Sermons

Hannah: The S/Hero of This Story

Sometimes, I play a little game with myself when I hear a less familiar Bible story. I try to figure out who the hero of the story is by which names are still in use today. I don’t know a lot of people named Elkanah or Peninah. But Hannah? I know a dozen Hannahs. And given the nature of our reading today, I think we can safely say that she is the focus of the story. Hannah is married to Elkanah and has not had any children, even though she is the wife that Elkanah loves. Her husband’s other wife, Peninah, has several children and lords it over Hannah, making her life miserable. But Hannah refuses to give up hope that she will bear a child.

A cursory reading of this text could lead you to believe that Hannah is being valued merely for her ability to conceive. And I do think that is at least part of what is at play in this passage. But I think it’s important to note two things: one is Hannah’s deep desire to have a child. She refuses to be content with what has been allotted to her. In fact, when Elkanah comes to her and says, “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” although it is not included in the text, her answer is quite obviously “no.” Hannah is bucking her place in the family, refusing to be content with just her husband. She feels a deep desire for more. Here I want to make sure to say that not everyone who feels that desire, that call to parenthood is able to fulfill it, whether because of fertility, or finances, or life circumstances. The second thing is that in petitioning God for a male child, she is also securing her economic position in the future. When her husband dies, she will need to rely on a son to care for her.

Peninah and her children clearly do not have Hannah’s best interest in mind. And so she goes to the temple. I want to take a moment to focus on the short episode between Hannah and the priest at the temple. When she is not praying the way he expects, the way he thinks a person should pray, he accuses her of drunkenness. I think there’s a lesson here about how we treat one another when a behavior is unexpected. As we are finding our bearings after the election, it feels as if there is no right way to “be.” And there’s a lot of *shoulds* being thrown around. You should get over it, you should be more upset/less upset, in the streets/organizing, giving, volunteering, etc. In this story, the priest jumps to a very unflattering conclusion about Hannah’s behavior, not seeing her with compassion but with judgment.

In these days and weeks after the election, I ask us to consider refraining from judging those who are dealing with emotions and information differently than we would. I wonder how this episode would have played out if the priest had approached her with genuine concern rather than assumptions and judgment. And so we learn at the end of this reading how the story plays out. Hannah has a child, Samuel. And the next line of the text is this: “My heart exults in the Lord. My strength is exalted in my God.” This is the first line in what is called Hannah’s song. And if it sounds familiar, it may be because it is very, very similar to the Magnificat, the song of Mary, which is what Mary sings as a response to the Angel Gabriel telling her that she also will bear a son. The songs of Hannah and Mary share a theme of a world turned upside down. “The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength,” says Hannah. “[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly,” says Mary. The Song of Hannah and the Song of Mary are not just about the joy of bringing a new life into the world. Rather, the songs are the dream of God for the world in which those children will live and create.

I have heard many songs myself over the last days, months, and years from mothers, parents, aunties, uncles, and all kinds of people. We sing the songs of our hearts, of the kind of world we want to live into, the world we want to pass on to the children in our lives. My mother also sang a song. When raising two kids at home, she became involved in education reform to ban corporal punishment in Oklahoma schools. Through that work, she learned she was a natural at organizing, never passing on an opportunity to find a connection with a stranger. She later became the Executive Director of the League of Women Voters in Oklahoma and then an advocate for public employees in the state. She fought the privatization of prisons. She fiercely believed that no one should make a cent off the imprisonment of another. And she didn’t leave me at home for any of it. I learned to read a map by navigating for my mom as we put up yard signs for this or that cause. She sang a song of justice, and she taught me to carry the tune.

At their best, families of origin show us the kind of love and care that God has for us. That’s because when a child is born into or adopted into a family, that child is seen as a gift to be cherished, loved, and taught. And there’s nothing that a child needs to do to earn love or to earn a place in the family. They simply belong. If we are the children of God, then we also are a gift to be cherished and loved. We simply belong. You notice that the first thing Hannah does when she receives the gift of Samuel is to give him back to God. She vows that he will be a Nazirite, part of a special religious order.

Giving back to God what has been given to us is central to our Christian identity. We do it every week at the offertory. I wish I had time to preach a whole sermon just on the offertory (and maybe someday I will), but what happens at that moment when we stand up and our gifts are brought forth is that we are offering to God our tangible gifts, in the form of the bread and wine, our money, and the dry good items we contribute to the food pantry up the street. We are offering God “ourselves, our souls and bodies.” We are offering to God what God has given us, our very being. I also learned about giving back to God from my parents.

I grew up in an Episcopal church in Oklahoma, and from the time I can remember, I knew that my parents took their financial commitment to the church seriously in the form of a pledge. I learned that the church shouldn’t just get what was left over when all the other budget pieces were accounted for. I was taught that the pledge should be one of the first pieces added to the budget, and other spending should adapt to that. When I first came to church here as a member, I started by putting money on the plates when I could. After I had been coming for a while, I started to pledge, at first just a few hundred dollars a year, then more, then much less when I was in seminary and didn’t have an income. That leads us to today. My pledge for next year is $5,000, or 7.5% of my salary. I do it because I want to be the kind of faith leader who embodies the values I talk about every week. And I do it because my parents taught me that it’s important. But mostly, I do it because I have been given so much. I have a safe, warm home and a stable job. And it is my privilege to offer back to God what has been given to me, to place my offering on the altar of a community that has given me so much. These are trying times, and I believe we are all doing our best. As we sing our songs of justice and offer our gifts back to God, we can be a little bit more like Hannah. After all, she is the hero of the story.