Interrupting the Silence

“For my eyes and for my mind.” Nearly every week for two years I heard Jimmie say those words. She was a parishioner at my previous parish. Jimmie was almost completely blind. She was confused and losing her memory. 

Every week her caregiver would bring Jimmie to church for the healing service. Every week she would lead Jimmie from her pew to the altar rail. Every week Jimmie would kneel, look up at me, and say, “For my eyes and for my mind.” 

Every week I would lay my hands on her head, anoint her with holy oil, and pray for her eyes and her mind. Every week her caregiver would lead Jimmie from the altar rail back to her pew. Every week Jimmie left church just as blind and confused as she was when she arrived.

Every week was the same. We did the same thing the week before and we would do it again the following week and the one after that. It never changed. It was like that every week.

I know what it’s like to live an every week kind of life. I suppose you do too. When I say an every week kind of life I’m not talking about the frequency with which we do something.

I’m talking about eyes that want to see salvation and minds that want a light for revelation. I’m talking about dreams anticipating realization and promises anticipating fulfillment. I’m talking about hurts waiting for healing and pain waiting for relief. I’m talking about guilt calling for forgiveness and shame calling for acceptance. I’m talking about estrangement that needs reconciliation and loneliness that needs belonging. I’m talking about grief that wants to be held and tears that want to be honored. I’m taking about brokenness seeking wholeness and injustice seeking to be made right. I’m talking about joy that sings thanksgiving and hope that dances the future. 

This every week kind of life is about the pieces of ourselves and parts of our lives that are such a deep part of us and have such a strong hold on us that all we can do is continue to show up and offer them again and again. “For my eyes and for my mind.” Anything less would be a betrayal of ourselves and our life. Every week Jimmie showed up and made an offering. That’s what Simeon is doing in today’s gospel (Luke 2:22-40). 

Simeon has been promised that he will not die before he sees the Messiah. But there’s more to the story that you need to know. 

Our sacred tradition says that Simeon was one of the seventy translators of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, what we call the septuagint. That translation is supposed to have begun around the third century before Christ and was completed in the year 132 before Christ. 

Are you doing the math here? That means Simeon was a really old guy. One strand of the tradition says Simeon was 270 years old when Jesus was presented in the temple. Another strand of the tradition says Simeon died at the age of 360. 

It also means that Simeon was living an every week kind of life for a really long time. Every week waiting to receive the child, waiting to go in peace, waiting to see salvation, waiting for a light for revelation.

I wonder in what ways you are living an every week kind of life today. What’s your version of an every week kind of life? For Jimmie it was her eyes and her mind. What is it for you?

What has brought you here tonight? What keeps you showing up every week? What is it that you are looking and waiting for? Whatever that might be, whatever your every week kind of life might be about, it is the means by which you are being offered and presented to God, life, one another.

And that’s the twist in today’s gospel. That’s the contradiction in the every week kind of life. We think we are waiting for something to be presented to us but it’s actually that something that is presenting us. 

Simeon held the child but it was actually the child who upheld Simeon. Simeon took Jesus in his arms to present him to God but realized that it was himself being presented to God by Jesus. What if that’s also true for Jimmie, you, me?

Every week for nearly two years I wondered what was going on with Jimmie. Her sight didn’t improve and her mind didn’t clear. Nothing changed. I didn’t understand. I felt powerless and wanted more for her. But I also felt inadequate and wanted more for myself. Every week it was the same old thing. “For my eyes and for my mind.”

One day it struck me. This is Simeon. Jimmie is Simeon. She knows and trusts the power of showing up to her own life every week. She understands with a confused mind what I don’t get; Jesus is presenting her to God. She sees with blind eyes what I can’t see; her own salvation. 

Every week she showed up. Every week it was enough for her to say, “For my eyes and for my mind.” Nothing more needed to be said or done. 

And every week, every single week, she was set free to go in peace. 

If that’s what an every week kind of life is like then I want to live that every day of my life. Don’t you?

____________________
Image Credit: By Unknown Georgian artist – Goldschmiedekunst und Toreutik in den Museen Georgiens Aurora Leningrad 1986Source of the first version: Guram Abramishvili (1977), Treasury of the Georgian Museum of Arts. Tbilisi: Khelovneba, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.