(First Baptist Church, Gaithersburg, MD, May 11, 1980; Calverton Baptist Church, Silver Spring, MD, May 9, 1982; Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC, May 12, 1985)
One of God's great mercies is that He consistently takes our faltering insecurities and transforms them into something beautiful for the kingdom. Over and over again we come to the Lord in some sort of awful state and He takes that despair, He takes that terrible hopelessness and helps us to make out of it a result that honors Him and brings happiness to us. If we can capture the secret of that transformation we have come a long way in terms of dealing with the disappointments we experience.
A man like Douglas MacArthur, for instance, was said to have had an absolute paranoia about the politicians back in Washington. Here he was, out on the battle front somewhere trying to mastermind a good-sized chunk of the Second World War, and back in the capital, so he thought, Roosevelt and Pentagon's desk soldiers were out to get him. Insecurity; sometimes bordering on the hopeless. But from somewhere the General found the personal resources to turn that insecurity into the kind of public relations efforts which helped to inspire the nation and to keep the confidence on millions of Americans alive. It's strange, when you think of it, how one person's insecurity, creatively handled, can fuel the sense of security, the feeling of well-being, for countless others.
Now of course not everyone overcomes insecurity; you know that. Sometimes we not only fail to overcome it, we actually end up communicating it, sharing it around. The child psychiatrist asked the mother about her little terror, “Does he feel insecure”? The mother's answer was, "I don't know whether he's insecure or not, but everyone else in the neighborhood sure is by now!" We don't always handle our feelings of insecurity well, but there are those matchless occasions when the grace of God intervenes and permits us to achieve triumph in spite of ourselves.
In ancient Israel there was such a person; there was the woman Hannah, wife of Elkanah. But Hannah, you see, was only the number two wife. In a two-wife marriage, she was the runner-up. Today women sometimes feel threatened by the idea that there might be another woman; Hannah never had to worry about that. There WAS another woman in her marriage. And in some sense she was it! The Scripture makes it clear that Hannah was most unhappy, and that there was one principal cause for this: she had no children. Hannah, we are told, lived well and loved well; she was highly regarded by her husband. We are told that she was well esteemed in the community. But all of this was not enough for her; that one thing which her culture had taught her counted for more than anything else, that Hannah did not have. Without a child her line would come to an end. Without a child she did not profit her husband. Without sons his name might vanish from the memories of his kinsmen once he died. Without children you were not fulfilling the injunction handed down by Moses to "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” All these things were so very much a part of that ancient Hebrew culture that no amount of reassurance could help Hannah get over the idea that she was incomplete without becoming a mother.
To me one of the most poignant lines of all the Scripture is the fumbling attempt at reassurance offered up by Elkanah in the face of Hannah's despair. “Hannah, why do you weep? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” I must admit that I can identify with brother Elkanah here; there are times when a mere male, confronted by the tears of the nearest female, cannot do anything right, cannot say anything right, but he is reduced to an absolute jelly of solicitousness. And I expect that was poor Elkanah's plight. Hannah has worked herself up into a fine state about being childless; she has listened over and over again to the taunts tossed her way by number one wife Peninnah. And now, to bring things to a head, here they are at the Temple again, and her husband Elkanah split up the meat left from the sacrifice. And when he did so, it must have been something like this: here's a slice for you, Penninah; and here's one for you, Hannah; and now Penninah, let's see, you need to take care of the children: one for Joab and one for Leah and one for Lemuel and one for the baby, I think she can chew this now. Oh Hannah, would you help Penninah carry all this, it's getting to be too much for one mother to handle.
It must have been after a scene something like that that Hannah breaks down in tears and confront her husband with her continuing predicament. And Elkanah comes forth with what sounds to me, because I'm listening to it with the ears of a male person, perhaps, but it sounds to me like real move, real sensitivity, "Why are you so miserable? Am I not more to you than ten sons?' Here is a husband who is doing his dead level best to reassure his wife that she is loved, that she is whole and complete, that all that really counts is his love for her. But she will not be consoled; she is insecure.
I wonder sometimes how many irrational things we do because we do not feel whole; how many times does our sense of desperation match up with a feeling of being incomplete? Is it that that is really just an illusion? How often is it that those whom we love and care about the most accept us just as we are; we don't really have to prove anything to them. And yet, we're like Hannah; we simply don't feel complete. We are often our own worst enemies; we don't sense the worthiness God has given us.
Let me allow you in on one of the world's little secrets. Let me offer up a clue today about what makes us tick. Did you know that many a woman, like Hannah, is insecure where men are concerned? They spend too much fear worrying whether they might lose their men, they fear what it would be like to have to exist without a man. They have succumbed to the gentle persuasion of the advertisers, who have told them they must be alluring to keep the relationship alive. They are insecure about men. They have not yet got the message conveyed by the feminist bumper sticker I saw, “Adam was just a rough draft.”
But before you draw and quarter me, I have to hurry on and say that this has another side; this has another angle: men are insecure where women are concerned. Men feel inadequate, many of them feel threatened by women. That's why they make such bad jokes about women, they talk about women drivers, you know the sort of thing: “Do you let your wife drive this car? No, it looked that way when I bought it.” They retreat into that strong silent act; many a man feels threatened about women. Are we really a whole lot different than the Buddhist monk I heard about this week: he will not look a woman in the eyes, he looks only at her feet, presumably for purity. And it goes on, this terrible litany: many parents feel threatened by their own children; many children feel intimidated by their parents. And it goes on and on and we never quite learn that we are loved. We never quite believe that we are accepted. “Are you not more to me than ten sons?”, Elkanah says to his wife. But we cannot hear it. Our insecurity, our nobodiness gets in our way.
This mother found the power to transform her desperation and her insecurity into a song of triumph, and she found it in prayer. She found in a deep and potent relationship to the Lord a response to the need of her own heart.
And now I want you to explore with me just what a transformation that really was. I'd like you to notice how fully and completely this mother became a whole and secure person. She had prayed fervently for a son; she had even prayed that if a son were to be granted, she would dedicate that child to the Lord. She promised the child to the service of the Temple, she vowed never to cut his hair. I expect there are a few mothers here today who suspect that their sons have take a similar vow. She prepared, having received this precious gift, to yield him up. . So complete was Hannah's wholeness that once she had received what she needed, she was free also to do without it.
And so the time when the son was born; so he was named Samuel, a name which suggested that he had been asked of God. And Hannah devoted herself to his care as any mother would. But then the time too when this small child, barely able to function at all, is taken to the temple to begin his long apprenticeship. Did you hear what Hannah said at that occasion, "Now I lend him to the Lord; for his whole life he is lent to the Lord." A mother's loan of her son to God.
Now think about that for a moment. Is that how you would put it? Would you speak of lending your child to God? I have an idea that most of us, brought up properly is a pious tradition, would say, “This child is loaned to me from God; he really belongs to God, but he is on loan to me.” But Hannah didn't say it that way, she turned it around. I loan him to God. Why? What's the distinction here?
Well, if someone lends me something, I do have some responsibilities toward it. I must keep it in good repair, I must try not to damage it, I am expected to return it when I'm finished with it. You'll find if you borrow books from me I have the memory of an elephant, by the way, and will track you down with the ferocity of a Sherlock Holmes. But, anyway, if I borrow something, I have the full use and control of it until I return it. But if I lend you something, even a precious book, I have relinquished for the time being my claim on its use.
So Hannah, you see, is lending her son to God. That one most precious, that one whose coming saved her from the curse of barrenness, she gives him up. She turns him over completely.
Read the account; it's fascinating. This mother goes up to see her boy once a year – once a year – with a new garment. How fully she has relinquished control. How comfortable she seems to be with herself. How assured and how at ease she is! She committed herself to the Lord's care in her prayers, and her insecurity is transformed into the kind of strength that allows her to turn Samuel over, just let go.
You know, in all of our relationships, whether it's mother and child or wife and husband or just among friends – in all of our relationships there is this quality of loaning one another to the Lord. It's truly a liberating thing when I can come to the place where I do not feel I have to control everyone and everything around me. It's truly a freeing thing to loan my relationships to God so that I no longer have to manage everything, but He can manage through me and through them. And in that experience all of us, like this mother of old Israel, can find strength.
My wife a couple of years ago did a study of the Christian women’s movements of the last century. What she discovered was that it was the women of faith who had made the real difference in all the important social movements of that era. The temperance movement, for example: it was Christian women who found the strength to struggle against alcohol. The suffrage movement: it was Christian women primarily who wanted the right to vote, Christian women who fought for first class citizenship out of the sense of security born out of prayer. And, most striking of all, the abolition movement: the earliest efforts to free the slaves were also led by women of faith. I for one like to think that because they loaned to God the relationships they had, they so gave themselves to the Lord that they received power to enough to swim against the tide of public opinion and to follow the dictates of their consciences.
I believe that the good news for women today, for mothers today, is that the same kind of quiet strength is available to you, just as it was to Hannah and just as it has been to countless women of faith through the centuries. And indeed it's good news for others than women, for more than mothers. All I really have to do is to acknowledge before God my insecurity, my lack of wholeness, my incompleteness; I pray to him out of that weakness, and he transforms it into possibilities. And then I take whatever he gives me and I lend it to him, I relinquish control of it, I turn it over to him and let him develop it, shape it. And in the end there is a new strength, a new power, and a new direction for me, and I am able to sing as Hannah did, "My heart rejoices in the Lord, in the Lord I now hold my head high.”
