Summary 

Simeon and Anna, two elderly figures in Luke's Gospel, teach us that even the most faithful believers experience deep longing for God's consolation throughout their lives. Simeon waited his entire life to see the Messiah, while Anna spent decades as a widow worshiping at the temple. Their stories reveal that coming to faith doesn't eliminate life's sorrows, but God enters into our pain through Jesus. The faithful elderly among us serve as precious witnesses, showing younger generations that following Jesus is possible through every stage of life's challenges. God understands our struggles because He has experienced them, offering true peace through Christ.

Transcript

Lord, now, God, as we heard the Holy Spirit speaking to Simeon long ago in this passage in Luke chapter two, God, would you speak to us? Would you meet with us now? Would the preaching of your word be for the blessing of your people?

God, would you direct us, and would we find our comfort and our peace and our joy in you? Amen. All right, I want you to take a moment and look at some of the stained glass around you, okay?

Think about the work that went into creating that.

So I read in a commentary, someone say that the first few chapters of Luke. In these first few chapters, Luke is kind of acting like this craftsman who's creating this beautiful picture for us, this stained glass picture. And he's taking these bits and he's staining them and he's breaking parts, you know, and he's then soldering them together. He's putting lead between them, and he's wanting to show forth part of the beauty that is Jesus through this painstaking craftsmanship. And it's actually sort of in this moment when Jesus is presented in the temple, that part of what part of the beauty is starting to shine forth.

At first it's just kind of these little cracks and little pieces and they're kind of, you know, disparate. And now he's kind of putting it together and he's saying, look. Well, Simeon says, for my eyes have seen. But he's not. It's not just for his eyes, but for the.

For the Gentiles, for all people, for the glory of Israel, a revelation for all.

There's a story that's being told and it's shining out. This is actually what Simeon prays, right? Lord, now you're letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation that you've prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. His eyes have seen it.

But here's the thing. It's not just that the beauty is for his eyes, right? Beauty is for the world. It's to be presented to all people. It's a light for the revelation of God to the world, to the Gentiles, to the folk who are far off, right?

Those were once aliens and strangers of the promises have been brought near by the grace of God. The glory of the story of Israel is seen for the world to behold the beauty of God. But here's the interesting thing. I think this is really, really interesting. And I share this with our Senior Saints lunch.

So some of this is going to be overlapped. For some of you, when Luke wants to display this craftsmanship, this beauty, this thing that has been created for everybody to.

It's not quite the folk that we would expect that he goes to. To shine forth this beauty. If you remember, we actually looked at some of this in our adult Sunday school this morning, the story of the Magi. These guys from the east come, and maybe they came with the pomp and circumstance that we, you know, have in our Christmas plays and stuff like that, all decked out. Certainly they were probably well to do because the gifts that they offered when they come from the east, because they've seen the star, they go to Jerusalem, the main city, they get the court of the king.

He questions them, he summons them. That's who they're talking to, right? That's what you'd maybe expect, expect the story to be told to those kind of folk. But when Luke kind of puts it all together and he says, look, do you see what I see? He's not going there.

Said, he kind of goes to the unexpected.

What we get here is when Luke begins to tell how the birth of this little Christ child is going to be this shining light for the world, this beautiful thing that is going to be the grace of God for the far off. What we see is that he goes to the elderly, to the older folk, to two older folks, specifically Simeon and Anna. So the last couple weeks, we've been suggesting that we're kind of. There's these fatherly figures, these figures in the birth narratives. So we looked at Quiet Joseph, right.

A couple weeks back, last week, we looked at Zechariah, the one who was made to be quiet out of his unbelief, demanding a sign. And this morning I want to look at this other fatherly figure and actually this motherly figure too, Simeon and Anna. And as far as we know, they don't have. They probably actually didn't have biological children, but no doubt they have spiritual children. And just as many sort of in our own church may not have biological children yet there's many spiritual children.

And I think that when we look at this, we actually see part of the beauty of the good news that Luke is presenting to us. Okay, when we look at these two figures. So first the fatherly figure. Simeon. Simeon, like, neither of these figures, we get, like, this whole bunch of information about them.

But we know that he was righteous and devout. And specifically we are told that he was waiting for the consolation of Israel. He's waiting for Israel to be consoled, desiring consolation Waiting for consolation. And of course, you can think about this in terms of Israel as a whole waiting. You know, they've been waiting for a long time.

You could even say in some ways that the world had been waiting for a long time. I mean, there's the prophecy long ago in Genesis chapter three that there'd be a child that would be born of the woman who would crush that conniving, lying, deceitful serpent. In some ways, we've. All right, the whole world is desiring consolation, and it's been a long time coming. But of course, Israel has also been waiting a long time.

We've talked about this recently, Israel desiring the true king on the throne. Yet one event after another event after another event only aggravates the desire for consolation.

But this is also true in Simeon's particular life. So you could consider the whole world, you consider the story of Israel, but you could also just consider the story of Simeon.

This whole prayer of Simeon, it begins, lord, now you're letting your servant depart in peace, which at least invites us into the idea that his life is not one of peace. I mean, he's desiring consolation. And he's saying, now finally, I can depart peace.

His life had likely not been one of peace, but rather of desiring it. He'd been waiting his whole long life with the world and with Israel for this consolation. And it's not hard for you to think through your own life and the different stages of life of how sort of the desire gets aggravated. The long life builds, time elapses, and the desire, the consolation of life, the consolation of God, the peace of God seems to grow. The desire for that.

From early on in life we find a deep desire for consolation.

Trying to think of when this begins. No doubt it begins earlier, but maybe one of the first stages that it really seems to be present is just in the odd social awkwardness of middle school, that time where you're just like, I just wish that I felt like I knew my people and they knew me and where am I? And can I just have some peace socially?

Then, you know, it kind of doesn't really stop.

I used to tell college students when I was doing campus ministry that they should just fill out a 3 by 5 card and hand it to people. Because when you were. When you were. When you're meeting somebody, you'd be like, oh, where are you from? What are you majoring?

What are you going to do? It's like this incessant question of what's your life going to be? And you're like, I don't know, I just want consolation because I actually, I just don't have any peace in my own mind. And now I've got to give you the answer to this mess of what's happening up here.

It keeps going. Of course, early in your marriage, you are not only faith, the fact that your spouse is actually not rose colored, it's just hormones. And neither are you, right? You've come face to face with the reality that actually you are so messed up and so are they. And the consolation, the desire for consolation, peace grows.

Your sin becomes more defined. It's easier to see, partly because somebody else is pointing it out sometimes by God's grace. But then of course, as you continue on in life, often we experience miscarriages.

Children are lost in car accidents, children are estranged. Friends disown us, we move, we have to make new friends. Ups and downs of financial difficulties. You find yourself looking for a new job. And it seems like all they want is the young people that know how to do AI, whatever that still is.

Tech savvy folk. And of course, of course we can just list our own ways. It seems like the desire for consolation grows and grows as the years pass. And here's something that is deeply, deeply important that I think is actually one of the significant lessons that we learn in this account here in Luke, is that this is not just for those who are outside of the people of God. That's not the case in this passage.

The desire for consolation and for peace in this story is for the people that are absolutely under the care and love of the Lord, are attentive to his ways and know his law, and are present in the temple and are worshiping him and giving their life to Him. They're the ones that are desiring consolation, finally saying, we can depart in peace.

Think about this. Okay, we see this, we see this first in, in the parents of Jesus. So it says they're not really. They're not the main figures here, but it says that they bring what was according, according to what was said in the law of the Lord. That's what verse 24 tells us.

And then it tells they brought a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. So again, we talked about this in our adult Sunday school. What does that mean? They were among the poorest of Israel, among the poorest of God's people. Which is to say they knew the hard life, life of struggle for food and maybe housing.

And as what so often happens among the poor, that likely affected their physical health and their mental Health, right. This is Mary and Joseph, part of God's people, spoken to in dreams and by angels. And they are not immune from the dynamic of desiring consolation and desiring peace.

But this desire for consolation, peace within the people of God, is also highlighted when we look at Simeon. So the first thing we read about Simeon is not that he was. That he was desiring the consolation of Israel, but the first thing that we read was that he was righteous and devout. And then we read in verse 26 that the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not see death until he'd seen the Lord's Christ. Verse 27 tells us that Simeon came in spirit to the temple, which is to say this man who desired consolation, that wanted peace, they wanted a life where God actually met his sorrows with God's consolation, with somebody that was led by the Holy Spirit, indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

This is, you know, if you. You could say this is one of the leaders of God's people, and he's living the life that you're living. That seems to be sorrow aggravated by sorrow, aggravated by sorrow, desiring consolation. Now, this is important lesson that we learn here. And unfortunately, honestly, it's a blessing that lots of Christians want to shun and say, ah, you come to God.

You've just got your life together. You get your life together. He's just gonna. Your life's gonna be fine. And here we find these saints near the end of their life, desiring consolation, desiring peace, because they had known such deep sorrow.

No doubt, even the devout and the faithful and those who are led by the Spirit ache for peace, desire consolation, which leads me to this.

One of the graces that God has given to this church is our elderly fathers and mothers of the faith. Let me say this because I want particularly you elderly to hear this. One of the graces. God, do I need new batteries? Am I cutting in and out a little bit?

No. Okay. No. One of the graces God gives to our church is the elderly. You older folk among us, you are God's gift to us, the long faithful.

You know, Ed Camp had his birthday a couple days ago.

If you know Ed, if you've sat with him, you know that his life has been one of sorrow on sorrow, some really deep, tragic sorrows. Some of you know that one of his boys was killed in a car accident years and years ago. He had gone out to the shore with some friends in his early 20s, and on their way back was hit and died in a car accident. You know, Ed and You've talked with him recently. You know what an utter challenge these last few years have been.

These last three and a half years since his wife Anna passed away.

They met in high school and he loved her dearly. And they were married, what, 62 years, I think it was, or something like that. Maybe they were part of this church. I forget how long it was exactly. And yet Ed is holding fast to Jesus.

You know, he's one of the long faithful ones.

Sorrow upon sorrow, desiring consolation, desiring peace, and holding fast to Jesus.

Many of you know our dear sister Donna Weatherly has been having a difficult time. She's in a rehab on the west shore and hasn't been able to be present with us. She's holding fast to Jesus and what a gift and what a grace of God to us all.

Fathers and mothers in the faith. You are a grace to us from God. You are a gift to us.

Your long life of bearing sorrow, your long life of desiring consolation, you're aching for peace and looking to God as the giver of it is one of the greatest gifts that we have as a church.

To be greeted by Dot Fisher after she hasn't been with us is a gift, right? Especially when she gives you a big bear hug. Especially when you know why she hasn't been with us is because often when the weather is not well, she is not well. And she still desires the Lord, the peace that comes from him in the midst of a body that's not always working well.

Gordon, your bearing, your cancer, your lung cancer, right after you retired was such a gift to me those years ago. But even more, Elaine and Gordon, you together, trusting the Lord in the midst of Elaine's cancer spoke to every one of us. It was a gift. Your long faithfulness is a gift to us.

This is part of the lesson of this passage. The long desire for consolation and looking to the Lord for our peace. The long faithful, the long faithful fathers and mothers are the gift of God to the people of God. And they train us in his ways. They are truly fathers and mothers for us as we age and at each stage of our aging.

Here's another lesson we need to hear. We need the gift of the long faithful and the elderly among us. But I also want to suggest to you this. We need the gift of those who are just beyond us. You didn't know what I mean.

You like high school or college age folk, our children need to see that Jesus can be followed at the next stage, right?

You high school, college age students, you need young adults who are trying to figure out, like, what do I do in my post college life? What does singleness look like? How do I faithfully follow Jesus in the midst of desiring a spouse, maybe? Or trying to figure out what my job is like in the midst of that confusion and actually following Jesus in the midst of that confusion. You are a grace to the people that are right behind you.

It can be done, right?

Or think of couples, maybe you've recently been married or something. You're like, I think we want children. That sounds like a good idea. That sounds unbelievably stressful. And I'll just tell you it is.

And it can be done because the Lord is kind and he is gracious, right? And in the midst of your questioning, actually seeing people just ahead of you saying, you know what? God can be followed now the long act of faith can be done.

You empty nesters are God's gift to me. Because I am often shook up by the idea of that stage of life because it sort of feels like the next major stage, you know, my life. There is a great gift of being in this body of Christ where we have fathers and mothers going ahead of us and saying, follow Jesus to the end. Follow him to the end. Your consolation will be met with the peace of God.

Simeon is a father in the faith, instructing us in our sorrow to lay it all on the God of peace.

And many of you are that to us as a church. Many of you can be that to those that come after you. God is creating this beautiful piece of art. And often if you looked about it, you're like, those are pieces that were probably broken, right? Maybe crushed a little bit, chipped off on a side, maybe when it was laying out on the table.

You're like, what is this mess?

And then he puts it up for the world to see. And he said, oh my word, to light, to enlighten the world, to bring peace.

He is creating. He's creating something lovely. One of the greatest witnesses you give to the world is through your long faithfulness to the Lord. Your long faithfulness in a life of sorrow, desiring his consolation. So then we have the story of Anna, right again.

We actually don't learn a lot about Anna. I mean, we have a little bit at the beginning, her family lineage and stuff like that. But we don't get a lot. We don't get a lot about Simeon. We don't get a lot about Anna.

And in some ways, what we have about Anna is similar to what we have about Simeon, which is to say it's just this little glimpse into a long life that is. Was probably often marked by sorrow, desiring consolation.

Look down at verse 36, if you have it open the second part there, it says she was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin. Meaning that they were married for seven years. Which means that, you know, at that time, very likely she would have been married like mid teens, say she was married when she was 15, 16. You know, she was married until she was in her early 20s. That's probably what it was.

And then it says verse 37. And then as a widow until she was 84. Here's an interesting thing actually. The Greek is not as clear as the English says there. It says.

So we get the sense from that, that in the, in this passage she's 84. That's possibly what it was. It could mean that she lived 84 more years after the passing of her husband. We actually could be dealing with somebody that's in her early hundreds, honestly. We're not.

We're not totally sure what it is. But the point remains.

She lived decades upon decades as a widow, having lost the love of her life.

And isn't that actually, isn't that what's happening here, right? This long waiting, God, bring your comfort and your consolation into the midst of our sorrow.

In this passage, again, it shows us her devotion. She did not depart this next part of verse 37. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. It's not that she probably had like a tent there, but she spent all of her days there, which also indicates to us that she very likely did not have family.

We're invited into this deeper story of sorrow and we're invited into seeing that again. She's devout, she's prophetess. That says that would have been a teacher. She would have been outside the temple talking about God with people, telling them about the Old Testament, right? Verse 38 says, 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.

Just devout. Her life was marked by sorrow upon sorrow. She too was waiting long waiting for consolation.

Which is again to say this, Your gray hairs and your aching joints, your arthritic bones are welcome in the fellowship of Jesus. He delights in it. He actually teaches us through you're aching.

Your long sorrow of lost loved ones and your clinging to the promise of promises of God might be the exact place, might be the exact thing that God uses to teach others. It often is, actually.

They're often the exact places where God is taking broken things and saying, look at the beauty of my grace. Look at my love and my kindness. Look at this beautiful painting that I'm displaying for generations to come. Look at the light that's shining through them.

But let me sort of end by coming to the little paragraph that actually joins these two stories. Did you notice that there's this kind of story of Simeon and then it kind of jumps down to Anna, and there's this little paragraph in between that sort of joins them together. I mean, Simeon does speak, but. But here's what it says, verse 33 to 35, and his father and his mother, that's Mary and Joseph marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to marry his mother.

And I think this is very likely because we don't believe that Joseph lived into Jesus adulthood, because he's not mentioned when Mary and his brothers are mentioned later on. Behold, this child is appointed for the fallen rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is opposed. And a sword will pierce through your own soul also, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. That sounds maybe cryptic, but what we find is that the beauty of this brilliant story, that God is shining into the world is where He. Where he knows the sorrow, the parental sorrow.

Mary, a sword will pierce through your soul also. And that's where we see actually the beauty of the Gospel of Jesus is when the sword pierces through the soul of Mary. When does the sword pierce through the soul of Mary? I guarantee you it's when she is watching Jesus on the cross. Is there a greater sorrow that a mother could experience, but their own child in agony upon a cross, dying right in front of them?

I guarantee you that's when the soul. The sword pierces her soul.

It's got to be it. Which is to say right here of this story of Simeon desiring consolation. I'm saying, I long for peace and I can finally depart in it because I see this child right before me. And in Anna's own story of long sorrow, the linchpin of all of it is the fact that God is not distant from it. Right?

That's why they have consolation. It's the unique thing about Christianity. It is that God not just knows sorrow, but becomes part of the sorrow. He's not just far off looking down upon you, thinking, I'm so sorry you're going through all that, but he goes to the place of the cross, takes our sin upon him. He goes to the place of pain, his mother's own pain, the sorrow of the world, for the life of the world.

To say that the hope that we have in our lives, in our lives as young children, our lives as young adults, or lives as young, young parents or senior citizens, is that when God comes to us, he comes to us Himself and goes to the place of sorrow himself and suffers that we might have consolation.

He's not distant from it, he's not divorced from it. He's not so far away as a God distant. But he comes to the very place of sorrow that we might know his consolation. Which let me end with this is to say, I bet.

I bet there were people that went to Simeon and to Anna. They're at the temple. And Anna's this teacher, right? And Simeon obviously is teaching too. He's.

He's got this prayer that we remember as the Nunc Dimittis, which is prayed, by the way, every evening in compline prayer, in many traditions. Some of you use the Book of Common Prayer, that's at the end of every day. So he's still teaching us, which is awesome. But I bet as they were there at the temple, no doubt people would come to them, as some of you have come to me and say, why does God allow such pain and sorrow in our lives?

Right? I mean, who doesn't ask that question from time to time? And my guess is what they would have said is actually same answer that I often give, which is, I don't really know.

I mean, the Bible doesn't exactly tell us why you experience the particular sorrows that you experience. Why we wait so long for consolation.

Maybe Simeon and Anna met them and said, I know that. I know the long waiting, and it is painful. You know, they knew that. So they could. They could talk to people about their own experience, but they probably didn't know the exact answers.

But on this side of the cross, what we can say is that Christianity and Jesus, unlike any other good news that you will have on offer, says God knows it. God knows what you're going through. God knows your long desire for consolation and for peace. And he goes into the midst of a broken world and he goes through the cross and through the empty tomb to say, it is not the end of the story.

Consolation will come. His light will shine into the darkness of the world. His peace will come into this messed up world. This is the good news of the gospel that Jesus meets. The long waiting, the desiring for consolation, the ones who want peace.

And then Jesus says, it's on offer. Give my life for you that you might have life. That's the good news of Christianity. It's the good news of our season. That Jesus knows our long waiting and he comes to bring us his peace.

Amen. Amen. Lord God, thanks for the fathers and mothers of the faith. Thank you for Simeon and Anna. Thank you for Mary and Ed.

And thank you for Donna and Gordon, so many others. Lord God, I pray that we would live the long, faithful road that is very hard. And it is long and it's waiting. And we desire your consolation. We desire peace.

And sometimes it feels like we keep waiting, God. But, Lord, more than anything we say thank you for the Lord Jesus, not only whose mother was pierced with sorrow, but you, Lord Jesus yourself, were pierced, stricken, smitten and afflicted for us. We bless you, Lord, that you remain a distant God, but you come to us in sorrow that we might know your peace. In your name we pray. Amen.

 

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