There was something fundamentally wrong with her. There had to be. It was the only explanation for Hannah’s inability to carry a child. Her husband, Elkanah’s second wife was able to conceive and bear children, a fact that she made sure to rub in every chance she got. Therefore, it had to be Hannah’s fault that she couldn’t become pregnant. There must have been some secret sin she had committed or some way she had offended God.
Today, we know that there are many explanations for infertility and that none of those reasons include a moral failing on the part of either partner. But that was not the case in Old Testament times. Back then, for a woman to be barren meant that she was useless, worthless, and unloved by God. Little wonder than that our reading opens with Hannah in the temple praying, pleading, begging God for a child. She is desperate for God to acknowledge her faithfulness and for a sign that God loves her.
As is often the case with God, God answers her prayer, giving her more than she had dreamed of asking for. God gives her a beautiful baby boy, Samuel, who will go on to do great things to the Lord.
You see, things were not going that well for the people of Israel. After the death of Moses who had led the people through the wilderness to the edge of the promised land and after the death of Moses’ successor Joshua who had conquered and driven out most of the inhabitants of the promised land so that God’s people could settle there, things began to go south. In subsequent generations, the people would forget God and go about doing whatever it was that they wanted. In turn, God would allow their enemies to defeat them. Then the people would cry out to God, Yahweh in Hebrew, who would then raise up a judge as the military and moral leader of the people. Through God’s power, this judge would deliver the people and restore them to right relationship with God. But after that judge would die, the people would again forget God and stop living in God’s ways. It was a vicious cycle that you can read about in the book of Judges if you are interested. Interestingly, one of the Judges God raised up was a woman by the name of Deborah. She is the first woman leader of God’s people and one that I think serves as proof that God can and does approve of and work through women leaders in the church. But that is a whole other topic for discussion so we will move on.
At the end of the book of Judges we hear that “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” The people of God have once again sinned and rejected God, choosing instead to do what they wanted. And so, the book of 1st Samuel finds God’s people in a tenuous position. They are a loose federation of tribes of God’s people with no central government. They are always at risk of being attacked by their enemies. And worse, the official church, the temple in Jerusalem is filled with corruption. Eli the priest is a weak leader and his sons commit all kinds of sins despite the fact that they too belong to the priestly class of God’s people.
Something needed to change. The cycle from the book of Judges simply could not continue; people could not just do what was right in their own eyes. God had gifted them commandments and had made them a promise, that God would forever and always be their God and they would be God’s people. So God had to do something.
Enter Hannah.
God saw Hannah and her faithfulness. God heard her prayer and the incredible promise that she was willing to make: The promise that if God would gift her with a son, she would return that child to the Lord. And so, as the Message translation of today’s reads, “God began making the necessary arrangements in response to what she had asked.”
Hannah named her son Samuel, a name that meant that God had heard and answered her prayer. When her son Samuel was old enough, Hannah did as she had promised. She took him to Eli the high priest and gave him to him to raise in the temple, teaching him to serve and obey God. Later, God would call the boy Samuel raising him up to be both the last judge of Israel and the first prophet (or spokesperson) for God. Samuel would be the one to anoint the first two kings of Israel, kings who were able to bring the lose federation of the tribes of the people of Israel together and make a great nation, strong and secure, of them. All this was accomplished because of the powerful faith of one woman who trusted God to turn her fortunes around and to answer her prayer.
Hannah’s story is an important one, even if it isn’t a particularly well known one. There are several things that we can learn from this woman of God and her faithfulness. Because truth be told, we live in a time like the one at the end of the book of Judges, with everyone doing what was right in their own eyes. Our world is marred by greed and selfishness. Sin is rampant. Something must be done.
As God’s people, we are called to be like Hannah during this time. We are called to implore, to beg, to bargain, to plead for what we most need and what we most desire. We are to ask for our healing and the healing of our world. We are to be just as bold as Hannah, laying our needs plain before God in prayer. We are to do these things trusting that God hears our prayer. As Old Testament scholar Bruce Birch explains, “Hannah simply and straightforwardly expressed her need to God. In doing, so she recognized that wholeness in her life lay beyond the things she could control and rested in God as the larger reality of her life.”
Our wholeness as individuals, as the church, as the world depends on God as well. No matter how hard we try and no matter how much we desire it, we cannot bring healing and wholeness to all that is broken on our own. We need God to do these things. And so, we need to trust God to make the necessary arrangements that will lead to change.
This doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing though. We need to take Hannah as our example and pound on the doors of heaven with our prayers. And like Hannah, we can practice the trustful persistence that is required if we are going to claim God’s grace. Hannah prayed with a troubled spirit according to the translation that Cheri read from this morning, but that phrase could also be translated as “stubborn spirit.” She was stubborn in her prayers and would not back down. She trusted that God’s grace was available to her and that God loved her even when all the evidence seemed to say the opposite was true. We are to have that kind of trust, that kind of stubbornness of spirit, when we pray to God.
This kind of trust is hard for most of us. We live in a culture of individualism and self-help that tells us that we can do it on our own with enough effort, enough determination, enough practice. But that simply isn’t the case when it comes to things of faith. Because we all fall short of keeping the commandments of God perfectly, we are unable to be righteous by ourselves. We need Christ’s righteousness, God’s grace, to save us, to heal us, to restore us to right relationship with God and with others. Because God loves us, God gifts us all that we need. We only need call upon God’s holy name. God is right there ready, waiting, and eager to answer our prayers.
God’s answer to our prayers may not be what we expect or are prepared for. God is a God of surprises that are beyond what we could ever imagine. Sometimes God answers prayer by giving us what we asked for, as was the case with Hannah. But other times God knows better what we need and gives us that instead. It might take awhile for us to realize that that is what God was up to when God answered our prayer, but once we realize it, we end up awed and humbled by God’s power in our lives.
In addition to being an example for us of prayer and boldness, there is one more thing we can learn from Hannah. When God answers our prayer by giving us the gift of grace that we (and our world) so desperately need, the proper response is to give back. We don’t have to give back on the level Hannah did, entrusting her son to the care of Eli the priest, we simply shouldn’t and can’t hold on to the grace that we have been given. If we try to be stingy with the grace that has come from God answering prayer, we will lose hold of that grace.
To again quote Old Testament scholar Bruce Birch, “in every generation there has been a need for some in the church to move beyond receiving grace to returning grace… People and communities of faith must become less concerned over who and how many have received God’s grace and more concerned with the ways in which God’s grace is given back to God’s service.” In other words, God’s gifts of grace aren’t to be concerned with the numbers and metrics of success, but rather with growth in faithfulness and service to God.
So, my siblings in Christ, I want to leave you with these questions. What are we as Salem Lutheran Church called to be stubborn in spirit about? What are we to beg for, to plead for, to boldly as for from God? And what are we going to do to give back God’s grace to others? We do a lot of things already to serve those in need, but what can we do to grow in grace or deepen our faith? What can we take from the example of Hannah and use it to transform us in our life together?
Some things to ponder, huh?
Amen.
