Sometimes we preachers wonder if anybody out there is listening. Sometimes they aren’t. And often somebody will surprise us with their listening. But either case we forget the power of words. In the Old Testament when a word was spoken something happened. God spoke and the world came in to being. God spoke to Abraham and this was a voice that changed history. Moses stood open-mouthed before a burning bush he was never the same. Mary and Joseph both heard the voice of an angel.
Words matter. For good or bad. Myron Madden once wrote a book called The Power to Bless. And he said that our words carry the power to bless or to curse. So we should be careful what we say. All of us. We have all felt the power of the blessing or the curse.
So back to the end of the service. People standing ready to leave gathering up their children or their belongings. Hungry and ready to get home. Some thinking about their Sunday afternoon. Maybe golf or a nap. And as they turn to leave their pew the preacher will say “Let me give you the Benediction before you leave. “ And sometimes we groan and say: “Oh no—not another mini-sermon.” But sometimes the strangest thing will happen. There at the end ready to leave— lightning will strike as real and life-changing as those stories in the Bible.
What I did not know as we finished our service was that someone ready to leave latched on to some phrase or word in the Benediction. They probably may not remember the fine sermon I thought I gave. But again and again someone will remember the Benediction. One woman, troubled by many things would call me up and say, “Roger I need to hear my Benediction.” And on the phone I give her the words that helped her along. Words that she needed. I would pray: “May the peace that passes all understanding and the love that will not let us go abide rest and abide with us forever.” And about every month after that—my friend would call with the same request. “I really need to hear my Benediction.”
I have no idea how many emails I have received with this same request. “Do you remember the Benediction you used to pray at the end of the service. Could you send that to me?” A woman stopped me the other day and said she had just talked to her son in California who had not been to church in years. He asked me the strangest thing. “Mother when I grew up in church the Pastor would pray the same words at the end of the sermon every Sunday.” Could you get those words for me?” So I sent him the Benediction through his Mother.
I wish I could claim that ending prayer originated with me. But the words are rooted deep in the Bible. Peace and love. Maybe these two words spoke to a hunger to those who remembered.
Sometimes the word, Benediction is interchangeable with the word: Blessing. And when a preacher raises his hands at the end of the service hopefully all those who come will find a peace we all need and a love deep in our hearts we crave.
Peace
God knows we need this powerful word in our lives. Peace is not the cessation of our wars. And it does not mean that every storm in our lives will go away. But I think maybe somebody out there at the end of the service will suddenly begin to find in the middle of their stormy weather there really is a peace that passes all the world’s understanding. Not depending on circumstances or achievement. But it does mean that in the middle of whatever we face we will find promised peace.
People in our world look up and wonder. How can there be peace when all around us is all this suffering? More than 600,000 of our brothers and sisters lost to this cursed virus. Think of all those left behind. Wives and husbands, partners and friends. and so many others. Their lives have been upended because of the grief they carry. This promised peace takes us all in.
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Love
But there is also a second word: love. “A love that will not let us go.” It is nothing that we do—it just comes like the shining sun and the moon at midnight. We think about love inside and outside the church—as conditional. “I love you if…” and all of us can fill in the blanks. This is a far cry from that love that will not let any of us go.
One Sunday at church the Minister preached on love. At the end of the sermon the line formed to receive Holy Communion. As the people passed by a young woman hard looking and smelling of alcohol leaned over to the Minister and said, “You said God even loves even prostitutes. Did you mean that?” And the minister whispered, “Yes.” The girl put her hand over her mouth and began to sob.
It is hard to believe that in this chaotic world there is a love that will not let us go. But that word called steadfast love that moves throughout the scriptures and spills over to all of us. We could easily place our names down beside all those Jesus touched. The woman at the well. Zaccheus. Doubting Thomas. The prodigal son or daughter. Simon Peter. Like the word peace—love is also a word that takes us all in.
I love that old story that Carlyle Marney used to tell. On Monday morning, he said, When the custodians come in to sweep out the sanctuary from the day before they will discover the strangest things. Instead of umbrellas, odd gloves, idly penciled notes, and discarded orders of service, they will come upon some other things. Scattered here and there they will find some big man’s deep grief and another’s disappointment and someone’s sense of failure. They will stumble on some quiet woman’s bitter hurt, another’s painful pride. Someone’s quarrel with God. Far over in another section, so tiny they almost miss it, they come on to some youngster’s sin—real or imagined. And they will find the bulky trash of someone’s badly bruised ego, All left behind where it belongs. All that was found would be swept out and thrown away when church is over.
Pastors pray all sorts of fine Benedictions. But let us stop and listen until the word becomes flesh and breaks open the crust of our hearts. Let’s pray that some word or words will stop at our pew and call our names. And when this happens we will know the power to bless. And that love that will never lets go will begin to change who we are into who we just might become.
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Two Moving Benedictions
William Sloane Coffin’s Benediction goes like this:
May God give you grace never to sell yourself short,
grace to risk something big for something good,
grace to remember that the world is too dangerous
for anything but truth
and too small for anything but love.”
My friend, the late John Claypool gave his people this blessing for most of his ministry.
“Depart now in the fellowship of God the Father,
and as you go remember:
in the goodness of Good, you were born into this world;
by the grace of God, you have been kept all the day long,
even unto this very hour;
and by the love of God, fully revealed in the face of Jesus,
you are being redeemed. Amen”
