“Circling and Sitting”
Genesis 8:6-12; Luke 2:22-38
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
June 12, 2016
A few weeks ago, I took my sermon inspiration from the name of the baby we baptized that Sunday. It seemed appropriate, as we baptized a baby named Calvin, to preach on grace, since it was a central theme for reformation theologian John Calvin. After the service, someone suggested that each time we have a baptism, I might draw upon the meaning of the baby’s name in the sermons. Nice idea, I thought. And so today my sermon is inspired by the name Olive Ann.
Olive Ann is named in memory and in honor of three very special people. Her first name evokes the memory of her great-grandmother Olive, who lived with her husband Albie in the house where Jim and Danielle now live. Growing up, Olive was a member of Edwards Church, and I understand she played the organ. Little Olive’s middle name, Ann, honors her special connection with her grandmother, Rena Ann, Jim’s mom, and remembers the gifts her grandmother Sherry Ann, Danielle’s Mom, gave to her family and the world. A beautiful name remembering and honoring three beautiful people.
I don’t know the history behind how Olive’s grandmas and great-grandmas acquired their names. But I’ve been thinking about the spiritual truths those names can teach us.
There are lots of olives mentioned in the Bible. Olive trees are a sign of the goodness of God’s creation. Olive oil is an expression of God’s abundant gifts of nourishment. Perhaps the most famous olive story in the Bible is our scripture reading from Genesis. This tale begins as the vivid but horrible story of the great flood draws to a close. For forty days and forty nights, it poured rain, flooding the earth, destroying all of life, except for the pairs of creatures who made it onto Noah’s ark. Whether you believe the flood actually happened, whether you see it as an act of God or as a natural disaster, however you make sense of leopards and bunnies hanging out together in an enclosed space, I invite you to imagine what it might have been like to be stuck in that ark. Crowded, smelly, noisy. Imagine standing on the deck and looking around—even after the rain has stopped—and seeing nothing but water. No trees, no land, nothing that looks familiar, nothing that can provide sustenance. I imagine fighting with despair, struggling to trust there is any hope for life moving forward.
In the midst of that struggle, Noah releases a dove. The dove circles and circles, searching for any sign of dry land. She returns with nothing. Noah waits seven days and sends the dove out again. Circling, searching, circling, searching until finally she finds it: an olive tree whose leaves are once again green. She plucks a leaf with her beak and brings it back: a promise that the waters are receding, a sign of hope, an assurance of God’s renewed abundance.
The image is so powerful it has taken on meaning far beyond this story: a dove with an olive branch is a universal symbol of peace.
There are not quite as many Ann’s in the Bible as there are olive trees. There’s Hannah, mother of Samuel, who despairs of having a child until she gives birth as a very old woman. There’s Ann the mother of Mary, who’s actually not named in the Bible, but who is considered a saint by our Catholic sisters and brothers. The one I picked for today is my favorite Ann—actually Anna–, the old woman who sits in the temple night and day.
Anna is a mysterious character. Who is she and what is she doing in the temple? The short passage in Luke’s gospel gives us more hints than we initially may realize.
It is unusual for the Bible to identify a woman as a prophet—so we know Anna must be important. Luke tells us she is the daughter of Phanuel. This might just be an identification of her family heritage—but the name Phanuel means “face of God.” Is Luke suggesting that Anna is the daughter of the face of God? What does that mean? Then there is her age. It might just be that she is 84 years old, but 84 is 7×12. Seven is a sacred number and 12 is the number of tribes in Israel. Hmmmm…
We know Anna is a widow, a member of one of the most vulnerable groups in society in Jesus’ time. What does it mean that a widow is one of the first people to recognize Jesus?
In Jesus’ time, there was a group of people who were known as anawim—the holy poor. They were people who had chosen a life of poverty, much like nuns or monks or Hindu sannyasis today. Their chosen vulnerability awakened them to their dependence on God, and so brought them closer to God. Might Anna have been one of the anawim?
The anawim were often poets, and some scholars suggest that the poem attributed to Simeon in the Bible might actually have been spoken by Anna.
We don’t know. What we do know is that Anna lived in a time of great confusion and unrest, a time that led many to despair. She chose to spend her time in the temple, fasting and praying. She was waiting for a sign of hope. As she waited, she prepared herself, seeking to become closer to God, attuning her eyes and her ears and her heart to the presence of the holy. All those years of fasting and praying came to fruition in a single moment. She saw the baby in the temple and knew, deep in her heart, that God was at work in a special way. She leapt up from the floor, belying her 84 years. She began accosting everyone she saw, telling about this child who was hope for the world.
We all have times in our lives when we struggle to believe hope is alive. We look at the state of our world—the overwhelming needs of refugees, the melting of the polar icecap—and we wonder if there is hope for change. We listen to incendiary and racist speeches in our own nation and we wonder if there is hope for our democracy. Closer to home, we see people’s lives ruined by addiction. In our personal lives, we struggle with grief that seems to have no end, with relationships that are broken, with health crises.
In those times, perhaps we can look over at little Olive Ann and allow her name to point us toward the truths highlighted in these two biblical stories.
The first truth: hope is alive. An olive tree will grow again, bearing green leaves to be plucked by a dove. God’s grace will appear to us through a person—maybe a baby coming to the temple, maybe a scruffy-looking teenager, maybe an overlooked senior—who will bring us hope. We may have to wait a long time until hope emerges from the flood waters, or until we are ready to recognize it. If we persevere, the promise will come to fruition: we will discover hope.
The second truth from these two very different stories is that there is more than one faithful way to wait for hope. The dove was sent forth in search of hope—circling around, swooping down to get a closer look. The dove calls us to be active, to put ourselves out there, to circle and search and maybe even to be part of bringing hope into being. The dove can’t do it, but we can dig a ditch to help the water drain away; we can plant the seeds for a new crop of olive trees; we can even build an ark as a refuge in the meantime.
Anna’s way of waiting is quieter, inward. She’s not passive, for she is fasting and praying non-stop. She is receptive, asking God to open her heart to new possibilities, to hone her vision so she can see deeper than the surface, to attune her ears so she can hear the melody of hope amidst the noise of the temple gates. She is preparing herself so she can recognize hope when it emerges.
Two very different ways of waiting for hope—one outward and active, one inward and receptive. How do we know when it is time to circle with the dove and when it is time to sit with Anna? I wonder if what we need most is simply the reminder that there is more than one way to wait. When we find ourselves so actively searching for hope that we are dizzy from our frantic circling, or if we realize we are trying to force hope into being, perhaps we need to learn from Anna, and simple sit for a while. Or when we find ourselves slipping from a receptive posture to a passive slump, we can take our cue from the dove and set out on a journey of discovery.
The third insight from these two stories is how we are called to respond when we find ourselves, finally, in the presence of hope. We are called to take that olive leaf in our beaks and fly around in circles of joy so everyone can see it. We are called to leap up from the floor and start accosting total strangers, sharing the news that is simply too good to keep to ourselves.
Olive Ann. What a beautiful name. And what beautiful truths this name evokes. Hope is alive. We wait for hope with patience and perseverance, sometimes circling actively, sometimes sitting receptively. When we discover hope, we are called to share it far and wide with great joy.
Amen.