Blessing and Keeping

 

“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.”

—Numbers 6:24-26 KJV

The smiling clerk in the copy store always ends our time of business with “Have a great weekend.” The cashier at the bank closes with “Enjoy the rest of your day.” And, the kid at the drive-through window of the fast food restaurant tells me, “Have a good one!”

How many of us consider the words that the pastor says over his or her congregation each week as a kind of “Have a good week?” This send-off—when done in church we actually call it the “Benediction,” which is the Latin word for “the blessing”—has far more power than something someone just says when you sneeze, or end a business transaction, or say a good-bye.

The Benediction, or Final Blessing of a Worship Service, represents not only the words and deliberate intention of a pastor to share God’s blessing, but it needs the reception of the congregation to complete it. Don’t we always say “thank you” even to the parting phrases spoken to us in a store?

We would do well to say to God:

Thank You that I will now live under Your blessing this week. I receive that word as though spoken by You to me. I also receive Your keeping power: the grace and the peace that the pastor, on Your behalf, has just given me.

In one church where I worshipped, the Order of Service provided for an additional minute of reflection after the Benediction and before the chatter and loud notes of the Postlude. In this time, the congregation silently and reverently thanked God for all they had received during that hour, including His blessing.

I would suggest that from now on, every Sunday when we hear the Benediction from our pastor, that we would consciously and purposefully “receive” that Benediction with thanksgiving. Emily Brink states it this way:¹

Perhaps you, like me, really look forward to the final blessing in every service. That is the time when God speaks his reassuring words of power, when he promises us that he will be with us and will sustain us. When the minister raises his hands, we receive, long distance as it were, the laying on of hands. And we know that the Holy Spirit will grant us the power that is needed to make us a blessing.

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1 Brink, Emily R. “Make Me a Blessing: Benedictions Are More Than Pious Wishes.” Reformed Worship, March, 1991. https://www.reformedworship.org/article/march-1991/make-me-blessing-benedictions-are-more-pious-wishes (accessed: June 28, 2018).