Candlemas

 

This coming Sunday is a pivot-point in the year, forty days on from Christmas, when we turn away from celebrating Jesus’ birth and turn towards remembering his agonising suffering, death, and glorious resurrection, in Holy Week and Easter.

This coming Sunday we recall the occasion, forty days after his birth, when Jesus’ parents presented him before God at the Temple in Jerusalem. This coming Sunday we bless candles — the ritual lighting of which symbolises our deepest moments of sorrow and of joy; and of recognition that God, who is invisible, is with us.

When a Jewish woman gave birth, she entered niddah, a period of seclusion and abstinence from intimacy with her husband she entered whenever she bled, in menstruation or in childbirth. Niddah lasted around seven days (or, seven days after the bleeding stopped) after which she would take a ritual bath before being reunited with her husband. (In recent years there has been a renaissance of this practice of withdrawal and reunion among Jewish women, as a beautiful gift of self-care, and a means of sustaining intimacy over time.)

After giving birth to a son, a woman entered niddah for seven days, followed by thirty-three days before she returned to public life, marked by presenting her son before God. After giving birth to a daughter, the periods were doubled — fourteen days of niddah, followed by sixty-six days before returning to public life.

This much is set out in the law of Moses, though no reason is given for why it should be thirty-three days for a son and sixty-six for a daughter — leading to much speculation. My own speculation (no more than that) is this. In Genesis 46 we read about the family of Jacob — grandson of father Abraham, and whom God had re-named Israel — who went with him down to Egypt to find salvation from a lengthy, region-wide famine. Jacob had twelve sons — who would give their names to the twelve tribes of Israel — and a daughter, by four different women, his wives Leah and Rachel, and their slaves Zilpah and Bilhah. We read that the number of his offspring, those belonging to him, his sons and their children, by his first wife Leah — beginning with his firstborn son, Reuben — numbered thirty-three; and the total number by all four women came to sixty-six. (The list of names and the accompanying numbers don’t exactly match; but these are symbolic numbers, not literal ones.)

I would suggest that to wait thirty-three days before presenting a son before God, and sixty-six days before presenting a daughter, is a means of including them in the family of Israel. Every son extends the family into the next generation. Every daughter completes the family again. Thirty-three. Sixty-six. This one, too, belongs to Israel. This one, too, takes their place within the family who are saved from famine, and, later, saved again, from enslavement. This one, too, is numbered.

So, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus, forty days on — seven, plus thirty-three — to take his place within the story of his people.

And there, there will be a reversal, a pivot-point, a turning. For the old man Simeon will bless Mary with a strange blessing: ‘and a sword shall pierce your heart, too.’

This points us to the cross, where a spear is thrust into Jesus’ heart to establish that he is, truly, dead; and the blood that has pooled there, and separated out into red and white blood cells, pours forth as blood and water. And a sword shall pierce your heart, too. Mary, at the foot of the cross. Her heart pierced, in the personal pain of any mother who witnesses the violent death of her son. But also, a symbolic union. Mary, who is the Church, the family of Jesus, shares in his piercing, in his death — and in his resurrection.

Just as Jesus is brought into the story of the family of Jacob/Israel, so, now, Mary — and all future generations to come — are brought into the story of the family of Jesus (which is a continuation, and a fulfilment, of the family of Israel).

This is the story into which the Church enters, participated in, down through the generations. A share in Christ’s suffering, dying, rising in glory. This is the life we are called to live in the world, not seeking to shield ourselves from pain but to know pain transformed, to bear faithful witness to, first, evil, and then, good — and truth, and beauty — rising from the bloody ground.

This is the story we enter into, symbolically — in embodied ways — in observing Christmas and Holy Week and Easter; and in observing the pivot-point between them, this Sunday, with the blessing of candles, which we light in times of great joy and sorrow.

 

a dimly burning wick

 

Often, when we hold services at church, we light candles, as a visible reminder that Jesus is the Light that shines in the darkness of this world. At this time of year, when it is dark when the 8.00 a.m. Sunday service starts, this symbolism is especially profound.

This morning, the member of the congregation who was setting out the space came to light the two candles that sit on either side of the windowsill behind the altar. The first candle lit, as normal; but the other would not light. And so he spent several minutes trying to coax it into flame, trimming the wick, to no avail. It sputtered into life, only to give up the ghost. Eventually, it was time for the service to begin, and so he needed to leave it, for now, and return to it later.

This was not planned, nor had I spiked the candle so that it would not light, yet this was a visual aid to what God wanted to say to us today. In Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, our Old Testament readings mostly come from the book of the prophet Isaiah, much of whose poetic vision is rehearsed, six hundred years later, by Jesus in the role of the Servant. Today we read:

‘a bruised reed he will not break,

and a dimly burning wick he will not quench’

(Isaiah 42.1-9)

A dimly burning wick he will not quench. Rather, like Ray this morning, Jesus holds us with tenderness and compassion, coaxing the flame of faith.

And this morning it was a gift to us to have two candles, one burning brightly, the other cold. Because, there are times when our faith is sure, when we know that God loves us, loves our neighbour, and so, we are able to love our neighbour too. And there are times when our faith burns dimly, sputters and fails. When we find it hard to accept — to imagine that it is possible — that God could possibly love me, unliveable as I am.

But we do not come to God on our own, we come together. Sometimes, my faith shines bright, when yours does not; at other times, it is your faith that shines, when mine is dim. Yet there is room on the windowsill for both candles. And the one that cannot ignite today will yet be tended into flame, whether today or later.

A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.

There are times when we are all bruised. Sometimes by the way we witness the world handling others — overly roughly, without appropriate care. Sometimes we are bruised by the circumstances of our own lives, or the lives of those close to us. Sometimes we are bruised by those sides to our personality we find hardest to live with. We are not always bruised, but we bruise easily. And we are tempted to harden our hearts: I have been hurt before, I will not allow it to happen to me again. But this will not save us, for the more we harden our hearts, the more we bruise one another. It is not hard hearts we need, but gentle hands. And here, again, we are reminded that Jesus cares for us with tenderness and compassion.

When we are bruised, when our faith is dim, at these times and in these places may we have epiphanies of our own. May we encounter Jesus, and may the eyes of our hearts be opened to his healing love, making us whole again.

 

Image: photo shows the altar in the Lady Chapel at our 8.00 a.m. service this morning. There are two brass candlesticks on the windowsill behind the altar, one at either end with a brass cross between them. The candle on the right is lit, the one on the left is unlit. Our curate, Katherine, is seated behind the altar. The altar is set ready for Holy Communion, with a silver ciborium (holding bread wafers) and chalice (for wine) and a brass bookstand holding the Book of Common Prayer.

 

slow horses

 

Over Christmas we rearranged chairs to allow more people to sit around our table, and I rearranged bookshelves to make room for the first eight Slough House novels (to be joined by the ninth, when it comes out in paperback). Mick Herron is a great writer, consistently achieving an addictive blend of spy thriller and very dark comedy.

Slough House is (allegedly) where MI5 redeploys failed spies who might pursue legal challenges to being made redundant, with the intention of grinding them down with work so unfulfilling that they chose to walk away. By definition, the residents of Slough House — referred to as Slow Horses — are F*ck Ups (have messed up with serious consequences) or Issues (potentially compromising addictions to alcohol, drugs, or gambling; PTSD) — or both — condemned to live out their days under the infuriatingly watchful eye of the deeply (darkly comically) obnoxious Jackson Lamb.

What makes whatever happens to this unlikely combination of less-than-likeable characters compelling is that it is clear that Mick Herron loves them (even if he is willing to bump characters off relentlessly for the sake of the storyline). And though he would never admit it to them (and perhaps not to himself) and, even if he could, they (being F*ck Ups or Issues) wouldn’t be able to accept it, Jackson Lamb loves them, too.

I don’t live in the world of security intelligence-gathering. But that isn’t the point. I recognise what I am reading because almost everyone I know (including myself) is either a F*ck Up or an Issue. Seriously. And because, as a priest — and, indeed, as a (as any) follower of Jesus — I am called to love them (including myself) even so.

To love the unlikeable, to really love them, which is the only thing that transforms anyone, calls for a different kind of intelligence-gathering. One built not on ‘what disaster might we prevent (by whatever means/force necessary)?’ (sin management) but ‘what goodness, what beauty, might become possible, which we could never have imagined?’ The slow and often seemingly pointless task of getting to know what makes that person tick; their hopes and dreams, their worries and fears; their sense of self, constructed from stories, lies, half-truths. The shame they need to be freed from. The dignity that is, in fact, inherent to them, that needs to be recognised.

So, I am enjoying the slow horses and appreciating what they have to teach me.