1 Samuel 1:4-20 “Therefore Hannah wept. . .”
For too many years, her rival has taunted her. “Our husband must love me more. Look at all the children I have. . . You know the village women say you must have done something wrong if you can’t have children. . .Who’s going to look out for you in your old age? No one.” For too many nights, Hannah’s tears have wet her pillow. Even when Elkanah’s sleeping form warms her back, Hannah weeps. She knows he loves her, even if she has not borne him a child. When he goes to make yearly sacrifices at the temple cult in Shiloh, this loving husband brings her extra meat for dinner. Yet the food sticks in her throat; she cannot eat it. All she can do is weep for the ridicule and loneliness she lives with because God has not given her a child.
Finally, Hannah decides that if God is in this barren, hopeless landscape of her life, then God can reverse that. It is time to take her grief, bitter tears and despair beyond a loving husband, the community and Eli the priest. It is time to talk directly to God. So she does. “God, do you hear me? I know you hear me. Do you see how miserable my life is? I’ve had enough, God. Enough is enough! I’m sick and tired of being pushed aside and ridiculed—just because I can’t have a baby. God, I need help and I mean it. I need a sign. I need a son. If you give me a son—a son who will give me a legacy in the world and take care of me in my old age—I will make you a promise, God. I promise I’ll give him back to you. I promise you that he will serve you until the day of his death.”
Eli is the priest at Shiloh. As he watches Hannah pray, he sees her lips moving, but hears no sound. He figures she’s drunk and reprimands her. Hannah tells him no, she is not drunk. She is in despair. She has been pouring out her soul to God. So Eli tells her to go in peace, that God will grant her petition. Hannah goes home, trusting that God will answer her prayer. And God does. Hannah—whose name in Hebrew is “Grace,” gets grace. After all these years, Hannah conceives and bears a son. She names him Samuel, which means “I have asked him of the Lord.”
The significance of this story is its place in a larger one. Moses is long gone. After Joshua died, there have been no more good, strong leaders. Instead, Israel has had a succession of tribal judges—many of whom are corrupt or weak. The nation has been in chaos, with people making up the rules as they go along. The Mosaic faith is practiced haphazardly. The faithful long for a leader who will bring both stability and vision into their conflict-ridden and chaotic land. Hannah—who is just an ordinary woman—becomes God’s instrument in this time of despair and barrenness, because she is a woman of courage and prayer. Out of her own personal difficulties and challenges—perhaps out of pure desperation—Hannah goes directly to God. And out of her connection and relationship with God, Samuel is born. Samuel becomes “the last of the judges, and in his role as prophet he anoints the first kings of Israel.”[1] It will be Samuel who will anoint Saul and David as kings of Israel. So out of a situation where a childless woman is taunted by her rival and faced with a bleak, hopeless future, God creates new life, new hope, a way where there has been no way.
Where do our own stories of faith connect with Hannah’s story? What does Hannah have to teach us? One thing she teaches us is that it is important to tell God what we need. Another is that sometimes we must persist—sometimes stubbornly—in telling God about what we need. Yet Hannah also teaches us that when God provides for our needs out of God’s grace, our proper response is to give it back—just as Hannah gave her son Samuel back to God for God’s service. God gives us grace. In turn, we give it back—in our worship, in our daily lives, and in the gifts and talents that we can use to build this community of faith.
Hannah’s story has spoken to me on a deep level. For those of you here today who are new to this faith community, St. Philip’s parish has gone through some very difficult and challenging years. Recently, I completed a Congregational Study, as part of my work on a Doctor of Ministry degree. One of the exercises I did was to hand-draw a graph of attendance from 1979 to 2008, along with names of leaders—rectors, associates and staff. I also noted significant events from 2000 to 2008. (You are welcome to look at this graph if you want.) Without going into lots of unnecessary detail, I will tell you that when I looked at the completed chart, I was amazed. From at least 1985—perhaps before that—until 2002, there is only one year when there were not more than 200 active parishioners at St. Philip’s. And by active, I mean over 200 people were going in and out of these doors on Sunday mornings, at three services. In the past ten years, this parish has undergone challenges, conflict, division, anger and grief. St. Philip’s has experienced a major fire in the old Parish House—now the Administration Wing. We’ve dealt with water and mold issues—which continue to be a challenge—and suffered the loss of a number of St. Philip’s parishioners. Some have died, some have retired and moved away, some have left in anger or despair. We are still faced with a number of physical plant challenges. We are paying $48,000 a year on a mortgage on Wyatt Ministry Center.
It would be easy to stand in the midst of all these challenges and blame someone else for the problems. It would be easy to hold tight to anger, old grudges and resentments for things that have happened, for words spoken, things done and things left undone. Just as the people of Israel did, it would be easy to fall into despair and discouragement as we look over a landscape that may seem barren, rocky and deserted by God.
I want you to know this day that as your rector and spiritual leader, I do not see a deserted, depressing landscape. Yes, we face challenges. But life is full of challenges, and so, too, is the Christian life. This the time when we depend most on our relationship with God, when we place our trust, our hope in God’s grace. I believe in God’s grace, so I do not see a hopeless, barren landscape in this congregation. I see faces of joy, of compassion, of prayer, of hope. I feel lots of good, new energy. I see new projects resurrected out of old ones. I see this worship space structurally sound with a new roof that does not leak. I see—thanks to the Quilters—a new wooden floor out there in the Narthex. I see a beautiful memorial garden out back with a columbarium for our loved ones’ remains and a memorial wall for those who are laid to rest elsewhere. I see the mortgage on Wyatt Ministry Center paid off. I see three Sunday services again—maybe the third one in the late afternoon. I see over 200 people in these pews in those three services on Sundays. I see outreach growing and I see financial resources used wisely. I see lots of baptisms and some weddings. And, I see people growing in leadership roles.
You, of course, are an integral part of this vision. It will take all of us to envision, then accomplish these goals. And from my vantage point, you are doing that. As of last Sunday, we had 58 pledges for 2010, in the amount of $168,000. That means we are over halfway to our goal of 130 pledges and $300,000. We will reach that goal, with your help. Every day I am asking God—through you and me—to provide what we need for next year.
When everything around us looks hopeless—as it did with Hannah—that is when we must give up ourselves and go to God. We say, “God, do you hear me? I know you hear me. Do you see what this parish looks like? We’ve had enough, God. Enough is enough! Okay, God, we need help and we mean it.
We need some signs that we are doing what you want us to do in this parish. If you will answer our prayers and provide the resources we need, we promise you something, God. We promise we will use those resources to do what you want us to do in this parish. And we promise that we will do those things for your glory and not for ourselves.” There. That’s done. Thank you, God.
© The Rev. Sheila N. McJilton
Pic of Hannah accessed through Google images
Pic of St. Philip’s taken by McJilton
[1] Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Yr. B., Vol. 4, David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 291.
From James: We had been on this road to Jerusalem many times. We knew the landscape. We knew every little town along the road. Yet this time, as we walked with Jesus, things were different. Some of us had begun to grumble, to grow impatient with each other. All of us wondered if somebody had changed the rules of the game without telling us.
We seemed to be talking past one another. Jesus didn’t understand us. We did not understand Jesus. Then the whole thing blew up. The other disciples found out that we had asked for places of honor. They were angry and wouldn’t speak to us. Then Jesus gave all of us a lecture about how if we want to be great, we must be willing to be servants. He said whoever wants to be first has to be slave of all. Did we give up everything we had just to be servants? I didn’t think so. I didn’t get it. After that, Jesus walked alone, ahead of all of us. Wrapped in that beautiful seamless cloak his mother gave him, he strode along, his face turned towards Jerusalem as if the rest of us weren’t even there.
Just like those first disciples, you and I hear Jesus’ call to servant ministry. This call is not to places of power, position and prestige. This call is to follow Jesus down a narrow road—even if it does lead to servanthood and suffering. What will our servant ministry look like today? That depends on the person and the situation. However, it always means that we give of ourselves—not in the sense of being a doormat—but with prayerful intention. It means that we always ask two questions. The first is this: “What can I do to bring the Kingdom of God, the Dream of God, into real places, in real time, today? The second: “What must I give up in order to make this Kingdom of God real today, in my world?”
Imagine the following scene. It is a hot, sunny day. The pungent smell of olive trees in road-side groves fills the air. A man walks along the dusty road. About a quarter of a mile behind him, a group of men are engaged in a heated argument.
That evening, in Capernaum, Jesus confronts them: “What were you arguing about on the way?” We can almost see the disciples turn red and shift uneasily. We can see them looking down at the floor. So the Master did hear them arguing after all. Jesus gathers them around. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus knows what society teaches: that only the powerful have value. If you have political power, wealth, military power, or family power, you make the decisions. You get the best seat at the dinner table. People wait for you, and they wait on you. The haves wield power over the have-nots. That’s the way it’s always been. Jesus challenges and subverts this view of power and authority.
We remember that day.
Never forget this:
The dog days of August are well upon us here in the Washington DC area. Someone has said that nothing is as hot as a Washington summer. While I’m not sure about the truth of that, I know that the official temperature right this moment (10:45 a.m.) is 87 degrees but according to weather.com, it feels like 94 degrees. Last night, when I got home from a meeting at church, I thought, “Good grief, I can hardly draw a good breath in this air.”
As I water my flowers and my tomatoes, I am reminded that some of my brothers and sisters live in heat far worse than this, in living conditions that are a far cry from my comfortable ones. They will not have a gallon of water this day for them or their children to drink, never mind having plenty of water to water a garden. I pray that God will remind me of this truth and that God will provide water in the wilderness, somehow, for those who don’t have enough.
On Sunday night, I returned from a two-week vacation in Maine–hence, my absence from this blog. Being away from internet access was both an interesting and uncomfortable exercise. We were on Mount Desert Island, near the gorgeous Acadia National Park and so could make trips into Bar Harbor There, I used an internet cafe a couple of times just to check e-mail (and to delete the hundreds of spam I got!), but I replied to very few; I had imposed some self-discipline on myself to get away from all things routine during vacation. So other than some news that came across a good friend’s Blackberry, I was in a news vaccuum.
While in Maine, I took lots of pictures with the new Pentax camera my beloved gave me as a ten-year ordination anniversary gift. At some point during the time away, I realized that I was taking lots of pictures of water. Mount Desert Island has an incredible variety of kinds of water. The Maine coast is rocky, with volcanic rock that is black in some places and pink (granite) in other places. Depending on the time of day, the colors shift and deepen with the sun’s position.
But the water. . .there are the ponds that stretch like shaped mirrors and reflect mountain peaks, ponds where lily pads and frogs on lily pads sit in still, quiet splendor. There are harbors that invite lobster boats, fishing boats, pleasure boats and yachts. There are waters roiled up artificially: one day we bought tickets and took a U.S. Mail Boat to Great Cranberry and Little Cranberry Islands, so I enjoyed the summer sun and breeze, and the sight of blue water making its wake behind the boat. And of course there is the ocean, in all variations of blue and black and green, with the white waves crashing against the rocks at Otter Cliffs–one of my favorite places in the world.
In Psalm 24, the psalmist writes this: “The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.”
For these past two weeks, I was grateful for time away, to rest my body, to refresh my soul, to be with good friends, and to just BE. I found myself grateful to be able to walk beside, or sit beside, waters that were sometimes still and sometimes moving, and to be a quiet observer of God’s Creation.
We have two examples in today’s scriptures of power. The book of Amos was written about eight hundred years before the time of John the Baptist and Jesus. During King Jereboam’s reign, Israel and Judah have enjoyed peace. Neither Egypt nor Assyria—world powers—threaten. The old tribal systems of family and land ownership are unraveling, and a more wealthy—and powerful—elite social class rises. With all this power and upward mobility comes a disregard for God’s laws. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. For many political and religious leaders, power has become an addictive drug, not a spiritual responsibility.
Not one person in that banquet hall protests or holds Herod accountable. And the one person who does hold him acountable is about to die. Herod makes a choice and uses his power poorly. In what must be a grisly scene, John the Baptist’s head is brought into Herod on a platter and given to the teenage girl. In turn, Salome hands the platter to her triumphant mother. This tragic story ends with John’s disciples coming to take his body, to lay it in a tomb—an eerie foreshadowing of the task that will face Jesus’ disciples in a few years.
In the summer of 2000, I went on a seventeen day trip to the Holy Land, led by Dr. Ellen Davis, my Old Testament professor in seminary. Four months before the trip, Ellen sent a lengthy e-mail which covered flight schedule, costs and passport reminders. Additionally, Ellen told us how to pack. Now I already knew about norms for dress, because I had been to Israel and Egypt two years earlier. I knew that dress norms there are more modest than in the States—one cannot enter Moslem religious sites or Jewish religious neighborhoods with bare knees or shoulders. Nights in Jerusalem can be cool, so one needs a shawl or wrap of some kind. A good sun hat and sun glasses are critical in desert climates. And of course one needs a sturdy pair of hiking boots. However, Ellen’s e-mail included more than basic packing tips: “I would urge you to pack lightly. We will be staying several nights in a row at most hotels or guest houses, so you can do hand laundry, or even send things out (although this will not be an option everywhere.)”
The disciples have been traveling with Jesus for a little while. They have learned much already—probably more than they think they’ve learned. Now, Jesus sends the disciples out in what you and I would call an internship. Jesus tells the disciples to pack lightly and take only what they need: one tunic, one pair of sandals and a staff—to protect themselves from wild animals or to negotiate the rough desert terrain. They are to take nothing extra: no cloak for a cool, windy evening. No bread. No bag. No money. Jesus does not send them out alone, but in pairs. This is critical, as the long, dusty roads between villages wind through harsh desert terrain full of wild animals and robbers.
But on the way to Jairus’ house, something happens. An unnamed woman pushes through the crowd to Jesus. She has been hemorrhaging for twelve years and she is desperate. Despite repeated visits to all kinds of doctors, despite all the money she has spent, this woman has not been healed. She is not even getting better. She is continuing to lose something life-giving—her blood—and undoubtedly she is exhausted and weak. She is also considered to be unclean, according to Levitical laws. So the very fact that she is in a crowd of people is, in itself, a violation of Jewish law. However, this woman has heard about Jesus of Nazareth. She believes that all she has to do is to touch this healer’s clothing to be made whole again. The ancient peoples possessed what we would call “magical thinking.” They thought that if someone had healing power, that power extended to their clothing, to anything they touched, even to the shadows they cast (think about holy relics). 
Of course this interruption has delayed Jesus’ trip to Jairus’ house. Suddenly, some friends of Jairus show up to say that there’s no point in Jesus’ going to heal the twelve year old because she has died. Jesus, the Son of God, is undeterred. Did he not say “Peace, be still” to the raging storm just a few days ago? God’s power rules the elements of nature—whether they are the powers of wind, sky and sea, or the powers of illness and death. So Jesus continues on to Jairus’ house. When they arrive, they see mourners who have already gathered in the traditional custom of weeping and wailing publicly. So when Jesus tells them, “The child is not dead, but sleeping,” they laugh in his face. Jesus, the Son of God, is undeterred. He takes the girl’s mother and father and three disciples—Peter, James and John—and enters the room where the girl has been laid. Jesus takes her hand and commands her, “Talitha cum.” These words—retained in the original Aramaic—show us that the Greek writers believed in the literal healing power of Jesus’ words.
