not so fast

 

A year ago this month, the Bishop of Durham retired, and the process began to appoint his successor. Interviews took place in late November, a candidate was selected, offered the post, and accepted. All this is done confidentially, just as any vicar is appointed: if I apply for a post, my current congregation does not need to be troubled by the thought of my departure unless I am successful. Once accepted there is further process, some of which is the same for bishops as for vicars, some of which is additional to most vicars (the involvement of both the Prime Minister and the Crown). But we were expecting a public announcement by now.

On Monday of this week, we heard that the candidate had withdrawn. There have been various rumours as to why, but such speculation is unhelpful. Again, the process is confidential: if I accepted a post as a vicar but before the news was made public I or a member of my family received a life-changing medical diagnosis that meant I had to withdraw, my privacy ought to be respected, and another person be given a clean sheet.

Yesterday evening, we gathered with others from across the Durham Diocese to acknowledge our disappointment, to affirm our trust in God, and to pray. And as we did so, my mind was drawn to the Old Testament passage set for this coming Sunday, Genesis 2.

In Genesis 2, God notes that a particular part of the earth needs someone to oversee and care for it. And so God forms a human and places them in the garden, within a boundaried territory. Such as a bishop given to a diocese. Such as where we thought that we were.

But still the situation is not quite right, the solution is not quite what is needed. And so, God forms all the animals of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, all living things, and invites the human to pay careful attention to what it is that God is forming, and to name it. And only through this process does the time reach its fullness whereby God draws out what is needful, and provides someone who will come alongside, who will see the human who is naming what God is doing and who will work alongside them to support and even deliver them when in trouble.

And it seemed to me that God is asking us to go back to our places across the diocese and pay attention to what God is forming there, and name it, and as we do so, at just the right time, we will find out who God is preparing to send to us, to come alongside us.

Genesis 1 is a sweeping overview of the story, such as you might get in the opening movement of a symphony or the opening song of a musical. Everything is condensed. All plant life is flourishing on the third day; all animal life is flourishing on the sixth day. And all is good. But Genesis 2 slows the story right down. There is as yet no plant life or animal life. Rather than speak everything into being, God forms life as a gardener or a potter, in slow processes that move at the pace necessary to notice and participate in the goodness of creation. This is the actual pace of the story we are drawn into, not the overview pace of Genesis 1. The slower, the better, for God has all the time in the world; and it is for those who have forgotten this to fret about time running out or away from us.

The passage from Genesis 2 is paired, this Sunday, with a passage from the Gospels where Jesus is depicted asleep in the boat on the lake in a storm, while his apprentices run around in panic. We too find ourselves in choppy times. May we rest in the love of God. May we sleep, not panic, in the storm.

 

how to hold a human

 

The Old Testament reading set for Holy Communion today is Genesis 9.1-13. It picks up the account of Noah after the Great Flood. These are the survivors, human and animal, of a traumatic event. The sea level had risen and flooded the Fertile Crescent along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Cradle of Humanity, from horizon to horizon: what today we would know as Kuwait and Iraq, hemmed in by the mountains of Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, and Syria and Jordan to the west. Every settlement washed away. But Noah and his family and their domesticated livestock survive, delivered by the god Yahweh, in an ark.

Like so many survivors who carry trauma in their bodies, and who lives with survivors’ guilt, Noah will attempt to numb his pain by drinking himself to oblivion. But Yahweh blesses Noah and his traumatized family. He informs them that the animals will be in dread of them, hardly surprising for they are traumatized too, but that they are given into the hands of Noah and his sons. They will be good for them, but food without lifeblood.

We all live downstream of the Great Flood, and no one gets through this life without experiencing trauma, whether a broad and shattering event such as natural disaster, or bereavement or living with dementia or suffering at the hands of an abuser. And it is this idea of being in someone’s hands that is significant here. For we are all given into one another’s hands, and the question God asks is, What will we do with the trauma survivors who are given into our hands as gifts?

Will we re-traumatize them with further mistreatment, as the Father gave the Son into the hands of his people and they had him tortured and executed?

Will we dehumanise them as objects of our altruism?

Or will we receive them as divine gift, as human with the dignity that is ours as those who bear the very likeness of God? Will we recognise that we, as community, are nourished by their being fully part of our community, that we are fed by them (that is, that we are fed by one another, for we are all simultaneously and paradoxically the one who receives in our hands and the one who is given into the hands of others) without bloodshed, without their life being consumed by us in some zero-sum game where there is only one winner so it had best be me?

May we receive one another in our hands, and be found worthy of the gift, by the Giver.

 

good : time

 

Notes for this coming Sunday.

Find a place where you will not be interrupted, and read Genesis 2.4-9, 15-25 and Luke 8.22-25 through, out loud, a couple of times.

Genesis 1 tells a sweeping overview of creation. Genesis 2 slows the story right down. Here, God does not simply speak things into being, but shapes them: the human, a garden, every living creature. Like a potter or a gardener. The human, too, is invited into the slow processes of getting to know, and growing to love, all things. The time it takes to participate in the goodness (a word we have already met several times in Genesis 1) of God’s creation. The invitation to love God, to love our neighbour as ourselves, to love all creation, takes as long as it takes: as The Supremes sang, ‘You can’t hurry love…’

In our verses from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus rests—he sleeps—while his disciples rush around in panic. And peace radiates from him.

Looking forward to the day ahead, does time feel like a gift or a tyrant (a task master driving us, or a prison governor constraining us)?

As we get older, our body asks us to slow down. Does this feel like an invitation, to become more fully human, or something to be resisted for as long as we are able?

‘good’ conveys: agreeable, beneficial, beautiful, best, better, bountiful, cheerful, at ease, fair, favour, fine, glad, goodly, graciously, joyful, kindly, loving, merry, pleasant, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, wealth, welfare, well-favoured. Thinking about today, how have you known the goodness of God?

Reading the two passages again, is there a word or a sentence that stands out for you? What might God be saying to you through it?

You might like to colour-in the drawing of the human asleep, held in the hands of God.

 

a tree in the wilderness

 

The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament recounts the history of a loose familial federation of chieftain-led tribes uniting under a high king. The king, Saul, was initially popular, but over time became increasingly paranoid, consumed by jealousy towards one of his closest generals, David. His life now in danger, David flees to live as a hunted outlaw. When Saul, along with some of his sons, later dies in battle, and one of his surviving sons succeeds as king, civil war breaks out. Eventually, the rebel forces win, and David is proclaimed high king. Seven yeas later, he moves his capital to Jerusalem and consolidates his reign by bringing the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant – cultic symbols of the god Yahweh – there.

At one point as an outlaw chieftain, David and his men are living in a cave system at En Gedi, near to the Dead Sea – the lowest point on the surface of the earth, and the lowest point in David’s personal history. The Dead Sea, and flat lands along its southern parts, are so salty as to be lifeless. But En Gedi is an oasis. Here, acacia trees – the wood from which the tabernacle and its furniture, the altar and the ark of the covenant, were made – grow beside streams that run all year round, fed by an aquifer, a great underground reservoir. Elsewhere, lone acacia trees offer life in ephemeral riverbeds that run dry for much of the year, or whose streams run braided through shifting sediment.

Whenever you read about a tree or trees in the Bible, it stands as a symbol for a person or people. This is one of the key repeated symbols in these scriptures, or holy texts. And David reflects on the trees of En Gedi, declaring: ‘Blessed are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the assembly of the scornful. Their delight is in the law of the Lord and they meditate on his law day and night. Like a tree planted by streams of water bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither, whatever they do, it shall prosper.’ In time this image comes to open the five books of collected Psalms that will serve as the song book of the temple that David’s son, Solomon, will build in Jerusalem.

Some four hundred years after David, Jerusalem is besieged by the neo-Babylonian empire. The tribes that were united under David and Solomon were long torn in two, the northern tribes succeeding from southern rule, and later laid to waste by the Assyrians. And now an enemy has surrounded Jerusalem, which holds out, for now. Against this backdrop, the prophet Jeremiah draws on David’s imagery, declaring:

‘Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

‘Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.’

(Jeremiah 17.5-8)

There are some interesting points to note:

[1] The wilderness experience is non-negotiable, not optional, it is a given, part of life – and the opportunity to discover Yahweh’s faithfulness.

[2] In the preceding verses (17.1-4) Jeremiah criticizes the people for constructing wooden poles used for the cultic worship of Canaanite gods (compare using acacia poles in the cultic worship of Yahweh) and erecting them next to living trees, to secure their vitality.

[3] Those who rely on their own strength to get through the challenges of life are described as choosing to live in an uninhabited salt land. The word for to live is to tabernacle, evoking the presence of Yahweh in the middle of the community of their ancestors after the exodus from oppression in Egypt. Moreover, the word for salt is connected to the idea of craftsmanship, expressly used of the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness. In other words, the outward activity of those whom Jeremiah calls cursed is indistinguishable from the outward activity of those whom he calls blessed.

It is possible (not only to misappropriate, as above, but also) to go through the ritual motions that help us draw on the lifegiving presence of the Lord while missing the lifegiving presence of the Lord. You can devote your time, skill, effort – your life – to it. We can even deceive ourselves, for ultimately only the Lord is capable to test the mind (in fact, the Hebrew is kidney, an organ that played a prominent role in the sacrificial system, and evokes, for us today, images of filtration, dialysis, and transplant surgery) and search the heart (17.9, 10).

Here is the thing: everybody wants to live a fruitful life. No one really wants to settle for a life that isn’t flourishing. The question is whether we think we can resource that from our own effort, or by dependence on some external source – and if an external source, what our god or gods of choice will be.

Jeremiah wants to know how his Iron Age contemporaries will answer this question. His words survive – despite being burnt at the king’s orders at the time and needing to be re-written – because the question still stands.

 

solitude

 

Reflections on Isaiah 6.1-13 and Luke 5.1-11 and on the spiritual practice of solitude (for more on solitude, see the Practicing the Way course).

The role of the prophet has been described as to hold together fearless truth-telling and fierce hope, naming social realities as they are and helping a society reimagine what life together could look like instead. And it is a matter of record in the Bible that every culture and context need such voices, calling us to turn away from death and embrace life.

The book of the prophet Isaiah records his call to just such a role, in an intense vision experienced at a time of transition. Uzziah, the king, had died. His reign had brought stability and security, but he had grown proud, had sought to be high priest as well as king — two roles that had always been kept apart — and had been humbled by God, forced to live in quarantine outside the city walls as a leper. As a leper, in death he cannot even be laid to rest with his ancestors in the royal tombs. His house is without him.

This is the backdrop against which Isaiah sees and hears the Lord of angel armies filling the temple, and the Master sends him to bear a message to the people. Our English translation — “Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.” — doesn’t quite convey it. The Hebrew repeats the words to hear, and to see, in a different form (the same consonants, different vowels) to give us something like ‘hearing piled up on hearing’ and ‘seeing piled up on seeing’ as activities that result in a dulling of awareness.

I don’t know what that looked like for Iron Age people. But I do know what it looks like for the first people to live in the Digital Age. I carry in my pocket a computer far more powerful than the computers that put men on the moon. The last time men walked on the moon was in the month after I was born, and in my lifetime the Digital Age has changed the face of the earth and has shaped us powerfully. Indeed, this has accelerated rapidly in my adult years.

When I was a child, if you wanted to contact me, you might call a phone physically connected to a wall in my home, and someone might be there to take a message. Now we carry our phones with us. We are on call on demand all of the time. Or you might have written a letter, and you might expect a reply within a week (or longer, if overseas). But now we have texts and email and are shaped to seek an immediate response. There is a lifetime of difference between waiting each day for the postman in anticipation of a letter from a sweetheart and checking our smartphone compulsively for work related emails or a ‘like’ on social media. The desire for connection has become oppressive.

When I was a child, there were three television channels. Now there are hundreds, if not thousands. You could do nothing but watch tv and you would not scratch the surface. When I was a child, we watched Newsround and the Six O’clock News. Now there is a constant cycle of breaking news, designed to grip you with anxiety from the moment you open your eyes in the morning until you lie awake worrying at night. You can have podcasts coming out of your ears. You can have a presence on multiple social media platforms, and stay up playing online multiplayer video games, hunting and hiding, shooting and running too fast to be shot.

It isn’t just Digital. We are shaped by other forms of technology too. I live on the intersection of three roads, and with the constant noise of traffic. And that noise, and that speed, shapes us in a particular way, over time. It shapes us into more anxious and more impatient people.

I’m not anti-technology, not by any means. But we need to be reminded that it isn’t neutral, that it shapes us, that it deforms us in many ways, and that we need a counter movement in our lives.

Isaiah wants to know, how long will this flood of sights and sounds, these distractions that dull our senses, last? And the Lord replies, until the land is utterly desolate and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.

And for Isaiah’s first Iron Age audience this pointed to exile, as an event in which the land would be liberated from human folly and allowed to rest and recover for seventy years. Perhaps that is what the earth needs again now.

But for those who, down the centuries, have been known by their contemporaries and by generations who came after as teachers of life, as saints, as women and men of noteworthy wisdom and holiness, as role models in the spiritual life, all recognise this empty place as an invitation to experience intimacy with God.

Because we are all deformed by the sights and sounds that fill the world, by the constant attrition that dulls us so that the beauty and wonder of the world becomes passé, and that is only getting more and more relentless. And if, instead, we are to be formed into more peaceful, more loving, more secure and whole people, we need to counteract those forces by embracing the practice of solitude.

Solitude is not the same thing as being alone. Some of us spend much of our week alone, and community is an essential human need. But so is solitude, which is the intentional choice of being alone with God. Of getting away from distractions, to spend time with God. Of getting away from distractions, to come face to face with ourselves, and to see ourselves not as something we deep down dislike but through God’s eyes, the eyes of the loving creator, redeemer and sustainer of our being, our body and soul.

In the Digital Age, this is an act of resistance. An act of holy rebellion. And it is hard, especially if you aren’t aware of other people doing likewise.

In Luke 6 we read an account of the call of Simon Peter to follow Jesus. To be with Jesus and become like Jesus, and — in a mystery we cannot fathom but can only enter into or resist — to become more fully the person the Lord had created Simon Peter to be. That is always the invitation: to be with Jesus, and in being with Jesus, in becoming more like him, to become, over time, more fully us. To be set free from all that deforms the glory of God in us.

And Jesus, as Simon Peter will soon discover, made a habit of retreating to quiet places to be with God. A daily habit, that sustained him in being present for others without being consumed by their demands.

Luke’s account begins with Simon and Jesus in the boat, together. Jesus tells Simon to head out into the deep, away from the crowd. Simon had been out there all night and found it empty. But this time, he heads out with Jesus, and discovers that it is full, full of fish, so full he can hardly contain it, and this draws him back into community, at a deeper level. This is how solitude differs from loneliness — which is desolate — or isolation — which is cut off from community.

But first, this solitude, this being alone with God — with Jesus — in the quiet place, provokes a necessary crisis. Simon is confronted with his sinfulness, his awareness of his inadequacy in the presence of God — and it is terrifying. Yet it is precisely here that Jesus speaks peace to his deepest fears and extends an invitation to follow him. Jesus extends the same invitation to us today. How will we respond?

One of the things I try to do is keep my phone on silent, and left on the side, on my day off. One day a week when I resist the distractions it offers. No social media — though it is desperately addictive, and I often fall to the temptation. And there are other times during the week that I turn it off and put it away.

It is worth working through your day, and noting where the noise comes from, externally — the radio, the television, the traffic — and internally — the repetitive anxieties or rehearsed arguments — and also the empty places where you go looking for God — a favourite chair in the house, a favourite walk. The point is not to eliminate sights and sounds and lay our lives to waste, but to identify quiet space in our days where we might simply be with God, not filling the emptiness with our prayers but simple being in one another’s presence, God and you, and resting in love.

The more sights and sounds there are in our lives, the greater our need for such counter-formational solitude.

And this is something where the older generations, who grew up before the Digital Age began, may have something deeply important to offer the younger generations, the digital natives. But only if we ourselves have become at home in the empty spaces and not just left behind by the centres of civilisation.

So, what have you learnt about meeting God in stillness and silence? What patterns have you build into your daily routine to seek God? These are not rhetorical questions. We need to pool our wisdom, for the sake of our community, for the people of this parish.

If you have found patterns or practices that help you meet God in this way, do share them. If you have found them helpful, there’s a good chance that others would too. And if you struggle to find God in the busyness and distractions of life, know that you are not alone.

May we know grace to seek and find the Lord in solitude and find healing and wholeness in him. Amen.

 

to curse or to bless?

 

I wonder when you last cursed something or someone?

Bloody politicians, they are all as bad as each other.

Here we go. Another storm. The weather is so miserable.

Why am I so clumsy?

I am a burden on others.

We might be surprised to realise how often we speak curses. How often we speak death.

The thing is, our words have power. You do not have to subscribe to the increasingly popular (at least among materially wealthy individuals) idea of manifesting to know that words have power.

If I curse the wind and the rain, it makes no difference to the wind and rain, but it does affect me. It concedes ground to the rule (kingdom) of death over me, as opposed to the reign of a loving, life-giving, life-sustaining God.

When I curse another person, it also affects me. But it can affect them too. Speak death over a life often enough and that life will be shaped by death. As will our own.

I wonder when you last blessed something or someone?

To utter a blessing is to speak the power of life and love in the world. To affirm a truth that may have been lost. To mend a part of the fabric of creation that may have been torn. Or simply to recognise and value what is in front of us. It does not so much create (as manifesting claims to do) material reality as it reveals the kingdom of God in the world—and allows both the one who blesses and that which is blessed to be shaped by that reality.

Uttering blessings does not seem to come as easily as curses. Like anything worthwhile, it takes practice. Some people journal between one and three things they are thankful for each day. Counting your blessings is not synonymous with blessing those things, but it may be a starting point.

Blessed are you, O wind, for you are strong and free.

Blessed are you, O rain, for you renew the face of the earth.

Blessed are you, O knife/pen, for you have been a faithful tool in my hand all these years. And blessed be the hand that made you, with such attention to the quality of their work.

Blessed are you, my cat/dog, for you have been a faithful companion.

Blessed are you, my child, strength of my youth and joy of my old age, for you will see things that I will never see and do things that I will never do.

Blessed are you, Members of Parliament, our representatives, for you seek to shape the world for the good of the people and give your strength to the common cause.

Blessed are you, O bird who sits in the tree, for you offer your song to the world without price.

Blessed are you, O tree, for you turn light into life, give shelter, filter air...

Blessed are you, food that we eat, for you nourish the body with nutrients and the soul with flavour and with the joy of companions [literally, those who break bread together].

Blessed are you, O farmers, for by the sweat of your brow you bring forth food from the earth.

Blessed are you, who get up while it is still dark to collect the waste from our homes and take it away, and you who sweep the streets by day, for you take upon yourself what others will not, and lift our burden.

Blessed are you, grandparent, for you know the joy of children given more than once in a lifetime, and the joy of returning them to their parents.

Blessed are you, who is unable for now to see yourself as a blessing, for you are loved by God; may you come to know your inherent goodness and beauty.

Blessed are you who are lost, in grief or despondency, for you will discover things you knew not of, and so could never have set out to find.

Blessed am I, for I am a child of God.

 

Simeon and Anna : part two : Anna

 

Malachi 3.1-5 and Luke 2.22-40

Anna awakes within the Temple complex. She is so old now that she does not have much need for sleep, but in the darkest hours she gets some rest, in the Chamber, off the Court of the Women, where the oil-soaked cakes for offering are prepared. It feels like home—after all, she is of the tribe of Asher, whom Jacob had blessed as providers of rich food, royal delicacies, through the generations for ever (Genesis 49:20). Though Anna herself eats little these days, as if sustained by food others know not.

You’ll know Anna, at least by sight. Day after day she comes and sits at the foot of the fifteen semi-circular steps that lead up from the Court of the Women to the Court of Israel, a small crowd always standing around her attentively. She has been here forever, long before the present buildings stood, longer even than old Simeon. She is, as much as the steps themselves, part of the fixings and the furniture. In all likelihood the great tide of humanity who pour in at the pilgrim festivals don’t notice her, or if they do she does not hold their attention: what is an ancient woman, compared to the bronze gates at the top of the steps, with which Nicanor wrought miracles, calming the sea—gates so revered that even Herod dared not replace them with gates of gold? But those who remain when the tide goes out again seek her out, for she speaks consolations.

A prophet, in the manner of Isaiah: ‘Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.’ (Isaiah 40:1, 2) Anna speaks consolation from the inside, as one who has authority. They say the number seven stands for completion, perfection. But who can accept seven as the completion of a marriage to so kind a man, the only man Anna had ever loved this way? Seven years enjoying the fat of life, slurping the marrow of its bones, glistening on the fingers, running down the chin; swallowed up by death in a moment. She had railed at God, like the sea; but God did not answer. She had beaten her fists against the sky; God remained silent. She had questioned herself—had their love been too fierce to last? Eventually the night passed and, gradual as light, it dawned on her that the silence of God was not indifference, nor powerlessness, but that she was being held, by One much greater than herself. And that the silence swallowed death whole. Brought all things to peace. There was nothing here to fear. Her husband slept with their ancestors; and at night Anna would lie with him; learnt to rest in eternity and rise, morning by morning, in time. She had lived this way so long, some said she had discovered the secret of immortality.

That was the first of many times of dying, in the long years of her widowhood, and through each loss she discovered more and more the blessing only those who mourn can understand. Rich food, royal delicacies. An acquired taste, yes, but not a bitter aftertaste. A strange, unlooked for perfection, but a perfection, nonetheless: union with the Holy One of Israel.

She speaks consolation to those who seek it here. Reveals the invisible God in the common things of life, in universal emotions. Prayerful words, that charm the terrors of the night into the most tender of mercies; that transform unleavened cakes into the sustenance of heaven. Night and day, day and night, the prayers of a prophet.

She prays, and sings, not a classically beautiful voice, cracked now by age, but one that rings in harmony with the Unseen. And she is singing now. Over a young couple who have arrived at the foot of the fifteen steps on their way to present sacrifice in the Court of Israel, a pair of turtle doves. And the firstborn son, whom old Simeon has taken in his arms and holds high for all to see. Simeon utters words of blessing. Anna joins in with a song of her own, their voices joining to mend the world, so it can receive its King.

And what of you? What has been broken open in your world? And what blessing has been revealed within? What song have you been given to sing, in a cracked voice perhaps, but the melody of heaven?

 

Simeon and Anna : part one : Simeon

 

Malachi 3.1-5 and Luke 2.22-40

Simeon woke up knowing that today was the day. Knowing in his bones, the knuckles of fingers and toes worn smooth by his years as a fuller, the trade he had plied since boyhood. Boiling down soap plants into a bleach paste; kneading linen tunics by hand in a tub; massaging woollen outer garments underfoot in a vat. All those years. All those customers. All those priests in their flowing robes. Blood was the hardest stain to remove.

He had been an old man fifteen years ago, when Herod had the simple temple Zerubbabel built when the exiles had returned from Babylon five hundred years ago torn down, the Temple Mount complex extended to twice its size, and a new building erected, the largest temple in the world. Magnificent. A wonder. Fitting for the God of the Jews. So much accomplished, in only a decade. Herod was a man on a mission. These days, Simeon spent his days in the temple courts. Even so, he wondered, what would God make of it, these great stones? Would he shed tears at its beauty, if he had eyes like a man? Or tears of sorrow?

Simeon was a man waiting to die. Not in a morbid way. He was not depressed. It was simply that he had lived a long life, and seen many things, seen his family grow, held his grandchildren in his arms, and yes, seen many friends and family members go ahead of him to Sheol, to the rest of the righteous with their ancestors. He simply did not need to keep on living, was looking forward to his reward, if not for one thing. One task remaining. For he had heard the Spirit of the Lord speak to his own spirit, in the secret place of prayer, charging him with one last job, for his master and, yes, friend. To take up the fuller’s soap one last time and fulfil the prophecy of Malachi, to cleanse not just the priests’ robes but the whole temple on the day that the Messiah would appear there.

He had been waiting, ready, for that day ever since the made-new temple had been completed, the scaffolding taken down, the sound of hammers fallen silent. Five years now, and more visitors to the temple, more pilgrims, than could ever be counted. Who was he waiting for? He did not know. Just knew that he would know when he saw it, saw the one for whom he waited, for whom he stayed alive. And today was the day.

The old man, not a priest but unlike the priests who served in the temple by roster an old man who could be found in the temple day after day, spies a man and a woman who carries her son, an infant, just forty days old. He has been in this world, wrapped in swaddling bands, for as long and no longer than Noah dwelt safe in the ark. And today the waters have subsided and this child, like Noah of old, steps into a new world. A new beginning.

Simeon approaches, reaches out, asks, “May I?” and takes the offered child from his mother in his smooth bleached hands, holds him up at arm’s length, and gazes into his eyes. The child holds the old man’s gaze. This is the one. The herald. The heralded.

The old man blesses God, his Master, the One who Saves, the One who dwells in light no longer unapproachable. The One who smiles upon his servant and releases him from his duties to enter into rest. Speaks words over the child that, one day, long after Simeon’s time, he too might take up as his own. Into Your hands I commend my spirit.

And then he blesses the father and the mother. Declares over them their goodness, their share in the divine nature, the man and the woman, speaks words that resist, set limits on, the toil of their labour, reminding them of truths so easily forgotten. And yet a blessing is not magic, not an incantation that wards off evil. A strange blessing this one: thoughts, good and evil, will be revealed; and a sword will pierce this mother’s own soul. Not protection from evil, so much as strength to face evil, to face it and transform it. A fuller’s blessing: calling this daughter of Eve to bruise out the stain of sin beneath her feet.

The act of blessing is not reserved for priests but belongs to all God’s people. No, more than that, to all God’s children, to humankind. To reach out beyond us and our story to something far greater than we will see, or can even imagine, and remind the world of the inherent goodness of all that God has made. To draw on our part—whether priest or fuller or butcher, baker, candlestick maker—to set others free to play their own.

What, and who, will you bless today?