Those who think the church is for old women and little children are more correct than they know.

Ordinarily, such judgment sees the church as obsolete or silly, foolishly impractical for anyone in the prime of life.  Young bucks and industrious workers, valley girls and real housewives of Orange County, folks with places to go and things to do have more valuable pursuits and pastimes.  Let old ladies in their quilting clutches and little tikes happy enough to accept Sunday School be dropped off to populate the church.  We have better things to do.

I wonder if any thought this way about Anna.  Widowed very young, she was now in her mid-80s and constant in her attention to worship and prayer in the temple.  Was she merely a curiosity, a sort of pious fixture tolerated and patronized but not what you would call important?  Perhaps she added a bit of solemnity to the temple surroundings to fit the stereotype. 

Would she have been what bus tourists expect to see, at least one eccentric in costume to add flavor to a superficial encounter with the church?  When you sightsee a cathedral, it's nice to see one person there actually on their knees.  Makes you believe the place isn't entirely a museum.

I have twice visited the great Gothic cathedral in Cologne, Germany, once in 1966 and again in 1980.  During the interval a museum had been constructed next door.  My distinct impression upon the second visit was that the museum had been built to accommodate the cathedral which had become part of the collection too large to bring indoors.  The cathedral was obsolete except for the occasional old woman on her knees.

Far from that, Anna was a battle cruiser.  She was a spiritually mature woman who lived her faith fully in the complete understanding that the redemption of Jerusalem, the true vitality of life and strength of Israel could only be obtained as a child from a Child, this Child named Jesus. 

Anna was like our beloved Grandma Pauline Rockensuess, without a husband for a long expanse of years, who survived on thrift and goodwill, living extremely modestly in a tiny residence in Anchorville, MI, frail in health from childhood rheumatic fever, but forceful in her faith because the object of her certainty was the Child Jesus Christ.  Grandma possessed very little of material worth, but her faith was of greater value than gold.

God alone knows how often angels have been dispatched, disasters averted, or the spiritually immature saved from harm by the faith and prayers of little children and old women.  How many soldiers have returned unscathed, teenagers shielded from their rash imprudence, or faltering marriages transformed in answer to the ardent faith and spiritual composure of people like Anna.  At the very thought of the Christ-child, she first gave thanks to God and then by word and speech demonstrated that the church is not only for children, children of God among whom she rejoiced herself to be, but from a Child.

The church IS childish.  The church is faint and delicate because it does not count on its own competence or charisma.  The church does not hold to what the world gauges as potent or influential.  The church depends upon baptismal water, consecrated bread and wine, and forgiveness of sins preached through the merits of Christ.  Yet these means of grace do not mean the church is weak.

Those who misread the sturdiness of Christian faith as merely the cogitations of old folks or childishness of youngsters fail to realize that the Kingdom of God belongs precisely to such as these who trust that it is the Word of the Lord alone that endures forever.  We would all do well to take more than a chapter from the lives of old Christian ladies and little baptized infants who do not apologize for their trust in Jesus Christ and who are artless in their faith that the little Child of Mary is their God and Savior.

They do not patronize Christ; they take pleasure in Him.  They don't see Jesus as embarrassing or an intrusion.  They are content in the knowledge that God in Christ makes the world go round.  It isn't the influential, the celebrity, nabob or honcho who reigns, but it is Christ Jesus who does.

Christ didn't fit the stereotype of God.  He didn't correspond to the labels people invent for their personal "god-of-choice."  He came, rather, in the delicacy of human flesh and made himself as vulnerable as a newborn child or poor old woman.  And yet, by His life, suffering, death, and resurrection the world was redeemed.  By Christ's suffering and death came the redemption of Jerusalem, not by the art of the deal, the atmosphere of stardom, or the dizziness of fame. 

By Christ alone!

In the prime of His life, Jesus was cut down.  He was regarded obsolete, foolishly impractical, and even dangerous.  He was held in condescension and then crucified.  It was thus and will continue for those perishing.  Jesus is consigned to the company of old women and little kids.  His name is foully used by comics who blaspheme him and belittle the archetypical "church lady."  He is written off by those who love their ease more than His salvation, and leave Him to those they imagine either senile or naïve.

Anna was neither.

She knew exactly who the Baby Jesus was, the promised Messiah, and God in the flesh.  She had known him by faith for 84 years.  She knew of whom she spoke.  She knew this child of Mary was "the redemption of Jerusalem" and that every promise of God for thousands of years and countless generations all found completion in this Child.  It would not be by vain pursuits and pastimes of tough, healthy people in their prime that the world would be saved.  It would be Mary's child who would redeem us.  It would be this Christ of God whom trusting children sing and whom those with good, old-fashioned, Christian faith embrace. 

Little children of Christ and seasoned saints of God around the cradle and the cross - that's the church invincible.