Hannah's Song

Scripture Lessons: 1 Samuel 1: 4-20 and 1 Samuel 2: 1-10 Sermon Title: Hannah’s Song Preached on November 18, 2018 Both of these passages that I’ve just read are about Samuel. Samuel is the prophet who made David and others King over Israel, and Samuel is one of my favorite people in the Bible. The Bible tells us a lot about him. We just read about the circumstances surrounding his birth, so now we know so much of his backstory that we even know what his mother was thinking before he was born. And if Samuel knew what we do now, that kind of insight surely gave Samuel a clear advantage over many children, because knowing that you’re loved and wanted by your parents can shape your self-understanding for your entire life. The child whose mother was disappointed about her pregnancy, who’s been told that she ruined her mother’s life of independence turns out differently from the other who always knew that she was the apple of her daddy’s eye. Knowing what your parents felt about you changes how you see yourself – and knowing that you were loved changes everything. Sara and I are hoping we’ve communicated something of our love to our daughters – something like what Hannah shares with us in Scripture. When she was pregnant, Sara and I got conned into a photography session at her cousin’s house. We love this cousin of hers and her husband, and we still do even after what they did to us. What happened is they got free family photos if they could conn enough of their friends to come over to their house to pay to have their picture taken, and we were among the suckers. So, we went over there, and I already hate this kind of thing. We got dressed up and I had to force a smile, which is hard because I know how weird I look when forced to smile for a picture, but then the photographer wanted us to stage all these poses – and the worst was this – the photographer, she asked me to touch my wife’s pregnant belly with my nose. That’s right. I couldn’t believe the photographer asked me to do it, and Sara couldn’t believe that I actually would. But I did – and doing so made Sara laugh so hard that joy erupted on her face, and right then the photographer took our picture. Today, that picture hangs right over our bed. It’s there for our girls to see. We want them to see it because when we had it framed Sara said, “now they’ll know how happy we were thinking about their birth. Every time they see this picture, they’ll see that we couldn’t wait to meet them. Now they’ll know that before they were even born, we loved them.” Samuel – if Samuel also knew what we just read, these Scripture lessons must have done the same thing for him. If he could remember what his mother Hannah was thinking before he was born, then when he was tempted to believe the voices of self-doubt that he heard inside his head, all he had to do was think back on this account of his mother who cherished him as a gift from God. If he couldn’t sleep for all his frustration with this crazy world of ours, maybe all he had to do was hum to himself the song that she sang him which made up our Second Scripture Lesson, and suddenly reality was reframed. If he started to believe what the bullies said, and if he ever wondered whether the dark cloud would ever lift, or the sadness would ever end, if there was the promise in his mind of a mother’s love and her conviction in the Lord’s provision, then these stories from before he was born was surely like a warm blanket on a cold dark night, holding him tight until the sun rose again. I hope Samuel knew all that backstory that our two Scripture lessons offer because Samuel was up against so much. He was a virtual orphan living in the Temple; the priest’s sons mistreated him, and he only got to see his family once a year. If you read the Harry Potter books you have an idea of what it must have been like to be Samuel. If you didn’t read those books it’s OK – they’re just about an orphan who has no real idea how loved he is. All the time was beaten down because he’s born in a house where his aunt and uncle mistreat him. He’s basically their live-in maid, but then one day he discovers that by his mother he was loved and knowing that changes everything, because love always changes everything. However, the world would have us forget it or would rather us not ever hear about it. That’s why it’s easy for me to imagine Hannah’s fear as she left her son at the Temple. You leave a boy at the Temple and how is he supposed to feel but hurt and abandoned. It’s worse than forgetting your child at the funeral home. Even though he was hardly abandoned it would have been hard to convince him otherwise, for not knowing the whole story that’s exactly what it looks like, and the world would gladly have Samuel or any of us believe the worst explanation that our imaginations might cook up. I’ve heard Rev. Joan Gray say that we must always be upfront and transparent, because what people make up is always worse than the truth – so imagine how important it was for Hannah to do anything she could to make sure that her son knew the whole story of her love for him. The whole story is just as we read it in our first scripture lesson – Hannah longed for a child but pregnancy, which can seem like it comes so easy to everyone else, remained out of her grasp. Unable to conceive she did what many of us do in times of extreme desperation – she made a deal with God. “Oh Lord of hosts,” she pleaded, “if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazerite until the day of his death.” Surprisingly – or un-surprisingly – the Lord accepted this bargain and that meant Hannah had to honor her end of the deal – which would be hard if not practically impossible. Think of her happy times with that child – the first time she felt the baby Samuel kick still in the womb, the time some artist tried to make her husband put his nose on her pregnant belly, the first time she held him in her arms, the first time this mother Hannah heard baby Samuel coo or saw him smile – but all the while, in the back of her mind, shrouding all these good things surely was the promise that she had made. She knew that once he was weaned, she would take him to the Temple and would return home without him, leaving him to wonder as he grew up a servant in the household of God – who am I am I and what does this mean? She wouldn’t be there to answer and to help him understand if he asked, “What did I do to deserve being left at the Temple without a family?” She wouldn’t be there to tell him about her deal with God and should Samuel would grow up wondering, “how could a mother be so cruel as to turn and walk away from her own flesh and blood.” The mind of a young boy is fertile ground for misunderstanding – the mind of anyone is fertile ground for misunderstanding – so Hannah, knowing that she would not be there to wipe away all his tears sings a song that she hopes will speak for her to tell her son that he was loved. She wanted him to know the truth. And by this song which makes up our second scripture lesson we know that she was not being selfish – she was being faithful. He had done nothing wrong – in fact, his mother knew that he would be about the work of setting the world right. And she hadn’t left him alone, for we are never alone; even when we feel the most abandoned our Lord is by our side if we only have the eyes to see. But we don’t always see as we struggle to understand and most of the time in this crazy world we are left to despair. No mother is always there to take us in her lap and to tell us that there might be another way to look at our situation – so being a teenager is hard – being anyone at any age is hard. Every time we read the paper – the reality of our world and our place in it is hard to grasp because we’re always having to wonder what all this means. Like Samul growing up in the Temple, we’re always tempted to ask: Is the world falling apart, or being put back together? Is the President about to be impeached or is he about to make America Great Again? Is that caravan walking north through Mexico a band of women and children who need our help or are they a horde that we must defend ourselves against? In each circumstance we’re all looking at the same data but we’re all seeing different things, because misunderstanding runs rampant in our minds, just as it does in the mind of every child, just as it did with Samuel, and to make any sense out of our world we can’t just turn to Fox or CNN, to one side of the aisle or the other, for it’s love that reframes everything – and it’s the love of God that so truly offers us the only way to truly understand what’s really going on. Just as young Samuel, to understand, needed to remember his mother’s song, so today I call you to listen to Hannah’s song as well. For what everyone is saying today is doom and gloom. Either way you look at it, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on, they’ll tell you that chaos is on the horizon and if you don’t give them the reigns then the foundations of civilization are going to shake – but is there not more in heaven and earth than human philosophy? Is there not more at work in our world than the will of partisan men and women? Is there not something else going on all around us? These days that we find ourselves living in – are not nearly so pivotal as the self-important wish you to believe, for as it was true ages ago, so it is true today – the future rests, not in the hands of mortals who manipulate us or bullies who push us around, but in the hands of our God who is full of love for His children. We have to reframe the world around us, by hearing Hannah’s song. For: The Holy One of Israel – he is a Rock and there is none like him. And the proud – let them not talk so very proudly, and let arrogance not come from their mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken – but the feeble girt on strength. The Lord makes poor and make rich; he brings low, he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap – and we had better stop our hand wringing and our worrying, for the future is not so uncertain, because the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s and on them he has set the world. We must be bold enough to think again, trusting in the love of God that changes everything that we might sing: “My heart exults in the Lord; My strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, Because I rejoice in my victory.” Amen.