The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: 'The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.' So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.'”
(Numbers 6:22-27)
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“The Lord bless you and keep you ...” The words have a very familiar ring to them. They're the beginning of perhaps the best known blessing included in the Bible – the blessing Hannah just read for us a moment ago. The words are very familiar and very important to me because I use them in some of the most important and significant pastoral occasions that ministers are involved in. By now, the words should be fairly familiar to at least those of you who've been with us for the last two Sundays. We use this blessing at baptisms. Last week at Gwendolyn's baptism, and this week at Shaye's baptism. The words are a little bit different than what we heard a few moments ago, and we sing them rather than reading them: “The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. Amen.” The same words, just using a bit of a different way of expressing the blessing – a blessing that's often bestowed upon us at the beginning of our lives. And I've used this blessing quite a lot over the last couple of months, because as many of you know I've conducted a lot of funeral services in that time, and this is the blessing that usually takes place at the interment service at the cemetery after the funeral. Again, the words I use are a little bit different: “May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord make his face to shine upon you; may the Lord look upon you with kindness and grant you peace.” Again, these are the same words, just using a bit of a different way of expressing the blessing – a blessing that's often bestowed upon us at the end of our lives. And I've recently been meeting with the couples that I'll be marrying over the summer and fall, and I reflected on the fact that I often use a variation on the same words at weddings – so they're also a blessing bestowed upon us over the course of our lives. Again, the words are a little different: “may God bless, preserve and keep you; may God look upon you with favour; may God look on you with kindness and give you grace ...” Again, these are the the same words, just using a bit of a different way of expressing the blessing – a blessing that's often bestowed upon us at moments of great change and transition (with all the hopes and fears that accompany great change and transition) in our lives. The words are invoked at the beginning and at the end, and so blessing must be involved in both the beginning and the end. The words are also invoked in between. I suppose you could say that blessing abounds.
And I hope that you heard exactly what I just said: blessing abounds. Not blessings abound, but blessing abounds. We have a tendency to think of God's blessing in the plural. As if they're one after the other after another. Multiple blessings, coming to us in multiple forms. IN this morning's Call to Worship, we used a line from an old gospel hymn that speaks in those terms: “Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings see what God has done.” And it sounds so obvious, doesn't it. When good things happen to us – whatever the good things happen to be – we speak of it in terms of yet another blessing. So we get blessed multiple times over the course of our lives. Now, I'm not saying that there's nothing to that. The Bible does speak of God's blessing in the plural: 68 times the word “blessings” appears. But I thought it was interesting when I looked it up that the word appears in the singular “blessing” 222 times. And I started wondering whether there might be a problem with thinking of individual and isolated blessings that come to us only when good things are happening to us – because it's the good things that are the blessings – right? So we get married. It's a blessing. So a baby is born. It's a blessing. So we get a good job. It's a blessing. So we come into a lot of money. It's a blessing. So we recover from a terrible disease. It's a blessing. We win the big game. It's a blessing. But I started to wonder: is that all blessing is about? Is it just the list of good things that happen to us over the course of our lives? Because if it is, that creates a problem. Then we're tempted to keep score. Who's more blessed? How many more good things has one person received compared to another? We then start to measure blessedness not in God's terms but in human and worldly terms. Or some people – and some of them very devout and faithful people – seem not blessed at all, because they live in abject poverty or with terrible illnesses or they suffer unbearable defeats, or they lose their job and have no idea where they're going to turn. Has the blessing of God suddenly disappeared from their lives because bad things have happened? Can we really begin to use the plural form “blessings” honourably and honestly without at least implicitly suggesting that some are more blessed (and therefore presumably more loved) by God than others. And then I thought about this blessing from the Book of Numbers, that begins with the simple words “the Lord bless you ..”
In context, the blessing was to be offered to a nation; to Israel. And it was a promise of God's blessing at a very hard time. Freed from slavery, Israel was wandering in the wilderness. The promised land was a long way off. They had repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction with God; they had over and over again turned away from God; they had fallen into idolatry and rebellion. Things at this point (in worldly terms at least) weren't looking that good for Israel. But - “the Lord bless you ...” In the midst of all their troubles and trials and tribulations, when the neighbouring nations might have looked at them and thought them cursed, the word from God was “the Lord bless you ...” Blessing doesn't imply and isn't meant to imply that all sorts of good things are happening in your lives. The real blessing is to know that whatever's happening in your life – God is there and God is holding you close and God is never going to let you go. That's the blessing. You don't get blessed just on certain wonderful occasions. The blessing is ongoing regardless of your circumstances.
We offer this blessing to babies as they begin life. The babies don't understand it. They have no concept of God or faith. But when we use these words at the beginning of life we're saying that no matter how much or how little we understand, God still blesses us. We offer this blessing to people embarking on the excitement of new beginnings in life. Often, perhaps, they don't even hear it – so fixed is their attention on their own lives and their own futures that thoughts of God are easily squeezed out in the midst of the hustle and bustle and emotion. But even if we become oblivious to God's presence, God still blesses us. We offer this blessing to people who have ended their lives. The body is dead. This may be the most hopeless of times in worldly thought because death seems so final. And yet, as final as we may think death looks, God still blesses us. Blessing abounds – not because really good things are happening to us, but simply because God is with us, which leads to one last point. The blessing goes on.
This is our hope. God's blessing isn't restricted to certain happy occasions. Nor is God's blessing confined by minor things such as time or space. God dwells in eternity – beyond things like time and space that govern our lives so completely. And since God blesses us – that blessing continues throughout all time and space. The blessing is that we're never separated from God – ever; by anything. Not by life, not even by death, Paul says in Romans. We're simply never separated from God. That's the real blessing we have. It's not a matter of keeping a scorecard to determine who's been more blessed. Neither is it a matter of thinking one person blessed because they've experienced a lot of good things and another person not blessed because they've experienced a lot of bad things. That's not the point. We're blessed because we're in the presence of God – at the beginning of our lives, at the end our of lives, all throughout our lives, and forever, through eternity. That's the blessing. That's why blessing abounds – because it never ends!
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