Anna and the King of Kings
Simeon and Anna in the Temple by Rembrandt, circa 1627. (Source: WikiCommons)
Where fools credit coincidence, the prudent discern providence. The Holy Spirit had drawn my attention this Advent season to the story of Anna and the Christ-child in the temple (Luke 2:36–38). As I was considering writing a meditation on it for Firebrand, I discovered Bishop Chironna’s piece (“Beholding the Promise: Simeon, the Spirit, and the Mystery of Advent”) on Simeon’s meeting the infant Jesus in the verses immediately preceding Anna’s appearance (Luke 2:25–35). The good bishop appeals to Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity as a way of appreciating how “Simeon’s encounter fits this framework of meaningfully connected events, not as a mere coincidence but as a moment where divine purpose and human experience intersect with marked intentionality.” The Spirit who led Simeon to just the right place and time to meet the long-awaited Messiah brought Anna there and then, too. The same Spirit, I trust, is directing the convergence of Firebrand contributors’ interest in this biblical episode. What may we learn from Luke’s account of Anna?
Lost in Place
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 (Luke 2:36; all quotes NRSV).
The first thing to notice about Luke’s portrait of Anna is that hers is a history of losses. She hails from one of the so-called “lost tribes” of Israel. That is, after the rule of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon over the united twelve tribes of Israel, ten of those tribes revolted against David’s dynasty and formed their own kingdom (1 Kings 12). Tragically, that kingdom repeatedly offended against God’s covenant through idolatry and injustice. As punishment, God allowed the mighty and brutal Assyrian Empire to conquer the kingdom and exile its tribes (2 Kings 17). Among the ten tribes lost to foreign domination and dispersion was Anna’s tribe of Asher. Perhaps her forebears had found their way back to their homeland after being resettled elsewhere by their conquerors, or maybe her ancestors were among the lower-class Israelites whom the Assyrians had left in the land. In either event, her tribal affiliation marked her with the scars of a legacy of loss.
Not only had Anna inherited loss; she had experienced it personally, too. Only seven years into her marriage, her husband had died. Given that Israelite girls married in their early teens, she would have been left a widow by age twenty or twenty-one. The rest of her long life she spent alone. But the loss of her spouse only foreshadowed a larger political loss. By the time Anna was born, Israel had regained its independence and unity under the leadership of a family of freedom fighters, the Maccabees. Their descendants remained in power for two-thirds of a century. By the end, though, a deadly power struggle between two rivals for Israel’s throne resulted in foreign intervention. The Roman army took over Jerusalem and established Rome’s control over the country. Israel’s independence was gone again! This national disaster took place in 63 BC, when Anna was likely still in her twenties and only a few years removed from her husband’s funeral.
The Sound of Silence
There was also a prophet, Anna . . . . She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. (Luke 2:36–37)
Despite all her losses, Anna never lost her faith. Rather than turning her back on God or even simply embracing legitimate earthly happiness through remarriage and regular meals, she chose to devote herself exclusively and intensively to God. She found a home not with a second husband but in the house of the Lord. She often set aside ordinary food to feast instead on God’s presence. All the longings born of her losses she lifted up in prayer. There in the Jerusalem temple by day and by night she embodied the Daughter of Zion crying out for deliverance (see Lamentations 2:10, 18). In response, God drew near to her and anointed her with the Spirit of prophecy. Sometimes the centuries between the Old and New Testaments are called “the four hundred silent years,” but prophecy did not cease during that period—Anna is proof!
At prayer in the temple, Anna’s life paralleled that of her Old Testament namesake, Hannah. The original Hannah had a husband but no child. In her distress she refused to eat, instead pouring out her soul in silent prayer at God’s temple (1 Samuel 1:4–16). We do not know if Anna prayed aloud or not, but her words go unrecorded in Scripture. What we do know is that, as happened with Hannah, her prayers reached God and received an answer. In Hannah’s case, God granted her the gift of conceiving a baby boy who would deliver Israel: Samuel. In Anna’s case, God permitted her to see another’s newborn Son who would bring an even greater salvation.
From One Mother to Another
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. (Luke 2:38)
The timing was perfect for Anna’s arrival. In accordance with the Law of Moses (see Leviticus 12), Mary waited forty days from her delivery and then came to the temple with Joseph and her baby for her postpartum purification ceremony. But when they entered the temple, a stranger named Simeon met them, took Mary’s baby into his arms, blessed God and the couple, and then spoke words of foreboding to Mary about how her Son would cause her pain (Luke 2:22–35). I can only imagine that a very young, new mommy like Mary felt gripped by anxiety and was more than ready to reclaim her baby from this strange man with his strange and troubling saying.
Into this tension-soaked moment stepped Anna. Her very presence may well have brought comfort to Mary, for here now was another woman, a matronly figure like the female relatives Mary had left behind far north in Nazareth or like her older relation Elizabeth nearby in the Judean hills (see Luke 1:36, 39–40). In fact, a later apocryphal writing known as the Infancy Gospel of James that borrows from Luke’s Gospel recasts Anna as Mary’s own mother, who had lived for a time in would-be widowhood while her husband fasted and prayed for a child. In this version of the story, it’s young Mary rather than old Anna who never left the temple, dwelling there from toddlerhood until she became Joseph’s ward at age twelve. Such early Christian fan fiction only exaggerates the genuine connection between the two women already present in Luke’s telling.
Setting aside the Infancy Gospel’s embellishments leaves us with an Anna who is not Mary’s literal mother but who plays a comparable role at this crucial juncture. As a woman of prophetic authority like Deborah of old, Anna too was “a mother in Israel” (Judges 5:7) who could offer Mary divinely-inspired encouragement. Maybe her very name did so by reminding Mary of Hannah and her victory song, which Mary herself had echoed in her Magnificat during her first trimester (compare Luke 1:46–56 with 1 Samuel 2:1–10). Likely in later years, when Joseph no longer shows up in the Gospels’ narratives and Mary herself apparently was a widow, she thought back to Anna as a godly role model and made mention of her to Luke. In any case, Anna’s timely words of worship toward God and of witness toward those awaiting Israel’s redemption shifted the mood away from Simeon’s closing tone of gloom and back to his earlier jubilance (Luke 2:28–32).
Anna in Anno Domini 2024
Two millennia after Anna, what does this muted prophet teach us? Like her, we are haunted by histories of loss. To take a pair of examples from my current state of residence: the counties immediately west and south of mine are the sites of the Osage murders (recently commemorated in the Killers of the Flower Moon book and film) and the Tulsa Race Massacre, respectively. Also like Anna, myriads in our world today from Ukraine to Sudan and the Middle East to Myanmar are experiencing escalating losses of life and liberty. And like her, many among us go through the holidays quietly mourning loved ones long or lately departed. Yet like Anna, let us respond by devoting ourselves more deeply to God through the means of grace. Then the Holy Spirit will use our worship of God and our witness to Christ at just the right times and places to help just the right people—not coincidentally but providentially.
Jerome Van Kuiken is Professor of Christian Thought at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, a member of Firebrand’s Editorial Board, and the author of The Judas We Never Knew: A Study on the Life and Letter of Jude (Seedbed, 2023).