Anna – The Faithful Witness
Pastor Mathew Magera – 8/4/19 – Sermon 360
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
We don’t know a lot about Anna but we know enough.
We know she was devoted to the Lord. We know she worshiped in the temple. We
know she witnessed to others about the coming of the Messiah. We know she
waited many years for the opportunity to lay her eyes on God’s very own Son.
This is all we need to know. Anna doesn’t need any dialogue for us to see what
a remarkable woman she was. How, then, can we, from only a few verses, come to
be like her? How can our devotion to the Lord be founded by Anna’s example?
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, from our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Has this ever happened to you? You’re driving down
the road and you see a car approaching in the distance and you feel like you
might recognize the shape of that car? This happens to me quite a bit. As the
car gets closer you start to see the color. Closer still you see if it has any
distinguishing marks on the hood. Your brain is processing the information as
fast as it can, all the while the car gets closer and closer. The last thing
you look for to confirm your suspicion is the silhouette of the person in the
driver’s seat. Finally, not even seconds from missing your opportunity you
recognize them. I know who that is. You get excited by the success of your
investigation skills that you put your hand up to wave. But, by the time you
get your arm up, the car has already passed you by and the moment is gone.
There you are, hand up already starting to wave but your gesture is only seen
by the car behind them. After all that sleuthing to identify that friend on the
road you have nothing to do with your excitement except to turn to the person
next to you and say, “hey, did you see that was so and so who passed us just
now.” Maybe next time you’ll be able to get that wave out in time.
What I’ve just described for you is a modern analogy
of Anna’s story. While reading the Gospel of Luke, here she comes and just as
quickly as she came, she’s in the rearview mirror. Three verses. That’s all we
get. No dialogue. She just rolls in as the narrative progresses and then she’s
gone. We barely have the opportunity to recognize her as she passes.
All the distinguishing facts are there for us too.
We have just enough information to learn about her but not much more than that.
She was a prophet, daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was old, a
widow, 84 years old. This information tells us how fortunate we are to even
meet her. Anna knew the Word of God. When scripture says she was a prophet it
means that she knew the scriptures and she commonly talked about them with
others. It doesn’t necessarily mean that she was called by God like other Old
Testament prophets were but Anna still had the ability to teach. She is
identified next by her tribe. The tribe of Asher. People were identified by
which son of Jacob they descended from. We identify people in the same manner
more or less. When you’re catching up with someone from long ago, you might say
who your grandfather or grandmother was. Oh yeah, you’re so-and-so’s grandkid.
It says a lot about who you are based on who you are related to. Being from the
tribe of Asher, however, didn’t always mean good. The tribe of Asher was one of
the more rebellious tribes. When they were taken into captivity after God
allowed the Assyrians to conquer them, many of them died and never returned to
their land. Anna, though, being a descendant from this tribe, must’ve come from
the faithful few that did return. There may have been a lot of rebellion in
their past, but Anna was a testimony of the faith that existed within a small
part of one of the more rebellious tribes.
We learn Anna is a widow, only having been married
for seven years before her husband died. She never remarried. It may be bold to
say that she wasn’t looking for the provisions from a male figure in her life,
the only provisions she was looking for came from God. We can see this by the
peculiar lifestyle she had. Luke says she never left the temple but worshiped
night and day, fasting and praying. This was her life. The Temple was where
God’s presence was. She wanted to be in God’s presence, she did not want to
leave it.
Anna lived a life of worship, witness, and waiting.
She worshiped fervently every day. She witnessed boldly to others in the
Temple, telling them about the coming Messiah until she saw Jesus with her own
eyes and then she told everyone she had seen him. She waited joyfully. She
waited many years until she got to see Jesus and she would remain in the Temple
and continue to wait for his redeeming work to be done.
Anna lived a devoted life as a devoted witness. We
look at her life and we agree she set a good example, but that’s about where it
stays. An example. Compared to the many adventures we could have in this life,
Anna’s example seems like a wasted life of boringness.
Would you pass up a good opportunity so you could
come to a Bible study? Would you pass up a vacation to go on a mission trip?
Would you forego Sunday brunch and go visit shut-ins? Anna’s life looks like a
life we would not want to lead yet, ironically the reason we find her in
scripture is specifically because of the life she led.
We fail constantly at many opportunities to lead a
life fully devoted to God. We pass up the spiritual life for the social life.
We pass up worship for the workplace. We pass up tithes for travel. We wouldn’t
want to miss these things. It may be we just don’t have time for God, but I
also think it’s that we just don’t want to make time for God. Is God really
that desirable to you? I mean, God can seem so far away when our friends are
just a phone call away. It’s much more desirable to have a conversation over
dinner with someone who can listen, answer questions, and give advice. I’m not
sure we feel this way when it comes to God.
This past week I was doing my homework from our
bread crumbs session and there was a question on the worksheet that asked, would
your week go any differently if Jesus was right beside you each day and night?
Oh, I went to town on this question. If Jesus could be right there with me
during the day, I’d feel like I had someone to talk to, someone I could ask
questions of and get advice. If I went to visit someone at home, I’d have
someone to ask for suggestions on what I could say. I could open up my deepest
theological questions and I could feel like I could have the answers right then
and there. If Jesus were to be right there with me, you bet my life would be
different. It actually got me excited. Then it made me realize something. I
think that for me and likely for others too, because we don’t have that
physical presence of Jesus as in a person walking right next to us, it makes
Jesus seem less real for us, and thus if he’s not really real I’d rather give
my time to something that is, like my friends, or my money, or my travel plans.
One of my college professors told a story one day
about when he was a young boy in church with his parents. He leaned over and
asked his mom what heaven would be like. She told him, “It’ll be a lot like
church but it will last forever.” He said, “Well, I certainly don’t want to go
there.” We’re just not that interested. Have you ever felt like this, just
disinterested in God?
What do we do about it? What do we do about that
burden? Not only do we have that disinterest in God but we probably feel a bit
guilty for it, don’t we? What do we do about that feeling? It’s awful. I should
love the Lord more. I should love the Lord like Anna did but I don’t. I failed
again. What do we do?
There’s a hymn in the Missouri Synod hymnal that I
feel speaks very well to this. It’s called “Entrust Your Days and Burdens”. The
first verse gives us these words, “Entrust your days and burdens to God’s most
loving hand; He cares for you while ruling the sky, the sea, the land. For He
who guides the tempests along their thunderous ways will find for you a pathway
and guide you all your days.” You see, God is the creator of everything, from
the smallest atom to the largest galaxy. The God that cares for the largest and
smallest cares for you. When we fail to devote ourselves to him, even when we
just don’t want to, it does not change the truth that he devotes himself to
you. God can handle our despondence and disinterest. God can handle our guilt
and our shame. God can and wants to take these burdens from us.
That guilt and shame can hold us back too. You know
it can. Why bother if I’m just not interested? You’ve felt that temptation
before. Fear of repeated or continued failure holds us back. Remove those and
we become free to live for the Lord. Think about it. If you had the same
excitement and anticipation for serving the Lord as you do for something you
are truly passionate about, wouldn’t you do it? Those experiences that you have
trouble sleeping the night before because you are just so excited about them.
Imagine if you were so excited about God you couldn’t sleep because of it. As
soon as that guilt and shame are removed, that despondence and disinterest,
it’s a whole new ballgame.
When we get caught up on what we have been unable to
do, the answer we need is to not focus on what we are unable to do for Christ
but to focus on what Christ has already done for us. Even when we fail, even
when we feel the guilt of skipping out on worship or Bible study or anything
else, remember that Christ still died for you and loves you and wants to take that
burden from you. We’re here today so that he can take that burden. You know
those missed opportunities. Here is the place we can lay them at the foot of
the cross and be renewed to go from here and live for Jesus.
When we let Jesus take that burden from you we can
live a life of devotion to him. Even if you are unsure how you feel about it.
Tell Jesus you are unsure. Tell him you find it boring or too above your head.
Give it to Jesus and keep pushing forward, letting him take you when you feel
you just can’t or don’t want to continue. Just like Anna, we can devote
ourselves to the Lord through worship, witness, and waiting. But, we can’t do
it on our own. We need help and fortunately, we have it. Let God serve you in
worship this morning. Let him feed you with his Word, feed you in his Holy
Supper. Let him remind you of your worth that he has given to you on the cross.
Then, respond in witness. Recite the words of the creed today with that pure
foundation of the Gospel in your heart. I believe in God the Father almighty.
Give some oomph to it. Respond to that worship. Keep that witnessing going as
you leave this place. Go out to lunch and talk about the ways God has renewed
you and why you continue to come back to worship again and again and why you serve
your community through the Church. Then, like Anna, wait. Wait joyfully. Wait,
not twiddling your thumbs or looking at your watch. Wait with anticipation.
He’s coming again. He’s coming. Don’t be downcast. Worship, witness, and wait
for Him with joy in your heart for here in this place on Sunday morning in the
heat of August you have seen the savior. You have seen him in the Word. You
have seen him at the table. You have seen him. He has come to you. He has saved
you. He has taken your guilt. He has taken your shame and he has given himself
to you. Go from here and be a faithful witness. God has given you the ability
to do it. Now may he grant you the strength and the will, freed in Christ, to
live a life devoted to Him. To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.