Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass says “that she wanted to be a good mother, that’s all”
...even when it came up against the hard task of cleaning years of algae from the pond to make it a swimmable pool. It caused her to develop a new relationship with mud from which she draws this assertion, “Transformation is not accomplished by tentative wading at the edge.” Years later Robin would reflect, “It’s been a balancing exchange: I worked on the pond and the pond worked on me, and together we made a good home.”
In our scripture lesson this morning, there is for Hannah no tentative wading at the edge. She crafts an equation of prayer and effort to articulate her need and place her trust in God’s gracious response. It was a balancing exchange. She worked on the prayer, and the prayer worked on her.
Hannah, deeply distressed, puts her whole self in, “Oh, God. Take a good, hard look at my pain and quit neglecting me and go into action. Give me a son, and I will completely and unreservedly give this gift back to you.”
Theologian Walter Brueggemann says it takes both gift and task to be the people of God. It is not all one or the other; but both/and. We make the effort and by grace God works wonders that are beyond our efforts. We exert our best though sometimes feeble efforts only to realize it is God’s grace that makes our effort possible. I have a friend who ran so smoothly and with such ease that coaches were always ragging him for not trying harder. On the other hand, the rest of us could flail, sweat, and try as we might, but we could not beat him.
Whether it comes easy or hard, we come to express our gratitude to God for our blessings; particularly the privilege of being this fellowship. Being members of one another is “a precarious interplay of effort and grace.” May this season of transition be marked by both effort and grace believing that we may ask of God to prepare the right person to be our pastor and leader and to then lend this person to God for the work of God’s kingdom among us. God will hear and answer our prayers and invite our faithful response.
The book of Samuel falls chronologically at the midpoint between the call of Father Abraham, a thousand years earlier and the birth of Jesus, the Christ, a thousand years later; when the country and culture were a mess, when things had fallen apart. The book of Judges concludes, “All the people did what was right in their own eyes.” (21:25). Not always the best way to determine a good outcome.
Hannah, however, acts in ways different from the norm and “stubbornly and prayerfully sets herself against the circumstances her society gives her. Before you know it, history is following in a different direction.”[1] Hannah has remarkable courage to live her life in candor before God. She brings her lack to God’s provision.
This story invites us in. It’s always about gift and response, effort and grace. We are a narrative formed community. Our need gives shape to the emptiness of our own existence, but it is not the final word. The biblical narrative reveals to us that if we but whisper a deep sigh of our hurts or hopes God will hear us.
By the time in life when I had outgrown a bedtime story, I remember enjoying overhearing the Bible stories my mother would read to my younger brother. I liked to hear those stories about real needs being met by God’s provisions. For the Hebrew storyteller, God was not peripheral to the story.[2] Everything that happened, happened in a world where God was lovingly present.
This story tells us about a man named Elkanah who has two wives. Peninnah has children, but Hannah, “has no children” (1:2). There is a rivalry between the two women. Elkanah’s efforts to comfort Hannah, although well-meaning, appear clumsy. Add Peninnah’s cruelty to this, and you have a story filled with as much tension as a wedding shower when the ex-girlfriend shows up. A typical question for me to ask in pre-marriage counseling is: “Who could you run into on a quick stop at the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving that might ruin your first Thanksgiving his or her family?” We have not come from a vacuum. Our lives are an unfolding story with contradictions, and sinfulness, limitations, and possibilities all on display like in the biblical drama.
May Hannah be our models when times are tough. Her longings become her prayer. Hannah’s vulnerability draws us into the story. It is surprising that the lament is the most common prayer in the Psalms. Hannah’s prayer is provoked by pain, but it is not confined to it. By casting her prayer in the form with a vow, she involves herself responsively. She both asks and gives. She asks for a child from God and offers to give this same child back to God. Her generosity is as integral as her poverty. Her prayer anticipates not just getting but also giving.[3]
Rabbis consider this to be a “prayer of the heart.” Hannah may be the first woman, even the first “ordinary person,” to take her place in the sanctuary and give voice to her need. [4] Her prayer proceeds neither from piety nor position, but from need: “I am a woman deeply troubled.”
I guess we could all tell of those who have acted toward us with genuine faith and affection. I remember a bizarre story, from my childhood. My mother and two older sisters and I lived in a small red duplex. The property owner had put in new posts and fencing to give us a small backyard. One night a wild and crazy man, inebriated, crawled up the wire and was wreaking havoc, trying to tear it down. I get us or something.
It’s curious to me that rather than feeling frightened I remember the sheer joyful excitement of this episode. I once shared this with a therapist, and he wept. What do you do when your therapist weeps?
At the very moment, when I was certain the out-of-control man was coming over the fence, my mom took a mop and swung it at him as she held open the back screen door, like Hannah at the temple door. Years later I would backfill this story with the likes of Don Quixote.
There I was, sandwiched in between my sisters, hiding behind my mother’s skirt as she yelled for him to go away. It was a precarious moment of effort and grace? You could say my mother was asking God for us in the way that she would on any number of occasions. Her prayers have made all the difference in who we would become.
“Hannah asked God for Samuel?” For whom, for what would you ask God? Hannah casts her care upon God. She knew God cared for her. Peter will echo this encounter in I Peter 5:7. In the biblical story need is always there, and God, who is never absent from the story, meets that need. The early church, blessed by God’s spirit, acted in ways appropriate according to every person’s need. “There wasn’t a needy person among them” (Acts 2:44). They asked of God, and God met their needs, and they cared for the needs of others.
Hannah had it within her to give a good gift to God. She prayed these words, “For this child I prayed. God has granted my request. I will lend him to God as long as he lives. He is dedicated to God for life.” (1:27-28). I pray that the Royal Lane fellowship will be marked by our faithfulness to ask God for that which we need with faith that God will hear and answer our prayers. Having then received, I pray that we will in gratitude give back what God has given to us!
We pray:
Grant us the grace to be grateful and faithful in all that we are and in all that we do! In Christ, we pray. Amen.
[1] Ibid., p. 13.
[2]Ibid., p. 5.
[3] Ibid., p. 19.
[4] Ibid., p. 20.