The psalmist pulled my sleeve this morning right when everything else was quiet. Sunshine pooled on the carpet in the living room where Plum sat building a tower with his bright plastic blocks. Beangirl was home sick with the wobbles and lay curled up on the sofa under a mountain of blankets. Each child settled and the morning stretching on, I sat down with my lectionary list and a Bible,flicking through the pages and looking for the right psalm.
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.
Yes. But it doesn’t go like that, does it? Isn’t it supposed to be you?
The Lord bless you and keep you, The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Those are the more familiar words. We sing them at baptisms, welcoming new members into the church family. But this morning, the words are a little different. The familiar blessing is found in Numbers 6 as God gives Moses words of blessing that Aaron and his sons are to share with the Israelites. This week’s lectionary reading from Psalm 67 is an echo of Aaron’s blessing, the psalmist taking the old familiar words and changing the angle.
You becomes us.
We’re in this together. Which was just what I needed to hear this morning. I didn’t need a loud projecting voice from the front of the hall, or an announcer on the radio, telling me I would be blessed. I needed the quiet whisper of us.
You and me.
If we’re both involved, then we can carry these words together.
I imagine the Psalmist taking Aaron’s blessing and reshaping it. This was a priestly blessing, meant to mark the Israelites with the Lord’s name. By reframing and pluralising the blessing, the Psalmist nudges us beyond the idea of priestly intermediary and suggests companionship among the people instead. James K. Mead describes this in his commentary on workingpreacher.org as “a public theology challenging Israel’s inward focus.”
Perhaps that’s what Israel needed. But so do we. It isn’t only the nation whose inward focus should be challenged. As well as all of us, it is each of us. We need a larger picture, perhaps a better way of looking.
In this short psalm, we are pushed us to consider how the circle of God’s blessing might extend. The Psalmist sings of a hope that God’s way may be known upon the earth and that all nations and peoples might know and praise God and he sings of blessing and continued blessing. It feels like a song of rippling circles, reaching wide and wider to contain everything in praise and bring every blessing closer.
I came across a prayer recently by Said, a contemporary Iranian poet, its simple images echoing the larger collective imagining of this psalm. The prayer sits in Sarah Arthur’s literary guide to prayer for Lent, Holy Week and Eastertide, Between Midnight and Dawn. The section in which is aptly titled Companions in the Light.
Lord, when you arrive
we’ll be light
bread and water
the table is set and the door ajar
come and be seated among us
free me from the belief
that you’re only faithful from a distance…
There is the calling and that is the promise, too. We will be light, everything is prepared and the shining face of God will be seen with us and among us all, as close as sunshine on skin.
