberty, and hap-piness. A common culture embodies an expressive individualist conception of God as well. Christian Smith ’ s sociological research on religious beliefs of youth shows they largely share a conception of God as a cosmic sugar daddy: we do our duty and God is there to provide for our needs and shower us with blessings (Smith 2005, 2009 ). This is captured in the popular contemporary gospel tune often connected with prosperity gospel mega - churches: “ When the praises go up, the blessings come down. ” Systematic theologian Miroslav Volf describes this as a deeply worrisome confusion of the Christian God with another: “ we run to a God who will shower us with gifts. We want God to be our heavenly Santa Claus ” (Volf 2005 : 27)

I can now return to wonder, not how that “ God bless our cabin ” sign got in our cabin, but rather how we lasted so long without one! That is the power of our common culture

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to shape us for the expectation that God cares for my happiness and provides those things I enjoy as a blessing given so that I might enjoy them, and for my life as a whole. We are on slippery ground here, for we surely want to say that God is a giver of good things and desires for me – and all creation – to be well. What else might salvation mean than something like this? Yet . . . A key element for the logic of blessing as Christians understand it comes here in this parenthetical insertion – all creation – so that it is not just me standing alone waiting for my blessing. Further, my daughter ’ s improvisation with our table blessing discloses something essential about the responsibility and prac-tice of connecting the blessing I receive to the need of another.

Blessings for Whom?

To work at unpacking further the notion that our blessing connects to the need of another, let me relate another vignette, this time of a much more public nature. On November 25, 2009 the rock band U2 were playing an incredible show in Pasadena ’ s Rose Bowl. As part of their 360 ° Tour, they had planned a mega concert for that night. They played before a record 97,014 people in Pasadena and an estimated 10 million from over 188 countries who were watching via the fi rst live concert streaming on YouTube. I was one of the people who watched it on YouTube, enjoying the spectacle and looking to see in particular how the playful, artful integration of the theme of grace into their latest album – No Line on the Horizon – would play out in the concert.

Midway in the concert, U2 sang their 2005 hit “ City of Blinding Lights, ” a song partly about New York and their experience of playing a few particularly powerful post - 9/11 concerts at Madison Square Gardens. The last line of the song, “ Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, luckily, ” while not attracting much attention in the mainstream press, was seen by many fans as another example of their theology of grace playing out – the claim that we do not get what we deserve. As Bono, the lead singer, walked along a catwalk beside the stage singing these last words of the song, he added after “ luckily ” : “ We don ’ t believe in luck. Grace abounds. Grace abounds. ”

I posted about this surprising and moving improvisational moment on my blog, and another U2 fan posted this reply: “ I got to be one of the 97k who experienced this incredible event live. When [Bono] said what you posted, I started to cry. It was beyond powerful. More complete and life - shaking than many sermons. ” In a follow - up email, he said, “ I so wish some of us in the Christian world were better at expressing God ’ s grace. It seems to be so central to the biblical narrative and yet we don ’ t try hard enough to understand it and express it. ” In rewriting the lyrics, “ Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, luckily, grace abounds, ” Bono had signaled to those of us who had ears to hear that, while blessings may come, they are not just for the holy or for those who ask, and they may just belong to another rather than to us.

Such sentiments are nothing new for this theologically sophisticated and politically charged band (see Scharen 2006 ). Yet the remarkable moment of connecting blessings to grace rather than merit embodies a key characteristic present in the previous story of my daughter ’ s adaptation of our table blessing. Bono had once interacted with the divine in a more directive way. “ In countless ways, ” he writes, “ large and small, I was

84 CHRISTIAN SCHAREN

always seeking the Lord ’ s blessing. I was always saying, ‘ I have a new song, look after it, ’ or ‘ I have a family, please look after them. ’ ” Yet, in a dramatic way, he relates being told by a wise mentor to stop: “ Stop asking God to bless what you ’ re doing. Get involved with what God is doing – because it ’ s already blessed ” (Bono 2006 : 37). Bono had become convinced that the Bible articulates a fundamental commitment on God ’ s part to those who are poor, which led him to appreciate the deep connection between his wealth and status and those who have neither. To have his blessings belong to what God is doing means that his blessings belong in a direct sense to the poor, the sick, the hungry, and those who suffer. 1

The Biblical Logic of Blessing

In both the vignette of my daughter and that of U2 the biblical logic of blessing is present. The logic of blessing in these stories underscores the idea that blessings are not merely “ for us ” or, worse, “ for me. ” To suggest as much leads us astray, to suppose that we are intended to fi nd safe haven in some enclave of the spiritually gifted and blessed. Rather, the blessings are always for a larger purpose, which is connected to God ’ s mission to bless all creation. While many sorts of specifi c blessings (and at times associ-ate curses!) are to be found in scripture, making sense of all the variety requires locating the cornerstone.

Following the work of British missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, I fi nd this cornerstone in the calling of Abram (Newbigin 1995 : 30). The fast and furious movement of the Genesis story has already witnessed the creation of the universe; its ravaging by greed, hatred, and violence; God ’ s dramatic action through the fl ood to have a fresh start; and the bizarre scattering of the nations after the hubris of the Tower of Babel. Among the many descendants of Shem, Noah ’ s son, was Abram who lived in his father Terah ’ s house in Haran with his wife Sarai. We are told Sarai “ was barren; she had no child. ” And we are told that Terah had left “ Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan ” but that they settled in Haran, instead. 2 One senses the tension here: Sarai is barren and the journey has stalled.

In the midst of this, a movement rooted in a long ago blessing re - emerges, but devel-ops in character as well. In the ancient story of creation, God blesses Adam and Eve and says, “ Be fruitful and multiply . . . ” Such a blessing was similarly given to Noah

2 Ur, an ancient city near the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in what is Iraq today, and Haran, in what is today southwest Turkey, were both within what is called the “ fertile cres-cent, ” a vital swath of irrigated land in the Middle Eastern desert. The ancient land of Canaan comprises a coastal Mediterranean region including modern Israel/Palestine and Lebanon.

1 He quotes Isaiah 58:9 – 11 especially in this regard: “ If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the fi nger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the affl icted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places ” (NASB).

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after the fl ood, but here, with Abram and Sarai, this basic blessing for fruitfulness is extended in response to the profound element of brokenness that has entered into the story. God says to Abram, “ Go from your country and your kindred and your father ’ s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing ” (Gen. 12:1: NRSV). Here, the key is the “ so that ” which makes the crucial link between the blessing of Abram and its purpose, to “ be a blessing. ”

This logic is reiterated in the fi nal version of this promise, late in the story, after renewed promises bring new names (Abraham and Sarah) and a new son (Isaac). After Abraham has been tested in his faithfulness by God ’ s request that he offer Isaac as a burnt offering, God says to Abraham: “ Because you have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you . . . and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice ” (Gen. 22:18). Newbigin puts it this way: the tension is between the promised blessing as responsibility and as privilege. Israel is constantly challenged to remain faithful to the responsi-bility of bearing the blessing for the sake of the nations, rather than to grasp hold of the blessing as its own privilege (Newbigin 1995 : 32). What is striking about the bibli-cal understanding of blessing is the relationship of blessing and historical experience. Blessing is understood to be fundamentally about God ’ s faithfulness in the past and hoped - for presence in the future. Despite great suffering (for example, the experience of slavery in Egypt) and striking disobedience (for example, worshipping a golden calf in the wilderness), the power of God ’ s blessing in and through those whom God chooses carries on through scripture.

One might even say that it is in and through suffering that God ’ s blessing comes to bear fruit. Not that the equation must work out in some prescriptive calculation like: suffering + endurance = blessing (one way to read the diffi cult story of Abraham ’ s near sacrifi ce of Isaac is to say that through it God renounces human sacrifi ce). From a Christian perspective, one might say that even though a human response to God ’ s promise and blessing is unfaithfulness, the consequences of which are a curse, God enters into that suffering. In Jesus, God even becomes that curse itself, in order to break its hold on us and to open up renewed possibilities for blessing. Indeed Jesus “ did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross ” (Phil. 2:7 – 8). As German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “ Jesus was the man for others ” ( 1967 : 202). Abraham ’ s blessing near the beginning of the Bible, and the Tree of Life in Revelation near its end, share the logic of Jesus ’ own life: they witness to the fact that God ’ s blessing is for the healing of the nations.

The Practical Logic of Blessing

Notice what the logic of blessing rooted in scripture does not allow. First it sets aside the notion that blessings are intended merely for me. It is a measure of our narcissistic and materialistic culture that interprets scripture as found in the contemporary fantasy

86 CHRISTIAN SCHAREN

book The Prayer of Jabaz (Wilkinson 2000 ). According to his website, its author Bruce Wilkinson is “ one of the world ’ s foremost Christian teachers. ” His “ New York Times #1 bestseller ” “ takes readers to 1 Chronicles 4:10 to discover how they can release God ’ s miraculous power and experience the blessings God longs to give each of us. ” The notion that I may fervently pray that God “ expand[s] my territory ” as this popular book puts it, and that God blesses me with a cabin or whatever else I might dream up, has more to do with what scripture calls “ curses. ” It is similar to what happens during the Exodus, after the escape from slavery in Egypt, when God provides manna in the wilder-ness. The people are to gather enough – more for a large family and less for a smaller family. Those who hoard will see their piles turn to rot, infested with maggots (Exod. 16). Both Israel and the church experience curses when, to use Newbigin ’ s terminology, they regard God ’ s blessing as a privilege rather than as a responsibility.

Second, the logic of blessing at the heart of scripture that we have articulated sets aside the notion that God ’ s holy people can go off by themselves, pretending they live in heaven already and unconcerned for those who are so - called “ sinners. ” Such an attitude can be seen in the disciples James and John who accompany Jesus to the moun-taintop where Jesus ’ transfi guration takes place (Mark 9). Stunned by the holiness of the scene, with Moses and Elijah in front of them on either side of Jesus, they suggest building huts and staying put. But Jesus demurs, drawing their attention down the mountain to the forsaken, the hurt, and the sick. To such as these, he says, such glory and power and blessing belong.

Martin Luther, the sixteenth - century Protestant reformer, understood and articu-lated this logic of blessing beautifully. Writing in a commentary on one of his favorite books of scripture, Paul ’ s letter to the Galatians, he glosses on chapter 6:2 – 3 where Paul writes: “ Bear one another ’ s burdens, and so fulfi ll the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. ” Luther admits how diffi cult living in love is, and how strong the temptation to run away from those who offend us in our efforts to live according to our understanding of the Christian life. Yet to do so would be to misunderstand to whom we owe our lives. God blesses us, Luther argues, so that we may be a blessing to those who need such love, mercy, and healing. “ For the sake of love, ” he argues, “ they are fl eeing the proper duty of love. ” Seeking to spell out this logic more carefully, so as to be clearly understood, he wrote:

If there is anything in us, it is not our own; it is a gift from God. But if it is a gift from God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, to the law of Christ. And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself. Thus my learning is not my own; it belongs to the unlearned and is a debt of love I owe to them. My chastity is not my own; it belongs to those who commit sins of the fl esh . . . My wisdom belongs to the foolish, my power to the oppressed. Thus my wealth belongs to the poor, my righteousness to the sinners. For these are the forms of God of which we must empty ourselves, in order that the forms of a servant may be in us. (Luther 1964 : 392 – 393)

It is clear here that Luther is straining to speak of what we are “ in Christ, ” that is, as we are caught up into the life of God ’ s own pattern of life as Trinity, and the “ shape of living ” is overwhelmed by the shape of God ’ s own life (Ford 1997 : 13).

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Living within the economy of blessing, as a way to live responsibly rather than assuming privilege, need not then be a load we strain to bear. Rather, by grace we are caught up into the very shape of God ’ s own life, becoming givers as God gives, overfl ow-ing as we are fi lled. This imagery helps us understand the reality of the Holy Trinity, writes Rowan Williams, as “ the outpouring and returning and sharing, gift and response and renewed overfl ow of giving, the threefold rhythm of love, Father, Son and Spirit. ” Living within the fl ow of such a dynamic divine life, therefore, what we call “ Church ” ought to be more like “ swimming in an overwhelming current of divine loving activity ” rather than signing up for a membership society (Williams 2007 : 136). Living the practice of blessing, then, is living “ in the fl ow ” of God ’ s own life. It is an assent to the deep Trinitarian pattern of reality, and to our own place in the fl ow of being given, and thereby giving; being blessed to be a blessing.

Practicing Blessing

In conclusion it remains for me to return to our cabin, to the work of parenting, and to ask about the patterns of life this discussion of blessing calls us to. Bonnie Miller - McLemore has written beautifully and powerfully about the intersection of parenting and the practice of blessing. Drawing a liturgical parallel, she notes: “ the practice of blessing, like a good benediction, declares our willingness to live joyously and gratefully within fi nite existence and to set our loved ones free to do the same ” (Miller - McLemore 2007 : 178). Such realism and grace are both welcome in thinking about the daily work of living faithfully. It is of course troubling to acknowl-edge owning a second home, let alone declaring God ’ s blessing upon it, when so many people die daily of the simple lack of food, clean water, and basic medicine. Yet it is also true that we vacation, and to vacation we spend money – money that our family invests in one place in order that we may go back to it year after year, and that we may share with countless others, rather than staying at this hotel or that resort in other locations. In so doing, we make not only space for our own renewal but a place where we can offer hospitality to friends and strangers also in search of rest and recreation.

The point is that goods confl ict, and the freedom to know that such a “ blessing ” in our lives is not simply a privilege to be hoarded but a responsibility to be given, as it has been given to us, is both freeing and convicting. It draws us into the logic of abundance, grace, and giving that extends from God and draws us into the dance. The improvisa-tional logic Grace showed by extending our table prayer to her joy in spending time at the cabin teaches us all about the practice of blessing in daily life (Wells 2004 ). Its impulse, once learned in an embodied way, becomes a way of making sense of and of acting within many particular moments of daily life (Bourdieu 1977 ). In a sense, fol-lowing the reorientation Bono experienced, we fi nd that a table prayer ’ s practical logic connects to a whole way of life that cuts across the grain of merely asking God to bless our lives and possessions. Rather, we come to see that these things are already blessed, that is, made for a holy purpose. Practicing blessing draws us into the logic of giving and receiving at the heart of God ’ s life in the world.

88 CHRISTIAN SCHAREN

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