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.
(Numbers 6:24-26, NIV)

This is a go-to benediction for many pastors. The Aaronic blessing sends many parishioners out into the modern world with assurance. But why the focus on God’s face? What did that mean in Aaron’s time, and what can it mean now?

Some recent translations skip the term altogether, replacing the metaphor with its assumed meaning. Favor. Approval. Kindness. If God looks you full in the face, shalom happens: peace, wholeness, prosperity, flourishing. That makes perfect sense, but I don’t want to ditch the metaphor entirely. Maybe there’s more to learn there.

Look at this photo of my son Mark, age 9. He’s looking at us full in the face. He looks happy and approving. How do you feel when looking at him? You don’t know him, but I bet you feel positive, even warm.

Your reactions point to some insights from neuroscience. Here are two of many connections, along with a theological insight:

1. Our minds are fundamentally social.

We need to encounter other faces to become human. Quite literally. The term for this is attachment. You know the importance of mother-child bonding.

Our mother’s face calls us forth. Under her gaze of love and approval, we begin to make healthy and joyful attachments. This is the task of infancy. Looking our mother in the face (and later others) triggers growth in the brain and body. Neural connections are made that will not happen apart from the stimulus of face-to-face relationship.

Back to the Aaronic blessing. Do you want God to look at you? Are you, like me, sometimes ashamed of what he will see? But knowing the effect of our mother’s gaze, imagine what happens when we encounter the face of a loving God, turned to us with approval. What might happen as a forgiving God proves himself emotionally safe, as we taste and see and find joy? And what might happen when we invoke God’s approving face on neighbors who are also hiding shame and expecting condemnation?

2. We become what we look at.

Another insight from neurobiology now catching up with the biblical text is this: What we pay attention to has physical effects on our body. Our focused attention creates or reinforces the neural pathways and networks that channel our thoughts and form our personality and habits.So, as psychiatrist Curt Thompson says in The Soul of Shame, “Ultimately, we become what we pay attention to.”

When God turns his face to us, and God’s Spirit enables us to respond with attention, we are changed. Into God’s likeness. It seems that the “renewing of our mind” Paul mentions in Romans12:2 has a physical component. And this change is visible to others. Our faces reflect God’s face. Psalm 34:5 (NIV) says that those who look to the Lord are “radiant.” When Moses spoke with God face to face, his face began to glow so that people were afraid and he had to wear a veil. But Paul tells us that now we don’t need a veil; our faces “show the bright glory of the Lord” (2 Cor 3.18, CEV). We will shine among the people around us “like stars lighting up the sky” (Philippians 2:15, ESV). I imagine you know a number of believers like this.

3. We speak this blessing into being.

God delegates to human beings the authority to bless others with his own name, to draw others into full relational humanity. And this blessing is not a mere hope, not a prayer or plea. In Numbers 6:27, God says that the priests “will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them” (NIV). This blessing is a speech-act, just like God’s creative speech in Genesis 1. It is a declaration of reality that is effected as it is spoken. As the priest speaks, the people are blessed.

You exert that power every time you invoke the Aaronic Blessing, or any benediction. God blesses as you pronounce a blessing. But this power doesn’t only belong to leaders. We can invite our people to speak the blessings of Scripture into the lives of others. As people created in God’s image and reconciled to God in Christ, their speech is more effective than they realize.

Our words can redefine the story by which people live, opening windows on a greater reality, pointing people to the ultimate approval for which we all long. We can call people out of the prison of shame to walk free in the transforming light of God’s face. We can invite them with us as we journey toward integration, relationship, shalom. So…let’s try out a new benediction.

Lift up your face from your phone.

Pay attention as God turns his approving face on you.

Talk with your neighbors face to face and reflect God’s love onto them.

Put God’s name on them. Speak blessing into their lives.

Call them into something more;

call them out of shame and isolation

and into relationship with the one who makes us fully human.