This time of year, we often see cartoons featuring the old year as a geezer with an hourglass about to run out, handing over the reins of time to the baby new year. The scene in today's story in the Temple looks similar. Two ancient people of faith, anticipating God's new future unfolding through an infant. The event is called "The Presentation," and what happened to the Child in the temple is what still happens when parents bring their children to church. We bring our kids, and people start to talk. In Jesus' case, because it's in the Bible, the talk is called "prophecy." When Springwater goobles over kids on a Sunday, it's business-as-usual, but we could consider it prophecy. This is the most beautiful baby ever born, see how attentive the child is, sure to be a pastor, already a musician, really thinking things through. We're blessing these children with futures bright with God's love.

So you can see where it would be unsettling for any parent to hear what Simeon had to say to baby Jesus. An excessively ancient man, he is clearly one of the Temple regulars. Blind, but that doesn't mean he can't see. His feet know the streets between his house and the Temple so well he doesn't even need a hand at his elbow. Simeon had wakened this morning, listening as he always did, for the Holy Spirit to indicate that his watch was over. Even when he was young, Simeon was the go-to guy in the neighborhood. In his younger years, people had come asking for advice on cattle to buy, or what school to send their sons to, was this fine-quality cloth. As he got older, men came for Simeon to interpret scripture, even as his eyes faded. Once he was blind, Simeon's reason for living became waiting. Waiting for God's Messiah, waiting for the time to be ripe. His time is running out. He wishes it would run out! Long ago he had seen that the purpose of his living was simply to pray, simply to wait, simply to be attentive. There wasn't a lot of money in it, but his needs were simple, and the Voice to which he listened said it was enough to wait.

Today the Voice urges him to the Temple. It is time. As usual, the Temple is bursting with the chaos of sacrifice and the animals, people begging, singing, voices of praise, celebrations. No sign of a potential coronation, no rumors of revolution. But his feet take him to the place where babies are presented. He understands, "Take him in your arms." The parents are young, trusting, so proud of this boy. Simeon takes the Child and his soul is filled with music. This is it. Throwing back his head, in his quavery, old man's voice, song bursts from him. Maybe not beautiful to others, but to Simeon, what he sings is beautiful as it swells against his heart. His song is part surrender, part praise to the God whose presence is closer to him than his heartbeat. Although personal, this intimate God is not private, does not belong to anyone, even to the people who call themselves The People of God. This God-all glory and praise!-this God loves all peoples. It is proved, revealed by this Child.

The parents are speechless. He can hear their sharp intake of breath as they draw closer to each other. He must speak to them. Simeon has sung of hope, of brightness, an extravagant tapestry of hope. He must show them the darker threads. This Light, this Child who is the Full Light of God to the world, will also create shadows. This Child will require decision. The world must decide for rising or falling, for life or for death. There is both hope and consolation in this Child. The mother must have consolation. Her mother-pain, the pain of all mothers, isn't just for herself. Her pain will be for her conversion as it is also for the sake of others. She can bear her pain with joy, with freedom, with delight and trust in God when she understands it is not for her sake alone.

Simeon's song enlightens what Anna does next. Anna, the tiny woman. Anna, so ancient even her wrinkles have wrinkles! Anna, gregarious, loving, the embodiment of Welcome in the Temple. She has been here so long, many call her Grandmother of the Promised One. A widow almost as she left childhood, she hadn't left the Temple in-well, generations. If it were anyone else, you would have thought she'd overheard Simeon and wanted to embellish his words with her two cents worth. But it was Anna. Prophet, they say. Her whole life was focused on one thing. God. Worship. Fasting. Never any kids of her own, but she said her wrinkles were stretch marks from solitude and solicitude and solidarity. Her life's vitality was completely poured out in worship. Her prayer was extravagance. Her fasting a gluttony, but of hope. So focused on God her life was anticipation. They invented this saying about her, "Blessed are the single-hearted for they shall see God."

When Simeon's song was done, she took the Child and began her dance. She laughed, she sang, she danced. And then she talked. Boy, did she talk! Anyone else, and she would have been a loony old lady. But people said she was a prophet, and she must have been, if exuberance is any sign of prophecy. "Sing with me," she cried. "The Child of redemption." Well, that was a little backwards. The first son belongs to God, and the parents come to the Temple to redeem him, not the other way around. But Anna's song was contagious-singing, dancing, laughing, whooping. "The redemption of Jerusalem!" she sings. "God's promises kept!" It was more than just a baby. Who could blame a grandmother for carrying on about a new baby. And everyone knew Anna was the Grandmother of the Promised One.
What did these two recognize? These two focused so deeply, so intently on God's promises. They saw hope under every rock and leaf. Were they over-reading the signs? Their interactions with the Child comment on each other. Simeon's song of hope, of Light, acknowledges darkness, knows that perhaps it is darkness itself which reveals the revolution of Light. Anna's personal darkness was her lifetime of loss. Separation from family and all that made a woman's life worthwhile in those times. And in the midst of the darkness she had come to embrace, the darkness she no longer denied, the darkness that taught her to focus outside herself, into that darkness came everything she'd waited for. Both darkness and waiting had prepared her to recognize this child. No wonder she didn't stop talking. No wonder she laughed and danced.

Anna's word of redemption required the sword Simeon saw for the mother. Judgment. Separation. Decision. You must decide. Therein lies redemption. Decide for life, even against the facts, even against the darkness. Receive the separation, the judgment. And then decide for life.

What did these two recognize that we don't? A Child who stands for hope, who embodies hope, even in the middle of darkness.

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