I Samuel 1:1-20, 2:1-10 Hannah, Hope, and the Honest Cries of Breaking Hearts A sermon by Rev. Aaron Fulp-Eickstaedt At Immanuel Presbyterian Church, McLean VA On August 20 th, 2017 Today our summer sermon series on Women of the Bible continues with a look at Hannah, the mother of Samuel, the prophet and judge who anoints the first two kings of Israel, Saul and then David. Hannah s story is told in the first two chapters of I Samuel. Listen now for the honest cries of her breaking heart and for the prayer she offers in response to what God does in her life. There was a certain man of Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives; the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. Now this man used to go up year by year from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year after 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. Her 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? After 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. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. She 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. As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine. But 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. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time. Then Eli answered, Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him. And she said, Let your servant find favour in your sight. Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer. They rose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, I have asked him of the Lord.
Hannah prayed and said, My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory. There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn. The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honour. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord s, and on them he has set the world. He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness; for not by might does one prevail. The Lord! His adversaries shall be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed. Sometimes it is not easy to sing Hallelujah. Sometimes praise the Lord can be the furthest thing from a person s mind or mouth. Sometimes, when we look around at the pain and injustice, the terror and violence, the messiness and misery in the world and in our own lives, it may seem that all we can do is lament in frustration, or sob in desperation, or weep private tears of shame. Sometimes circumstances are such that we just plain run out of words and, for a time at least, all we have to bring God are the honest cries of breaking hearts.
The solo Dianne Forburger sang earlier in the service that lovely Amy Grant piece brings home that this sort of vulnerable acknowledgment of one s own brokenness and need of the world s brokenness and need is better than a Hallelujah. Here s why: It s not glib, or Pollyanna, or the rote recitation of something we think we re supposed to be feeling. It tells the truth about what is really going on with us. When we are introduced to Hannah at the beginning of today s passage, we meet a woman who finds it hard to say Hallelujah. Who can blame her really? The one thing she wants more than anything else to bear a child she cannot do. To make matters worse, her husband Elkanah in the manner of other Old Testament figures like Abraham has another wife and that other wife, Penninah, has no trouble getting pregnant and giving birth. Add to Hannah s frustration at being childless that Penninah rubs it in her face whenever they go up to the temple to sacrifice and you can imagine the rest of the year, too and you can see why singing Hallelujah might just have been a bridge too far for Hannah. She can t manage Hallelujah. She can t even bring herself to eat. And the cherry on the top of Hannah s particular predicament is how her husband makes it worse with his insensitive and egotistical words, Why are you crying? Am I not more to you than ten sons? Elkanah apparently missed the premarital counseling session on what not to say to your spouse when she or he is hurting. At her breaking point now, all Hannah can do is go into the temple and pour out her soul. The text says she is full of distress and weeping bitterly. And while she s in there she makes a bargain with God, as people in desperation are wont to do. If you give me a son, I ll dedicate him to you. He ll be a Nazirite. Eli, the priest in charge, notices Hannah there, sees her mouth moving without any sound coming out, and he accuses her of being drunk. Hannah puts Eli in his place, snapping at him that she s been pouring out her soul to God in her great anxiety and vexation all this time. Great anxiety and vexation. Another translation renders those words great anguish and grief. I don t know whether great anxiety, vexation, anguish, and grief are better than a Hallelujah or not, but I will say that the words do seem to name what I imagine every single one of us have felt from time to time in our lives. We may not have been in Hannah s shoes exactly, but we know what it s like to desperately want something and not get it. Not all of us have to go back to middle school to remember what it is to feel put down, mocked, and bullied like Hannah was. There are all sorts of things that can cause us to feel great anxiety and vexation. You can make your own list. It might include family issues, worries about our children, our spouses, our financial situation, our health, the health of our nation and our world. It s what we do with that anxiety and vexation that is the issue. Do we ignore it, blithely say praise the Lord, and keep plowing ahead, or do we do what Hannah did? Bring it to God, laying out, in vulnerability and openness, how it really is with us. Often we do the former. There is a satirical news site, sort of the Onion for church people, called The Babylon Bee. One of their recent articles, datelined Erie, Pennsylvania opened like this: The results of Pastor Mike s informal survey are in: every single member of Bayfront Methodist Church is doing either fine, good, or real good. When the pastor pressed for details, members responded with some combination of, No really, I m doing great, or else, Yeah, things are good, things are good.
The survey was conducted as the pastor faithfully stood at the doors of the church after the Sunday service, shaking the hands of each churchgoer as they left and asking how they were doing. It s really quite spectacular, the pastor told reporters Monday. You would think, given the state of our fallen world, that at least one person would be going through a crisis or battling some kind of indwelling sin that they need help with. But not at this church we re all doing fine it seems. Praise the Lord! 1 What makes that article so funny is that pastors know and people in pews know that there is not a single Sunday when every worshiper is doing just fine. There s more than enough anxiety and vexation to go around. Speaking of anxiety and vexation, grief and anguish, I think that those words name what all of us are feeling at least to some degree with regard to what happened in Charlottesville last weekend with the neo-nazis and other white supremacists marching with torches and flags and attempting to provoke violent response. I was proud of my clergy sisters and brothers like Gay Lee Einstein, Brian McLaren, Lisa Sharon Harper, Traci Blackmon, and others for being a presence for love, peace, and justice, in that place. Ever since last weekend, I ve been pouring out my soul to God in great anxiety and vexation. Maybe you ve been doing that, too. Heather Heyer, the woman was killed by the white supremacist from Ohio wrote in her last Facebook post about white supremacists marching on Charlottesville, If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention. If our hearts are not breaking, if we are not vexed by the fact that white supremacy continues to be a force in our society, if that is not vexing us, we are not paying attention. And if we think white supremacy and racism is limited to a relatively small number of people who felt emboldened enough to come out in broad daylight in support of extreme views, you and I haven t been being honest with ourselves and we haven t been reading the comments. God, I just cannot read the comments. That s the number one rule of the Internet, don t read the comments. If you read the comments and your heart isn t breaking, then you re not paying attention. I was heartened to read the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, lamenting that some Christians have supported or looked the other way with regard to this. He called Christians to deal with this head on. He wrote: White supremacy does not merely attack our society (though it does) and the ideals of our nation (though it does); white supremacy attacks the image of Jesus Christ himself. White supremacy exalts the creature over the Creator, and the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against it. This sort of ethnic nationalism and racial superiority ought to matter to every Christian, regardless of national, ethnic or racial background. After all, we are not our own but are part of a church a church made up of all nations, all ethnicities, united not by blood and soil but by the shed blood and broken body of Jesus Christ. The church should call white supremacy what it is: terrorism, but more than terrorism. White supremacy is Satanism. Even worse, white supremacy is a devil-worship that often pretends that it is speaking for God. White supremacy angers Jesus of Nazareth. The question is: Does it anger his church? 2 We should be vexed. We should be angry. 1 Report: Every Single Person At Church Doing Fine, The Babylon Bee, http://babylonbee.com/news/report-every-single-person-church-fine/ 12 Jul 2016 (last accessed 21 Aug 2017) 2 Russell Moore, Russell Moore: White supremacy angers Jesus, but does it anger his church?, The Washington Post, 14 Aug 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-offaith/wp/2017/08/14/russell-moore-white-supremacy-angers-jesus-but-does-it-anger-hischurch/?utm_term=.d4c100b10c07 (last accessed 21 Aug 2017)
If white supremacy vexes those of us who are white, if it makes those of us who are white anxious and it should what about the people who are the targets of this violent ideology? What about people of color, Jewish folks, gays and lesbians, immigrants, transgender people? It is hard to say Hallelujah when your life, your very existence, is being threatened, and you live in a system where others enjoy privileges by virtue of their skin color, their religion, their sexual orientation, or their gender identity that you are not accorded. If we think that privilege does not come to us as white people, we need to ask ourselves, honestly, if we d be willing to trade places and really experience life in another person s shoes. To grow up African-American, gay, lesbian, immigrant, transgender. Would we be gladly willing to take their place, not just as a perspectival thought experiment, but in reality? If the answer is No, then that s where we can begin to really be honest with ourselves, not just about white supremacy but about white privilege and inherent racism. I know, we don t want to say that we re racist. Here is where I need to say that Hannah s story ends well, which is what makes it a bit difficult to preach on because we all know, we know, that not every woman who pours out her soul to God longing to have a child gets to give birth to one, and not every woman who holds on for life survives, and not every soldier who pleads not to die comes home from war, and not every drunk who cries out is constitutionally capable of being honest enough with him or herself to get and stay sober. No matter what sort of bargains they or we make with God. That being said, the value in the honest cry in, like Hannah, bringing the vexation and anxiety and longing to God is that we can be given the resources to sustain us even when our prayers aren t answered exactly how or precisely when we want them to be. The value in the honest cries of breaking hearts with regard to what happened in Charlottesville is that the story of Hannah isn t just about a biblical character literally having a baby it is also about hope and understanding and love and how they get birthed in us. When we bring it to God, when we acknowledge it to God, ourselves and other human beings, we can move beyond denial and pretense, bring it out to the light and air where the healing can happen. That s how love and understanding get birthed. A college classmate of mine who was Southern Baptist when I knew here but became a Roman Catholic nun (if you ve lived in the South, you know how amazing this is) posted this from a Catholic layperson: Racism is America s original sin, and we can never be cleansed of it if we never talk about it. We white people need to talk about it. Our brothers and sisters of color are literally dying for us to talk about race in America in an open, non-defensive manner. We are Christian, but we are also American, and the blood of racism pulses through every vein in this country s past and present. 3 So what can we do? Well we can begin by talking about it. 3 Sarah Margaret Babbs, From a white person to white people: We re complicit, U.S. Catholic: Faith in Real Life, http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201708/white-person-white-people-werecomplicit-31110 (last accessed 21 Aug 2017)
We can get educated. We can read books like The New Jim Crow 4, or Waking Up White 5, or Just Mercy 6, or Between the World and Me 7. We can go to the workshop on Racism that our Presbytery will be sponsoring this fall. We can try to imagine ourselves into the perspective of another. We can imagine what it would be like, not to wake up white, but to grow up as an African-American or as an immigrant, to have the playing field always tilted against you. One of the remarkable things about Hannah s prayer after Samuel is born and it serves as the model, or the template, for Mary s Magnificat is how this formerly barren and bullied childless mother speaks on behalf of the poor, the hungry, the needy, and the downtrodden and sings out the tables will be turned, for not by might does one prevail. We can speak up. It may not mean going to be a counter protestor at a white supremacy rally, it might mean being part of something like happened in Boston yesterday a counter rally for peace and understanding. We can remember the words of another song that prominently features the word Hallelujah, one that the late, great Leonard Cohen wrote. One of the verses says: Baby I have been here before I know this room, I've walked this floor I used to live alone before I knew you I've seen your flag on the marble arch Love is not a victory march It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah 8 Love is not a victory march. It is seen in vulnerability, made real in speaking up and speaking out and being present. One last thing I want to share. It is a statement from Jonathan Reckford, the CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, an organization we have long supported. As a Christian organization that welcomes people of all faiths and no faith, inclusivity is who we are. It s what makes us a strong community, and it s those same values that make us a strong nation. As a lifelong Christian, I want to be clear: the white nationalists, neo-nazis, KKK and their supporters who descended on Charlottesville have rejected the teachings of Jesus Christ. 4 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, (The New Press, 2012) 5 Debby Irving, Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race, (Elephant Room Press, 2014) 6 Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) 7 Ta-Nehishi Coates, Between the World and Me, (Text Publishing Co; UK ed. Edition, 2015) 8 Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah, in Various Positions, Sony, 1995, https://www.amazon.com/various- Positions-Leonard-Cohen/dp/B000002AZX
Habitat for Humanity stands firmly against their words, actions and any suggestion that theirs is a legitimate grievance. We applaud and honor those who put their own well -being at risk to reject this hatred. We share in the nation s grief in the tragic loss of Heather Heyer, whose life was taken while she was standing to protect others. We mourn for Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen III and Trooper - Pilot Berke M. M. Bates, who lost their lives while protecting and serving their community. The hate-motivated acts we saw this weekend do not define us as Americans, or as citizens of the world. And they don t define Charlottesville either. Because even while that city grieves, there are forces of love hard at work. Later today, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville will break ground on a community of affordable housing that will give 14 families the opportunity for a better future. Dan Rosensweig, the CEO of this affiliate, shares these words: We don t have answers as to why the kinds of evil and hatred experienced in Charlottesville this week exist in the world, but we do know these three things: People who are swinging a hammer are not swinging a stick or a flag pole. When we are given the opportunity to work side by side with someone from a different background, we inevitably replace fear with a shared sense of purpose and humanity. And when we commit to listening without judgment, we all inspire people to be guided by their better angels. Dan is right. Every nail hammered, every wall raised, is a rejection of hate and a step toward the future where everyone irrespective of class, color or creed has a decent life. 9 Do you know what that is? That s hope. And for today, that s even better than a Hallelujah. 9 Statement by Habitat CEO Jonathan Reckford on the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Habitat for Humanity, https://www.habitat.org/newsroom/2017/statement-by-habitat-ceojonathan-reckford-on-the-violence-in-charlottesville-virginia, 17 Aug 2017, (last accessed 21 Aug 2017)