Dear Friends and Fellow Deputies,
I am not a New Year’s Resolution kind of person. I always figure that if I can’t motivate myself from within, some arbitrary date on the calendar isn’t going to do it either. Plus, my birthday is in mid-January and that’s its own arbitrary date of new beginning (and a reminder of one’s own mortality), and I don’t tend to change very much then either. So, rather than focus this New Year’s letter on anything that has to do with the Gregorian Calander, I’d like to turn our attention to the Liturgical Calendar.
January 1 is the Feast of the Holy Name. A “Feast of Our Lord” in the calendar, this feast is to be “regularly observed,” but in my experience, it rarely is. Clergy and Laity alike are tired after Thanksgiving, four weeks of Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Christmas I, and that pesky ball drop at midnight the night before. If your congregation holds services on Holy Name Day, that’s awesome! If it doesn’t, welcome to the club.
The bummer of skipping the Feast of the Holy Name is that it is the only time in the Lectionary that we hear Numbers 6:22-27. There, we hear of how God intends to bless the Hebrews while they are camped in the Desert of Sinai. From God, through Moses, to Aaron and his sons comes the familiar blessing:
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.
I love this prayer of blessing, especially in my context where on any given Sunday, we might have members of all three Abrahamic Faiths in our pews. It is a blessing that I feel comfortable using when our Jewish EfM leader comes up to receive a blessing at the administration of the Eucharist. It is a blessing that covers everything we might need from God in our day to day lives of trying, failing, and trying again to follow God and build the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.
Bless you – The root word for “bless” in Hebrew means “to kneel.” Thus, the image here is that the God of all Creation is kneeling down to offer blessing upon one of God’s beloved.
Keep you – To keep in this context is to protect, to hold close. May the Lord watch over your going out and your coming in from this time forth, forevermore.
God’s face shine upon you – The Jewish Study Bible translates this as “May the LORD deal kindly with you,” as we ask God to look with favor upon us.
Be gracious to you – God’s face shining upon us is a sign of God’s favor and goodness towards us.
God’s countenance lifted upon you – Similarly, God’s countenance is the very face of God. For God’s face to be lifted toward you means that God’s favor is bestowed upon you.
Give you peace – Finally, the root hope of all blessing is that the one being blessed might come to experience the peace, the Shalom, the healing, and the wholeness that comes from God alone.
As this new year begins, may God’s blessings abound on each of you, that you might know the gracious, loving, peaceful love of God.
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Steve Pankey
Vice President of the House of Deputies
