"Bless Thou the Handling of Our Hands" -- Luke 13:10-17 (12th Sunday After Pentecost)
- Scott Clark
- 4 days ago
- 11 min read
In the late 1800s, Alexander Carmichael traveled the rocky islands and Highlands of Scotland, collecting prayers.[1] Carmichael was a civil servant. He was in excise actually, a tax collector. And he also had a fascination with folklore – how real people lived real lives and the stories they told about it, and the songs they sang, and the prayers they prayed.
His government assignments put him out in the far reaches of Scotland – Oban (the gateway to Iona), the Isle of Skye, and beyond that, the Outer Hebrides – the islands that reach on toward Iceland.[2] From these home bases, Carmichael journeyed out – by ferry and foot – walking sheep paths – spending the night in a farmer’s croft or a shepherd’s hut. He spent time with folks in their everyday lives – farming, milking the cows, grinding meal, weaving, fishing. Folk opened up their lives to him. And what he found – he said – in these everyday moments of work and labor – were “people full of prayer and song.”
As they worked, they prayed. Prayer, for them, was not confined to Sunday worship. It wasn’t written or dictated by an official church. It rose up out of daily life. What he experienced was what one writer calls “a Celtic way of seeing.”[3] These Celtic Christian traditions arose in the peoples who lived around the Irish Sea – Ireland, Scotland, Wales, on down to Brittany in the far northwest of France. Celtic Christian spirituality looks for and sees God in the ordinary moments of the day. For the folks that Carmichael met, “the presence of God was one of the most immediate realities of their lives.” This is God’s world; creation is good; and creation reflects its Creator. We can see God there; we can meet God there.
Their prayers grew up out of life itself.
And what Carmichael heard on his decades of travel, he wrote down. These prayers that they breathed in and out would otherwise have been lost to us – an oral tradition faded into the mists of time – but Carmichael wrote them down and collected them in a 5-volume work called Carmina Gadelica. And, while he was doing that in Scotland, another guy, Douglas Hyde, undertook a similar project in Ireland.
So we have these prayers – lots of them. Esther de Waal has created accessible collections of these prayers in a series of books, including this one, Celtic Vision. There are prayers for reaping and sewing:
I will go out to sow the seed,
in the name of the one who gives it growth...
God, be giving growth and kindly substance
to everything that is in my ground.[4]
God, bless Thou Thyself my reaping,
Each ridge, and plain and field...
Each ear and handful in the sheaf.[5]
There were prayers sung as they milked the cows:
Bless, O God, my little cow..
Bless thou my partnership
and the milking of my hands, O God.
Bless, O God, the udder and each teat,
Bless, O God, each finger on my hand,
Bless Thou each drop that goes into my pitcher.[6]
As they milked the cow, they prayed.
There were prayers for fishing – “Blest be the boat” – as those who set out on the seas invoked the Biblical stories of God protecting folks in storms and ships.
And there were prayers for the catch. I love this one:
The first fish which I bring up,
in the name of Christ, King of the elements,
the poor shall have as their wish.
Again and again, in these prayers there’s this phrase: “Bless, Thou, the handling of my hands” – a steady, constant prayer that God be present – blessing the world – in the handling of my hands – in the work of my hands – in every bit of what we do – God there in it. These prayers make a bold claim: In the work of our hands, we can see God’s handiwork.
Our Scriptures this morning give us glimpses of God’s handiwork. The Psalm paints the scene as broadly as we can imagine: O God, our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory in the heavens – the work of your fingers, the work of your hands. We might imagine that scene on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel – God reaching out that one creating finger to Adam. Or, when I hear this, I like to imagine God dancing across the sky, as she places the sun... and the moon each in their place.. and then she lights the stars one by one – the movement of her dreadlocks creating a breeze that cools the day, as the flocks and herds roam the hills, and the fish swim the seas – the work of God’s hand everywhere we look.
In the Gospel reading, we see God’s handiwork in the healing hands of Jesus.[7] Now this is a healing story, and we know that healing stories have a pattern: (1) there’s a need; (2) the need is voiced; and (3) the need is met.[8] What’s interesting in each story is how that pattern comes to life.
In this morning’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, a woman shows up for worship, bent over with 18 years of pain. She comes every week, to the synagogue, to worship. Imagine what it must take for her to get there – the time and effort it takes to get ready for worship – to walk the dusty streets all the way to the synagogue.
The woman doesn’t voice her need in words. In fact, there’s no indication in the story that she has come that day with any expectation of healing – she has come to worship God. The need is “voiced” in this moment where she shows up with all of who she is, and Jesus sees her. Scripture says that she is stooped down.[9] Maybe the other folks there don’t see her, but Jesus does. Jesus sees her completely – her courage and her need.
And here’s how her need is met. Jesus lays his hand upon her. Imagine. Imagine what that must have been like. What would it have been like to have Jesus place his hand on you? PAUSE With healing in his hand, Jesus then says, “Woman, you are set free.” There’s more than just healing in his hand, there is freedom... freedom from pain, from being bent over, from everything that does her harm. And she stands up straight, and rejoices. Maybe she jumps, and shouts out. And the crowd goes wild.
Oh, but there’s a religious leader there... and he knows how the Sabbath is supposed to work... and he can’t stand this. So he motions the crowd. “Sit down. Sit down. People, hear this, there are six days for work – come get your healing on those days, not the Sabbath.”
(Now as a practical matter – most folks can’t come on those days. They can’t come on those days, because.... they are working. Most everyone is poor, and if they don’t work, their families don’t eat.)
But the religious leader’s point is really more about the Sabbath, itself. “This is the Sabbath, y’all,” he is saying, “It’s a holy day. A day set apart for God. The law says that, on the Sabbath, we are to worship God and nothing else. The Sabbath is holy. Come get your healing on some other day.”
Jesus rebukes him: “You hypocrite. On the Sabbath, don’t you untie and set free your donkey so that they can get a drink of water? On the Sabbath, shouldn’t this woman, then – this Daughter of Abraham – also be set free from what has bound her up?”
Now it’s easy to hear Jesus angry and all up in this religious leader’s face. Fiery Jesus. But imagine for a moment. Imagine that, as he says all this, Jesus lays his hand on the religious leader, too – on his shoulder: “C’mon. Don’t you see the hypocrisy – you wouldn’t hesitate to untie your donkey to give it a drink of water – how much more do you think that God – that we – should heal and help this daughter of Abraham.” The healing here isn’t just for this woman – it’s for this religious leader – and everyone there – if they’d just open their eyes and see – they could be free.
No one in the story disputes that the Sabbath is a holy day. This isn’t so much about whether to keep the Sabbath holy, but how to keep the Sabbath holy. [10] The question that Jesus puts before the religious leader is this: Isn’t the Sabbath made holy when we do the will and work of God – when we heal and set people free? This is the day. Every day is the day,Jesus is saying, for healing and for freedom. BREATHE
So all these little everyday Celtic prayers – “Bless thou, the handling of my hands”— and this glimpse of Jesus’ healing hands – they’ve got me wondering – Does healing ever show up in the handling of my hands? They’ve got me thinking about what my hands do over the course of the day. I don’t do a lot of manual labor. But as I think through my days – I cook our meals. I chop and stir and season. And that keeps us fed. I water the plants, and that keeps them alive. So there’s that.
But at work – at my job job? Well, I spend a lot of time emailing. I don’t experience email as particularly healing. But maybe, as I type away, those emails, along with your emails, are part of what keeps the life of this church moving forward. I hope. (That may be a generous take on email.) I was thinking about this as I revised the worship script, one of the routine things I do every week – I type in camera and mic cues that Karl and I use. The work of my hands – and of Karl’s hands – makes it so that those of you at home can be here with us. What if as I did all that... I prayed... God bless the handling of my hands; bless Karl’s hands as he turns mics off and on; bless the friends who will worship with us, bless the miracle of how you gather us together. How might that change my ordinary days?
What do your hands do during the course of an ordinary day?
I was inspired by Ann Reppun as we were talking about this during Worship Practice on Friday. Ann is a nurse, and she says that before she sees a patient at the clinic, she’ll often pray, “God, let these hands help heal; may my touch be tender; and may my hands do what they need to do in the 20 minutes allotted for this appointment so I can see the next patient, and help heal them too.”
This week, Session gave final approval to the Guest Room – a moment four years in the making. On Thursday, Michelle Fouts came by and took me on a tour of the guest room, and I thought of all the hands that have been at work in there – hands putting up walls and a ceiling that will shelter those in need; hammering, painting, wrestling with sofabeds; making the beds; tending to those tender touches – everything just so – so that the room is as welcoming as it can be. God bless the handling of our hands – may they shelter and welcome those in need.
It got me thinking of the hands that write postcards,
· of the hands that invited folks to the June Gaza event, the hands that typed emails to our Congressman and convinced him to sign on to legislation to stop providing bombs that are falling on hospitals in Gaza;
· It got me thinking about the hands that move chairs for anniversary celebrations,
· the hands that drive folks to doctor’s appointments,
· the hands that make meals for those who are ailing,
· the hands that hold our hands, in our deep pain, when there are no words that will do.
It got me thinking about the hands that play the piano, or work the soundboard, or that drop some bills in the basket for Pedal for Protein.
Bless Thou, loving God, the handling of our hands.
I’ve got two ideas for us for this coming week:
The first is to look and to see – like Jesus does in this story – to look and to see the people whom God brings into our path every day. Who are the folks who are bent over in some kind of pain?[11] Who is so weighed down that they can’t look up? Who are the folks who need our help, Christ’s healing touch, Christ’s liberating touch, to help untie them from whatever is holding them back?
Look and see – really see – and then ask, How might that healing come to life in my hands, in our hands?
And the second idea is to start saying those prayers – those everyday, every moment, work-of-our-hands prayers – some variation of “Bless, Thou, the handling of my hands.” Whatever you are about to do – ask God to bless it. Ask God to bless the people who will benefit from the work of our hands. Bless my hands as I prepare this meal, may those who share it be fed and nourished.
This summer, we talked a lot about imagination – God’s longing for the world writ big. As we move into fall we’re going to explore how that big vision– how it might come to life in our embodied lives. We’re in the liturgical season called “Ordinary Time,” and at the close of summer we are returning to our regular routines. In the coming weeks, we’ll hold that big vision for the world, as we look for God in the ordinary moments of our days. We’ll explore together how to live the life of Christ in a (Not So) Ordinary Time.
Let’s wrap all this up with a blessing, one I wrote just for you. (I invite you to extend your hands with me in blessing):
Bless Thou, O God, the handling of our hands.
May they be gentle in the presence of harm and hurt.
May their grasp be strong as they clutch and carry signs in protest.
May they be full of skill and craft,
as they create those things needed for life.
May they be stretched wide to welcome the stranger.
May they be held close in the embrace of kindred spirits.
May they be folded and still in the quiet of prayer.
May they be loud in praise of you.
Bless Thou, O God, the handling of our hands,
may they convey your healing touch
to the deep need of the world.
May the work of your hands,
come to life in the handling of ours. Amen.
© 2025 Scott Clark
[1] For background on Alexander Carmichael and his Carmina Gaedelica (and Celtic Christian spirituality generally), see Esther de Waal, The Celtic Vision: Prayers, Blessings, Songs and Invocations from the Gaelic Traditions (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1988, 2001 ed.); Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination (New York, NY: Image Books, 1997); Esther de Waal, Every Earthly Blessing: Rediscovering the Celtic World (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1990, 1999 ed.), p.xv.
[2] See Celtic Vision, pp. xvi-xviii.
[3] See id. p. xviii.
[4] Celtic Vision, p.24.
[5] Id, p.23.
[6] Id. p.46.
[7] For general background on this passage and on the Gospel of Luke, see R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. ix (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995); Justo L. González, Luke (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010); Sharon Ringe, Luke (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995); Mitzi Smith and Yung Suk Kim, “Gospel of Luke,” Toward Decentering the New Testament: A Reintroduction (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018): Elizabeth Campbell, Commentary in Connections, Year C, vol. 3 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2018).
[8] See Antoinette Clark Wire, Holy Lives, Holy Deaths: A Close Hearing of Early Jewish Storytellers (Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, GA: 2002).
[9] See Campbell, p.264.
[10] See Ringe, p.167.
[11] See Campbell, p.265.
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