Malachi 3.1-5; Hebrews 2.14-18; Luke 2.22-40

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m
tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
and learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickle for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
but maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
when suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

I was introduced to this poem by Jenny Joseph a while ago by a friend who is somewhat older than me, and who is treading the path of losing her inhibitions as she ages. I can picture her now, chuckling away at the sentiments expressed in the poem.

Ageing is a troublesome business. Some people age well - they accept that the parameters of their lives may be shrinking, that their world is becoming smaller as their physical bodies and minds become less fit and sharp as once they were.

They look back and thank God for having brought them thus far, they reflect on the joys of their past life, and they still reach out to others with love. They become at peace with the world and with God. It was great to hear from a son with whom I was planning a funeral recently that his mother retained a playful sense of humour until her death, aged 98, even though her physical body had somewhat deteriorated.

Other people really struggle with the ageing process. As their bodies and minds begin to tire, they become frustrated by the things they can no longer do. They are bitter about their pains, they become very inward-focused and lose the ability to think about others. They find it hard to accept with good grace that they have now become dependent on others for so much of their life.

Of course, many people fall somewhere between the two. As an aside, I read this week that research undertaken recently in 80 countries apparently shows that one’s sense of well-being throughout life follows a U-shaped curve, with the peaks of happiness when we’re young and during the final years (The Times, 29 January 2008). As an aside, I have to say I was slightly disturbed to read that for women the trough of happiness is at age 40 - I hit that figure in June.

Back to our Bible readings, in which we see young and old together.

Mary and Joseph have taken the child Jesus to the Temple for his dedication as is required by Jewish Law.

Luke is always very keen to stress the continuity between Christianity and Judaism. Five times in today’s 18 verses he tells us that Jesus’s parents were acting according to the law.

The contrast is great between the small child at the beginning of his life, being dedicated to God, and the two elderly people in the Temple, Simeon and Anna. The Christ-child has his whole life before him; Simeon and Anna have lived most of their already.

We see in these two older people the results of a life dedicated to God. We are told that Simeon was righteous and devout; that Anna ever left the temple but worshipped there with prayer and fasting day and night.

When we dedicate someone or even ourselves to God, we can never know exactly how it will work out.

I suppose our equivalent ritual is baptism. When I baptise someone I can never guarantee that they will continue to live by the promises that they have made or others have been made for them. Some families make promises that they then become unable to keep; others bring their children up in a committed way. Some of those children in the first kind of family find their way back to God for themselves; some in the second type later make a decision to go their own way. Only time will tell.

But in Simeon and Anna we see the results of people whose dedication to God has remained and grown. Because of their faithfulness and prayerfulness, when Mary and Joseph bring the child Jesus into the Temple, they recognise who he is. Because they have given attention to their relationship with God, they have an acute sense of the holy.

Simeon and Anna remind us that you are never too old to be used by God. Even if your body and mind are failing - and we don’t know that they were at that stage, though Simeon’s words “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace” suggest that he is ready to die - you can still pray and grow in your relationship with God.

Simeon and Anna had spent lives of regular prayer and worship. They recognised who Jesus was because they were open and aware of the presence of God in their midst. They had been waiting, waiting for God’s action, and now it had arrived.

God transformed the moment for them. On the outside this was a normal family carrying out the normal Jewish way of life. But God transformed that moment because the child, of course, was no normal child.

Their response was different. Though both recognised the Messiah, Simeon related it to his own life. It was as if he said, “That’s OK, God, time to go. I’ve seen the long-awaited king, the light that will bring salvation. I no longer need to remain on earth because the thing I’ve waited for so long has now happened.”

But Anna responds in a very different way. She begins to tell the world about Jesus. She goes out and finds people to tell them what has taken place. She praises God and tells the world.

One is an internal response; the other an exterior. These are two different ways in which we too respond to God. In our silent prayers we respond to God as Simeon did. In our prayers about ourselves and our sharing and relating our own concerns to God, we share Simeon’s approach.

But in our coming together to worship on a Sunday, in our sharing our faith with others, in our proclaiming the works of God, we are responding in the same way as Anna.

We only see snapshots of the lives of these two people, but they help us to shape and become aware of the balance that is needed in our spiritual lives. Some of us will, by inclination and personality, feel more comfortable with Simeon’s way of responding; others, perhaps especially the more extrovert among us, will respond more easily as Anna did.

But whatever our personality, all of us need both in our lives. We all need the times of silence and space, of interior prayer and reflection, of relating the works and wonders of God to our own lives. And we all need the times of openly praising God, of sharing with others, of pointing towards God’s light as Anna did.

Simeon and Anna had spent a lifetime in touch with God. As we grow older we have the gifts of the life we have led, the things we have learnt, the experiences of God that increase in magnitude and number. As we grow older, if we have devoted ourselves to God, we will become more aware of God and the wonder of the life we have been give, and the great mystery of salvation.

Many people, as they grow older, sense that life doesn’t hold as much for them as it did. I certainly don’t want to do down the struggles that some people have adjusting to their ageing, and increasing frailty and decreasing mobility - I know it is hard - but there are positives about growing older too, which I hope we can draw out of this story of two elderly people used by God.

And all of us, young and old, can follow their example of openness and awareness to the things of God, so that we too might recognise God’s gifts and grace and all God’s blessings, in the midst if a world that sometimes hides them and overshadows them.

Simeon and Anna after lifetimes of prayer and dedication to God act as an example to us, showing how we too through a life that makes time for God, can be more aware of the treasures that God brings, and most of all, more aware, through the help of the Holy Spirit, of his Son Jesus Christ, and his presence in the world.