Trust me
Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth (Joel 1:8)
Much is sometimes made of the word for virgin, for it can also mean young woman. The reason for this is simple. In earlier times the two were considered indistinguishable. A young woman, a very young woman by modern standards, would be a virgin. And as all got married, anyone who could no longer be described as a young woman would not be a virgin. Some seem to think that this means the gospel writers couldn't tell the difference, as if in the past people didn't know you couldn't both have a baby and still be a virgin. Clearly they realised that they were claiming something extraordinary when telling their readers that Jesus was born of a virgin. You can almost hear them say 'You won't believe it but...'
Here the word has a different purpose. The young woman has had her new husband snatched away from her on the steps of the altar. It is not entirely clear whether she has just got married or is just about to get married, but the rawness of it is plain. A secure future with a loving protector lost in a moment. So she has put on sackcloth, a rough and plain material, to signal to all the awfulness of her state.
I am intrigued that sackcloth can have another meaning. It is the garb of repentance. There is no hint here that the virgin has anything to repent but I wonder: am I going too far to suggest the ambiguity is deliberate. Has she not only found herself without a husband but in a state where she really needs one to show her fidelity? I don't know but the sorrow on public display here is tinged with some sharp edges of misery.
On the news today, Sophia Miles, the actress known in our household for playing Marie Antoinette in Doctor Who, posted a picture of herself at her dying father's bedside. He had many underlying conditions, as the phrase has become, but she wanted to show her loss to the world not for her sake, but for ours. Her public display of mourning is for our education.
I want to honour her for it, but I also have a confession. All the attempts by many to make us take this virus seriously have started to get under my skin. I am becoming fearful. My sackcloth is not the mourning for a loved one, though that may come, but for a failure of faith. You see I genuinely believe in a God who has the strings of reality in his hands. Into whose embrace I can safely fall. I have been acquainted with death and have made my peace, but I still want to say, Not now Lord, surely. So my journey is clear. It is not one into fear, but one into faith. Seeing the young woman in sackcloth, the dying father or the terribly sick friend, is a call from God to trust him. Can I? Can you?
Much is sometimes made of the word for virgin, for it can also mean young woman. The reason for this is simple. In earlier times the two were considered indistinguishable. A young woman, a very young woman by modern standards, would be a virgin. And as all got married, anyone who could no longer be described as a young woman would not be a virgin. Some seem to think that this means the gospel writers couldn't tell the difference, as if in the past people didn't know you couldn't both have a baby and still be a virgin. Clearly they realised that they were claiming something extraordinary when telling their readers that Jesus was born of a virgin. You can almost hear them say 'You won't believe it but...'
Here the word has a different purpose. The young woman has had her new husband snatched away from her on the steps of the altar. It is not entirely clear whether she has just got married or is just about to get married, but the rawness of it is plain. A secure future with a loving protector lost in a moment. So she has put on sackcloth, a rough and plain material, to signal to all the awfulness of her state.
I am intrigued that sackcloth can have another meaning. It is the garb of repentance. There is no hint here that the virgin has anything to repent but I wonder: am I going too far to suggest the ambiguity is deliberate. Has she not only found herself without a husband but in a state where she really needs one to show her fidelity? I don't know but the sorrow on public display here is tinged with some sharp edges of misery.
On the news today, Sophia Miles, the actress known in our household for playing Marie Antoinette in Doctor Who, posted a picture of herself at her dying father's bedside. He had many underlying conditions, as the phrase has become, but she wanted to show her loss to the world not for her sake, but for ours. Her public display of mourning is for our education.
I want to honour her for it, but I also have a confession. All the attempts by many to make us take this virus seriously have started to get under my skin. I am becoming fearful. My sackcloth is not the mourning for a loved one, though that may come, but for a failure of faith. You see I genuinely believe in a God who has the strings of reality in his hands. Into whose embrace I can safely fall. I have been acquainted with death and have made my peace, but I still want to say, Not now Lord, surely. So my journey is clear. It is not one into fear, but one into faith. Seeing the young woman in sackcloth, the dying father or the terribly sick friend, is a call from God to trust him. Can I? Can you?
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| Chiesa di Santa Maria al Lago, Torbole with the Book of Common Prayer open at Morning Prayers |
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