NRSV 1 SAMUEL 1:4-20
4 On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; 5 but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the LORD had closed her womb. 6 Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb. 7 So 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. 8 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?”
9 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. 10 She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD, and wept bitterly. 11 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.”
12 As she continued praying before the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. 13 Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. 14 So Eli said to her, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.” 15 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. 16 Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” 17 Then Eli answered, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.” 18 And 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.
19 They 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. 20 In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, “I have asked him of the LORD.”
This Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving. At least, Thanksgiving in our country. When I visited Jamaica almost forty years ago I was shocked to discover that not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.
There are different dates for this day, depending on where you are. But the intent is basically the same: To lift up our voices and our prayers in thanksgiving for all the ways that we have felt God’s touch and love. There are enough times to make our complaints to God – ‘why do bad things happen to good people’, and all that. So we need at least one day to give thanks. On these days when it seems that Thanksgiving is getting shoved aside by the rush to Christmas crowd, all the more reason to be intentional about taking the time to give thanks.
Many of us will congregate with our families and/or friends, special people to us, around the table on Thursday to engage in a veritable feast. Before we do that most of us will, I hope (and I know I am preaching to the choir on this once since this is a church, but you can’t assume anything) but I hope we will mark this time with a prayer; a prayer of thanksgiving, holding hands, maybe, in a circle, maybe with some giggles and nervous laughter. But that joviality is a mark of the Spirit, too, reminding us of the great joy that comes when we lift up our thanks to God. In that prayer, no doubt, will be a list of things that we are thankful for: family, friends, love, relationships, food, a place to live, a country that we are (most of the time) proud of and which lets us do this without any interference. There will be many things to give thanks for, and we will lift them up and then start snarfing up the food.
It’s always one of the highlights of the year for most of us. We yearn for this special time during the holidays when we can get together and eat, drink and enjoy. Even if we have to put up with that relative/friend whose political views drive us nuts.
But I have to wonder how Thanksgiving is going down in places like parts of California which have been burned to the ground, where family members and friends are no longer around and whole towns have been laid waste by the fire. Or Mexico Beach, that place on Florida’s Gulf Coast which was pretty much blown off the map by the same storm that knocked out our power for several days. Or for the folks in Pittsburgh, especially the ones who live in Squirrel Hill where the Tree of Life Synagogue suffered what all of us faith communities dread more than just about anything – a crazy guy with a gun totally destroying our sense of peaceful and safe worship.
The holidays are wonderful but if you have gone through a tragedy, if you have experienced the loss of someone special, if you have received a dire medical report, if you are in the midst of any one or several of a long list of unhappy and unfortunate events, it can seriously taint your sense of celebration. It’s just the nature of being human. Of course we want happy days and times of celebration; we want to feel happy – it feels good, and it is healthy for you. But denial is not just a river in Egypt, and denying the pain of life during the holidays just to make someone else feel better or to prove how tough you are is not always a good course.
The other day I was reflecting on how it has been over 40 years since I suffered for the first time in my life the loss of a close person – my Father, whose funeral was on my 26th birthday – and how that first time through the holidays was extremely difficult. What brought that to mind was a flyer announcing a seminar that Piedmont Senior Resources is sponsoring tomorrow at the SCOPE Building on Griffin Boulevard that deals with loss during the holidays. I wish they had something like that when I was going through all of that years ago, but the fact that these folks are doing it now is a recognition that grief has always been an unwelcome but consistent intruder into our holidays. These days can be wonderful and delightful, but they can also be really, really tough. And we need to take that toughness seriously enough rather than telling suffering people to buck up and have another egg nog. Some things are not helpful. But paying attention and listening to what is really going on with someone might just be the best gift we can give them these days. Not everybody’s prayers can be happy and jovial. But in all prayers lie the power and the potential to draw us closer to each other and to the God to whom we lift up our words and our thoughts.
There are a lot of texts in the Bible about Thanksgiving, including several Psalms. But I think it was interesting that the good folks on the Lectionary Committee chose these texts for late November. It has a familiar story line in the Bible; a barren woman suffers and her suffering is heard from God and she delivers a child who goes on to do great things. It is a great story, with a happy ending. But if we rush too much to that happy ending we might miss something.
What we would especially miss is that this – just like all of those other miracle birth stories – is not solely about birthing a baby. There is a much wider family circle here than a guy and his two wives. There is a people here who are suffering from barrenness. What is needed is not just a physical birth, but a birth of hope. The child that comes is the child who will lead Israel through some very difficult times.
But before his arrival things are, for the people of Israel, a mess. Not the good kind of mess, like when we are talking about someone who has endearing idiosyncrasies. They are in a mess in a really bad way. They are coming off the time of the Judges, and everyone is out doing their own thing. The word of God is rare in those days, we will hear in another chapter, and the reason it is so rare is that it is so rarely acknowledged or called upon; the people are doing what seems best to them, so there is no need for God in their lives. Only that is not going so well. They are oppressed by the neighboring nations, their religious life is a shambles, and they are like a big ship without a rudder; aimlessly moving along, just sleep walking through life with nothing but nightmares.
Their situation is fairly well mirrored in the life of a woman named Hannah. She is one of two wives of a guy named Elkanah, and she is barren. She has had no children, a problem made worse by the other wife who – maybe out of jealousy at Hannah being the favored wife – hassles her without end. Her husband is no help, either; he is nice enough but his response to her situation is all about him. He doesn’t really get it. He doesn’t even try to experience her pain and anguish. He trivializes it – “Aren’t I worth more to you than ten sons?” Sorry Elkanah, this is not just about you so please go away.
The religious community isn’t a really big help either. She is so upset with her situation that she cannot eat; you know what that’s like, don’t you? When the grief, the pain, the deep sense of alienation takes away everything, even your appetite. She heads off to the Temple at Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant was, and she lifts up her prayer to God. She doesn’t need a priest for this, and from what we learn later about how they were behaving one could not blame her. They, too, were all in it for themselves, just like everyone else. So Hannah puts everything she has into this prayer; a prayer from the deepest place of where she is and who she is. No ritualistic formula, no lofty sounding words, no pious phrases. Just the utterances from a person in deep travail. She is trusting that this God will care, will listen, and will respond.
In the midst of that prayer the priest, Eli, assumes that she is drunk and is just carrying on in an inappropriate way. Funny how we religious leaders still do that. We think because people don’t pray the way we do that they are doing it all wrong. But as Richard Rohr has said many times, it is only by doing it wrong that we can really do it right. It is by doing it wrong that we throw ourselves, like Hannah, on the unfathomable grace and power of God. She really doesn’t need a priest for this, and Eli is not really much of a help. Except that eventually he does get it and offers up some consolation for the woman.
But this is not a story about a bunch of clueless men or even a brave woman. It is a story of the nature of God; a God who does care, even when it seems that no one else does. A God who does listen, even deeper than we might imagine. St. Augustine reminded us that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves – go and play with that one for a while – and that, “…our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in Thee.” And this is a God who will respond. In this case, with a child, but the responses of God to our prayers are not easily categorized. This isn’t Santa Claus, and God is not a heavenly vending machine where you put in your quarters of prayers and you get what you want.
But God does care, God does listen, and God does respond – many times in ways that blow our minds, as this must have blown Hannah’s. The song of praise she utters should sound familiar; it is just like Mary’s Magnificat when she received word that she, too, would conceive and give birth to a child who would deliver people from the morass of their own making. In that song, Mary sings that God, “…has looked on the lowliness of his servant.” God takes us where we are, in all of our lowliness, and works through us even with that lowliness.
That song, like Hannah’s, sings of a God who does not leave our lives like they were, and God does not leave the world the way it was. God is always working in our lives and in the life of the world for resurrection when death threatens. Our lives are turned around, our world is completely tossed upside down. The poor are enriched, the rich are brought low, the powerful are sent empty away and the powerless have good things in abundance.
So when you gather to lift up those prayers on Thursday, don’t worry about getting it right. Just believe somewhere in the deepest parts of who you are – just like Hannah did – that God does care about you and those you love, that God does listen, and that God will respond. For in our imperfect prayers is a power beyond our imaginings, given to us by a God who responds in ways we have yet to see. But ways which will renew our lives. Just ask Hannah. Amen.