Vale/Veil
Ministerial Meandering
Vale/Veil
The veil is a curious piece of clothing. In modern Western culture it is probably only seen nowadays at weddings, and occasional funerals.
On both these occasions it is used for subtly different purposes. In the wedding the veil serves as concealment of the bride’s face from the groom, as it is thought to be bad luck to see your bride on the day, before the wedding itself takes place. In days gone by, when weddings were arranged, the bride and groom may not have even met, so the lifting of the veil would have been a complete surprise.
Remember Jacob, who was working for his uncle Laban, and was in love with his younger daughter, Rachel? Laban was a crafty character, and not only would have had his daughter veiled during the ceremony, but also got Jacob befuddled from drink, so that when he woke up after his wedding night, he found he had just been sleeping with the older daughter Leah.
Veils can be tricky things! Particularly apt in this case, as Jacob himself was a trickster, and had tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright, and would later trick him out of his father’s blessing too. So here is a come-uppance, of sorts, where the trickster is tricked himself.
In a funeral, the widow is allowed to hide her tear-stained face behind a veil, as a courtesy to hide her grief - or joy, depending on what she is about to inherit.
The actual piece of clothing referred to as a ‘veil’ varies from culture to culture, so that for the Muslim or Hindu, it can be a far more formidable piece of cloth that can cover the head as well as the face; the yashmak is still a thin, see-through material, but the purdah is a thicker material and gives no hint of what lies beneath it.
It is sometimes therefore used as a disguise, or for concealment. Disfigurement and ugliness can be hidden beneath such a garment, but also beauty. The Arab and Muslim cultures do not want the beauty of their wives on display, so hide them from prying eyes.
But beauty can come in different forms, and Moses had to hide the shining face he had acquired from his experience of exposure to God. The glory - as it was called - was just too much for the Israelites, and they found Moses unapproachable. Until, that is, the glory faded. It is notable that during the fading of his shining face, Moses retained the veil, so that the dimming of his experience would not affect the people adversely either.
There are other vales too, of a darker hue, into which we have to travel from time to time. The valley of the shadow - or ‘death’s dark vale’ - as Psalm 23 puts it in common translation.
We may have been shown that death has lost its sting - by Jesus rising from the dead, but does this always play out in our daily lives? Perhaps not.
It may not be actual death that we feel accompanies us, but a darkness from which we see no escape. In the image I put on the Art Gallery a couple of Sundays ago, there was a dark valley with no obvious exit, dark storm clouds above, and narrowing cliff walls on either side. There was no immediate mortal threat, but to continue down the path between the cliffs would be to engage in a form of existential crisis, over which there would appear to be no control.
Many of us experience such feelings in our lifetimes, and these are not moments we would willingly repeat. Life is teaming with these razor-sharp underwater rocks, and sailing such a course might well lead us to ask the question, “Why?”
Unfortunately for us, the answer might well come back, “Why not?”
What it does do, is to test our faith in the promise of Jesus that he has ‘overcome the world’. What Psalm 23 does for us is to reassure us of the fact that all will be all right in the end. And - as Sonny says in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - ‘if it’s not all right, then it’s not the end.’
Philip+