I arrived early for lunch with a college student home on Christmas break. The hostess seated me at a table in the back of the restaurant near the kitchen.
I sipped a glass of water and watched the servers emerge from the kitchen door, their arms loaded with trays of food. They walked quickly to the waiting diners at tables nearby. A sign hung at the top of the door jamb, facing inward toward the kitchen, its black letters visible from the restaurant side.
It took a few seconds to decipher the reversed letters: “Are Your Hands Full?” The sign reminded servers to carry as much as they can to minimize trips. Empty hands are inefficient.
I visit the elderly in our congregation and see the problems of aging. Some have hands full caring for spouses with dementia or congestive heart failure and don’t know a moment’s rest. Others suffer the opposite dilemma in assisted living facilities: with no need to cook, clean, repair or perform chores, their hands lie empty and idle in their laps. They itch for something to do.
When the prophet Simeon took the Christ child in his arms, his hands were full, and when he said to Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul too,” her hands were empty.
You have created a powerful image here, with its own symbolism in addition to the cryptic symbolism in Luke.
So many other passages have precedents in the Old Testament, that I suspect this one does too, but I cannot find one.
The meaning of the whole sentence is cryptic, even for translators.
I don’t know whether to trust the association some translators and exegetes and traditions make between the sword piercing her soul and sorrow.
Meanwhile, the image of the empty hands is haunting, and I imagine I will always see that image when I read those words in Luke.
A connection can be made here with existentialist idea that a life must be lived intensely, or it is not life at all. The empty hands symbolize, in that context, the awareness of the problem of life. It might be said that Jesus affirmed that awareness, and solved the problem – except, except that a sword still pierces our souls and our empty hands ache.