Last Sunday we encountered two interesting figures in Luke 2: Simeon the priest and Anna the “prophetess.”   I gave the congregation my view on Anna’s true identity, which is a bit different than many expect.

In Hebrew, Anna means “Grace.”  That fact alone is interesting, and suggestive of the something deep in Luke’s gospel, given that the very first story of Luke’s birth narrative is of the birth of John the Baptist.  In Hebrew, John means “God is gracious.”  So the whole of the Luke’s birth narrative is framed by GRACE.

Luke tells us a number of facts about Anna/Grace that suggest that there is more to her story than meets the eye.  Consider the following:

(a) She is at least 84 years old.  Depending on how you translate the Greek, she is either 84 yrs old, or has been widowed for 84 years after being married for 7, which would probably make her over 100.  In other words, she’s far older than most people in her society, whose life expectancy was decades lower.  Most or all of her peers are long dead.  There’s no mention of children, but if she had any, they’re probably long dead, too.

(b) Being a widow for so long, and either childless or without living children, Anna/Grace is almost certainly dirt poor – a fact which is strongly suggested by the other details Luke gives us about her.

(c) Luke tells us she “never left the temple but worshiped night and day.”  As a woman, Anna/Grace could not have served the temple as a priest, which makes it highly unusual that she would “never” leave the temple, even at night.  Likely, she”never” leaves the temple because she has nowhere else to go.  Anna/Grace is homeless.

(d) She also is said to “fast and pray” when she is at the temple (i.e., all the time).  A woman who is elderly, friend/childless, dirt-poor, and homeless likely does not “fast” merely as a spiritual discipline.  Rather, she fasts because she has no food!

Seen in this light, “Anna the Prophetess” starts looking a lot more like “Gracie the Bag Lady” … at least until she runs into Jesus.  Before she spots the Messiah in her midst, Gracie (as I prefer to call her) is a beggar at the temple, outside the power structure, looked down upon by most, and reliant on whatever small coins are dropped at her feet by the faithful. Yet after her experience with Jesus, in which God gives her an intuition about Jesus’ nature and identity that is every bit as accurate and profound as that of Simeon’s, “Gracie the Bag Lady” is transformed into “Anna the Prophetess” in Scripture and in the eyes of all generations who follow her.

Isn’t this exactly what happens to any of us who stumble into Jesus?  It seems that you just can’t let this Jesus guy into your heart without him changing you into a new creation of some sort, with a higher identity and purpose than you ever thought possible.

Christian sociologist Tony Campolo (whom I call my “favorite evangelical”), who taught for many years at Eastern University near Philadelphia, told a gripping story in Sunday’s worship service (via YouTube video) about a birthday party he threw for a prostitute named Agnes at 3:30 am in Honolulu.  While “Gracie” was no prostitute, the transformation that takes place in her life is quite similar to the transformation to which Campolo’s story points.  No small number of folks gave an enthusiastic response to Campolo’s story after worship.  For those of you who haven’t seen it, or who would like to see it again, click the link below.  It’s well worth the view!

TONY CAMPOLO’S STORY ABOUT THROWING A BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR A PROSTITUTE AT 3:30 AM

For those of you looking into 2010, the “Roadside Conversations” videos for Luke 11 and 12 have just been posted.  At Countryside, we’ll be covering Luke 11 the week of January 3rd and Luke 12 the week of January 10th.  Click the links below for the videos:

Luke 11

Luke 12

This Sunday we’ll be exploring Luke 2 in worship at Countryside Church.  Specifically, we’ll be looking at two curious people who come into the spotlight at the end of the chapter: Simeon the priest, and Anna the prophetess.  Both people are said to have recognized Jesus as the Messiah when he was brought to the temple as an eight-day-old infant to be circumcised.

The stories get me to wondering: How does one recognize the invisible reality that exists within and behind the visible world?  How is it that a priest and prophetess could recognize Jesus as the Messiah of God?  There was no neon sign above his head.  There were no choirs of angels singing his praises.  The stories practically beg the question: How does one develop “eyes to see” and “ears to hear” what others neither see nor hear?

In the 13th C, one of my favorite poets, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (or Rumi for short) made this observation:

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it.
Whoever has polished it more sees more — more unseen forms become manifest to him.

In contrast to our North American culture which tends to believe that spiritual insight/intuition just comes naturally, and therefore does not require serious or ongoing attention, Rumi offers a helpful counterpoint.  So does Luke 2.  Both Simeon and Anna had been lifetime devotees to the spiritual path.  In fact, Anna is said to have been coming to the Temple daily for 84 years!

What is natural to us is not clarity, but fuzziness with respect to our path in life.  As the apostle Paul observes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).  While there is not much hope of achieving perfect clarity, however, it is indeed possible to bring our lives into much greater focus.  It is possible to increasingly “see” what eyesight fails to reveal, and to “hear” what the ears cannot.

What polishes your mirror?  What have you found that helps increase your powers of intuition or gives greater clarity to your path?

Sorry to those of you who may have been searching for the “Roadside Conversations” videos for Luke 1 and 2, now that we’re in the Christmas season.

Click here for the Luke 1 video.

Click here for the Luke 2 video.

The chapter in Van Blair’s commentary to read along side these chapters is in the back of the book in the “Polemic” section – the part dealing with the Virgin Birth.  Not all Luke Groups will necessarily want to spend two weeks covering Luke 1 and 2.  In that case, I’d suggest either a Christmas Party for the following week, or covering one of this other “polemic” sections, which are all interesting.

Are you busier than you need to be during the holiday season?  Advent is a time of preparation; a time for finding silent places in your day for reflection and contemplation; a time to allow quiet joy to well up from within as one re-connects with the “reason for the season.”  We’ll  be exploring some of this on Sunday with our focus on John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, in Luke 1.

We’ll also be making available hard copies of a brilliant essay by author David Duncan (who’s coming to Countryside in in April!) called “Strategic Withdrawal,” which he gave us permission to distribute to members and friends of Countryside.  I believe I would be breaking the spirit of Mr. Duncan’s generous permission to publish it for the world on this blog, but if you’re not in the Omaha area (and even if you are), I’d heartily recommend purchasing the book it’s found in: My Story as Told by Water: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-Watchings, Fish-Stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, from Living Rivers, in the Age of the Industrial Dark (Sierra Club Books, 2002) at your local bookstore or online.  It’s a perfect remedy for over-the-top seasonal busyness!

For those of you watching the Luke video commentary, Roadside Conversations, here’s Chapter 9 and Chapter 10.

And don’t forget: These are not only helpful for small group preparation and personal Bible study, but are also helpful prep for  worship!

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. 12:7 But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. – Luke 12:6-7

The other day I responded to an email I received from someone living out-of-state who is an agnostic wanting to have a conversation about how one may experience this “God who loves us beyond our wildest imagination” that I talk and write about.  This is a person who has experienced a great deal of pain and disappointment in his life, and I found myself reflecting along the lines of the “salt” sermon I preached a couple months ago where we poured cans of Morton Salt down the aisles (“The Three Great Loves, Affirmation 10, Part 2,” September 20, 2009).  It was a sermon that touched on the verses from Luke 12 above.  I realize I’m getting ahead of myself by blogging on Luke 12, and that those of you who were here for that sermon may find what’s below redundant, but I thought I’d share the following for those who wish to read it:

When people of our great-great-grandparents’ generation looked out at the stars shining brightly over their farms and ranches, it was easy to feel exactly what thousands of generations before them felt – a sense of awe and wonder; a sense of perfection and orderliness to the Universe; perhaps also a sense of artistry and imagination.  The sky may have served as a reminder of God’s beneficence and blessing.  At least they could feel these things when the crops were doing well, or the cows were milking.  But in drought, or through cold winters that livestock didn’t survive, that sky may have looked the same, but other associations or questions might have come to mind: Is God punishing us by withholding the rain?  Did we do something wrong?  Is God trying to teach us a lesson?  Did God decide not to listen to our constant prayers?  The one thing that they would NOT likely have asked is, Does God exist?  That wasn’t in their world-view.

But now that modern science has stepped onto the scene, we can look into the same sky our ancestors did and while there may be a number of similarities of thoughts and ideas we share with our ancestors, we have new thoughts as well, thoughts that none of our ancestors could even imagine having.   We look into the milky area of the sky and realize we’re in the midst of a galaxy 100,000 light years in length and 3,000 lightyears in depth – a galaxy that is said to contain AT LEAST one hundred billion stars (i.e., approx 66,000 cans of Morton Salt if each grain represented a star).  We look at one faintly glowing “star” in the lower hemisphere and realize that that “star” is actually an entire other galaxy called Andromeda, and what we are beholding has travelled 2.5 million years at the speed of light to reach us.  And the Andromeda is considered to be the most distant visible galaxies of what scientists call the NEAR Field, i.e., the closest galaxies!

In some respects, these observations have allowed us to be filled with even more awe and wonder; even more peaceful reverence than even our ancient forebears.  However, they have also introduced a NEW thought into our our minds, at least when the (literal or figurative) rain doesn’t come and the cows are dying: “Does God exist?”  “Are we all alone?”  “If God exists, how could such a God be aware of me, or hear my prayers with so much … empty space?”

Those who are more prone to more down-to-earth, concrete, rubber-hits-the-road thinking may try to escape the terror of aloneness in the face of such vastness by looking to only that which they can see and touch.  But even here, modern science has introduced NEW thoughts into our minds that the ancients (even our great-great-grandparents) never had to deal with.  We look at our hands and realize that they are made up not just of skin, muscle, bone, etc, but also of cells … and cells can be reduced to molecules … and molecules to atoms … to atomic particles … and to subatomic particles like quarks.  We recognize that, on a relative scale, the distance between a proton and its nearest electron is greater than the distance between the sun and earth.  And this causes us to realize that everything we can see before us contains more empty space than anything else.  We’re really more than 99.999999999% empty space …

So now when we modern “farmers” look out at the sky when the “rains” don’t come and all around us seems to be dying, and also when we turn our gaze downward to the earth, it is hard sometimes not to be overwhelmed by a sense of vast, vast, emptiness.  And absence.

“What of this God who loves us beyond our wildest imagination now?” one cannot help but ask.

The major religions of the world all have different ways of addressing this question (though not all believe in a God, or a God who loves us like this, of course).  I find that the Christian path speaks to me quite powerfully precisely at the intersection where vast emptiness meets vast emptiness.  For, at the center of Christian faith is not a “warm fuzzy blanket” meant to provide an “cushy comfort” but a Cross – an instrument of torture and death; a place of utmost desolation and despair; a place where even Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you FORSAKEN me?”

Christian faith is not a good intellectual concept.  It’s not a set of doctrines.  It’s not even a set of beliefs.  Christian faith is simply an experience.  While the experience may turn into something quite ecstatic, lifting one to the heights of love and grace, it never starts here, nor does it end here.  The basic experience to which the Cross points is emptiness.  It is the experience of deeply relating to and claiming our emptiness, losing hope and faith, and discovering the emptiness of God touching the emptiness that is us.

I cannot begin to describe what this experience “feels” like.  The experience is as far beyond words as that Andromeda galaxy is beyond earth.  It is WAY beyond doctrines and beliefs – so far that people of absolutely NO belief can experience this fierce intersection without ever finding religious language to describe it.   And to me, that only makes it more real; more worthy of contemplation (even though I admit from square one that I’ll never understand it); even more worthy of adoration (even though I’ll never fully appreciate, much less adore it).

Even my own “mountain top” experience in 1981 (that I write about in Asphalt Jesus) didn’t begin there, with a spiritual “high.”  It began with two people getting in touch with our deep emptiness and letting go of “self.”  If one searches for an ultimate “high,” one never finds it (I know this from incredibly long experience of trying to replicate the very experience I had in ‘81, or trying to get close to it!).  But what all of us can do is find the emptiness inside and claim it.  This is the surest path to God, I think.  Somehow emptiness + emptiness regularly seems to lead to somethingness.  Literally, creatio ex nihilo.  And a new day dawns.  A new creation is born.

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