Blessed Be
We are in Ordinary Time. You might disagree with that statement based on everything happening in our world; but, according to the Church calendar, we are now in Ordinary Time. Ordinary is the longest season of the Church – it begins after the 50-day season of Easter and ends with the first Sunday of Advent, November 28, this year. The liturgical color is (ordinary) green. The season of Advent and Christmas is anything but ordinary, as is Epiphany, Lent and Easter. Those are extra-ordinary times.
The opening acclamation for the service in Ordinary Time is this:
Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The response: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and for ever, amen.
That opening acclamation, like 98% of the phrases in the Book of Common Prayer, comes from the Bible. Here are the passages that outline that acclamation.
In the book of Ruth (4:14), the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord.”
In the Second book of Samuel (6:8) and mirrored in 1 Chronicles (16:2), David finished making a burnt offering and “he blessed the people in the name of the Lord.”
Psalm 113:2, “Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time on and forevermore.”
Lastly, in the book of Job (1:21), he said, “The Lord gives and takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
The two I would like to compare are from Ruth and Job. In Ruth, the widow, Naomi, got married and became pregnant, which in their day meant raising a child in the memory of her deceased husband. The women around her said, “Blessed be the Lord … God shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.” In the book of Job, as the story goes, all that Job had was taken from him but instead of cursing God, he said, “God gives and takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Both passages use the “blessed be” phrase but are distinctly different – the women around Naomi name God as restorer and nourisher whereas Job recognizes God as giver and taker.
Job is the oldest book in the Bible. Many theologians believe it predates the Hebrew language. Sufi wisdom believes that all things come from God and all things return to God; which is one way to look at Job’s theological statement of giver and taker. But I am going to take a different approach that blends it more in line with Naomi’s belief. We don’t know the mind of Job; or if he was even a real person or if this is simply a story to imagine how to live as faithful people amid bad things happening to good people; but the story shows that it was the devil who took away everything that Job held dear. At the end of Job’s story, all was restored by God. With Naomi’s faith, we see God as restorer and nourisher not as the-one-who-arbitrarily-takes.
I, however, believe that God does give and take – God takes away our/my individual sin as well as the sin of the world. God takes away fear and gives love and joy and peace. God takes away the sting of death and replaces it with hope and faith. All of those “takings” leave us/me restored and nourished.
Blessed be the name of the Lord!
-Fr. Dave
