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?