A Woman, A Widow, and a Lost Tribe

My brother, Kurt as a baby. There is great
joy in meeting a baby, One can only imagine
what Anna felt. 

Scripture:

Luke 2:36   There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, ³⁷ then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. ³⁸ At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Observation:

While at the Temple, Mary and Joseph, along with the baby, encountered a woman, Anna. Her name is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew name “Hannah,” who was Samuel’s mother. This visit to the Temple is reminiscent of Hannah’s dedication of Samuel in service to God, therefore, the presence of “Anna” at Jesus’ dedication is significant. 

This woman was a prophet, and there are very few female prophets found in the Scriptures. In the Old Testament we find seven which are identified as such by the Talmud: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, and Esther. This Anna, joins in with this line of women who have gone before her. 

We are told that she comes from the tribe of Asher, the daughter of Phanuel. Asher is a northern tribe, one that fell to the Babylonians. Some thought that first-century Israelites were all “Jews,” or from the tribe of Judah. Luke intentionally allows us to see that there is a remnant of God’s people who has remained faithful. Anna represents the unlikeliest of individuals for she is a woman, a widow, and from the tribe of Asher. 

Anna is elderly, even as there are those who dispute what this sentence means regarding her age. Either she is eighty-four at this time, or she was a widow for eighty-four years. Either way, she is old now, and has devoted herself to service to God. She probably didn’t live at the temple, but was found there from sunup to sundown, every day, a woman of prayer and fasting. 

Because of the intimacy of her relationship with God, she immediately recognized who Jesus was. Fulfilling her role as a prophet, she began to praise God and preach! Many would have come to the Temple looking for redemption, and she began to point them in the direction of this little child, telling everyone who would listen what had been revealed to her. 

Application:

Luke seems to pull out all the stops when coming to the story of Anna, showing us just how much of an outsider she really was. Over and over again, the most unlikely of individuals plays a central role in spreading the gospel. Anna is a woman, a widow, and is from a lost tribe, the tribe of Asher. This tribe is no longer central to the Israelites, who consider themselves all from the tribe of Judah. To be from the tribe of Asher is to be an outsider, and yet, when everything is stacked against this woman, she remains faithful. 

We all have obstacles in life and we can choose how to deal with them. Either they will knock us down, or they will become the building blocks that will make us better people. For many women, simply being a woman can be a perceived obstacle to obedience and faithful service to God. Historically the doors of opportunity have not been as readily opened for women as they have for men. Therefore, obedience can require tenacity, creativity and persistence in following the call of God. One can only imagine what Anna’s family must have thought when she trotted off to Jerusalem decades before! But in obedience to God, she went, and served faithfully for years. 

A widow had numerous obstacles in life, but they could also have been turned into opportunities. Anna was evidently widowed at a very young age and had spent most of her life as a single woman. We have no record that she had children. There are a couple of ways to look at this, because she could have been extremely poor, or she may have been well off financially. Sometimes, when women were widowed at a young age, they inherited their husband’s finances, and were able to become benefactors of those in need of financial support. Some of the women who served with Jesus were women with financial resources. Anna may have answered God’s call to go to Jerusalem because she was able to support herself financially and therefore consecrate all that she had in service to God. In essence, she was an early bi-vocational minister in the house of the Lord. She could be there day in and day out because she had the financial resources to support herself. If this was the case, she probably supported others as well, and helped those who were in need. Anna was self-disciplined, fasting and praying on a regular basis. She had learned to live a simple life, not even spending much on food, so that she could give all she could. 

We don’t know how the Jews in Jerusalem treated those from outside of Israel. Coming from the tribe of Asher, Anna may have been viewed with skepticism as an outsider, or there may have been respect for the righteous remnant of those from the Northern Kingdom. What we do know is that she would have had no place in the heart of Judaism. Her presence, and her announcement of the birth of the baby represent God’s grace reaching out to the very fringe of the community. Anna may well have been the “undocumented” individual living in Jerusalem, and yet, this is who God wanted to use to spread the gospel. 

The good news was to be for all people, and this includes the woman, the widow and the stranger among us. There is nothing in any of our lives that can be an obstacle to God’s love. And, there is no excuse great enough not to answer the call to spread the good news. If God could use Anna, God can use any of us. 

Prayer:

Lord, please help me to have a generous and disciplined spirit like Anna. Amen.