Sermon - Presenting Anna

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, James Whistler, 1871

A homily given at Choral Evensong at St-Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 28th February 2024 based on Luke 2.22-40.

Forty days after Christmas, the church celebrates the Feast of the Presentation, which marks the end of the season of Epiphany. Its origin lies in the reading we heard as our second lesson, in which Luke describes how Mary and Joseph came to present Jesus to God in the temple and make a sacrificial offering to redeem his life, as was customary in Jewish tradition for the parents of all first-born sons. Inside the Temple, the Holy Family meet Simeon, led there by the Holy Spirit, through whom he learns that he will not be able to die until he has seen the Messiah.

Simeon recognises the forty-day old baby as the Messiah and sings his great song, which forms part of the liturgy of the church to this day "Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes hath seen thy salvation." Simeon's prayer goes on to describe Jesus as the light to the Gentiles - a reference that led to the feast being known as Candlemas from the fourth century onwards - a day when Christians would bring candles to church to be blessed, lit and processed, bringing light to the darkness.

With all the focus on Simeon and the legacy of his great song, it is not often we hear much about the devout widow Anna, the only woman in the New Testament to be described as a prophet.

In many of the great works of art depicting The Presentation, including those by Rembrandt, Anna is either not shown at all, or painted as if in half shadow, almost as an afterthought. Neither does she attract many column inches in the literary arts. T.S.Eliot titles his poem inspired by the feast ‘A Song for Simeon’.

The absence of Anna in art and much of our liturgy that celebrates this feast seems to me to be contrary to the spirit of Luke's Gospel, which is characterised by its pairings of men and women; with parables focussing on a man coupled with parables focussing on a woman; and famous pairings such as Zechariah and Elizabeth and, here at the Presentation - Simeon and Anna. 

To seek to redress this Anna-deficit I thought it might be interesting to use Eliot's Song for Simeon as a lens through which to look at Luke's text and imagine what 'A Song for Anna' might sound like?

Written in 1927, shortly after Eliot was received into the Church of England from Unitarianism, the first verse of Eliot's poem echoes Simeon's wait for eternal rest. Even the signs of Spring - the blooming Roman hyacinths - are cheating the season, their roots captive in the warmth of their bowls. Simeon’s life is described as a feather - but unlike the song of the medieval polymath Hildegard of Bingen who famously described her life as like a feather floating on the breath of God, Simeon's feather is motionless "waiting for the death wind." 

Whilst tradition assumes Simeon's age, St Luke tells us how old Anna is - and at eighty four, she is old, by anyone’s measure. But as we imagine writing Anna's song, while we may choose to reference her senior years, I don’t think she is sitting and waiting for the end. Anna had not been bound to earthly life until she had seen the Messiah - as Simeon had been. Before meeting the infant Jesus, she spent day and night in the temple, fasting and praying - which, as anyone who has tried something similar will know, requires great personal strength. Anna sounds to me like a very strong and active eighty-four year old! The feather of her life seems very much to be still floating on the breath of God. 

In the second verse Eliot suggests something of Simeon's life of good works in the city. This outward expression of faith contrasts with Anna's interior life of prayer in the temple; postures which seem to be reversed in the response of each on encountering the Messiah. But Simeon's good deeds, imagined by Eliot, are what one would expect from someone that Luke describes as a "righteous and devout" man of the time. I think Anna's song would need a different focus. Anna was a trailblazer. As a widow from a young age, she would have probably been expected to marry again - not to devote the rest of her life to prayer in the temple. Unlike Simeon, Anna seems to have taken an unexpected path to God, in spite of societal pressure to do something different. 

In this second stanza Eliot also references Simeon's family and his legacy. St Luke tells us that Anna is the daughter of Phanuel - which means "Face of God" - a portent of her future role as a witness to the birth of the Messiah – something, I feel, we must not overlook in our imagined Song for Anna.

In the third verse of Eliot's text that prophetic theme comes to the fore, as Simeon meets the "still unspeaking and unspoken word" of God and in the final verse, Simeon's role in the prophecy is personally fulfilled, as he departs in peace. Eliot describes Simeon as having "no to-morrow" - at least here on earth. However St Luke hints that in Anna, this prophecy is fulfilled in a very different way – just as fulfilling but in her case, the transformative power of the revelation of the Messiah is expressed not by departing in peace, but in an outburst of the most bounteous joy, which Luke described as "praising God and speaking to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem." This doesn't sound to me like a final flourish before death – I think Anna might have kept on singing her song for many years to come.

But hey, that’s just my take on what A Song for Anna might start to sound like. Please take a copy of Eliot’s poem away and think up your own - and who knows, some clever person in the choir might be able to set it to music. Next year we might sing it, alongside the Nunc Dimittis?

Because I think it is when presented together the response of Simeon and Anna to their encounter with the infant Jesus show us how we might fully respond to the transformative power of the light of Christ in our own lives.

A version of this sermon was first given at St Stephen Walbrook in February 2020.

Image: Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, James Whistler, 1871


A Song for Simeon, T.S.Eliot

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.
Who shall remember my house,
where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come ?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.