In the Bible there are many people who are called to great acts in older age, long after they thought they were even capable. God shows us time and again that age is not the problem, faithfulness of heart is all that matters. Two such older people are Simeon and Anna whom we hear about in Luke’s Gospel chapter 2 at the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.

So who’s who in this painting by Giovanni Bellini of the Presentation at the Temple? Painted in about 1460 and housed in the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Italy, it closely resembles a slightly earlier painting by Bellini’s brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna.

Joseph is the elderly man with white hair and beard in the centre looking straight out and beyond us.
Mary, Mother of Jesus is centre left holding Jesus out to Simeon.
Jesus is standing on a cushion towards the arms of St. Simeon.
Simeon is centre right, the elderly man with white hair and beard but unlike Joseph has his head covered in reverence, his arms out ready to hold Jesus.

St Simeon wears an embroidered red cloak as does Joseph and the man on our right. The red alludes to the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the Temple and the sacrifice to come. The other two men on our right maybe the artist’s relatives, not other bible characters.

On our left is either Anna the Prophetess – the elderly woman wearing purple focused on Jesus or is Mary’s mother Anne. The other younger woman may be a biblical character or from the artist’s family – we don’t know. However, the men wear red, the two key women wear purple, to represent their future sorrow and mourning.

Now there are three ceremonies which take place on two distinct days in Scripture here. But we tend to merge them all into one event, rather than seeing them separately, both in time and in ritual:

a) The first is the circumcision which usually took place where the family lived, and not at the Jerusalem Temple. It occurred on the eighth day after birth, as prescribed by the Law of Moses in Leviticus 12:3.

b) The second is the presentation of the first-born son, also a requirement of the Law and by which the name of the child was given so is highly significant.

c) The third was the purification of the mother required by the Law after the birth of a child, also in Leviticus 12:6. Jesus would therefore have been 6 weeks old at the time of his presentation in this painting.

It is the second ceremony, the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, which is most prominent in Luke’s Gospel and most represented in art. For here, Simeon and Anna witness to, and announce that the baby Jesus is God’s Messiah, the Saviour of the world. The Hebrew name for Jesus is Jeshua meaning ‘the Lord’ and ‘to save’ – therefore the Lord is salvation – and was formally given to him at his Presentation rite in the Temple according to Luke’s gospel. It was one of the key indications to Simeon that this child Jesus was the promised Messiah. Therefore, when Simeon says that ‘my eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord’ he literally means Jesus.

Simeon is a mysterious man. He appears out of nowhere. We do not know about his tribe, his family, was he married with children? What was his job? The only things we know are that he was a man of faith and hope, because he “looked for the consolation of Israel.” This expression summarises the faith of the Old Testament in the promises of God concerning the restoration of Israel through the coming of her Messiah.

It was the Holy Spirit who had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he had seen God’s Anointed One. It was the Holy Spirit that directed Simeon to the Temple on the particular day that Jesus’ parents brought him to be presented to the Lord. Recognising Jesus to be the Messiah, this elderly man took the child in his arms and blessed God. After a lifetime of seeking him, we can hardly imagine this moment. A very patient old man who at last held Christ in his frail arms in deep joy. He was now ready to die.

While Simeon was a devout Jew, he did not view the Messiah’s coming as only for the benefit of Israel. The Messiah was a “light of revelation to the Gentiles” – the Messiah came as God’s salvation to all humanity. This truth was taught in the Old Testament prophecies of a salvation for Gentiles as well as for Israel. That means all of us today.

We can imagine the impact that Simeon had on Joseph and Mary here. Up until this point in the gospels, all the sayings relating to Jesus had been positive. Yet now, Simeon unveils the other side of the Old Testament prophecies – of Jesus’ rejection, crucifixion and death in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Simeon’s words will now prepare Mary for the grief she will suffer, as the world’s rejection of her son will lead her to witness his death on the cross. Truly this will be a sword that will pierce her soul. Seen here in the sorrowful and resigned manner from which she begins to hand Jesus over to Simeon. And in the swaddling wrapped so tightly around Jesus that it is more funeral than of new birth.

We come to Anna the Prophetess, we know she was married at 14 and widowed at 21. As a young widow, she could easily have remarried. As a member of the tribe of Asher, there was a strong incentive to marry and bear children, since this tribe was in danger of extinction as one of the ten “lost tribes” of Israel, which were scattered in the Assyrian captivity. This tribe was known for its beautiful people and skills that qualified them for royal and high priestly marriage. Yet Anna remained single, and lived out her long life in the Temple, instead occupied with prayer and fasting.

At the age of 72 tradition claims that Anna was made responsible for the care of Mary at the Temple from the day of her own presentation there – when she was 3 years old until her betrothal to Joseph. Having believed in the Old Testament prophecies all her life she was the only woman in the Temple to greet Jesus when it was time for his Presentation. Anna proclaims Jesus as the redeemer of Jerusalem. Luke is the only Gospel that records Anna’s role here because Luke sees the correlation between the Temple’s significance with the Messiah’s fulfilment of the Temple’s purpose – namely to worship God first in a physical place and then through Christ in a physical being.

Unlike Simeon, Anna is not just visiting the Temple for the day; she’s there all the time. According to Luke 2:37, Anna “never left the Temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day”. Perhaps she was part of an order of widows who had specific religious functions in the Temple. Luke may also have seen Anna as the second witness in the Temple needed to validate Jesus’ significance according to Deuteronomy 19:15 which states the importance of having two witnesses to validate an event. Anna lived in expectancy of the first Advent, witnessing the Lord’s first coming in grace to bring us salvation through faith. As a prophetess Anna would have understood from the Old Testament that the “day of the Lord” was a day of divine judgment, and that the Messiah would come to deal with Israel’s sin. Her prayer and fasting were evidence of her mourning for the sins of Israel.

Anna shows us that old age can be rich in purpose. Her experiences and maturity give credibility to a life of loyalty and expectation that reaches its fruition in the fulfilment of God’s prophetic promises. She is a role model for all of us – not just widows and older people, in how she made time for God, her constancy in accepting what God wanted from her and in the direction her life took. Anna would have been a good listener, offering tender compassion to all those who came to her. She would have shown that God is the centre of her love and God would look after her needs and her hopes – that his presence was everything.

We can appreciate these two elderly people probably hobbling along, holding onto each other for stability when they glimpsed the arrival of Mary and Joseph and a small baby being carried through the courtyard. Anna and Simeon knew that this is God’s Chosen One – the One whom they had waited and hoped for all these years. They knew that this child would make sense of all their prayers and longings. They didn’t know how. They just knew…

The pairing of Simeon and Anna reflects Luke’s use of male-female parallels when he writes about people who receive divine blessing and salvation. Jesus’ birth is framed by two stories – Elizabeth and Zechariah in Luke 1 and Anna and Simeon in Luke 2. So here we have two older people with a six-week-old baby showing us both ends of the life cycle.

Looking backwards, Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s promises.
Looking forwards, Jesus is the hope of the world, a light in the darkness.

By Fleur Dorrell

Photograph of the painting by Sailko – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78488831

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