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I can remember the moment it happened. We were at the church of my childhood. For whatever reason, this is one of my absolute earliest memories. 

Someone sneezed. A lady who was full of unction and southern grace said in response, “Bless ya.”  I think that was one of the earliest times I noticed someone using that common phrase, “Bless you” after someone had sneezed. I was young. 

Another time, years later, a Deacon candidate was giving their testimony at a church. They talked about all God had done for them. They used the word blessed to describe how they felt. 

My young friend Vinton is an African-American pastor down in middle Georgia. He talked about a church luncheon they were having. Someone had brought some potatoes cooked in a way he had never tried before. 

They made such an impression, he posted about them on Facebook. “Get you some of those potatoes Sister Gretchen brought….they’ll bless you!” he exclaimed. 

What is this word “blessed”? Because we hear it three times in the brief scripture of Luke 1: 39-45. Blessed is what her cousin said Mary was, long before Jesus was even born. Before we’re done, we’re going to try to understand it better

This Christmas week. Mary is blessed above all others in our story. If we are people of faith, then that Christmas story is right up there among the very greatest stories or news that ever breaks into our lives.

Parker Palmer has said, “As people are dying, they don’t ask the question “Should I have been more self-centered in my life, more self-serving or self-protecting in my life?” They may muse more instead on regrets or on values that they wish they had allowed to shape their days. 

How easy it is for us to make our lives revolve around our own selves. Dying people most often wish they had done even more than they did, somehow, for and with others instead. 

A big question revolving around myself these days is this. If my faith isn’t leading my life, then what can I achieve, what can I do, what can I bring in from the outside that will make me feel grounded? What will make me feel centered or fulfilled? 

Bless-ed. Blessed. Blessing. Bless you. What does that mean? Some people believe that in English, this custom might date back to the days of the Black Plague. That’s because to sneeze at that time was seen as good fortune, for they were expelling bad things that were within them from the plague. 

Actually, the earliest documented notion that someone sneezing was to be recognized was recorded by Pliny the Elder. At one point in his written history of ancient Roman culture, Pliny records that Tiberious Caesar seems to have begun saluting (not blessing) someone who had just sneezed. 

So it is that in English, that word of “blessing” replaced saluting, if these sources are right. But 2,000 years ago, Mary was seen as “blessed.” Predominantly, it seems to mean something holy most of the time. 

To hear this word in a holy way, then, is to confer God’s care upon them, or to acknowledge that God has already cared for them actively. To recognize that something has come their way, or they have done something, that is positive in God’s sight. 

Oh we could change the details. Mary was going to bring this child into a tough world. A world where her people were occupied by and held under the thumb of a powerful empire. Though quite young, she wasn’t naive to all that. 

You and I live in a world today where we wish the threats of war didn’t loom, injustice all too frequently gets rewarded and where we wish people valued courtesy and unity more and selfishness less. We’re not naive to all that. 

Still, Mary was blessed, and a truth I want to remind us all is that you or I could be too. Maybe you have been already. Maybe you’ve been blessed. Maybe I have been, and we don’t even know it yet. Maybe we have said “yes,” and it didn’t seem like a big thing at the time. 

Maybe we have opened ourselves to what God is doing in our world still today and we’ve said “yes.” You may not even know what you’ve done. What you’ve agreed to. 

In fact, as Christmas arrives here is one more thought. Maybe you haven’t said “yes” yet, but it’s not too late to do so.

DR. CHARLES QUALLS is senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church. Contact him at 757-562-5135.