Luke 2

³⁶ And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, ³⁷ and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. ³⁸ And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

I will never forget when it happened. It scared me a little at first. Jarred me.

I was sitting at the gate in the airport in Haiti. The room was packed. It was hot. I was tense. I wanted to go home.

We had gotten lost, me and the three guys I was with, in the city the night before.

It was night. It was raining. We were lost.

Curious people had started gathering around the car with the foreigners in it. I was uneasy. I am ashamed to say that I even had a few hard words with the young man leading our trip. He had insisted on leaving our lodgings in another town and trying to get new lodgings in the city the night before we flew out. He wanted to be closer to the airport so we would not have to get up so early the next morning. He did not seem to know where we were going. I told him that he had acted irresponsibly and put us in harm’s way. I told him that if he was going to lead mission trips he needed to think before making impulsive, dangerous decisions. I am not normally a scared person, but I did not like the situation we were in.

Then the man at the hotel found us and we followed him up the hill to his place.

The next morning, we went to the airport. Again: cramped, busy, hot. I and the three other pastors from the states were in line. Then, we were pulled from the line. The guards seemed to be studying us, studying one of us in particular. They took us into a small room and began to ask lots and lots of questions.

This…I did not like this. Why were they questioning us? Why were they questioning the one pastor in particular. Then it hit me. His t-shirt. He was wearing a red t-shirt. That is the first thing. And there was one word across the front of his shirt: “Revolution.” The “t” was a cross. It was a Christian t-shirt. But it was a red t-shirt with the word “Revolution” across the front.

A little bit of advice: There are lots of countries where you really do not need to wear a red t-shirt with the word “Revolution” across the front.

I tried to relax. I tried to chat a bit with one of the security guards. But inside I was thinking one thing: “You should not have worn that shirt. Why did you were that shirt?” The one with the word “Revolution.” The one with the cross for the “t.”

They let us go and then we went to the gate, to the gathering area, to the hot, cramped, room. And we waited for our plane.

Then it happened. The thing that really caught me off guard.

She stood up. A Haitian woman. She stood up and very loudly said to the room, “Brothers and sisters, listen to me. If you do not know Jesus, you need to accept Him! You need to accept Him today! Do not wait! If you do not accept Jesus, you will die and go to hell without Him! If you accept Jesus, you will go to Heaven and live with Him! Do not wait! You must repent! You must be born again! You must be saved, or you will be lost, lost forever!”

And that was that. She sat down. And the room was silent for a moment, and then it was back to normal: the chatter, the talking, the waiting, the sweating.

I wanted my friend to remove his t-shirt, the one that was red, that had the word “Revolution” on it, the one where the letter “t” was the cross. That t-shirt might could have landed us in trouble there.

But this woman…this woman seemed not to care about trouble. This woman seemed to want a revolution. And she knew that the revolution started with Jesus and His cross. And she shouted it over that room. Shouted it at all of us.

And it was one of the most wonderful things I have ever seen.

That woman of courage.

That woman of boldness.

That woman who wanted a revolution that started with Jesus.

I would like to talk to you about Anna the prophetess.

Anna was old and was acquainted with loss.

Who was this Anna? The Bible tells us some most interesting information about her.

³⁶ And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, ³⁷ and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. ³⁸ And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

How fascinating. A woman, a widow, a prophetess. She was elderly. The language surrounding her age is actually not that clear. She was either eight-four years old in all or she lived for eighty-four years after being married for seven years to her husband. Again, the Greek is not quite clear which is the case. But she is elderly either way. And she was extremely devoted to the Lord. “She did not depart the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.”

My goodness! What an absolutely fascinating person! We do not hear a lot about Anna the prophetess, but we should.

Many in the early church could not help but see in Anna’s stated age and her status as a widow certain spiritual and prophetic realities.

The Venerable Bede, for instance, believed that, “In a mystical sense Anna stands for the church, which in this present world is as it were widowed by the death of her Spouse.”[1] Ah, so just as the Bridegroom, Jesus, laid down his life, so, too, Anna’s spouse had died. This is what Bede—that English monk from the 8^th century—saw there: a type of Jesus and His church (awaiting His return) and Anna and her deceased husband.

Before Bede, in the third century, the church father Origen seemed to see the order of creation in the fact that two people in Luke 2 approach and proclaim the baby Jesus: first, Simeon, and secondly, Anna. “How beautiful the order is!”[2]wrote Origen. Origen seems to have seen in that order the order of creation itself: first, Adam, and then, Eve. So, first, Simeon, and then, Anna.

More than one of the church fathers thought the number mentioned here was significant: eighty-four years (again, either eighty-four years of age or eighty-four years a widow after her husband’s passing). Both the Venerable Bede and Ambrose of Milan pointed out that eighty-four is seven times twelve. Seven and twelve are both important numbers in scripture and, as Ambrose pointed out, “seemed to imply a number that is sacred.”[3] Perhaps. Maybe so.

Another idea about Anna’s age is intriguing. Craig Keener explains:

One famous widow in Jewish tradition, Judith, was said to have lived as a widow till her death at 105. If one adds the two numbers given in the text here, seven and eighty-four (taking eighty-four as the length of Anna’s widowhood rather than her age), and she was married at the common age of fourteen, one could see her as about 105 also. But the number may refer to her age; or Luke might mean her age but retain ambiguity to allow an allusion to Judith.[4]

This is an intriguing idea! The apocryphal Book of Judith tells us that Judith was a widow who saved Jerusalem by getting dressed up, visiting the tent of an invading Assyrian general named Holofernes, getting him rip-roaring drunk, cutting his head off with a sword, then returning to her home, hoisting the head of Holofernes up, and proclaiming the salvation of the people of God! In other words, some think Luke provides her age in order to connect Anna with Judith: both were widows who proclaimed salvation for the people of God, but, of course, in very different ways.

These are really fascinating theories, and maybe there is something to that. Numerology really can tempt us to dive right in, no? But let me just propose one more theory: Matthew says Anna was eighty-four because she was…well…eighty-four!

Either way, it is amazing how curious people are about this elderly, widowed, prophetess!

She knew loss. She had buried a husband. But she found something in her loss: a radical devotion to God!

Anna waited before her God but did not waste her waiting.

We see Anna waiting, but she does not waste her waiting. Instead:

³⁷ …She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.

There are, in fact, four qualities listed here:

• Anna “did not depart from the temple.”
• Anna “worshiped.”
• Anna fasted.
• Anna prayed.

Anna was wholly devoted to God. She had lost her earthly love and then discovered a greater love.

Anna was not an aesthetic stuck in a cycle of self-mortification. No, her presence in the temple, her worship, her fasting, her prayer: these were joyful acts of love.

She had been united to her husband for seven years. She was now united wholly to God.

And as she stayed in the temple and worship and fasted and prayed, something happened: God took hold of her heart and God shaped her hopes and desires. To the point that, when we meet her here, Anna simply wants to see the Lord, be with the Lord. And she wanted to meet the Lord’s anointed, this one she had heard about, this one who was to come, the Messiah, this Savior of Israel.

Anna yearned to know more of God, yearned to see God, yearned to experience the fullness of God. And then, one day, it happened!

How about you? How about me? Do we yearn to see God? Do we devote ourselves to worship, to prayer, to fasting, to setting aside all worldly distractions so that we can hear God more fully and see God more clearly?

Anna met the one she was waiting for and then told everybody about Him!

In our text, God granted the deep desire of Anna’s heart. Listen:

³⁸ And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God…

Ah! What is this? “And coming up at that very hour…” What is “that very hour”? To answer that, we need to go back some verses, to verse 22 of Luke 2. There, we read:

²² And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord

But who are these people about whom verse 22 is talking? They are none other than the holy family: Joseph and Mary and Jesus. “They brought him up to Jerusalem.” Joseph and Mary had brought Jesus up to the temple. They are standing there, holding the baby Jesus in the temple. And Luke tells us that, first, a man named Simeon came up. And Simeon took Jesus and praised God and said that he could now depart in peace since he had seen the Lord!

And then, Anna!

³⁸ And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Anna the prophetess who never left the temple, who worshiped, who prayed, who fasted, who waited without wasting her waiting, who wanted to see God, who wanted to experience the fullness of God: Anna saw the baby Jesus and His parents.

And she:

• gave thanks to God;
• spoke of Jesus to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

She proclaimed, in other words, that salvation had come in this Jesus! That in Jesus, Jerusalem and the world saw its Savior!

She prophesied, Anna the prophetess! She proclaimed the coming of God’s anointed!

This was dangerous, no? Johann Spangenberg, the Lutheran theologian of the 16^th century, wondered about the effect of Anna’s prophesying about Jesus:

Did they then believer her? Not all of them. Most of the crowd thought that she was a crazy old lady for certain, because she was saying such outrageous and unheard-of things about a little baby. Indeed, who knows how it went afterwards with the pious Anna and the priest Simeon. If their age was not respected, then they did not of course remain alive, and then certainly what was done to other prophets was done to them.[5]

Here is a sobering thought! Were Simeon and Anna persecuted for their exaltation of Jesus there in the temple? Maybe. We do not know. We are not told. But this much is clear: There is no evidence at all that either Simeon or Anna was afraid to proclaim Jesus! They had waited to see Him and He had come! So tell the world they must!

Anna the prophetess! What a hero! What a saint of God! How amazing! How beautiful

Anna spoke “of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.” What a witness! When we put our own witness for Christ alongside Anna’s witness, how does it look? How does it fare? Are we bold to tell others about Jesus like Anna was? Do we proclaim? Do we point people to Jesus?

Anna did, and so we remember her example today.

John Mark Reynolds has written something beautiful and profound about Anna.

Anna never makes the Christmas special, because all she got to do was see God in the flesh. There were no angels and no need for a special effects budget. She was a prophetess, but not our exciting modern kind that predict Hitler’s rise like Nostradamus or Michael Jackson’s death like the psychics at the National Enquirer. Instead, she was the dull Biblical kind, who end up speaking for God…

Poor Anna!…

Anna had lost her husband quickly. She could have cursed God or remarried. Instead, she moved into God’s house and decided to pray and to fast. She lost earthly love and decided to gamble on heavenly love. She waited a long time, but one day love came.

She held the answer to her real needs in her arms. She saw God. She saw beauty. She saw goodness. She saw truth.

Anna was very old, but she hadn’t just been waiting. She had been getting ready by purging her body through fasts and learning the language of Heaven through prayer. When Jesus entered the Temple, she knew the God-Man and came to Him. Practice had prepared her for the Perfect and she prophesied.

She said “thank you” to God for showing up when He did not have to do so and pointed out to anyone who would listen that the real solution to their problems had arrived.

She did not make the secular history books and the religious leaders of the day ignored her. Evidently the only person who remembered her words was the mother of the baby who later told her doctor, a guy named Luke.

Anna became part of Christmas…

Anna persisted, spoke to God, and listened. She spoke for God and did this for decades. She was changed and made fit for salvation and God saved her. God delighted to save her and give her joy. He came, was held by her, the God who had held the cosmos on one finger.

Anna might have missed that moment by sitting home waiting for God to meet her pain at the loss of a husband or her pain in old age.

Anna was ready for Jesus. Will I be? Will you?[6]

Yes, she was ready…and she got to see the Lord!

Are you ready? Will you see the Lord?

Indeed, “every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.” Confess what? Jesus is Lord! We will all one day see Jesus. What will that meeting be for you? What will it be for me?

For Anna, it was joy indescribable. This elderly lady approached the baby Jesus with awe and wonder! And then she could not stop telling others about Him!

Thank God for Anna the prophetess!

Anna has shown us the way!

Anna has shown us what it looks like to love and proclaim Jesus!

 

[1] Just, Arthur A., Jr. Luke. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Gen. Ed. Thomas C. Oden. New Testament, Volume III (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p.51.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., p.51–52.

[4] Keener, Craig S. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. (IVP Bible Background Commentary Set) (p. 186). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

[5] Kreitzer, Beth. Luke. Reformation Commentary on Scripture. Gen. Ed. Timothy George. New Testament, Volume III (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), p.66.

[6] https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2009/12/the-women-of-advent-and-christmas-iii-anna-she-never-makes-the-christmas-special