and the Subversive Power of Love
All Saints A | Matthew 5:1-12
I don’t know if you’ve been in a Starbucks in the last six years, but they have this process where you order your drink and they make your drink and then, at the end of the bar, they call out your name. It is super weird in this era of mobile ordering because they’ll call out names of people who aren’t in the room. “Brenda!” or “Michelle!” and nobody moves because none of us ordered the drink.
There’s a barista I used to see at my southside Starbucks, that I didn’t want making my drink. Not because she did a bad job with it, but because she’d call out my name and I’d go up to the end of the bar to collect it and she’d say “Have a blessed day!” and she said it every time, to all of the people collecting drinks, all the people leaving the store, and it she was so cheery about it and I gotta tell you, friends, it made me kinda grumpy. In part because it’s a Starbucks, not Chick-fil-A. But really because the theology isn’t good. Intentions can be good and the execution is just not there.
I’m not making fun of a barista. Or discouraging the well-wishing of our neighbors. And I’m not even dwelling on the evangelistic intent. I want us to think about what it means to bless each other. To actually bless the person next to you. To say to them may God bless you. And compare that to what we associate with being blessed. And, therefore, having a blessed day.
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