This year, in Advent and Christmas, we are doing things a little bit differently - instead of a more traditional "sermon," each week our reflection is going to take the form of story-telling, told from the perspective of someone who was waiting for Jesus.
Sunday November 28, 2021
First Sunday of Advent
Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Scripture: Luke 2:22-40
I wonder what my parents were thinking when they named me Hannah, after our ancestor in faith, the mother of Samuel. She lived a bitter life, longing for a child, weeping and praying in the temple; and then when Samuel was born, the first Hannah handed him over as a young child so that he could live his whole life in the temple. Maybe by naming me after that first Hannah, my parents doomed me to a life in the temple.
Like Hannah’s son, I too am a prophet. I can’t control when God-whose-name-is-holy speaks to me, but I recognize their voice, and I share it with others.
When I was still a young girl, my parents arranged my marriage for me. He was a kind man, but oh, so old. He was looking for a nursemaid more than a wife. We lived together for seven years before he died. Like I said, he was kind, and he never abused me, but I was so busy caring for him, that I didn’t have time to speak to God-whose-name-is-holy. When he died, I was sad, but we were still only just getting to know one another.
And when he died, I was all alone in the world. My parents had died by that time so I couldn’t return to their house. My husband had no other family members. We had had no children. I was a widow in the truest sense of the word – I had nobody.
And so I went to sit outside the temple to beg for others to help me – after all, God-whose-name-is-holy tells us that we are to care for widows and orphans and foreigners living in our land.
But it wasn’t too many days before the temple officials recognized that I was a prophet, and so they offered me a small room to sleep in, in exchange for sharing the words of God-whose-name-is-holy with the people who came there to worship. From that day on, I never left the temple again.
It was a small room, and my routine didn’t vary from day to day, but at last I had time to spend in prayer and fasting.
The months slipped by, and then the years, each day the same as the day that came before. The years passed, more than 60 of them, and now I am an old woman.
The day that I’m telling you about, it began the same as every other day. There was nothing that made it any different in its beginning – there was nothing to tell me that this was going to be a special day. People were coming and going from the temple, offering their sacrifices, the way that the law of our people tells them that they are to do. And I was sitting in my room, surrounded by the heavy stone walls, with my heart open to hear whatever God-whose-name-is-holy wanted to tell me.
Suddenly, and I don’t know why, I felt a strong urge to leave my room and go out to the courtyard where the people were gathered to offer their sacrifices. I have lived long enough that I have learned not to ignore these urges.
When I got out to the courtyard, there was Simeon. I think that he was a prophet like I am. He didn’t live at the temple, but he was there almost every day, offering sacrifices and prayers. Rumour has it that God-whose-name-is-holy had told him that he would meet God’s Messiah before he died.
Well, Simeon is old, just as I am old, and he was running out of time to meet this Messiah, this one who was to be anointed, this one who was promised to lead us to freedom.
And this day, there was Simeon in the courtyard, and there was a commotion around him. He had walked over to a pair of young parents, and taken their child from their arms. This family was obviously here in the temple to offer their sacrifice of a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, as is expected for the birth of their firstborn son.
And Simeon took this young boy in his arms, and began to cry out: “Lord, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”
And then God-whose-name-is-holy spoke to me more clearly than I have ever heard the holy voice before, telling me that this infant was the Messiah – the one we were waiting for. And I began to sing, praising God, and my old feet began to dance. And I told everyone who was there in the temple that day, and everyone who came every day after, that I had met the Messiah, that God’s time had come.
And afterwards, as I was walking back to my room, a beam of light shone into the dusky temple, where I had never seen a beam of light shining before. And I knew that something was different. I knew that the world would never be the same again.
“Prophetess Anna”
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1639)
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