University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

The Reverend Anna Pinckney Straight

University Presbyterian Church

November 19, 2006

“Victory!”

1 Samuel 2:  1- 10

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 honor. 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.”[1]

I love the story of Hannah.  Hannah, the mother of Samuel, one of the greatest leaders of all of the Old Testament.  A truth teller.  King anointer.  As the book of Samuel tells us, “As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground” (1 Samuel 3:19).

Hannah was his mother.  Our lectionary text for today is her victory song.  Victory for the child she was given, the child she thought might never arrive.

Like many women whose stories are told in the Testament also known as the Hebrew Bible, Hannah was not, in the years when it would have been expected, able to have children.

Now that was difficult enough of a thing to bear in a time when having children was more than a joy, it was an economic and cultural necessity, but Hannah had a second difficulty. Her husband’s other wife.

Her husband’s other wife did not share Hannah’s fertility issues.  Her husband’s other wife had lots of children.  And because the husband that they shared preferred Hannah to his other wife, the other wife used Hannah’s infertility as a weapon, reminding Hannah in her most vulnerable moments of what she was, that Hannah was not, and what Hannah desperately wanted more than anything else to be, a mother.

Hannah had the love of her husband, and so she went to God with her request.  Time and time again.  Year after year after year. She would go to the temple to pray.  This was no casual desire on her part, this call to become a parent was something so strong it was as much a part of her as her name. 

And so she prayed.  Not the Presbyterian kind of prayers that most of us are used to where we politely bow our heads and occasionally sneak a glance around to see what’s going on, but real, all consuming, body moving, tear inducing, prayer.   Where you become so completely in sync with the prayer and the God to whom you are praying that you lose any sense of anything and everything else going on around you.

I suspect you know exactly the kind of prayer I am talking about, and while they may not be our normal Sunday morning prayer, they weren’t the normal prayers of Hannah’s time either, and I imagine that most if not all of you can probably recall one or many moments when you prayed such a prayer.

Hannah prayed.  And years after it would have been considered normal or expected, Hannah finally gets pregnant.  And she gives birth to Samuel.  It is the thing that she has wanted more than anything else.  Inclusion.  Vindication.  Victory.

And here’s where the story gets fascinating for me. Hannah, now being what she has wanted more than anything else to be, gives her child, freely and openly, back to God  As soon as Samuel is weaned, she takes him to the priest of the temple, Eli, and gives Samuel to him so that he might live his life in service to God.

Imagine something you’ve worked for, wanted, more than anything. And when it is within the touch of your grasp, you willingly turn it over to someone else or something else.  It’s hard for me to imagine, but that’s exactly what Hannah does.  And it is a profoundly faithful action.

Hannah, a woman who prays.  A woman who knows that to which she has been called and is willing to give herself to that call, completely and totally.

Her victory song is our text for today.

I love the story of Hannah, for the ways in which it reminds us all of the realities and pain of infertility.  Those who feel called to parenthood and yet are unable to have it happen in the way that for so many of us happens so easily.  In fact, I’ve often thought that this would be the perfect text for Mother’s Day.

I love the story of Hannah, and her voice which comes through so loud and clear from an era in which women weren’t supposed to be women at all, but only daughters and then wives.

I love the story of Hannah, finally and mostly, because of the way in which she embraces her victory without claiming it.

Her victory song is not proclaiming the joy of her success.  It is not a triumphant Oscar acceptance speech or campaign celebration balloon drop.  It is not the taunting voice of Homer Simpson, “In your face, Flanders.” It is not any of these things, because Hannah’s victory song is not about her victory at all, it is about God’s.  Her victory is not even in having a child, it is in being open to God’s ability to love and transform.

She sings this song, our text for today, not after finding out that she is pregnant or even when she delivers a healthy baby boy, she sings it after she takes him to the temple, for that is when she truly understands the gift she has been given.

As one of the commentaries I read this week said, “She [Hannah] is a marvelous model of how personal suffering can be the entry point to understanding the pain of the poor.  Her own cry did not stifle the cries of other women to her ears but enabled her to hear those cries all the more clearly.  In heartfelt prayer, she claimed her liberation and then claimed it for all who suffer.”[2]

And that’s what makes this text so powerful.  Hannah has not expected this gift.  She has yearned for it.  She has suffered waiting for it, but she has not expected it or thought it her due or her right.  And so when it is given, she receives it fully and completely.  Not as an act of completion, but a call to discipleship, a chance to learn anew how to serve and reach out.  Having a child is not her entryway into acceptance, it is a reminder of the needs of those who struggle.

Hannah understood, invites us to understand, what a pastor friend of mine often says and does her best to live, “Expectation is the enemy of intimacy.”

Expectation is the enemy of intimacy.  Once you expect something, you can no longer receive it as a gift. 

If, this Thursday, you expect a complete dinner to arrive on your table at 3:00, you cannot receive its preparation as a gift. 

If you expect that your friends and/or spouse will always be there for you, you can never receive their attention and understanding and support as a gift.

If you expect that your parents will always disagree with you, you can never receive their independent thoughts as a gift.

What do you expect?  How do you receive?

Life is about the reception of gifts.  The gift of this day.  This hour.  This opportunity.  To love and serve and proclaim the love of the God who has given us everything.  Which we have no right to expect, and which God earnestly hopes we will receive with joy and thanksgiving.

Life is about the reception of gifts because faith is about how we respond to those gifts.  About how we allow the gift of love and forgiveness to lead us into sharing that very love and forgiveness, in thought, word, and deed.

True victory is Thanksgiving.

In the words of Patrick Miller, a former professor at Princeton Seminary:

"In a world that assumes the status is quo, that things have to be the way they are and that we must not assume too much about improving them, the doxologies of God's people are fundamental indicators that wonders have not ceased, that possibilities not yet dreamt of will happen, and that hope is an authentic stance."[3]

We live in a world where few if any of us believe the status to be quo.  More than anything, we see the world changing so fast that we rush to keep up.  What is up for grabs are the ways in which the world is guided.   None of us has the world in our pockets, we all have this day in our hands and the victories to which we can either cling desperately or give as generously as they were given to us. All of us the opportunity in this day to dream of God’s possibility and to know that hope is an authentic stance.  How fully do we embrace this opportunity?

How does God inhabit your own doxologies and psalms of victory?

“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.”

I love the story of Hannah.

Amen.