ADHD is an acronym that stands for “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” The condition is so widespread today that it is now less a medical diagnosis than a cultural label. Our culture suffers from “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.”
The causes are not too hard to find. We live in an age of massive information overload. In the digital world, the demands made on our cognitive faculties are enormous. We check our phones once every 12 minutes, beginning right after we wake up. Our attention shifts rapidly from friends and their stories on social media, to podcasts on our favorite subjects, to current events on the 24 hour news cycle.
The result is that seldom do we spend too long on any one thing. We keep moving from one thing to the next. And before long, we find that we can’t spend too long on any one thing. We lose the capacity. Our attention has become too fragmented, our ability to concentrate too impaired.
In a now famous essay published in the Atlantic in 2008, author Nicholas Carr writes of this experience. Listen to what he has to say:
“Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”
Can we relate to this experience? I hardly need to tell you that this state of affairs is bad for the lives that we ought to be living as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ. For to live as a Christian–or at least to live well as a Christian—depends on a set of practices that demand sustained attention, that require concentration, not least the deep reading of Scripture in our private devotions.
Let not the world squeeze you into its mold, the Apostle Paul counseled the faithful in Rome, in the memorable translation of JB Phillips. How desperately we need to hear and receive this counsel today!
Paul continues: But rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:1,2). One of the principal means by which we can renew our minds is to give our attention, whatever may be left of it, to the Scriptures.
Today affords us the opportunity to do just this. Let us then turn to our gospel lesson in Luke to consider carefully what’s before us there.
The scene is the Jerusalem temple—an ordinary day there by all appearances. A poor couple has come in. They have brought their child to perform the common ritual of purification.
You see, the Law stipulates that a woman is to make purification for herself forty days after the birth of her son. Since the baby she holds in her arms is her firstborn son, she must present him to the Lord.
In this connection, the parents are to offer a sacrifice. They offer a pair of turtledoves or young pigeons. Incidentally, this is how we know they are poor. We know that because, according to the Law, the doves or the pigeons are an acceptable offering only if the couple cannot afford a lamb.
It’s an ordinary event, one that happens every day. Just another poor couple and their child.
But there is another who has come to the temple. His name is Simeon. He is described as a righteous and devout man—righteous in that he faithfully follows the Law of Moses, devout in that he does it from the heart. To do the first without the second is to be a Pharisee. To be the second without doing the first is to be ignorant.
But this is not what makes Simeon stand out. Simeon has cultivated an inner life, a life of attentiveness and awareness, a life that comes from waiting patiently on the Lord. For what exactly was he waiting? He was waiting for the consolation of his people Israel.
Today he reaps spiritual dividends from the life that he has led. For today his long wait has come to an end.
Guided by the Holy Spirit, Simeon approaches the young couple. Illuminated by that same Spirit, Simeon is able to see past the ordinary. That baby there—it is more than the child of an ordinary couple. Mysteriously drawn to them, he asks the young woman if he can hold the baby in his arms.
Receiving the child from her, he experiences something wonderful in this moment of grace—the moment when he cradles the Messiah in his arms and presses him gently to his heart. By the illumination of the Holy Spirit, Simeon sees past the ordinary to something wonderful that God is doing here. Specifically, he sees what the prophet Malachi foretold: The Lord is coming into his temple (3:1).
Breathing out a deep sigh of contentment, Simeon says: “Lord, you may now dismiss your servant in peace, because my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all people” (Luke 2:29-31).
This is the defining moment of Simeon’s life. Or rather should we say this is its crowning moment. For “it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah” (Luke 2:26).
Simeon still held out hope for this life, a hope in God’s faithfulness to his promise to him. Despite his old age, Simeon made his own the conviction of the Psalmist: “I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (27:13).
It is worth noting that the Holy Spirit appears here. We know the Spirit not only as the divine agent that reveals God’s truth to us, but also as the power of hope.
The Holy Spirit is the power of hope who gives us the power to hope. That is why the Apostle Paul can bless us with the words: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).
The Spirit also speaks through the prophets. Simeon blesses the family and turns to Mary to prophesy: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed, so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed–and a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34,35).
Here a somber note is introduced into the song of Simeon. The light for the revelation to the Gentiles casts a shadow. God has prepared his salvation in the presence of all peoples, but for some it will be a sign to be opposed.
Indeed, Simeon is a true prophet, because what he prophesies will happen. The opposition will dog every step of the Lord’s Messiah until it tries, convicts and sentences him to death. When Mary beholds him there on the cross, a sword will pierce her own soul too.
Speaking of the prophets, let us recall that, according to the prophet Joel, in the last days God would pour out his Spirit on all flesh. The old people would be given the power to dream dreams. On both his male and female servants God would pour out his Spirit (Joel 2:28-29).
Perhaps this helps explain why old Simeon is not alone in his witness. There is also an old woman named Anna.
The witness of man to God’s salvation is partial and incomplete. It can only be made whole by the witness of a woman. There can be no Simeon without an Anna, just as there can be no Mary without a Joseph.
Make no mistake. The Gospel is intentional when featuring the four of them for us here. In doing so, Luke reminds us that not only in God’s plan of creation, but also in God’s plan of salvation, man and woman are integral to each other. “In the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman” (1 Corinthians 11:11). And together, they are co-heirs of the grace of life, the new life that comes through the salvation that Christ brings, to paraphrase the Apostle Peter (cf. 1 Peter 3:7).
And so Anna too has been waiting. Having been married to her husband only seven years, she lived as a widow until 84 years of age.
Indeed, in this regard her life is a symbol of Israel. After a brief period of intimacy with her God in the desert, Israel became estranged from him, and lived subsequently as though she was widowed. Anna’s biography is a microcosm of the history of Israel.
Apart from this, however, we can say about her the same as we have already said about Simeon. During those long years of widowhood, she has cultivated an inner life, a life of attentiveness and awareness, a life of fasting and praying that reflects a fundamental posture of waiting patiently on the Lord.
For what exactly is she waiting? She too is waiting for the Lord’s Messiah.
Now Anna is a prophetess, which means that she has been anointed with the same Spirit who is active in Simeon. That explains why she too is able to recognize the child when her attention is drawn to the holy family standing together with Simeon.
This underscores what we intimated earlier. To be sure, Jesus is the Lord’s Messiah. But recognizing him as such is no mere human possibility. Apart from the Holy Spirit, no one can see and acknowledge in him God’s salvation.
To those without the Spirit, the song of Simeon, the speech of Anna about the child, can only sound like foolish blather, for the meaning of their words can only be discerned with the help of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14). No one can confess Jesus is Lord apart from the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor. 8:1). That is why we should always pray to God to send the Holy Spirit among us, so that the people among us who do not yet believe may come to share our faith.
Anna for her part has the Spirit. When she sees the child, she begins to praise God and tell everyone who was waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem about him, as we have already mentioned.
The wait is over. God has not forsaken Israel. God has not forsaken Anna. And God will not forsake anyone who waits patiently on him, that he may show them too his salvation.
What about us? In the first place, are we free enough from the distractions, from the noise, from the frenetic pace of life in the digital age, to wait patiently on the Lord?
Have we cultivated an inner life, an attentive awareness, that enables us to wait on the Lord? Have we developed a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, so that we are able to discern what the Lord is telling us, where the Lord is guiding us, when our wait has ended?
And if we do wait, do we lose heart? Do we give up and become doubters, even cynics? It is a temptation, one that grows greater in proportion as the wait grows longer.
That option is the wide gate through which to enter because the way is broad. But there is another option. We can continue to wait, trusting in God’s word, even when its fulfillment is delayed.
And in the meanwhile we can cultivate that interior space, that deep place within us, that place that is quiet enough to hear his word, when he speaks to us, to discern his guidance, when he moves us.
For what God has shown us this year in the celebration of Christ’s birth is not to be packed away with all the boxes of Christmas lights and decorations. It is meant to usher in a season of epiphany, the ongoing manifestation of God at work in our world, in our lives, in the here and now. Will we have the capacity to perceive it? Will we be in a position to recognize it and respond to it?
Let us, let each one of us, be sure we can answer “yes” to these questions. Amen.