There was a prophetess, too, Anna the
daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was well on in years. Her days
of girlhood over, she had been married for seven years 37before
becoming a widow. She was now eighty-four years old and never left the Temple,
serving God night and day with fasting and prayer. 38She
came up just at that moment and began to praise God; and she spoke of the child
to all who looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem.
1. Anna shows
that God works through folks that society marginalizes. She was a woman, and women
had low status in that day. See Three Blessings: Why does the daily liturgy thank God for
not making you a Gentile, slave, or a woman?
She does not appear to have had
children, and “barren” women had lower status than women generally. She was a
widow, one of the most vulnerable of women. See
Wisdom Principles: Caring for
the Weak & Vulnerable. She was old. See Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 .
She came from the tribe of Asher, a tribe that was not particularly prominent
in its prime, and that had been decimated by the Assyrian exile. Yet God used
her powerfully, both at that time (to encourage Mary & Joseph) and in the
millennia since then (to encourage those who have read/heard of her actions).
2. Although
Anna performed an extraordinary service, it came out of her faithfulness in the
ordinary.
A. She was a
very credible witness—the core of what she was called to do here—because of her
ongoing, long running, devotion to God. That was her “ordinary.” That dynamic
is further explored in Preliminary Work:
What we can learn from Joseph and Daniel.
B. She was in a
position to do this particular service, the extraordinary thing we remember her
for, because she was faithfully going about her ordinary vocation on this
particular day.
C. I doubt that
Anna knew this extraordinary event was going to happen on this particular day.
Yet God broke into what she probably expected to be an ordinary day to bring
about the extraordinary event described here.
D. The
ordinariness that this extraordinary event came out of becomes more apparent
when we consider it in the context of our own lives. Given what Luke 2:25-35 tells us about Simeon, and Anna’s
own devotion, it’s likely that they knew each other, just like we know folks
“from church.” The language of verses
36 and 38 indicate that Anna was going about her normal routine when she came
upon Simeon’s interaction with the holy family. That lead to her extraordinary
interaction with them. In sum, the events we read about here are the result of
what we might describe as “bumping into someone at church.” It doesn’t get much
more ordinary than that.
3. This passage
illustrates two other principles that appear elsewhere in scripture:
A. Genesis 50:20 and Romans 8:28 tell us that God is able to being good out of
otherwise difficult situations. As discussed in point 1 above, Anna faced
multiple difficulties, but those difficulties likely produced her devotion to
God and hence her being in the position to deliver the blessings described in
that point.
B. Scripture
tells us that a fact can be reliably established by the testimony of two witnesses.
See e.g. Deuteronomy 17:6, Deuteronomy
19:15, Matthew 18:6. Verses 36 and 38 tell us that Anna was independently
testifying to Jesus’ status at the same time Simeon was, providing that evidentiary support for that status.
Other meditations on Jesus’ nativity are collected at What We Can Learn from Jesus' Nativity: The Annunciation through Simeon & Anna
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