God Blesses with a Good Word - Numbers 6: 22-27

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Old Testament Lesson from Numbers 6.

True story…and, for the record, it wasn’t my wife or kids. 

A mom came to church with her two young kids, probably 2 & 4 or 5 & 3, something like that. They had done pretty well throughout the service, but I saw that the kids were about done and so was mom. After the prayers was the offering and, soon after that would be the conclusion of the service. While the offering was being taken, I saw that the mom was gathering her things and the kids toys, ready to head out the door as soon as possible. Then, just loud enough that I could hear, one of the kids shushed mom and told her to stop because church wasn’t done yet. The mom, slightly chagrined, stopped to wait for the service to finish. As the pastor turned and began to speak the benediction, “The Lord bless you and keep you,” one of the kids loudly announced, “Now we can go, Mom; the Pastor said depart down the aisle, first that side goes and then our side.”

For many, the words of the benediction aren’t much more than the signal that the service is mere moments from being done freeing worshippers for another week. Depart down the center aisle, this side first and then the other, indeed.

A benediction is much more than final instructions on how to leave a worship service. Benediction is a compound Latin word meaning “good word,” or to be a little less literal, a word of blessing.  That begs the question: what is a blessing? Of course, it’s used in church, but we hear it elsewhere, too. Ask someone how they are doing and you hear back, “I am so blessed.” You wonder what they mean, since you know they don’t go to church, but you’re a bit embarrassed to ask. It seems to be connected with wealth, wealth and happiness – people are blessed to get a new car or a nice home, or a good medical report, or when everything is going swimmingly. On the other side of the coin, you hear me say it in hospital rooms, “May I offer a prayer and a blessing?” Is a blessing just a fancy, pastoral way of saying “Adios”?

Benedictions and blessings deliver exactly what they proclaim. Specifically, in the Biblical context, through these “good words,” God gives good gifts to His people and empowers His people to act on His behalf with others. God’s blessings frequently invoke His name as He places it on His people. In the case of this benediction from Numbers 6, this deliver God’s name in triplicate. Where God’s name is, He is. Because there are several different blessings and benedictions in the Bible, this one from Numbers 6 is usually referred to as the Aaronic Benediction because, in context, God gave this benediction to Moses to deliver to Aaron and his family. As priests, they were to speak this benediction over the people of Israel. “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel and I will bless them.”

It's also worth mentioning what a blessing is not. A blessing isn’t God accepting or condoning something. For example, God cannot bless an abortion clinic nor will He bless medical professionals doing such things; but He can and will bless those who gently, lovingly stand outside the clinic, pray for the women and unborn children entering, speak truthfully and lovingly to them, and seek to softly redirect them from committing murder.

So, what are these words God gave to Aaron? And, if they were to be spoken over the Children of Israel, why is it that the Church still speaks them today?

“The Lord bless you and keep you…” The benediction begins with the declaration of what this is – a blessing. This is almost an invocation with His greeting His people. It’s God’s promise. The verb, bless, is unique in its grammar; it means not only is the Lord blessing presently, but He will continue to do it every time this blessing is spoken. That’s how God’s Word works. When He says it, it happens. It’s not “May the Lord bless you,” as we might say in a prayer, nor is it “the Lord will bless you,” as Jesus says in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.” It’s declarative: The Lord bless you. It is spoken and it happens in the immediate with an ongoing, continual gift. That sounds like it's just an academic exercise, but there is some wonderful theology going on here in this verb tense. It happens with God’s Word and we don’t even realize it. For example, in the absolution you received this morning, when God’s Word is spoken by the pastor, forgiving sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, you are forgiven immediately. Or, when the pastor speaks over a newly-wed couple, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” that declaration makes it so. So, as the Benediction is said by Aaron and the priests of the Old Testament, or a Christian pastor in the New Testament era, “The Lord bless you,” the Lord continues to bless those who receive it in faith.

The blessing itself is most extraordinary. The Benediction is three lines, with two parts in each line. The first item in each pair deals with God’s engagement with His people. First He greets them, then He looks upon them with approval, and finally pays close attention to them. The second item in each pair covers the result of those engagements: keeping safe from evil, access to His grace, and the gift of peace and restoration.  Not merely a one-time gift, the gift is repeated by God each time His representatives speak it. And, each gift is connected with His Name. In our English Bibles, this simply says, The Lord, and the name Lord is printed in a unique way: with a large, capitol L and slightly smaller, subscript capitol ORD. Anytime you see this in an English Bible, this is the editor’s way of telling you this is the Divine name of God, Yahweh. This isn’t just some God, this isn’t any Cannanite God, this is Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob speaking, the God who called Israel into existence as His people and gave Himself to be their God, the God who spoke to Moses from the bush and lead the people from Egypt toward the Promised Land, and He is placing His name, with the gifts the Name delivers, upon His people.

I have to wonder, though, what Moses thought as he delivered these words to Aaron, especially the Lord making His face shine and His countenance lift up on the people. This reading is from Numbers. Back up to Exodus for a moment. When Moses went up Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, his one plea was to see the face of God, but God said that no one – not even Moses – could see the face of God and live. Sinful man cannot survive the sinless holiness of God. What God allowed was that He would pass by and Moses would be able to see God’s back – not God’s countenance, not His face; that would remain hidden. All Moses could see was God’s back. God’s countenance must be hidden from the eyes of man, lest sinful man be destroyed. So, did Moses wonder about this word of God? Did he wonder how on earth and when God’s people would ever see God’s countenance and live?

Today is known as the Circumcision and Naming of Jesus. On the 8^th day of His young life, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple where He was circumcised and given His name. Circumcision was the mark of flesh that separated the people of Israel, identifying them as people of God. It was a physical mark that they had the name of Yahweh, the Lord God, placed on them. They were also given their name. Usually the name was a family name. In Hebrew, boys often named in conjunction with their father. Simon Peter, for example, is named Simon Bar Jonah, literally, Simon son of Jonah. But Jesus’ name was different. He would not be Something, son of Joseph. He was given the name of Jesus by the angel. Names mean things: Jesus means Savior.

If you want to see the countenance of God, the face of God, and live, then look no further than that 8 day old Baby whom Joseph and Mary obediently named Jesus. There, in flesh, was God dwelling with His people, becoming a human to live among and like us; remaining God so He could be sinless and perfectly resist the temptations we face. Later, one of Jesus’ disciples would ask of Him, “Show us the Father” – we want to see God! Jesus would reply, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” And, what the disciples saw, what the world saw, what you see is the love and mercy of God. Through His ministry, Jesus will continually show the Father’s countenance of grace as He restores sight, as He heals the lame, as He strengthens the weak. He shows the Father’s face as He looks into the eyes of sinners and calls people to repentance, as He proclaims forgiveness, and as He brings life to the dying and the dead. He reveals the Father’s countenance as His own baptism, where the Father’s voice thunders, “This is my beloved Son whom I love; listen to Him.” But the one place where you do not see the Father’s countenance through the Son is at the cross. There, having become sin for us, Jesus was so repugnant, so repulsive that the Father turned His back on His own Son who pleaded, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” The Father turned His back against the sin of humanity. That’s the opposite of a benediction, a blessing, a good word: a curse. The greatest, or the worst, curse of all is the curse of death and that is what Jesus received: death.

Through Jesus’ substitutionary and saving death, the world would again know the Father’s countenance through Jesus. On Easter morning, Jesus made His face seen again, speaking words of grace, peace, and mercy – first to Mary, then to the disciples journeying to Emmaus, then those in the upper room. Again and again, the resurrected face of Jesus showed the Father’s love for His own.

And, so there is no doubt of God’s countenance shining brilliantly and lovingly over you, just as God gave His name to Israel, He gives it to you as well – a name you know more fully and wonderfully than Israel ever did. To Israel, God was Yahweh, hidden in fire and cloud and behind veils. You know God as the Father, revealed in the Son, whom you know through the Holy Spirit. A mysterious Trinity, in that we will never fully understand this side of heaven, yet wonderful in Divine fulness. That Trinitarian name, foreshadowed over Yahweh’s three-part benediction to Israel, is delivered to you when you were baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. As God’s people, we gather in His name and by His command. It’s repeated as we begin worship, when we hear sins forgiven, and when we hear the blessings of His Word read and preached to us. Over and over, in the Lord’s House, the name of God is spoken over us and we receive His blessings through His name.

But why, if we are New Testament people, who know God through Jesus’ live, death and resurrection, why do we leave under an Old Testament benediction?

In English, we call the 4^th book of the Bible, the 4^th part of the Torah, the book of Numbers. In Hebrew, the name of the book is actually Ba Midbar, “In the Wilderness.” It’s taken from the first sentence of the book, “Then the Word of the Lord came to Moses in the wilderness…” It’s in the wilderness that the Lord spoke the Benediction; it was in the wilderness that the people received God’s blessings. The wilderness was a difficult place then, and it is a difficult place today. To use wilderness as a metaphor, God’s baptized people, the church, continues to journey through the wilderness of this world, constantly under attack by the devil, the world, and yes, even our own sinful flesh. We should expect no less. When Jesus was baptized, literally with water still dripping off of Him, the Spirit lead Him into the wilderness to be tempted. We follow in His footsteps from the font to the wilderness. In the wilderness, we need the blessing, the Good Word, the benediction of God. So, God delivers His blessing to us. The Church is the New Israel. We receive the same blessing as did Israel of old, from the God whom we know more intimately and fully through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the blessing still does that which God said it would do.

It does mean that it is time to go, but not merely go home. We go as His people with His name is placed on us. He sends us from this place out into the wilderness, armed and protected, sealed, covered, and baptized in His name. He pledges to bless us and keep us in His love. He promises to place His Divine pleasure upon us, to look upon us favorably with grace and forgiveness. He promises to look upon us with peace. Amen.