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Anna: A Wise Elderly Woman
Luke 2:21-40A group of travelers were forced to wait on their plane, which was late due to another flight being canceled. The crowd grew more impatient as the time went on and on. Finally, one angry passenger pushed to the front of the line, slammed his ticket down and said, “I must be on this flight now and I must be in first class.” The flight attendant, trying to be nice said, “Sir, we will get to you as soon as possible, but you must wait in line like everyone else.” He quickly said, “Ma’am, do you have any idea who I am?” Without blinking an eye, she smiled, picked up her mike and said, “We have a passenger here at the gate WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to gate 17.”
When was the last time that you were forced to sit and wait on something? Did you know that if you lived on St. Paul Island in Alaska and got the urge for pizza it would take three days for the pizza to arrive? Personally, I can hardly stand waiting. I don’t do real well in doctor’s offices or Hospital Emergency Rooms. I’m just not a good “waiter.” But sometimes God makes us wait. Christmas is often associated with waiting.
Let me ask you some questions. Were you waiting for something this Christmas? Are you longing for anything? What were you expecting to receive? Were you looking forward to anything special this Christmas? One of the tougher truths of the Christian life is that God doesn't work according to our schedule, but according to His. Sometimes He doesn't appear to be working at all, but He is. Waiting for something good to come is hard…and not just for children. Adults can have a hard time waiting for good things to come as well.
This is the last message in our study of The Three Wise Women of Christmas. We’re focusing on a lady who waited a very long time for the first Christmas. Her name is Anna and she is A Wise Elderly Woman.
Let me introduce you to Anna. We need to begin with the fact that by the time the first Christmas arrived, Anna had already lived a very long time. Some Bible translators have gingerly handled their description of Anna's age by translating verse 36 as, "she was very advanced in her years greatly." They do this because it's not smart to refer to an elderly female as an "old lady" or an "old woman." Tact dictates you don’t ask a woman her age. The NIV sets tactfulness aside and just blurts out, "she was very old."
The reality is that Anna had been around a long time. Most scholars estimate her age anywhere between 84 and 105. That may seem like a wide range, so let me explain. The Greek in verse 37 is unclear. It could be translated as either, "she was a widow of 84 years" or "she was a widow for 84 years." If you opt for the second translation, calculating that if she’d married at the customary age of 13 or 14, and been married for 7 years and widowed for 84 years, that then adds up to 104 or 105. However you translate the Greek, at this time in her life Anna was very, very old, especially in her culture when fifty was considered a ripe old age.
Anna was also a widow and had been one for a long time. Widowhood has always been difficult, but in that day, it was particularly difficult. It virtually guaranteed a life of terrible poverty. That’s why in the days of the early church Paul urged young widows to remarry so that the church was not overly burdened with their support (1 Tim. 5:14). But for some reason, Anna never remarried; an unusual decision for someone in her situation to make back then. Some think her husband was the love of her life, so much so that she just couldn’t bring herself to share her life with another.
I tend to believe that she did this because God told her not to remarry. God gave her this command because there was an eternally significant purpose in her long widowhood. And Anna faithfully accepted this as part of God's plan and devoted her life to His service. She understood the principle Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 7:34 when he said, "An unmarried woman is concerned about the Lord's affairs: her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit."
Anna had led a very frugal, chaste, and sober life. She probably barely eked out a living by relying on charity or by supporting herself out of the meager remnants of her family's inheritance. And this leads me to point out the place she’d chosen for her home. Verse 37 says, "She never left the Temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying."
The Temple must have been a spectacular place to live because the Temple King Herod built in Jerusalem was the crown jewel of that city. While Herod was a cruel ruler, he was a very gifted builder. The Temple was one of his greatest architectural achievements. It was an awe-inspiring physical symbol of the one true God and the extraordinary nation He had established through Abraham and Isaac. It’s said that on a sunny day, the gold and the white stone of the Temple structure shone so brightly that it hurt one's eyes. In Anna's day it was also one of the world's busiest places. Armies of priests scurried around the temple campus each day attending to their various sacred tasks. Plus, throngs of pilgrims from all over the world traipsed about, eager to see the spectacle and to worship the Lord.
Apparently Anna lived on the Temple grounds, perhaps in one of the apartments in the outer courts that we read about in Nehemiah 13. These were very simple, modest rooms, meant to be used as temporary dwelling places for priests, like Zechariah, who lived on the Temple grounds while doing their two weeks annual service. Perhaps due to her decades of faithfulness to the Lord, Temple officials had given Anna one of these small chambers. Maybe in the beginning she even earned her keep by serving as a caretaker of sorts, but in our text for today she’d have been too old for that task. Apparently, once she reached this stage in life, the Temple officials must have given her the chamber to live in for life to reward her for her faithful labors over the years.
Just an aside here, one thing we can learn from Anna is the importance of orienting our lives around the local church. Now I'm not saying that we should actually live at church. But what I am saying is that the local church should be the anchor of our busy schedules in life. The church should be the "hub of our wheel" if you know what I mean. A major part of our lives should revolve around our involvement in our church. After all, this church is where we find and cultivate friendships with other believers, true friends that stick closer than a brother. This is where we bring our children so that the Christian principles we teach them at home are reinforced by the labors of Sunday school teachers, Children’s Church workers and Midweek ministry leaders. This is where we bring our teens in the hopes that they will find peers who encourage them to grow spiritually. This place is where we’re equipped for ministry. An important part of "life," an essential part of life, happens here at church. Church should not be an appendage the believer somehow fits in.
Regular church attendance is related to a longer life, according to a report in the journal, Health Psychology. Previous research has suggested that religious involvement may reduce the risk of health problems, such as high blood pressure or heart disease. It’s not clear why religion may contribute to longevity, but it may be because religious people lead a healthier lifestyle in general compared with those who are not religiously active
Scientists, Daniel Hungerman of the University of Notre Dame and Jonathan Gruber of MIT, did research and found that when states dropped their blue laws, remember those old laws that once banned Sunday commerce, laws that once reflected a culture that encouraged church attendance? Their study showed that when states dropped blue laws, church attendance dipped by 15% among those who had been going weekly but that's not all. Their research also showed that churchgoers became as likely as non-attendees to use drugs, and the gap between the two groups' heavy-drinking rates closed sharply. Daniel Hungerman wisely concluded, "What you do on Sunday morning could make a big difference in how you spend Saturday night." And it can. Anna's example serves to remind us of this important principle of life. Friend, if you're not an active member of this church, become one! Anchor your life here and you and your family will be better equipped to withstand the inevitable storms of life!
Anna's dedication to Temple life shows us another way she sets a good example for us in that it indicates she didn't run from God when she ran into the unfairness of life. When she remained childless and then when her young husband died, she didn't respond to the tough times of life by running from God but rather to Him. She didn’t become bitter but better.
Eugenia Price writes, "Anna permitted her heartbreak to force her to God. Those of us who have faced tragedy of any kind, particularly those of you who are widows, know that nothing heals the wounds like being consciously with God." Anna didn't succumb to the loneliness or a growing sense of futility and despair. She could have, but she didn't. Instead Anna devoted herself to God. She devoted herself to loving Him, worshiping Him, spending time in His presence.
That leads to one more observation I want you to note about Anna. She was known as a prophetess. She was someone who was known for the way she listened to God's still small voice, someone He used to proclaim His Word to others, someone who, like Mary, believed God's promises.
As the decades passed, Anna's unwavering faithfulness and devotion to God gradually earned her the respect of the Temple community. It became very obvious that this elderly woman had a very special relationship with God. Anna was recognized as a woman of wisdom and understanding so much so that she was given the rare distinction of being referred to as a prophetess of God. If my research is correct, only a handful of women in the Bible were given this title. That says a lot about Anna's spiritual maturity. People noticed her close relationship with God.
According to Luke’s record, when Jesus was about six weeks old, Joseph and Mary brought Him to the temple to observe two ceremonies of the Hebrew faith. One was the Redemption of the First Born. During this ceremony parents acknowledged that every firstborn male belonged to the Lord. In this ceremony parents in essence bought back or "redeemed" their son from God for the price of five shekels. Think of it! They redeemed the Redeemer! The second was the purification of Mary. In this ceremony a sacrifice was offered for the cleansing of the sins of the mother. Mary and Joseph brought two turtledoves or pigeons, an offering indicative of the fact that they were very poor. Please note too the fact that Mary did this shows that she realized she was a sinner just like every other human being and in need of a Redeemer, in need of cleansing as much as anyone else. It’s ironic too that she paid the price for her purification while holding in her arms the Son of God who would one day pay the ultimate price of the ultimate sacrifice so that she and all who would receive Him would receive the ultimate cleansing.
In her decades of service at the Temple, I'm sure Anna had seen thousands of these ceremonies. But when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus she knew it was the Messiah. Somehow amidst the throngs of people who were on the sprawling Temple campus that day she "happened" to walk by this young couple. Perhaps as she did, she heard her old friend Simeon's response that Luke records for us in verses 25-35. It’s more likely she heard God's familiar still small voice. As verse 38 says, "Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem."
Anna is only mentioned in these three verses from Luke's gospel. We never hear anything about her again, even in extra-Biblical literature. This is it! She pops up for this brief moment and then she’s gone. But her brief moment in the spotlight earns my admiration. I look up to this particular wise woman of Christmas because even though she was "very advanced in her years greatly" she didn't act that way. Anna didn't seem old and feeble. Let me share three reasons why I believe this.1. Anna had excellent spiritual vision. Thousands of priests were running around doing God's business, yet only Anna and Simeon, two ancient relics that most temple officials probably thought a bit odd, only they saw the Messiah of God when He arrived. Why? Why did these two old people see what others missed? It wasn't that other people in Israel weren't looking for a Messiah. They were, but their spiritual eyesight wasn't as sharp as Anna's because they were looking for the wrong kind of deliverer.
For example, the Pharisees believed a great celestial champion would some day come to earth. He would be another king of David's line who would revive all the glories of the past and free them from Roman bondage and restore the people of Israel as the true masters of the world. The Essenes, the teachers of that day, were looking for someone like Moses to come and teach and enforce the law.
But there were also a small group of visionary Hebrews who were known as “the quiet in the land.” They had no dreams of violence or of power and of armies with banners or of some great messianic lawgiver. They knew that Isaiah had prophesied the Messiah would be a suffering servant who would “take our infirmities and sorrows upon Himself" and that He would be "pierced for our transgressions, for our iniquities, oppressed and afflicted, led like a lamb to the slaughter, assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in His death though He had done no violence nor was any deceit in His mouth." These “quiet ones” devoted their lives to the study of the Scriptures, constant prayer and quiet watchfulness until the true Messiah would come. They believed and clung to God's promise in Proverbs 8:17 when He said, "those who diligently seek Me will find Me." Simeon and Anna were members of this group of Godly people. They put their hope in the kind of Messiah that Scripture foretold, not a ruler of the people of Israel but a redeemer of all mankind.
By the way, the word in Anna's speech that is used here in verse 38 for "redemption" means "to buy again" and is found throughout Scripture. It’s primarily used to describe the act of freeing a slave. There are various Greek words used in Scripture to depict redemption. One term used is "agorazo" meaning "to be bought in the marketplace." During the days of the early church there were about 60 million slaves in the Roman Empire, so about two thirds of the entire population would have understood this word first hand. People were taken to a slave market and auctioned off in the marketplace. Most of them lived their whole lives in bondage.
There’s another word for "redemption." It's "exagorazo." This is the word used in verse 38. It means "to be bought out of the marketplace...never to be sold there again." This is the kind of redemption Anna was talking about in her description of Jesus' life work. Her life-long study of the Scriptures empowered by nearly a century of prayer and fasting had enabled her to see that the people redeemed by the Messiah would be bought out of slavery to sin never to be sold into it again. They would be free indeed! When the true Messiah showed up, her excellent eyesight enabled her to see Him and recognize Him. She put her hope in the right kind of Messiah. She saw what others missed due to their spiritual myopia.
As we come to the end of this Christmas Season, let me ask you, how "young" are your spiritual eyes? Do you have a close relationship with God, one that’s matured through prayer and Bible study so that you’re able to see Him at work and join Him in it? Or are your spiritual eyes "old" so that you miss out on the joy of making an eternal difference in this world?2. Anna had a very young heart. Like Anna, all of us age physically. I'm sure she had all the aches and pains that come with old age. I don't want to rub that particular uncomfortable fact in too much, but you "mature" adults out there know what I'm talking about. And don't tune me out if you're young, because you won't be young forever! If you're my age or older then you know there was a time when we were young and it seemed we’d always be that way, but then certain things in life began to happen that reminded us that we’re not immortal.
In her poem "Mid-life Crisis" Penny Laubenthal refers to this. She writes, “Everyone I know is thirty-five. Donna in my writing class is thirty-five, Melissa the artist, is thirty-five. Last night when I lay sleepin, someone slipped in and scribbled lines all over my face, stuck bags under my eyes, packed cellulite on my thighs This morning my mother's hand reached to get my toothbrush. An unfamiliar face stared back at me from the vanity. Someone else's stomach protruded from beneath my belt. The kudzu of middle age has overtaken me. Cholesterol clogs my arteries like milfoil on the Tennessee River. Yesterday I was thirty-five. Today I am forty-five. I had intended to age elegantly...grow lean like Louis Nevelson, craggy like O'Keeffe, not squat like Gertrude Stein. Tomorrow I am going to buy a new mirror, have my hair dyed, phone for a face lift. Meanwhile I am going to claim that my children belong to my husband from a former marriage. And I am going to lie, shamelessly about my age; I am going to say, I am only thirty five." We can lie about our age all we want but it won't stop our bodies from growing older and beginning to break down, including our mental faculties, faculties that begin to fail as the decades fly by, such that we experience what is referred to as "senior moments" when for the life of us we can't remember something.
Maybe you heard about the two couples who’d been friends for years. They were taking a break from their weekly card game. The wives were in the kitchen, while the men stayed out in the den. One man said: "Joe, you played a great game tonight. I usually have to remind you what cards have been played, but tonight I didn't have to." "Well that's because I went to memory school" said Joe. "Really?" his friend asked. "What's the name of that school?" Joe thought for a minute and said, "Let me see. Umm...uh...what do you call that flower that's red, with thorns on the stem?" "A rose?" "Yes! That's it!" Then he turned toward the kitchen and said, "Hey Rose! What was the name of that memory school I went to?"
We all age and grow old physically, but our "hearts," our attitudes, our mind set doesn't have to! We don't stop living just because our bodies start to decline. Remember, we have eternal souls. Youth is an attitude of the heart, not a condition of the body. When he was seventy-eight General Douglas MacArthur said, "Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul."
Anna is someone who understood this principle. In spite of the advanced age of her body, her heart was very young, ready and willing for any new adventure God sent her way! She lived out 2 Cor. 4:16, "We do not lose heart, though our outer man is decaying, because our inner man is being renewed day by day." And it is renewed day by day as we experience the adventure of joining God in His great work.
The world defines the "prime of life" far differently from the way God does. The world sees it as that season when we’re most physically strong and mentally acute. But God sees it as that season when we are most spiritually strong and intellectually humbled. The world considers us in our prime when we have the greatest fame with others. The Bible sees it as when we most want to please God. The world defines our prime as when we are in the best position to build our own empire. Scripture defines it as when we are most focused on advancing the Kingdom of God, most sensitive to the leading of God's Spirit, as Anna certainly was. She was definitely in her prime and so was old Simeon! They were both very young at heart. Because they were, at a time when most people considered them candidates for a rest home, God chose them to do one of the most important tasks ever performed in history. With a spiritual power born by years of cultivation, this elderly pair passed on a blessing that in a sense primed the pump of Jesus' earthly mission. They named the Gift that Jesus was, equipped His parents for what lay ahead, and spoke about the child to all who were looking for redemption. As David Jeremiah writes, "For years people would relive this remarkable day at the Temple, the day the Messiah arrived. But the joyful message came through channels no one expected, not through the priests or the crowd favorites but through two old, forgotten relics of good, old-time religion."
Recently, I came across a statement that reminds me of Anna and her friend Simeon: "Beautiful young people are acts of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art." Let me ask you. How healthy is your heart? Would people say you are in the prime of life spiritually, or past it?
On November 18, 1995, Israeli violinist Itzhak Perlman came out on stage at New York's Lincoln Center-and just getting on stage is no small matter for him. Stricken with polio as a child, Perlman wears braces on both legs and walks with two crutches. Just seeing him come across the stage is a sight you don't forget. He moves painfully, but with dignity, until he gets to his chair. He sits down slowly, lays his crutches aside, undoes the clasps on his braces, tucks one foot back and stretches the other forward. Then he reaches down, picks up his violin, notches it under his chin, nods to the maestro, and begins to play. On this particular occasion, however, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first stanza, a string on Perlman's violin broke. You could hear it snap, going off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. People who were there that night later said: "We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches, and limp his way off stage or else wait for someone to bring him another [string or violin]."
But the old master didn't do that. Instead, he paused for a moment, closed his eyes, and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra recommenced, and he joined them where he'd left off. He played with a passion, power, and purity like that audience had never heard before. Of course, all of them knew that it's impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. But that night, that player refused to know that. Someone commented, "You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was re-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them they had never made before." When Perlman finished there was an awesome silence in the room and then suddenly, the audience exploded to its feet. Another individual present that day said, "We were all screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done." Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet the audience, and then said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone: "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."
Let me ask those of us who are approaching or who even now are in the last quarter of our lives. How are you using what you have left? And those of you who are still young physically don't tune me out because before you know it you'll be past your 50th birthday, or your 60th, or your 70th. As I said, back when we were all about five minutes younger than we are now, we all age! Even now, the end of physical life is coming very quickly. We need to remember that others will not remember how we ran the race of life, as much as they will how we finished it! We must remember that as Isaiah 40:30-31 says, "Even youths grow weary and tired and vigorous young men stumble badly, but those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength... they will mount up with wings like eagles... they will run and not get weary. They will walk and not faint." We keep our hearts young...we stay in our prime...as long as, like Anna, we wait on the Lord and rely on His strength and direction!3. Anna was in a hurry about what mattered. As I said a moment ago, once she saw Jesus she didn't stop going to people and telling them that the Messiah-the long-awaited Redeemer-had finally come. Verse 38 says, "She talked about Jesus to everyone who had been waiting for the promised King to come and deliver Jerusalem." I bet that like Santa, Anna had been keeping a list, a list of people whom she considered to be fellow waiters in their prime, people like herself with great eyesight and young hearts who had been looking for and longing for the true Messiah. As soon as she got done with Simeon and Mary and Joseph and the baby she went and found her people and told all those receptive people about what she had just seen.
But she hurried on. She didn’t stop with the people on her list. The verb for "talked" in verse 38 denotes continuous action. From that moment until the day she drew her final breath Anna could be seen rushing around the temple buttonholing people left and right, talking non-stop about what she’d seen. And I think people listened. I mean, if she had been twenty Anna's words might have been easily dismissed as the illusion of idealistic youth. But at 84 or 104 Anna was past all that. Her lifetime of faithful devotion could not be disregarded. Her spiritual insight and wisdom could not be denied. Now she had an audience and it was her time to speak. Her testimony was not unlike that of the psalmist who wrote: "But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise You more and more! My mouth will tell of Your righteousness, of your salvation all day long. Since my youth O God, You have taught me, and to this day I declare Your marvelous deeds. Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare Your power to the next generation, Your might to all who are to come" (Ps. 71:14-15). Friend, Are you in a hurry about what’s important? Regardless of your physical age, are you ready and raring to tell anyone who will listen about the love of Jesus? Isaiah 52:7 tells us that no matter how old and decrepit the body may look, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation!"Conclusion: There are many ways Anna’s life applies to us. The first is as a reminder of what really matters in life. What ultimately mattered in Anna’s life was not marriage or family or children, but faithfulness to God. The seemingly unproductive activities of prayer and fasting, proclamation and praise was, and still is, most important. The early church devoted itself to such activities. The Apostles made prayer and the proclamation of God’s Word the priority of their ministry. The coming of the kingdom of God was the one great hope, the one great motivation, the one great occupation of these two saints, and it should be ours as well. Our Lord taught us that we should pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). This is not to say that everyone should attempt to imitate Anna. But her highest priority was loving and serving God.
How eager are you to see the Messiah “face to face”? How do you confront the inevitability of death? Does life hold for you one single, dominating purpose? For the Christian, the Lord Jesus Christ is the focal point of life, the governing principle and priority of life. If you’ve not trusted in Him as God’s Messiah, I urge you to heed the testimony of Anna and to trust in Jesus Christ as God’s Messiah, the One who came to save all who would call upon Him, and to trust Him as God’s only means of salvation, by bearing your punishment on the cross of Calvary, and by rising from the dead.
The ageing Christian should grow old with God in mind, with all the enthusiasm that he/she can muster! With a great hope of heaven! We’re all growing older! Perhaps you’re young now, but one day, barring some tragic circumstance, you will be old too. Eccles. 12:1 says: “Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth; before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, "I have no pleasure in them." Perhaps you are old. Have you given in to the temptations of old age? Given up on spiritual efforts? Are you coasting into eternity? Absorbed with yourself in your later years. Let’s not give up one second of serving God! Jesus urged us to, “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). Friend, are you maturing in the Lord or are you just getting older?
