Ghosts aren’t quite what you think they are. I learned this the hard way shortly after we brought my mother-in-law home from the hospital. We put her in the new cryogenic freezer in the basement. My wife was delighted to have her mum so close. Finally we had an option other than freezing her brain and dumping it with a hundred others stacked in a storage bin like chicken. We had the upright model so it looked as if she was standing behind the glass. For my part, other than it’s cool to watch a relative drained of all bodily fluids, I was proud she’d been selected. Thousands of applicants, only twenty-five chosen, and to my certain knowledge no one else in the state. We were on the cutting edge of cryogenics. As for mother, spending a few years as a human popsicle was small change for hanging onto life, immortal as good as, getting the cure in a few decades, and some day sticking the tulips on our gravestones. She turned a steely-blue as they injected the fluid that slipped around every internal surface and penetrated to the core of each organ. At least, that’s what it said in the maintenance manual. Not that there was much to do, keep an eye on the dials, never switch off the big red lever that had “never switch off” written on it, and top up the fluid once a year. Less trouble than a pot plant.

After the technicians left, we had a coffee in the basement, and my wife arranged some flowers on the top of the freezer, which I said made mother look like some head-dressed alien from the planet “Freon.” We had a bit of a row since she said people could still hear and I said rubbish and anyway mum was deaf even before she iced over; that didn’t help though, so she went upstairs crying. I didn’t admit it but I felt a bit guilty, so before I went to bed, at around midnight, I went to the basement to apologize. That was when I first heard a whisper. For a while, the noise from the motor hummed out anything else but then, quite distinct, almost hanging in the middle of the room, there was this whisper. The creepy thing was that I didn’t have to look behind me since it was clearly in front of my face, somewhere between me and Mum’s blank blue stare in the freezer. It wasn’t a nice whisper either. There was panic in it. I thought of that second you realize the elevator’s stuck, or the ladder’s gone, or the guy in the alley isn’t getting out of the way. Then it went. I started to leave and it came back. Not panicky this time but angry, really angry. God knows how I got out of the basement.

And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present [him] to the Lord; ...And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, Then he took him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now thou may dismiss thy servant in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him.

Joseph and Mary go into the Temple and get jumped by this stringy old guy, racked on the years so thin, the veins are rubbing through the skin on his face. He takes the baby. Doesn’t even bother to say hello. “God,” she thinks, “the old sod’ll drop him.” She needn’t have worried, he didn’t wait this long just to tip the consolation of Israel all over the Temple floor. He holds him up and peering at him like the light at the end of the tunnel, he blesses the child. We have to understand: he shouldn’t be doing this, he’s not a priest, which is why he’s lurking about to hieron, not ho naus, where he’d foul up the system like a raccoon in the bathroom. He has no license for blessing stuff, he ought to be dead anyway, and he’s not in the story of which this is the anti-type. In the type, I Samuel 1 and 2, from which Luke is cribbing the details, Samuel gets offered to the priest, Eli. Here, Jesus is grabbed by Simeon and blessed irregularly, profanely – though, don’t get me wrong, he’s a good man, “upright and devout,” no less.

Simeon’s another old wrestler, hanging on God, clutching at him, importunate as a child a week before Christmas, won’t be satisfied until he sees the Messiah. “OK, OK,” says the Lord, “God has heard you, Sema-el.” It’s not easy, many ’s the time he’s felt his soul rise into his mouth and he’s bolted it down again. He’s made himself God’s back-door man, hanging where no one’s expected, swinging between the hope and the glory. Hasn’t slept more than minutes for years, suspended in no-man’s land where the prophets all hold their breath. So the Spirit, propping him up like a friend, brings Simeon into the Temple, into the court, no doubt, of the Gentiles, just at the right moment, to appear from nowhere, throw Mary and Joseph off the track, and deliver his low class blessing to this swaddled little tiger. Which is all wrong and just right. “Lord, now thou may dismiss thy servant in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation – and for Gentiles also.” Now, he can let himself go, the clutch upon his soul relax, and his spirit an offering to the most High. Impossible even a moment earlier: how can he leave, how can he not hang on, how can offer anything, until he has seen the consolation of Israel, offered to him as easy as holding a child? How could he let himself go until then? How can any of us let ourselves go, until then?

Three weeks later, my wife was dusting the top of the freezer when a vase from the other side of the room hit her in the back of the neck. We don’t keep anything valuable in the basement, so there was no harm done but my wife got it into her head that mother was responsible. “Her eyes,” she said, “right before it happened, she looked furious.” Of course, there was nothing about any of this in the manual. I asked about calling a priest but she thought an exorcism might void the warranty. After all, you can’t be too careful. Then, I told her about the whispers. She said she couldn’t stand the thought of this going on for years. “There’s always the lever,” I said, “the one we’re not supposed to switch off.” She grabbed my hand, “She’ll defrost. I couldn’t bear the guilt.” So, we did the next best thing: cleared everything we wanted out of the basement, went upstairs, and locked the door. I decided we weren’t going to worry about the fluid level or the dials, all that mattered was that door staying shut for the next twenty-five years.

Six months later, we were watching a program about vampire bats when the lights went out. “I’ll turn the breaker back on,” I said. Then I remembered the breaker box was in the basement. “We could use candles,” my wife adopted a fetal position on the sofa. “Not for the rest of our lives, we can’t. I’ll just run down, flick the switch, and run back upstairs. I won’t even look at the freezer.” I got half-way down the basement stairs and I can only say it sounded like an airport when they ground all the planes. Hundreds of voices, agitated, angry, frightened, furious, sad, hysterical, even coldly controlled like people who are trying to ignore a disaster. They were all different, yet there was no doubt that every one was my mother-in-law. There must have been a few dozen children and yet I still knew they were mother. Mother asking for food, mother wanting to be taken to the bathroom, mother sulking, mother quarrelling with an unheard friend, even mother opening presents at Christmas. That was the scariest, since she still sounded frightened. Then I heard mother talking to me years back, explaining how my wife was allergic to eggs, it was just as it was, but not quite. She sounded hurried as if she was trying to leave, as if there was train to catch, and she was going to miss it. I walked slowly through the voices like I was wading, they felt thick, oily. I turned on the breaker, shut my eyes, and tried to run but I had to push every inch. Voices pressing on your face and running over it like spiders’ webs: that is the weirdest thing.

“And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave it unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: do this in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you.”

Nothing stays still. Everything moves: blood and cells in their hidden arranging; the bird depressing the branch, shaking the water from its wings; the sun, remembered in my mind’s eye. Everything moves but only two movements really matter: all movement is within one or the other and one only moves because of the other. There is the movement by which we slowly, in hesitance and reluctance, offer our lives to God. This offering of our lives is our life and, however contradictory we are, reaching to God whilst we dig in our heels, however gradual our oblation, we all end in a rush, offered entire whether we wish it or no. Then there is the first and greater movement, the ceaseless coming of God from which giving everything breaks into life, and we feel the disturbances of desire, and sniff heaven’s distant perfume. “This is my body.” These two opposite movements coincide in these words. Christian faith is knowing this coincidence. The Eternal Son offers himself. This is my body, this is where I am. And the Son of Man returns this complement, this is my body offered for you. Only by the offering of God, does he, our humanity, pledge, and Savior, offer himself.

This bit, though, is awkward, even embarrassing: “offered for you.” If you read the small print, there is a promise here which, on not a few mornings, feels a bit like a threat. I offer myself, in order that you, too, may depart in my peace, that you may let yourself go, offer the lot. Daily. This movement matters. It is the true substance of our lives without which we are merely shadows and fluff. Yet it is easy to say, and I feel the desire, I do, but also the simultaneous withdrawal, the hedging, the specious excuses of a reluctant wedding guest. We can do nothing about this, for all our great differences in courage and generosity, everyone comes to recognize that internal shut down, the pull at the end of our chain. What we can do, can only do, is hang on Him who hangs upon the Cross, so that we are caught up in his offering, which alone satisfies and eases; and so, joined with Him, we may daily say, ““into your hands, I commit my spirit” “Let your servant depart in peace, having seen your salvation.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” For seven very long evenings we’d sat trying to talk about anything but the agitated conference we guessed was still going on in the basement. We couldn’t hear anything but we kept jumping at every creak. We turned the television on so we wouldn’t hear, then we turned it off again, just in case we missed something. “Don’t you think she’s dead?,” my wife asked again, “and the voices, they’re all ghosts teeming out of her like maggots.” I said that people didn’t have more than one ghost, and that she wasn’t dead, just stopped. “Is that what happens, then” she said, “when you’re stopped, not dead or alive? Your mind just breaks and spills out, all over the basement?”

The next morning my wife went off to stay with a friend. It was easier for a while, I could keep out or busy. One night I went to sleep on the sofa. I woke up with a voice hissing in my ear like a fly. They’d spread. Mother was behind the curtain, next to me on the sofa, by the door, whispering from the ceiling. Reading shopping lists, talking to her husband, arguing with a client, singing: but always about to scream. I unbolted the basement door. Useless now, anyway. There was a roar of voices; difficult to believe that one life could have all those voices. They got louder every step down, but when I put one foot on the basement floor, there was silence. It was a thick, ugly silence, like I was late: a bitter, angry, offended, demanding silence. Mother had frozen with her eyes open. I’d asked the cryogenics guy if that was normal.” He’d shrugged, “sometimes the agent pulls the eyelids back as it sets. Nothing to worry about.” I was worried, though. The eyes followed me as I walked over to the freezer. I don’t think I was imagining it because I jumped to one side, then the other but they were still after me. I turned to leave and the voices started up, a low belligerent murmur. I looked at the freezer, they stopped. Then, I felt sick and started off again toward the stairs. The voices screamed back, furious. They only stopped when I turned around toward mother.

I saw the red lever, the one with “never switch off” stamped on it, and went up to it. The silence dropped into ice, I could feel it pushing me, a sharp pain between my shoulder-blades. I touched the lever but then let go. Behind me, the whispers suddenly growled like a pack of Rottweilers. I held the lever and pulled. For a moment, nothing happened. The freezer juddered and stopped its whine. Then, the basement filled with electric pressure, a lurching wind full of voices, crashing together, forming into a spiral of ratcheting noise, belling out, punching like a jack into the ceiling. I was on the floor, covering my head. The basement started to explode but then the screaming burst and hissed away, upwards, somewhere in a long stream. Two days later, they took the freezer away with mother’s body still in it. By then, her eyes had shut.

And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, ... a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spoke of the child to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.

Perhaps ghosts are what’s left of unoffered lives. I wouldn’t make the leap from the harbor to the reeling boat and so missed the trip. Certainly, some have thought those who grip too hard to life, clutching the body like the last rock in the waves, that when they die, they are at a loss. Not knowing where to go, they hang around the bone yard, scaring the traffic and saying, “boo.” If this is the way to make ghosts, it is exactly the reverse of what happens in the Temple. She carries her age like a house on her back, it pins her down and every step creaks. Today, though, she sees this child. The Spirit slips behind those bleary old eyes and she sees the salvation of Israel. So, she forgets the trembling stick in her hand, the wall by which she creeps for safety, her basket, her purse, her dignity, herself. And Anna praises God like the chariot of Israel was whisking her off to Elijah, sprung from the world. She stretches her hands and offers herself up on tiptoe.

And the salvation of Israel met Moses in a burning tree, and that fire was in the tree as sure as the breath in my lungs, yet the tree held, it was not confused into ash, it suffered no alteration, yet the fire took it. From now on Moses is, well, Moses, the bush-man, sea-parter, rock-striker, desert tramp, and law-giver. Moses, who has given all, starting with his shoes. For him, no step that’s not an offering. Oh yes, wrenched out, of course, not easy, but finally irresistibly strong, a slow turning of the soul, a blow-by-blow straightening of love’s warped arrow. Now, before the supper, Jesus takes off their shoes and washes the disciples feet; they don’t know it yet but he’s getting them ready for the fire that will rest on them. Only as Jesus offers himself for us and to us, only as he is at our service, only as our sustenance, are we ready for our sacrifice which is praise and trust, love and hope.

So, all this follows: we are to pray, which is to offer nothing but ourselves. We are to forgive, which is to send our enemies for the blessing we long for. We are to love our neighbors, which is to offer the charity of Christ who offers himself for them. We are to care and gather and make and use with love and enjoy, which is to offer creation. We are to die daily, which is to receive much for offering little. And we are to die finally, which is to offer all at a rush, as the diver springs from the cliff.

Amen.