1 Samuel 1:4-20
Forgetting, Remembering, and Waiting for God
James Sledge November
15, 2015
Hannah’s
story is a personal one, but it is not just about her. She lives in a time when
Israel is in disarray and chaos, fragmented into tribes that sometimes fight
one another, threatened by the powerful Philistines. The hope and promise from
the days of Moses and Joshua are gone. Hannah’s personal despair mirrors that
of Israel.
Hannah
despairs because she is childless, something understood as a curse from God. Yahweh
had closed her womb, the story tells us twice. God, it seems, is Hannah’s
enemy.
Hannah
lived in a patriarchal society where the value of women was largely limited to
child bearing and nurture. A woman who could not have children had little in
the way of other options for a fulfilling life, and her husband’s other wife
never let Hannah forget that. She tormented her, a pain only intensified by the
annual trips to Shiloh where each family member offered sacrifices at the
sanctuary of God. Sacrifices to the one who had cursed her.
Her
husband Elkanah loves her and doesn’t
think her worthless, but his efforts to cheer her up fall a little flat. “Why
are you so sad? Why won’t you eat? After all, you have me.” Even I know better
than that, and my wife says I’m clueless.
Elkanah
isn’t the only clueless guy in the story. Eli the priest stumbles badly
himself. He’s there in the temple when Hannah comes in, walking right past him.
She makes no notice of the priest, taking her case straight to Yahweh. She has
a bitter complaint. God has forgotten her, and she longs to be remembered.
Eli
totally misreads her, thinking she’s drunk because she moves her lips without
speaking. That seems pretty thin evidence. Maybe he’s not used to women barging
right by him and dropping on the floor before God.
Hannah
quickly sets the priest straight, but then adds, “Do not regard your servant as a worthless
woman…” That is the problem. In her world, she is considered cursed and
worthless.
I’m
not certain how to read Eli’s response. He does seem sympathetic, but when he
says, “the God of Israel grant the petition you have made…” is that a
promise, or merely a hope? However Eli means it, Hannah goes home glad.
I occasionally have someone share a crisis
with me and ask me to pray for her. I’m happy to do so, and I hope my prayers
provide some comfort. Still, I don’t know that either of us thinks the
situation changed after I’m finished. I’m not sure anyone goes home glad.
On
the day I first began to think about this sermon, I happened upon a quote from
Nadia Bolz-Weber. She’s a Lutheran pastor who doesn’t look or sound like most
pastors. She often wears a tank top or vest, revealing tattoos down the length
of both arms, and her language would get her thrown out of a lot of churches.
She’s founder and pastor of The House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, a
church that draws lots of people who rarely go near churches.
In
her book, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful
Faith of a Sinner & Saint, she writes, “(T)he job of a preacher is to
find some kind of good news for people. And that good news really should be
about who God is and how God works and what God has done and what God will do.
(What passes for preaching in many cases is more here’s the problem, and here’s what you can do about it, which I
myself have never once heard as being ‘good news.’)”[1]
I wonder if Hannah went home glad
because she actually encountered good news. Not encouragement or some
suggestions about how to get through her difficulty, but honest to goodness
gospel rooted in the nature and character of God. I also wonder if I and a lot
of other people mess up this faith thing because we’re so used to operating from
that mindset Bolz-Weber critiques: here’s
the problem, and here’s what you can do about it.
_____________________________________________________________________________
We
live in a world that expects people to be self-sufficient. It measures your
worth by your output, by what you earn or achieve or accomplish. That’s true of
business, sports, academics, or just about anything else. A lot of our
culture’s stress and anxiety emerges from worrying about measuring up. If we
don’t keep striving, if we don’t make it,
what then?
Many
of us here at Falls Church Presbyterian have done well in our striving. Some of
us may imagine ourselves immune from a plight like Hannah’s of feeling
worthless. A few may even imagine that those around us who do not measure up
are worthless with only themselves to blame. But I think a lot of us have a
nagging worry that our striving doesn’t quite cut it.
Very
often, participating in our competitive, consumerist culture doesn’t provide
all it promised. We still find ourselves hungry and unfilled. We’re still bothered
by a gnawing emptiness. But it’s hard to stop striving and chasing after more.
If we do, what will become of us? If we aren’t successful enough, don’t own
enough, don’t make good enough grades, aren’t pretty enough, don’t have a good
enough job, will we matter? Will anyone notice us? Will we count for anything? Will
we become like Hannah?
Hannah
does not matter, except to her husband, and that is not enough. She is
insignificant, worthless, forgotten. And so she cries out to God, “If
only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me…”
Old
Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says, “Yahweh is a powerful rememberer;
and when Yahweh remembers the partner and the promise, newness becomes
possible.”[2]
That is true for Hannah, and for Israel. It is true for you and me, and for the
Church. It is true for the world.
In our competitive, consumerist culture
of striving, this is easy for us to forget, imagining that we are on our own. When
we struggle as individuals, when our congregation struggles, when the world
seems to be coming apart, we can think is all up to us, that we are left to our
own devices. We can live and act as though God has forgotten us. But our faith
is in a God who remembers.
_____________________________________________________________________________
In
just two weeks, we will enter the season of Advent. In our culture of striving,
Advent and Christmas can be virtually indistinguishable, a non-stop, frenzied attempt
to manufacture joy and good cheer. However, for people of faith, Advent is
about waiting – an active, preparing sort of waiting, but waiting nonetheless. But
I suspect that such waiting is possible, especially in the face of mindless
terror in Beirut and Paris and countless other places, only when we know and
trust the powerful remembering of God.
And Yahweh remembered (Hannah). In due time, she
conceived and bore a son. And newness and hope and the promise of
a new day were born as well.
Thanks
be to God!
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