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Rev.
Shannon Johnson Kershner |
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1 Samuel 1:4-20 August 18, 2019 To my daughter Hannah Lee on her eighteenth birthday, First of all, thank you, dear Hannah. Thank you for giving me permission to read this letter aloud to the congregation of Black Mountain Presbyterian Church, our new church home. Hopefully, your father and I have managed to parent you in a way that even as a preacher’s kid, you always found church to be a place to rest, to stretch your wings, to learn about God’s claim on your life, and to be loved. Hopefully as a new 18 year old, you will not be too embarrassed that when you were eight, your mom used this letter as a way to explore the biblical text of Hannah When I told you I was preaching Hannah’s story today, you looked at me kind of funny. “You are preaching about me?” you asked. “No sweetheart,” I replied. “I am preaching about the Hannah of the Bible. The one for whom you are named.” “Why did you name me after her? What are you going to say?” you inquired. And so I wrote this letter. In the days of Hannah, her husband Elkanah, and the priest Eli, it was extremely important for a woman to have a child—and not just a child, but a son. Now, before we go any further, I do have to say a couple of things about that reality. First, I imagine that for a lot of women, having a child is still a very important desire. It was for me. One day, it may be for you. But I have also known a lot of women and men for whom that desire turned to heartbreak for one reason or another. My own heart breaks for them as I have seen them struggle with wanting a child of their own and finding loss instead. To be honest with you sweetheart, Hannah’s story is a hard one to preach when you know folks like those. For I know that many of them have had Hannah’s prayer on their own lips but have not found the same resolution. So, my Hannah, please be aware of their pain as you get older. I have held it in the front of my mind as I have written this letter. But when I talk about the pressure for our biblical Hannah to have a child, I am not only talking about emotional desire and longing. I am also talking about a social and economic reality too. In Hannah’s day, a woman’s identity was almost completely defined by her children—specifically, her sons. Only if she had a son would she be guaranteed to have a future-- a source of literal sustenance and protection. A woman without a son was a woman without a name, without a voice, without any sense of power or agency in the world. A childless woman was a person forced to the margins and devalued. It is hard for us, women who live in America in this generation, to grasp that reality. But it existed for Hannah. It still exists for women all around our world. In some places, women are still only as valuable as the sons they birth. So, knowing that desperate need to have a son in order to have any kind of future, you can start to understand Hannah’s distress over her barrenness and her sense of emptiness. It did not help that Elkanah’s other wife (Side note: Don’t get me started about traditional biblical family values. They often leave quite a bit to be desired. But back to my point…) it did not help that the other wife tortured Hannah over her barrenness. Hannah’s despair became so thick that she could not eat. She could not sleep. She could not stop herself from weeping. Her husband did not understand her severe emotional state. “Am I not more to you than ten sons? Why are you so upset?” he would ask her. It is unfortunate he did not choose to say “Hannah, you mean more to me than ten sons.” That kind of love might have made a difference in Hannah’s heart. Oh well. Our story tells us that Hannah’s deep distress went on year after year. And it always worsened on the high holy days. Every year, as Elkanah, Peninnah, and Hannah went to the temple for the time of sacrifice, Hannah was bitterly reminded of what she did not have – a son, a promise of a future, a name, a sense of hope. And every year, as Elkanah and Peninnah and Eli watched, Hannah sunk more and more into her grief—frail, distressed, not eating, not sleeping, only weeping. A muted voice of despair. My sweet Hannah, I know what you must be thinking by now. “That’s great, mom. You named me for a woman who was so sad she could not even lift her eyes. Gee. Thanks for that one.” I would agree with you, but we have not yet reached the end of Hannah’s story. Actually, if her story stopped here in the despair, you probably would not bear her name. You bear her name because of the very next sentence. So listen extremely carefully. In the middle of her despair; in the middle of her physical, emotional, and spiritual barrenness; in the middle of her deep distress, Hannah rose. Hannah rose. Now, at first, you may not feel the power of that simple sentence construct. But you have to remember, Hannah was without a name, without any sense of power, without any kind of hope. She was tormented, lost in her grief, so beat down that she could not eat, or sleep, or do anything but weep until no tears were left and only the dull, throbbing ache of loss remained. BUT, one morning at the Temple, Hannah rose. She got up. She stood up. She pushed through her pain, through her sense of hopelessness, through her barrenness, and she rose. The same verb, by the way, the one for “rose,” is used for those times in the New Testament when Jesus heals someone and brings them back to fullness and life, when he raises them up. So in that same spirit of resurrection and healing, Hannah rose. And Hannah marched right up to that Temple, right up to that place where she believed God made God’s home, right up to that holy, sacred space, and she poured out her soul to her God. In the middle of her despair, Hannah dared to rise and Hannah dared to pray. She poured it all out, crying as she silently prayed, still so caught by her pain that she was only able to move her mouth with the words, still unable to give her prayer audible sound. “O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on me and remember me and not forget me,” she began. I have to stop again, my Hannah, to make sure you realize something else very important. Women typically did not just go to the temple and pray for themselves, without the aid of a husband or a priest. That was not considered normal. And yet, Hannah dared to rise. She dared to go to her Temple. And she dares to pray to her God, her Creator, in order to remind God of God’s responsibility to look at her, to see her in her pain, to remember her, and to answer her. My sweet Hannah, just pause for a moment and drink in her courage and her stubborn faith. She reminds me of Job’s story that I preached a month ago. Both Hannah and Job clung to God with all that they had in them. Now, let’s continue. As I wrote above, Hannah was still so distressed that she could not put sound to her words. She could only move her lips in her desperate prayer. And so the priest Eli just saw this woman--this woman without a husband anywhere nearby, this woman whom he had observed year after year unable to stop weeping—he observed that she was still crying her eyes out and moving her mouth nonsensically. So he assumed she was drunk and told her so. Eli was not exactly the posterchild for pastoral sensitivity, was he. He verbally kicked her when she was already down. But, this Hannah, this Hannah who dared to rise and who dared to pray, responded to the priest and told him that she was not drunk, but merely pouring out her soul to the God who had promised her ancestors to be her God and to remember her. And Eli, who frankly strikes me as someone who simply wanted to pacify her and get her to go home, uttered a quick blessing. “Go in peace. May God grant your petition.” And my Hannah, you know what? Not only did this Hannah dare to rise. Not only did this Hannah dare to pray. Not only did this Hannah dare to stand up for herself with the priest. But this Hannah, for whom you are named, also dared to believe that God would indeed answer her prayer in God’s time and in God’s way. Did you hear that in the story? As soon as she had poured out her soul—all her bitterness, all her despair, all her pain—to God in prayer, she rose once again, returned to her husband, ate and drank until she was satisfied. And our text says that her countenance was sad no more. Don’t you find that simply amazing? Apparently, this Hannah for whom you are named, knew in the depth of her very being, that appearances to the contrary, her God was a God who remembered her. Her God was a God with whom she could be completely honest. Her God was a God who respected a stubborn insistence of faith. Her God was a God who would finally bring life out of barrenness, hope out of hopelessness, joy out of despair. Her God was a God who could be trusted, who would act, and who would respond in God’s good time and in God’s good way. Her God, your God, my God, our God, was a strange and mysterious God. A God who decided to use a voiceless, marginal woman to change the course of history. For you know by now, my Hannah, that the biblical Hannah’s son was Samuel. And Samuel was the beginning of the monarchy of Israel…the one who eventually anointed King David…the beginning of a new life and a new time for God’s chosen people. It is incredible, isn’t it? Given all that I have told you about the place of women in that ancient culture, aren’t you amazed that God would dare to use a woman—a barren, distressed, marginal woman named Hannah—to begin Israel’s monarchy? God dared to begin creating new life not just for Hannah but for all God’s people precisely in a place of emptiness, of powerlessness, of despair and hopelessness. I must admit that when I state that affirmation of our faith for you, my Hannah, I still get chills. When I pause and realize that is how God has chosen and still chooses to work in our world—so often in ways that completely violate our reason and our logic—well, my soul is fed. I could keep going, my Hannah. I could tell you about Hannah’s song that follows this birth story. I could show you how she began as a muted voice of despair but ended singing songs of revolutionary praise. But you might be getting tired of reading. I am starting to get tired of writing. It is an emotional thing for me as your mother, as a pastor, to relay the story of your namesake. But I needed you to know. I wanted you to know just why your father and I dared to name you Hannah, after this daring woman named Hannah of 1 Samuel. By the way, if your father had gotten his way, you would not have been named Hannah Lee. Rather, you would have been named Hannah Rose. For indeed she did. And thanks to her daring initiative and God’s daring response, they both gave birth to a new beginning. To God be all power and glory this day and forever. I love you, my sweet girl.
Love,
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