December 23th readings: Psalm 150 and Luke 2:33-40

Luke 2:36-38: There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Anna saw so much during more than sixty years of solitude. Pompey conquered Judea around the time her husband died, and her city was thereafter occupied by legions of Roman soldiers. She had already been alone for more than a decade when a middle-aged Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, forever changing the politics and alliances of the western world. Thirty years later, she watched as a puppet “king” launched a major initiative to rebuild Jerusalem’s temple.

What did Anna make of all the changes that took place during her long loneliness? All we know of her is that by the time she was an octogenarian, she never left the temple. I imagine this was not because she was in awe of Herod’s pet project, but rather because the temple had become the home of her rituals of praying and fasting. Does this perhaps suggest an insight into where her beloved city’s true hope lay? Not in governors and emperors, but in God’s faithfulness, and in the long-ago promised redemption?

Anna, who knew something about solitude, longed for nothing so much as the coming of Jerusalem’s true friend, the companion from God for whom she and so many others had been waiting. What is it that we are longing for?

Tony Baker