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Saint Luke 2:22-40
Waiting is hard. Not just for the big stuff but for the little stuff as well.
According to a recent article in Gentleman's Quarterly there is a reason why we will do almost anything to avoid waiting. Dr. Jason Farman, professor at Maryland University and the author of Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World, noted that there didn’t seem to be any pauses in our life.
I think we're losing the capacity to do nothing. In my own life, I have a very difficult time standing in line without taking my phone out of my pocket and scrolling through Twitter. I feel like I need to be doing something at all times, or I feel a sense of guilt about my use of time.
In the United States, we absolutely think of our time as individual—and also as our scarcest resource. When we imagine productive time—time being used wisely, time being used well—waiting is contrary to all of that. If you make me wait, you're limiting my ability to be successful in this life.
He suggests that “daydreaming and waiting” may be healthier because they “activate a part of the brain called the ... the imagination network. We need these moments of pause in order for our brain to make creative and inventive connections.”1
If people don’t pause, those connections are not being made.
Ask some people how they are and they will respond “busy” as if their worth was tied to their schedules and all they had to do. But if you asked Simeon and Anna in today’s gospel how they were, they almost certainly would have responded, “we’re waiting contentedly, thank you very much.”
Anna and Simeon, it seems have been waiting around the temple for a very long time.
We don’t know how old Simeon is but Anna is one of the few people in the New Testament who has her age mentioned, she’s in her eighties. They have been hanging around the temple in what must have seemed to them like a perpetual waiting room.
There is no mention of what they did while they waited. Pastor Bauman suggested at our on-line Bible Study last Thursday that Anna may have been the longest serving person on the temple’s altar guild. And Simeon, being a guy, may have just puttered around the place. Scripture tells us they were righteous and devout, living in expectation.
But how long is one expected to wait not knowing anything about what you are waiting for? How long would any of us wait knowing only that the someone or something that will bring, some kind of “consolation” and who will fulfill the long-awaited promise to the people is coming? My guess is we wouldn’t wait very long. At least not before we checked our smart phones.
There must have been moments in their lives when they thought they couldn’t wait any longer. It is these “middle moments” of life when discouragement sets in.
There is even a term for these moments. It is called “Kanter’s Law” after Dr. Rosabeth Moss-Kanter, professor at the Harvard Business School. She warns that “in the middle, everything looks like a failure" She says, “Everyone feels motivated in the beginning but it is in the middle that ... we all have doubts. And, she warns, it is in the middle of a project that our tendency to give up is the greatest.”2
That is what worries me about our “Generosity in 2024" stewardship campaign. Right now, we see the need, we understand the challenge, and we are ready to undertake it. We are more than motivated. But weeks from now, when we are in the middle there might be doubts. Will we make it? Can we do it? Has our start been strong enough? Can we keep up the pace? Kanter’s law reminds us that ““it is in the middle where the hard work happens.”2
Anna and Simeon may have started their waiting in the temple with confidence. “It won’t be long.” they might have said to each other to buoy up their spirits. But as the years droned on, and they reach their “middle moments,” Kanter’s law might have kicked in and doubts may have began to rear their ugly head.
I wonder how close they were to giving up before a couple walked in, Mary and Joseph, just fulfilling the law by bringing their baby boy to the temple.
Mary Ann Evans who, because of the times in which she lived, is better known as George Eliot observed, “We older human beings feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in earth or sky.”3
Seemingly by chance, Mary and Joseph bumped into an old man named Simeon, and then a woman named Anna who had been a widow for decades. The aged inevitably turn and gaze at an infant, as if the chances to glimpse such precious beauty are numbered.4
Wouldn’t it have been great to have been there?
Simeon’s hands, gnarled with arthritis, age spots, boney fingers gently cradling the infant’s head; eyes meeting; smile unfolding across the wise elder’s face – a beautiful exchange under any circumstances, made even more wondrous because of those involved and the Spirit’s presence guiding them all.
This is a picture of generations coming together. “Past, present, and future meet in one intimate, brief moment in the temple.”5
What they see is a mixed bag. This child will upset the apple cart of those who thought they had it all together. This child will grow up to be a man who does not roll over in the face of those who think they are the absolute authority over everything and everybody. This tenacity may bring him to the point where it costs him his life and breaks his mother’s heart.
Yet, the two prophets continue, those who allow themselves to be touched by him will know a peace that carries them to the end of their days.
An unfortunate consequence of the first line of Simeon’s chant: “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word...”6 is that we have made it into his swan song. We have used it as if it were sung with his dying breath.
Traditionally in churches it is sung right after the commendation before the casket is recessed down the aisle at the conclusion of a funeral service.
But what if those weren’t the last notes Simeon and Anna ever sung? What if it was not only about an end to their waiting but a song about new beginnings? What if they marched out of the temple arm and arm, into the streets singing that they their eyes had seen their salvation and the light for all people?
What if they shared a song of joy, pure joy?
What if they sang it to proclaim that all their waiting was not in vain?
What if they sang it to proclaim that in all those “middle moments” when they doubted what they were doing and “Kanter’s Law” was about to overcome them, it didn’t.
What if they sang it to proclaim that their waiting led to a new beginning for them, and for all the people for whom Christ came?
In a sense all of us are waiting and wondering what will happen to us, to our church, to our future.
Waiting is hard but, unlike Simeon and Anna, what we are waiting for is already here. Jesus is here, in this place, he is with us.
What Simeon and Anna sang about was the joy of discovering what we already know. It’s not a joy of our own devising.
“It is a joy that comes when prayers have been heard and answered, when hope is fulfilled, and dreams are made reality. It is a joy that can only come as a gift ... not something of our making.”7
Joy came to us as a baby, yes, but a baby who grew up to be a man who showed us how to live, how to love, and who promised to be with us through it all – our beginnings, our endings, and even our “middle moments” of doubt and anxiety.
Jesus is the one we have been waiting for. Jesus is the one we can build our lives around.
We’ll sing their song again today “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation.” For this, promise, in all our waiting, in all of our moments, we can be like Simeon and Anna, and pause, at least for a little while, to offer back our thanks and praise.
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1. Clay Skipper, “Why Waiting Feels Terrible,” GQ.com, November 16, 2020, https://www.gq.com/story/why-getting-better-at-waiting-could-improve-your-life.
2. Francisco Saez, “Kanter’s Law: Everything Looks like a Failure in the Middle,” FacileThings, September 13, 2023, https://facilethings.com/blog/en/everything-looks-like-a-failure-in-the-middle.
3. Shirley Isherwood, Chris Molan, and George Eliot, Silas Marner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
4. James D Howell, “What Can We Say? December 27 1st of Christmas” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notations (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 1, 2020), http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.
5. Julie Peeples, “Luke 2:22-40. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 131-133.
6. Saint Luke 2:29. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]
7. William H Willimon, “The Fullness of Time,” Pulpit Resource 30, no. 4 (2002): pp. 59-61.
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