She Prayed to the LORD

 1 Samuel 1: 1-20

A sermon preached by Charles J. Tomlin, DMin;

July 25^th, 2021,   Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Series: The Way of God’s Justice 16/20

 

There was a certain man of Ramathaim, a Zuphite¹ from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.

 ² He had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

 ³ 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.

 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,¹ 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.¹ 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 nazirite¹ until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants,² 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,¹ ate and drank with her husband,² and her countenance was sad no longer.³

 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.

In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, "I have asked him of the LORD."

 (1 Sam. 1:1-20 (NRS)

 

In the book ‘Path of the Prophets’ Rabbi Barry Schwartz says, while people often think that the Bible is full of people praying that’s really not the case.  While people do pray throughout the Bible, the act of prayer isn’t often displayed with a lot of detail.   Think about it?  What do you remember about the prayers of Abraham, Moses, or even Simon Peter?  We have many prayerful words from Paul, including one very emotional prayer from Jesus, but specific acts of prayer and praying are harder to find.  However, one obvious depiction a person overtly praying comes from this story of a woman named Hannah. 

You would probably pray too if your life depended upon it.  Most people pray in that kind of moment, haven’t you noticed?  In fact, Scholars believe that cave drawings found in southwestern Europe, going back 30,000 year ago, come from people attempting to communicate with the world beyond.   Still today, even in the most unsophisticated way when people get frustrated, they pray.  Haven’t you heard someone say: “O, my God!”.   My uncle wasn’t a overly religious man but every time he got mad I’d hear him say with southern draw, ‘I god’, instead of ‘By God’.   What would you read into that?   Also, when people get distressed, as during times of the great need, they often cry out whether they are believers or not: ‘Dear God, please help me!’   This is elemental, but it’s still prayer.  It seems to prove, as one scientist has claimed, that we humans are ‘wired’ to pray.

After the twin Trade Towers came down in New York, churches filled up all over this nation, even though church attendance was in decline.  Why did many people go back to church?  It evidently was not to change their minds about church or God, since church attendance is in decline again.  No, people went back to church because they felt they needed to pray.   In times of great need, people pray.  We put our humanness on display.  We reveal who we are way deep down.  We are dependent, creatures who need saving and redeeming.  Even people who do not pray, or do not believe in God, when troubles come our lives we will utter some kind of prayer, an outcry of distress.

In today’s Old Testament text, Hannah was desperate and deliberate in prayer.   In fact, the text says she went to the temple and continued praying (v. 12), even begging God.   She wasn’t praying because she wanted to get close to God.  She was already close to God because she went to the temple to pray over and over.  In this text the even the priest thinks Hannah is intoxicated because lips are moving so fast.  It was her own desperate situation constantly drove her to her knees.  Let’s take a look. 

 

THE LORD HAD CLOSED HER WOMB. (v. 5 )

Hannah’s situation was what every woman and couple fears—infertility.  The inability to conceive a child.   Her value of self came down to whether or not she could conceive.   To reduce a woman to her womb was an act of cruelty in the ancient world.   It was a time when men dominated, and a woman who was unable to have a child was marked as barren.  A woman’s future and worth depended on her having children.  If a woman had no children, and her husband died, she could end up barren both in life and death.

As heavily as this burden weighed upon Hannah’s heart and soul”, as was customary in such situations, Hannah’s husband, Elkanah, had taken a surrogate wife to fulfill her duties.  Polygamy wasn’t that common among the Hebrews, but it was legal and morally acceptable, especially when necessary to produce children.   Unlike Hannah, his second second wife, Peninnah was able to conceive and she bore several children (1 Sam. 1:4 NRS).  This only added fuel to the fire to Hannah’s pain and hurt.  Even though it was obvious that Elkanah loved Hannah, she was still childless and the ‘other woman’ was unnecessarily rubbing it in.

What seems most cruel in this situation, however, was this ideal that ‘the LORD had closed her womb’.   To attribute both good, bad, or whatever happens to be under God’s control, is comforting to some.   But this can certainly backfire badly.  That’s one reason we should never claim to know more than we know, especially when it comes to God.  Think about it.  While it may seem good to say God is in absolute control of everything that happens, or that life is always going according to God’s plan may sound reassuring, but is it really?   Is God responsible for hungry children?  Is God responsible for natural catastrophes?   Is God responsible for cancers, accidents, or other evils in our world?   How could Hannah attribute her dire situation to God, then keep praying to that same God for help?

 To some people, throughout history and still today, the Old Testament makes God look like a ‘moral monster’ who punishes, judges, rules or controls the world.  But is this a fair understanding of what the Hebrews actually believed?  Certainly, there is growth in the understanding of God throughout the Bible and  God wasn’t understood in the same way as God is more fully revealed in the servant life and suffering death of Jesus Christ.  But still, this doesn’t mean the Old Testament view of God is different.  God is God.  God is the God of compassion and mercy in the Old Testament, as God is in the New Testament.  As God revealed himself to Moses in Exodus 33:18–19 (NRSV): “Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.’   No, God isn’t different, but people are different.   Humans ways of understanding and knowing God has changed and continue to change. 

Thus, when Hannah’s understood that ‘the Lord closed her womb’ she wasn’t holding God responsible for her misfortune, but she was actually making a faith-statement in worship of God, just like people still do when they trust God through difficult situations.  ‘Where else can we go but to the Lord,’ the song rightly says.  Hannah was acknowledging God’s presence, even in her own difficult situation.  She’s wasn’t blaming God for making this happen to her.  She felt, especially through the ridicule from husband’s second wife, that she herself was somehow responsible for her barrenness.  The common understanding of that world had almost no grey area, but very black and white.  To the Hebrew mind God is only good but humans have a propensity toward evil.  The only way a righteous God could respond to human sinfulness, and remain holy and righteous, is to judge and punish sin.  However, since God is merciful and compassionate,  Hannah believed that though she may have been somehow and unknowingly responsible, through her prayers she hope that her merciful and compassionate God might grant her request and end her despair.            

It was this misunderstanding that misfortune always comes to evil persons and fortune comes to those are good, which was the great misunderstanding that Jesus attempted to correct, as we see in the story if the healing of the ‘Man born Blind’.   Perhaps you recall, in John 9, where the disciples asked Jesus about the man’s blindness, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”  This question makes the assumption that since God controls everything, then only bad things happen to those who are bad and only good happens when people are righteous.   Now, such a nicely neat package of ‘tit for tat’  might sound comforting, if you are fortunate that is.  But such a belief can also backfire, especially for those who can’t understand why bad things are happening to them in a particular moment.  This can cause, and has caused people to lose all faith in God. 

What Jesus does when he heals the blind man is to deflect this whole line of reasoning, avoiding any kind of cause and effect answer.  Jesus gives his a spiritual insight that looks for the good, explaining that God allows this man’s blindness so that God can do a work of healing in his life.  But what kind of answer is this, really?  What would Jesus say to those who aren’t healed?   Well, the quick answer is that Jesus doesn’t give any answer to what can’t be answered.  Jesus wanted to move his disciples away from the need of having answers to every situation, but to develop the kind of faith that becomes an answer by working with God for good to bring solutions, hope and healing for the world.   So, while Jesus was indeed a Jew who saw God as ultimately behind all things, even Jesus did not try answer what can’t be answered in life, but as Paul explains more fully, Jesus wanted his disciples to focus on the good we can do, joining with God in his saving, healing, and redemptive mission in the world. 

Now, how do we look back to Hannah’s situation through faith in Jesus?   We definitely shouldn’t see Hannah blaming God, nor do we see her attempting to confess some unknown sin to God.  What we do see in this story is a woman of great faith, appealing to her compassionate and merciful God she hoped would answer her prayer and change her situation.   But is this the kind of prayer we should still ask and expect God to answer?  Hannah is probably only part of the biblical story because she eventually, miraculously, bore the child named Samuel who would anoint Israel’s first king.  Does, or should this story give us any hope that God might answer our own prayers?

 

SHE VOWED A VOW (v. 11)

         Our human need to pray, especially when we face misfortune desperation is where Micah’s requirement of humble walking with God comes in.  How do we humbly prayer to God when we need something to happen, either for us,  or in the world?   Do we do like Hannah does, make vows to God and then hope for the best, trusting that somehow God will answer?  

        One of my professors in Seminary did exactly this.   Delos Miles was in a fox hole when the North Koreans suddenly attacked and unexpectedly overran their position.   All the people in the fox hole line with him were shot and killed, but somehow he survived.   When the enemy were coming to inspect the dead, he pretended he was dead by lying completely still.  With the enemy all around him, he laid there for 9 hours praying, making vows saying,  “God, whoever you are, if you get me through this, I’ll do anything.  I’ll serve you in ministry.”  And sure enough, Dr. Miles survived and he kept his vow too.  He returned home from the war, went to college and seminary, made straight ‘A’s and became a much beloved Seminary professor, teaching Evangelism where I studied.  He preached the baccalaureate sermon at my graduation ceremony.  But here’s the thing.  Is this really what prayer is about?  Is prayer really making vows, even promising ourselves to God to get things from God?  As I heard a TV preacher say: ‘Expect Great things from God.  Get great things from God.  Besides, wasn’t Hannah’s prayer selfish, even though it certainly wasn’t self-serving?   If God fulfilled her request, she did promise her child to God.  Interestingly, in a Hebrew culture, that wasn’t so dramatic because every first born male child was dedicated to God, but what made her vow special was how she was making a ‘nazarite vow’, promising abstinence, making her child uniquely available to God.   

 So, let’s consider this further.  Is this what prayer means, that we make promises to God and make a promise that increases our chances of a getting a favorable answer?   It would seem, if we reduce prayer to ‘promising’, ‘asking’ and only ‘getting’ what we ask for, then we’d have to also say that Jesus was a failure at prayer, wouldn’t we?  Jesus prayed,  ‘Lord, it be possible, take this cup from me!’ but God didn’t ‘take the cup’ nor did God even immediately answer why’ Jesus was forsaken at the cross.  We can now see the good in ‘why’ God didn’t answer and allowed Jesus to suffer, but what does this mean for us, when make promises, or when we live righteous lives, yet our prayers aren’t answered as we need; when we see no good that comes to us, or to others we love?    

        So, thinking about Hannah’s vow and also about my professor’s prayer in the foxhole, what’s in prayer for us?   While we can obviously see something of our human condition in bargaining with God, but what does prayer mean whether we do, or whether we don’t get what we ask for?  What if God had answered ‘no’ to Hannah, would she have returned to the temple to pray anyway? 

One thing for sure, at some time or another, we all run up against a situation, a problem, or a dilemma when are in desperate need and will pray, even bargain or make promises to God.  But what I think makes Hannah stand out, is not only was she very human in expressing her need to God, she’s also very unusual, like my professor was after the foxhole incident, of someone following through with their promise by giving themselves fully to God.   

Think about this.  We don’t really know about Hannah because she prayed, nor because her prayer was answered.   No, we only know about Hannah, just like I only knew my professor, because they kept and followed through with their promises.  Because Hannah actually gave her child to God, even before she conceived, and because she held nothing back, we see and know about her.  We don’t simply know her as an example for getting answers from God, but as being an answer for God in who they are and how they pray.

 

 

 

 

THE LORD REMEMBERED HER (v. 19)

        As this story ends, the final point isn’t simply made only that the Lord answered Hannah’s prayer, granting Hannah’s request exactly as she prayed.  But the text expresses answering much more personally, saying rather, that ‘The Lord remembered her’!  God’s answer as remembering us, points beyond what happens or doesn’t happen when we pray, but it moves to answer most importantly who God is and who we are to God.  In other words, the text doesn’t end with a mere objective result; We pray, God answers.  No, it ends by asking us to consider this God who cares, and has compassion on us, not just the answer God gives to us.

To say that God remembers certainly doesn’t mean that God is capable of forgetting us, but it points to the fulfillment of God’s promises in the life of God’s people who trust and hope in Him.  Sometimes God remembers us by answering our prayers as we ask them, so that we may hardly remember even asking.  Other times, however, God remembers us by giving us much more than what we ask, so that we never forget.  The answer becomes part of us and changes not only our situation, but everything about us.  That’s what is being implied here. 

By saying that God remembered Hannah means that God gave Hannah a gift even greater than her child—if that can be imagined.  And that is exactly what is being expressed here.   God not only remembered to give Hannah’s request his full attention, but this merciful, gracious God who remembered her, was also giving Hannah, and God’s people a gift they would never have to give back.  In remembering Hannah, God gave Her the greatest gift—himself.

This means, or what I hope it means to you is that you can make Hannah’s story something inspiring for your whole life.  While I sincerely believe that prayer always makes a difference, prayer shouldn’t be reduced to only to getting answers.  If that’s what prayer means, then ‘walking humbly with God’ would go out the window of probability, wouldn’t it?   We all have what we want, so we would for get, right?  But God makes sure not only that if we want to remember to him, we will, but God also makes sure we all know, through this story that God also remembers us, when we pray. 

Even if there isn’t always a direct link between our asking and the answers, that doesn’t mean God isn’t listening or that God isn’t remembering what we pray, seek or ask.   Prayers always have an impact, and I believe they always influence an outcome in our lives and in our world.   Everything seen is influenced by things unseen, isn’t it?   When I pick up a saw, a pencil, a paintbrush and try to create something from an invisible, original idea in my mind, I transfer those concepts to my hands and feet to make an impact.   In the same way, when I speak my heart to God who loves, cares, and continues to work through us all in this world, I can be confident that God works from and through our all ours hearts and minds too, bringing his own universal mind to bear his perfect and loving purposes into our wills and lives through our own hands, feet, and actions that can create a better world and loving responses.   In other words, prayer isn’t just mind over matter, but it’s means we matter, because God works through all our situations, through mind and matter to bring about most everything that we know as real in life.

Also, when I know that my thoughts impact the world, and when I trust that the words l say and the way I live makes a difference; I also know that God remembers, as the song says, ‘even me’.  I can also be confident that the prayers I express to God will somehow impact the events I live, although I might not always see it directly.   As William Temple, once quipped, ‘When I pray, coincidences happen.  When I don’t pray, coincidences don’t happen.”   In other words, we may not always see how our prayers change the world, but we can always know how prayer changes us, from the inside out.  

In the final scheme of things, having a God who remembers us, you and me, is always what matters the most.  As Jesus was about to suffer and meet his death, this was his greatest concern too.   Jesus didn’t primarily take his leave of this world only saying go do what I say or did.  That came later in the fulness of his resurrection power, but not in the weakness of his flesh.  On the night when he was betrayed, the Scripture says, as Jesus felt the full weight being human,  Jesus expressed to his disciples was that his greatest need was, and still is, to ‘Remember me!’  ‘Do this, in remembrance of me.’   Do you hear, really hear this?  In the Old Bible, a human is found praying and hoping that God will remember them, and God does.  In the New Bible, however, God inhabits human flesh, praying and hoping that He will be remembered by us.  Now, as I see it, that’s is the spirit of prayer.  Prayer isn’t mostly about WHAT we need, but WHO we need.   This God whom we need, also needs, and wants to remember us.   When you know that, you are walking humbly with God.   Amen