Blessings of the Triune God
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on the 20th April, 2008 by Dr Nathan MacDonald
Readings: Numbers 6:22 - 27 & Luke 24:44 - 53
Sermon
In the 1990s young Christians began to sport bracelets with the letters WWJD: 'What would Jesus Do?' No doubt you've seen them, perhaps you have one. Religious believers, of various stripes, have often worn symbols, though Christians usually wear crosses or crucifixes. WWJD reflects the strength and weakness of modern evangelicalism in its strong orientation towards action. 'What would Jesus Do' is all about 'What Should I Do'. Yet things are often worn not as goads to action, but for protection. As amulets, we might say.
About 30 years ago just outside Jerusalem archaeologist discovered in a burial cave, two little rolled up silver scrolls. They had probably been worn as amulets in life, and were now buried in death, probably sometime around the sixth century. When unrolled these beautiful little scrolls were found to have the words of this mornings reading from the Old Testament written on them: The Lord bless you and keep you. They are, in fact, the oldest part of the Old Testament ever discovered. It is poignant to think that amulets asking that 'God cause his face to shine' should accompany someone to their ancient grave.
This text, called the Priestly Blessing, has some of the most beautiful and elevating words. It has become one of the most well known parts of the Old Testament. It is a wonderful literary construction. There are three lines. In Hebrew each line is longer than the previous one. There are 3 words in the first line, 5 in the second and 7 in the last. It is like an ancient Hebrew haiku. Exquisite, fine and delicate, just like those ancient silver scrolls upon which it was written.
Each of the lines in the blessing is constructed in a similar way. The first part of the line details God's motion towards us. The second part of the line describes the blessing that results for us from that positive motion of God.
'The Lord bless you' is the first motion of God towards us, and summarizes God's stance towards us. This means we will have to abandon one of our most cherished views of God in the Old Testament. In his book the God delusion, Richard Dawkins summarizes that view with all the rhetorical flourishes. "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." I cannot judge Dawkins' qualifications as a scientist, but he makes a poor scholar of the Old Testament.
The God of the Bible ¿ the God that Christians worship and adore - has a propensity towards blessing. At the creation of humanity he blesses mankind. When he chooses Abraham he promises blessing to the nation. 'I will bless those who bless you, and if anyone despises you I will curse him'. God's words to Abraham presuppose that almost everyone is the recipient of blessing and it is only the one exception that experiences the curse. According to the Bible, God is the guardian of justice - and surely none of us wish for an unjust God, yet his actions towards us are characterized by mercy, by grace, by blessing.
One should be always wary of making God's in one's own image, and, with no disrespect meant to my colleagues, I hope with all my heart God is not an academic. Yet I am reminded of the first time I sat on a Degree Classification Board. I came to that meeting with a view about what lecturers and professors were like. They were critical and had high standards. They did not suffer fools gladly. I could not imagine a group of academics finding students on the borderline between a 1st and a 2.1 and deciding to award them a 1st. Yet, as I sat in my first Degree Classification Board I was surprised to find that my colleagues were often ready to make arguments for why someone should be raised from a 2.1 to a 1st, and that more often than not, everyone else wanted to have the case made. It was not to say that every student that year on the borderline received a 1st, but if memory serves me, more did than didn't. God's motion towards us is one of continual generosity.
God's motion to us is further revealed through two blessings that mention God's face. 'God's face shine upon you'. The meaning is not lost on us even in English for we have our own idioms that use the same expression. We say 'his face lit up' or 'her face shone'. They describe the way that our face physically changes as we something that causes us great pleasure. It is the look of the girlfriend when her lover asks that question on bended knee, it is the look of a parent when a child says her first word. It is the sign of favour, the opposite of an expression of anger when we say that 'his face clouded over'.
God's face not only shines, but his face is lifted. This is language more alien to us. It is ancient Hebrew court language and describes that positive relationship that court officials had with the king. He looked at them eye to eye. It is the opposite expression to God hiding his face from his people.
God's movement towards us, his beneficence, results in rich blessing. First, the Lord keeps us. In the ancient world of the Bible there was much to fear. Life was always held by a thread. Who knew when a vengeful army might appear on the horizon, or whether the rains would come this year. Disease was common and lifespans short. Our world is very different and so are our fears. Yet the beautiful words of the Priestly Blessing tell us that God moves towards us in order to keep us. Jesus himself instructed his disciples not to be worried or upset, to believe in God and in him. God is also gracious. His kindness is shown in his great forbearance. It is the kindness of God to those who do not deserve his kindness, do not always recognize it or acknowledge it. Finally, God offers peace. The Hebrew word is perhaps familiar to us: the word 'Shalom'. Peace. In the Bible the word 'peace' is a comprehensive term covering every goodness: prosperity, health, friendship. It is not just the lack of war, it is everything that is positive besides. Small wonder that in modern Hebrew 'Shalom' is the word with which you greet people.
This is a truly beautiful statement. According to Jewish tradition this was the blessing said by the Priest when he come out of the temple at the end of the temple service. From very early times the holy name of God was a sacred matter and was not allowed to be uttered, but when the Priestly Blessing was spoken, it was the only time when God's Holy Name could be vocalized. As the priests came out of the Temple they would raise their hands in a strange gesture. You're actually quite familiar with it. As strange as it may seem the gesture the priests used was the sign the creators of Star Trek used to signify greetings between the Vulcans. That rather strange sign Mr Spock would do whenever he greeted an alien species.
We are familiar with these words because they are found at the end of many of our services too. Just before we leave the chapel at the end of a service or the end of a Eucharist we hear the minister or priest saying these beautiful words. Familiar though this practice be to us, it is actually rather novel. When services were first held in this chapel, the priestly blessing would have been almost unknown. The worshippers would have left with the words 'The blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be with you'. It was that troublesome monk from Germany, Martin Luther, who introduced these words into the liturgy.
Luther noticed, of course, the threefold repetition of the divine name: The Lord bless you. The Lord cause his face to shine upon you. The Lord lift up his face upon you. Luther saw here the Trinity and so it naturally suggested to him that this old Jewish blessing could stand in for the traditional Trinitarian blessing.
We might perhaps have a little nervousness with Luther's logic. Should we really understand this blessing Trinitarianlly, for this could not have been in the mind of the original biblical author, an ancient Hebrew. And yet there is something beautiful even compelling about Luther's reading. Our second reading comes from the end of Luke's gospel and speaks of how Jesus ascended from his disciples into heaven. You will recall that Jesus is said to have blessed his disciples, yet we are not told the content of this blessing.
As Luther reads the Lucan account of Christ's departure he asked to himself, what blessing would our Lord have used, if not a biblical one? And what other biblical blessing could our great High Priest speak, except the Priestly Blessing from Numbers? And so there is a beautiful symmetry to the gospels. For just as in Matthew Jesus commissions the disciples to teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so here in Luke Jesus leaves the disciples with a Trinitarian blessing.
The life of our Lord Jesus Christ was a brief moment of glory within the history of the people of God. When Jesus departed he left his blessing - a blessing that came from the Old Testament but spoke deeply of the innermost life of God. In a short while we too will depart, not from the place where Christ has ascended, but from this chapel. Our service too is brief, a brief respite in lives to be given over to Christian service, to making disciples, to proclaiming and living the love of Christ. As we do so we go with God's blessing. The blessing is spoken by the minister, but it is not his, but Christ's blessing. The Old Testament already anticipates this: "So the priests shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them". The blessing that Christ gave to his disciples sounds through the ages, echoing even around this chapel. 'The Lord bless you and keep you. the LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.'
Amen.