There Was ALSO a Prophetess, Anna

Here is a story from the margins of the infancy narrative (Luke 2: 36-40). Prophetess Anna appears at the threshold where the Christmas story fades and the chronicle of the adult Jesus begins, positioned after the presentation at the temple and before the boy lost amongst the scholars. From the tribe of Asher—a lineage barely whispered in scripture—she emerges: a woman, a widow, advanced in years. Anna had kept her hopes alive; she looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem. Jesus is brought to the temple for the rite of purification and presentation. Anna recognised him at once and began to speak of him to everyone around; she was perhaps the first proclaimer of the gospel in the temple.

This passage acknowledges a great truth: people from the margins of society—the poor, the widowed, and the outsider—are often the first and fastest to recognise and speak aloud the truth. The people at the centre are busy maintaining the status quo, and defend their space, rituals, doctrines, and power. We condemn King Herod and what he did, but we would be no better if we were in that position. Jesus lived on for 33 years more amongst them; still the religious authorities of that time did not recognise or recommend him to others—and it will be no better if he were to come again today. The hardcore inner circle is busy defending the doctrines, rituals, and the written text.

There is beauty in the life of prophetess Anna. She lived incomplete, in her father's house, even after marriage, even at eighty-eight; her hope kept her incomplete; now she feels complete. Though living in the temple she did not get controlled by the temple, its hierarchies, and status quo; she looked forward, and therefore she saw and recognised. Whatever may be our life situation, unless we look forward in hope, we will never see, reach, or live a better life when it happens.

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Standing in the pulpit to preach Anna's story, I feel the weight of my position within the church hierarchy—how carefully I must navigate when speaking of institutional matters, how defensive I become when power structures face scrutiny. I observe the architecture of our worship: myself elevated at the centre and top as the main celebrant; the faithful seated in front rows—the daily churchgoers, perhaps—and then the last benchers claiming the margins, attending, obeying, but not participating as equals. I long for a different configuration: a circle where we might sing the psalm together, speak the prayers as one voice, break the bread as companions rather than hierarchs and subjects.

Fixed hierarchies destroy from both directions. Those elevated are crushed beneath the burden of the crown, corroded by the constant consumption of power's privileges. Those below are ground down by subjugation, exploitation, and the slow violence of systematic diminishment. The pyramid must be exchanged for the circle; or perhaps just give up the pyramid and have nothing in its place, but the binding spirit. Only then might we live as equals—not in some distant kingdom, but here, now, in the temple where Anna once stood, waiting, watching, seeing what others could not.

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