Hannah’s Lessons

1 Samuel 1:4-20

November 19, 2006

By

Reverend Litton Logan

Scriptures:

1 Samuel 1:4 through 1 Samuel 1:20 (NRSV)
⁴On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; ⁵but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the LORD had closed her womb.  ⁶Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb. ⁷So it went on year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the LORD, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. ⁸Her husband Elkanah said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?”

⁹After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the LORD.  Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the LORD. ¹⁰She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD, and wept bitterly. ¹¹She made this vow: “O LORD of hosts, 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 nazirite until the day of his death.  He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.”

¹²As she continued praying before the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. ¹³Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. ¹⁴So Eli said to her, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.” ¹⁵But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD. ¹⁶Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” ¹⁷Then Eli answered, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.” ¹⁸And she said, “Let your servant find favor in your sight.” Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.

¹⁹They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the LORD; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the LORD remembered her. ²⁰In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, “I have asked him of the LORD.”

Sermon:

          This story of Hannah and her barrenness often causes many modern readers to roll their eyes in a knowing and discounting manner as if to say, “Do you believe this?”  Nevertheless, things are never as they seem, are they. For example:

A man is in his last hours. As he lay on his deathbed, the man confided to his wife, "I cannot die without telling you the truth. I must confess that I have been unfaithful to you throughout our whole marriage.”

His wife looked at him, smiling sweetly, and patted his hand saying, "Yes, dear I know, why do you think I gave you the poison?"

Therefore, to try to discount or explain the story of Hannah’s barrenness and the birth of Samuel within an historical or naïve religious understanding is, I believe, to be unfaithful to the scriptures in our confessional stances as Christians not to mention compromising the powerful, universal truths that this story holds.  Truths that as individuals, as a community of faith, as a nation, and as a world we have proven countless times.

          Across human history, including the bible writers and some modern people, there are those who believe that God jumps in and out of the human condition tweaking cause and effect to make things happen in certain ways.  Such thinking pushed to its logical conclusion renders human, free will illogical. Therefore, I invite us to look at these scriptures with our spiritual minds where all things are possible not with our limiting, rational or religious minds.  Let us see the timeless and universal truths that the ancients saw and understood all be their paradigms of understanding different from ours.  Let us see the truth of God’s influencing human events without violating human free will and universal laws of nature.

Pre-scientific human beings understood supernatural forces at work in most, if not all, human or natural events.  This is most evident in matters concerning human procreation.  Biblical stories of barren women giving birth, post-menopausal women conceiving and bearing children, and women whose pregnancies are in someway divinely influenced always set the stage for the birth of a special child.  A special child, who becomes a special person through whom God works to influence the human condition for good.  In today’s scripture, the child will be Samuel and Samuel will become a great man of God. Samuel will be God’s man, God’s voice, and God’s influence in Israel’s transition from a loose, rag-tag federation of tribes to God’s nation of distinction.  Samuel is the last of the great Judges of Israel and its first great Prophet.

At the close of the Book of Judges, we see the tribes of Israel in moral, political, and social disarray.  Out of these conditions, the books of Samuel tell us about the political, social, and technological influences as well as the people who will play key roles in the radical transformation of ancient Israel into nation under King David. However, the main character of the Books of Samuel is always God.  God is at work in the lives of people inviting them toward that, which is good for God’s people.  We will also see God’s accommodating some bad human choices into Israel’s course of self-determination. In effect, we can say that this opening story of Hannah in 1 Samuel is a parody of Israel’s story.  Israel at this time is barren, chaotic, and not pregnant with a divine presence; a leaderless rabble jeered at and made fun of by her more nationalistic neighbors. The tribes of Israel are a people without a dynamic and defining presence of God in their land. Out of this chaos and bareness, God will send God’s word—God’s ordering and defining presence—into the land through Samuel.

Poor Hannah, was a woman during a time when biological destiny as the mother of a male child was a defining characteristic of her worth before God, her family, her husband, and her society.  Why hasn’t God answered her yearly prayers for a son when she, her husband, and his other very productive wife, Fertile Myrtle, I mean Peninnah, made their annual pilgrimage to Shiloh?  Not only was Hannah barren but she was the brunt of Peninnah’s constant jealous torments and ridicule because she was childless but Elkanah’s favorite.  She was so tormented and depressed she wept and did not eat.  She lived in chaos with an enemy in her own home.  Why has she not found favor with her God?

          Elkanah, of his two wives, loved Hannah the most.  During the annual sacrifice and feast at Shiloh, Elkanah gave Hannah a double portion of the sacrificed food as if she had children.  Nevertheless, Elkanah is so typical of many of us men.  Elkanah just couldn’t believe he wasn’t the center of Hannah’s world and sufficient to her every desire and need.  “Hannah, what’s the big deal here honey, I love you, most of all, isn’t my love more important than ten sons.”  Notice, Elkanah didn’t say that Hannah’s love was worth more to him than ten sons. Nope, Elkanah probably took Peninnah as his wife after Hannah couldn’t bare him a son.  Don’t you just love the Old Testament—people are so people.

Elkanah personifies the old saying--To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot & love him a little.  To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot & not try to understand her at all.  This convoluted logic and Pheninnah’s vengeful spite toward Hannah reminds me of the story of Mr. and Mrs. Jones.

Mrs. Jones lay on her deathbed. The family was standing around her bed. With a low voice, she said to her husband, "When I'm gone I want you to marry Widow Smith."

Her husband shocked, declared, "No, I can't marry anyone after you."

Mrs. Jones insisted, "But I want you to."

Mr. Jones despondently asked, "But why?"

Mrs. Jones feeble as she was stated with some force, “The Widow Smith once cheated me out of first place in the Jams and Jellies category at the church bazaar!"  She deserves you.”

          On this particular occasion of the family’s annual pilgrimage, Hannah, who is portrayed as a very persistent and forceful in her petitions to God makes a covenant with God.  If God will give her a male child, she will dedicate her son, make him a nazirite, for life in God’s service. A nazir or nizirite was a holy person under a vow to God, although not usually for life.

          Eli, the Judge and Priest at Shiloh, sees Hannah praying.  This is the same Eli whose sons are the worthless, debauched men that will figure heavily in the downfall of Eli’s house, the downfall of the system of Judges in Israel, and the loss of the Ark of the Covenant. 

Eli sees Hannah’s lips moving in intense prayer.  Suspecting she has gotten carried away with her feasting and celebration, he admonishes her.  The dialogue between these two reveals that Hannah is not a worthless woman (An implication for the early listeners and readers that she is not like Eli’s sons) nor is she drunk.  She is intensely troubled, depressed, and wrestling with her feelings in prayer before God. Eli sees her sincerity and tells her to go in peace, “…the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.” 

            Hannah, with Eli’s blessings, leaves this occasion of petitioning God with a degree of confident peace.  She goes on her way, returning to her husband and they eat, drink, and enjoy themselves.  Later Hannah conceives and bares a son.  When this child is weaned, he will be given over to the care of Eli at the Temple at Shiloh.  The young man will grow in to a person of power and might before God and the people of Israel. Samuel will anoint Saul, the first king of Israel, who later because of some of his choices will be rejected by God as king.  Samuel, under God’s guidance, will select and anoint David and his descendents as the replacement for Saul and his family as rulers over Israel.

          These opening verses of 1 Samuel address the moral and spiritual condition of Israel through a woman’s struggle and her vow to God.  Through Samuel, God will deliver the people from their chaos and establish God’s word—divine order and directions--in the land.  Hannah’s story tells us that no matter how bad things seem, God will not abandon the persistently faithful. God hears and while working through human choices and events will raise up those people, inspired by and dedicated to God’s will, to address chaotic situations and times when there is little or no dynamic presence of God in the land. God will capitalize on the unimagined and unrealized possibilities of human choices in an undetermined universe to bring about God’s will in a particular time for all time. I add: I believe God’s goal for humankind is not to be realized in a place, a form of government, or even a nation but rather in a time, a universal state of being, characterized by the Great Law of Love.

          On this Thanksgiving Sunday, as we think about the founding of this great nation, I invite you to think for a moment about the people of the hour that shaped this nation and took leadership positions in some of the darkest hours of the founding of this country.  Think of all those unsung men and women who sacrificed their lives to bring about this nation.

As we behold a world plagued with war, poverty, and strife, think about those people, foreign and domestic, who have emerged as voices of reason and strength in periods of global war, economic, and social upheaval.  Think of those people whose powers of persuasion and diplomacy have pull the world back from the brink of self-destruction.

As we see the lines of conflict between the world’s three greatest, living religions being drawn in blood and terror, think of all the great spiritual and religious leaders who came on the human scene at the right time, with the right words, and insights to guide us to a higher and more noble understandings of God’s will.  None of these great people were perfect; they all had flaws, shortcomings, and personal sins.

          In summary: Hannah has four lessons to teach us.  First, in the final analysis no matter how we understand God working in the universe, God is nonetheless ultimately the ruler of the universe. Second, God does not turn God’s back on the persistently righteous. Third, God works to bring about God’s will using people and events without violating our divine right of self-determination, as Saul and David so aptly prove. God will raise up those people who will establish God’s word in the land.  We humans may impede God’s will of love in a particular situation, we may make bad choices that cause God to have to accommodate these choices, and thus create a crooked and convoluted pathway to the future of God’s universe.  However, let there be no doubt God is in charge—somehow, someway.

          Samuel emerges as a critical person at a critical time.  Saul was a critical person in a critical time, who gave in to his weaknesses.  David became the man of the hour as imperfect and as human as he was, God nonetheless used him. Thus, the fourth lesson of Hannah--God uses the imperfect and the least expected people in achieving the divine will.  People like you and me, if we will be open to God’s call. I mean even old Eli, got to pronounce God’s benediction on Hannah.

          Hannah was persistent, forceful, and tireless, in seeking God’s blessing.  Moreover, she made good on her covenant vow to God. She gave up her son to be raised a nazir. She loved him, visited him once a year, and brought him a new coat each year but Samuel stayed at Shiloh as she had promised. Samuel, her child from God, saved her from biological shame and a lack of status among her people.  Samuel made her proud, ensured her name among the annuals of Israel’s faithful as he led Israel out of her moral and spiritual shame and into national status as God’s people among idolatrous nations.

          We also must be persistent, forceful, tireless, praying and studying without ceasing, in seeking God’s will for our lives, this nation, and our world.  In addition, if we call ourselves God’s people, people of covenant, then we must be faithful in fulfilling our part of our covenant relationship with God.  We must be willing to give sacrificially in our service to God, we must live moral and spiritual lives so that God’s word—God’s order and defining presence--may be found in our land and in a world that seems hell-bent on destruction and idolatry.