Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation which you prepared in sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.” There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Panuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer. And coming forward at that very time, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem. (Luke 2.25-32, 36-38)
In 1989, the popular humorist and syndicated writer Erma Bombeck published a book that she entitled “I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I want to Go to Boise,” an extraordinary book based on the three years that she spent walking, talking, and living with families who had children with cancer. Invited by the Director of Camp Sunrise to visit the facility, a camp specifically for children with cancer in Northern Arizona, Bombeck agreed, that invitation eventually resulting in her writing a book about her experiences, all the profits from it going to the American Cancer Society.
The book told the story of these children who, as Bombeck came to see, were kids that accepted the situation and chose to see cancer as an unwelcome visitor in their lives. But it wasn’t who they were. They were determined to be treated the same as everyone else. The curious title originated in a conversation that Bombeck had with a boy at the camp who had told her that his three wishes were to grow hair, to grow up, and to go to Boise, leading her to believe there was something about Boise that no one else knew.
At one point in the book, Bombeck examined the word hope, a word that she said the children often used in their conversations. Reflecting on the word, she asked herself, “What does it look like, feel like, smell like?” Referring to a session that a social worker at the camp had held with the children in which they were asked to describe hope, Bombeck borrowed the words of the children, writing, “When it talks, you’re the only one who can hear it.” And, “Hope raises its voice sometimes. It has to talk louder than fear.” And, “Occasionally, hope is shy and likes to hide. Sometimes you can coax it to come to you, but most of the time you have to be patient and wait. Then it will come to you.”
Their wisdom well beyond their years, the children also spoke of hope in these ways. “If you don’t take good care of it, it can die.” “It will come to you only when you need it.” “It’s an animal you can’t buy or cage. You have to keep looking till you find it.” Both heartwarming and heartbreaking, the book caused readers to laugh out loud at times and, at other times, to cry as tears fell down their cheeks.
The question about hope that Bombeck asked is a good one. What does it look like, feel like, smell like? It is a question that almost everybody asks at some point in his or her life, especially at the low points when everything seems hopeless. Desperate for something to hold onto, anything to anchor oneself, a person grabs onto hope like a drowning swimmer reaching for the lifebuoy thrown to him or her, the floatie donut becoming the only divider between life and death.
If we want to know what hope looked like for the evangelist Luke, then all we have to do is take a moment to look at the two figures that he introduces to us in the selection from his sacred text that we have on this Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, commonly called Holy Family Sunday because of its traditional focus on some aspect of the Holy Family of Nazareth.
As we see in these few verses, Luke concludes his infancy narrative, the name given to the first two chapters of his gospel, with the story of Joseph and Mary making an offering in the Temple in Jerusalem in fulfillment of the Mosaic Law that called for such a sacrifice upon the birth of a firstborn son. The ritual was rooted in the final plague in Egypt when the Angel of Death struck dead the firstborn of the Egyptians, but spared the firstborn of the Hebrew slaves, passing by their doorpost that had been marked with the blood of a lamb.
It is while Joseph and Mary are in the Temple that they come face to face with two figures that only appear in Luke’s narrative. Known as Simeon and Anna, this pair becomes the personification of hope for Luke. (We may want to note here that Luke, unlike the other gospel writers, often uses a pair of male and female persons in his gospel, in this way making certain that women also are included as recipients of the good news.)
First, he tells us of Simeon, described as “righteous and devout” who has “awaited the consolation of Israel.” He is an old man, although his age is not told us, but in his prayer to the Most High God while holding the newborn child Jesus in his arms he states that he can now go in peace, having been promised by God that he would not see death “before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.”
Simultaneous with the encounter with Simeon, a woman called Anna approaches Joseph and Mary and she also “gives thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.” Apparently, Luke had not been schooled in the notion that one never tells the age of a woman because he doesn’t hesitate to tell us that Anna “was advanced in years, having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.”
That both of these figures are old is important because they are the living personification of the whole people of Israel who lived in the constant hope of the coming of the Messiah and who had waited for centuries for this promise to be fulfilled. Both of them “advanced in years,” their bodies and their spirits were sustained by the hope that one day the Messiah would grace the world with his presence.
Luke uses the same word “awaiting” when sharing the stories of these two significant persons. He says that Simeon “awaited the consolation of Israel” and that Anna spoke about the child to “all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.” The use of the word “awaiting” alerts us to the fact that hope believes in the future while it must survive in the present.
Simeon, believing he would not die until his eyes had seen the Messiah, waited as the years piled atop one another, always looking to that future day when he finally would gaze upon the face of the Redeemer, after which he could go to his grave in peace, certain that the promise had been fulfilled and that the future day of redemption had finally arrived.
As one writer said of the aged Simeon, “Surely, over the years, he had prayed a thousand prayers, hoped a thousand hopes, and suffered a thousand disappointments, but, finally, his dream was realized, and he could die in peace because God had rewarded his waiting.” His days of waiting had ended and his hopes had been shown solid, not fool’s gold as many others had goaded him as he kept looking to a future day, a better day.
Similarly, Anna, sustained by prayer and by fasting and by daily presence in the Temple, becomes the exemplum of those in Israel who awaited the redemption of Jerusalem, no longer a young woman full of fanciful dreams, but now an old woman whose dreams were replaced with hope, a woman who would not allow despair or despondency to destroy her hope for a better tomorrow as promised by the prophets of old.
Once described by the scripture scholar William Barclay as “old but never ceased to cope, never ceased to work, and never ceased to pray,” Anna becomes proof of a promise fulfilled after years of waiting, her spirit strengthened by a relentless hope that beat within her chest as steady as the heartbeat that sustained her body.
For many of us, the figures of Simeon and Anna are not just the stuff of bedtime stories or sweet lullabies. They are real-life people who inspire us to hold on, to hold fast, and to hope because we are Simeon and we are Anna, people whose today is weighted down with worry, with wariness, and with weariness, but people who await a tomorrow when we will see again right, might, and light.
But, like Simeon and Anna, it is a long wait for us as it was for them, no easy answers found and no quick solutions offered. So, we keep vigil with these two aged figures, our eyes focused on the possibility and the promise of a more favorable tomorrow while we endure the pain and the privations of today. We stand alongside them as we also pray, petition, and appeal to a higher power to show us the face of the newborn child in the Temple.
So, as the stories of Simeon and Anna are put before us today, we welcome them into our homes and into our hearts as they become our partners in hope. And as any of us who has stared into the abyss of hopelessness knows, we need partners, people who stand before us, stand with us, and stand for us. Hope almost always requires partnerships.
And, as we await a better tomorrow, we also can become partners to those who find themselves even more weakened and wearied than we are, providing them with possibilities and promises that they seem unable to find or fathom, allowing them to borrow a measure of our hope as they endure the day ahead, awaiting relief and restoration that can only come tomorrow, however near or far that day is into the future.
In walking beside those children who suffered from cancer, Bombeck said she learned that while their little bodies housed a full-blow major catastrophic disease they always remained children of hope. As she wrote, “Children exist on a diet of optimism: The rain is always going to stop just before the Little League game begins. The lost library book will always turn up just before it is due. An Act of God will close the school when the term paper isn’t finished.”
What Luke tells us today is that it is not only children that hold onto hope. He reminds us that old people worn out by the many years and whipped by the winds of life can also be hopeful. If the story of Simeon and Anna tells us anything, it is that hope will keep us afloat until we can make a soft landing, however long we have to wait.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 