Hannah’s Prayer: Embracing Rhythms of Lament and Praise

Good morning.  My name is the Rev. Kristen Yates, and I am the Associate Pastor of Formational Discipleship here at the Mission Cincinnati and it is good to be with you.  I am feeling refreshed after four restful days with staff and vestry out at Red River Gorge, and it is my delight now as always to share the Word of God with you.

So, I don’t know what your experience of life has been like thus far, but if it has been anything like mine, it probably has not gone entirely according to plan.   For me, life truthfully has been very different what I had once dreamed, and if I am being completely honest with you, it has been far more painful than I could have ever imagined, like the time I entered into a severe bout of grief over the loss of a dream of having a husband and children as I inched closer to age 40.  In those months, I was inconsolable, and the images that most resonated with me at that time in my life were Job in his desolation and a dead tree.  I was Job.  I was that dead tree.   

 But, as you can probably guess.  I have had other experiences of life, as well.  For me, life has also been far more exquisite than I could have ever imagined, like the time I slept under the stars on Galiano Island in British Columbia with fellow seminary students.  I was completely awestruck by the number of stars in the sky that night and overjoyed by the sounds of seals and orcas who were close to the shore.  It was like heaven for me.

 And then there has also been the waiting.  Our culture has taught us that if we order something today, we can have it in the mail in two days, even sometimes on the same day.  Life is about instant gratification.  However, my life has shown me something very different.  All good things in my life have come with delays, like my first home which came to me in my 40s, and some good things for which I have waited for a very long time have still not come. 

And so, in my life, I have experienced both barrenness and bounty, both deep desolation and magnificent consolation, and delay and fulfillment.  It is not what I would have imagined, and I assume that you have had your own versions of this in your lives too.  Now. whether this is how we would wish life to be or not, this is what life looks like in a world created to be good but that is broken, in a world where the Kingdom is at the same time “here but not yet”. Well, friends would you pray with me.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the life you have given us, and we know that you are with us both in our mountaintops and valleys, in our deserts and our paradises, and in our waiting and our arrivals at our destinations.  Dear Lord, as we dive into our Scriptures today, would you help us see what you are up to in the world and in our lives and would you form us into a people of love, faith, patience, and wisdom who reflect your Kingdom in this beautiful but broken world.  Amen.

So today, we continue our sermon series entitled “Soundtrack”, which explores how the People of God throughout the centuries have created art, music, and poetry as a means to express their unique identity in the world.  And today, we focus specifically on the prayers of one woman whose words of praise have inspired praise and music throughout the centuries, first perhaps inspiring the words of Psalm 113 but then most definitely inspiring the Magnificat –  Mary’s words of praise about God’s work in Jesus that have been turned into some of the most beautiful musical masterpieces of all time. 

Now this woman named Hannah, whose words inspired generations to come, was a person like me and perhaps you, who experienced both barrenness and bounty, both desolation and consolation, and delay and fulfillment in her life.  And this is important to note, for when we encountered Hannah in the passage we read today in 1 Samuel, we saw Hannah in a period of consolation.  She was rejoicing and praising God for being the Rock, the God who knows, and the God of reversals – the One who lifts up the oppressed and the humble and lays low the oppressors and the haughty.  She was even praising God for the way He would exalt and give strength to his King, the anointed one, this King who did not even exist at this time. 

Hannah’s words were both personal and heart-felt, as well as other-centered and prophetic.  She held nothing back in her praise to God, and this was not because she was a person with a particularly cheerful and exuberant personality.  Now, she might have been that, but there is nothing in the context of these Scriptures to tell us what she was like.  No, Hannah held nothing back because she was a woman who had previously known deep desolation and she was also a woman who had encountered the God who knows and lifts up the humble.   And so, if we are going to understand these words of praise we encountered in 1 Samuel today, we first need to understand Hannah’s context. 

And for that, we’ll want to understand both the larger context of the People of Israel at the time, as well as Hannah’s personal context.  So let us take a look, first starting with Israel’s context. 

So, Hannah lived in the time of the Judges, the time between Joshua leading the people of the Israel and King David and his successors leading the people.  And as Fr. William alluded to last week, this was a particularly crazy time period in the life of Israel for as the Book of Judges tells us “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”, and what was right, was not necessarily good or in line with God’s commandments.  In fact, some of the most disturbing and violent stories of the entire Scriptures come from this time period in the life in the people of Israel.  

It was a dark period that consisted of a repetitive cycle in which the people of Israel disobeyed God, God judged them by handing them over to their enemies, the people cried out for a deliverer, and God raised up a judge, a person to deliver and lead the people.  Now, you would think that the people would have eventually recognized this cycle and therefore would have stopped disobeying God and began to trust and obey Him, but unfortunately, they did not, and unfortunately, the judges got worse over time.  So, the people of Israel were in desperate need of a good and godly leader who would protect and nurture his people and lead them in the ways of God. 

So, this was Hannah’s context.  And under these conditions of living, Hannah had her own personal woes.  You see, Hannah was barren.  She was unable to have children, and this was a great source of distress for her.  In fact, her distress was so great at one point that when she was praying feverishly to the Lord, the priest Eli mistook her for being drunk.  She of course was not drunk, just completely distraught as she took her laments to the Lord.  For being barren in the ancient Middle East was a terrible condition.  It brought on great shame and fear for it was important for a woman to bear a son to pass on her husband’s name and legacy.  If she couldn’t do this, she was seen as a waste and there was a real possibility that her husband would divorce her, leaving her in economic difficulty. 

In the case of Hannah, she was fortunate enough in that her husband did appear to love her, but he had also taken on another wife, Peninnah, likely because of Hannah’s barrenness.  Well, Peninnah did go on to bear many children, and she also went on to be an absolute bear to Hannah.  Because of Hannah’s barrenness, Peninnah purposely provoked her and often made Hannah cry. 

Now, we don’t know what she said or did her.  Perhaps, she communicated to Hannah the common belief at the time that God was judging her and that is why she couldn’t bear children.  Perhaps, she paraded her own children around in front of Hannah in such a way that constantly reminded Hannah of her own deep desire for children and the joys of motherhood.  What ever happened, Peninnah’s actions and words were mean-spirited, and Hannah’s spirit sunk further and further down until one day she couldn’t keep her composure anymore.  She poured her heart out to God, naming her desires, but also pledging that should she bear a child, she would dedicate him to God’s service.  This shows us that even in her deepest personal distress, Hannah was thinking beyond herself to the needs of her people Israel during this time of upheaval.  And in her deepest moment of distress, God heard her and answered her. 

She conceived, gave birth to a son, gave him the name Samuel, which means the “the Lord heard”, and after she had weaned him, she brought him to the Tabernacle so that he might serve the Lord and his people there.  Hannah was faithful to her promise, and as a consequence, her son, Samuel grew up to be a faithful servant of the Lord and a good Judge of the People of Israel.  He would also be the last Judge, for he was the one who would anoint King Saul and King David.

Well, when we get to the passage we read today, it is right after the time that Hannah weaned Samuel and brought him to the Tabernacle, and just as previously she could not hold back her grief and lament, now Hannah could not hold back her praise.  And her prayer was very interesting, for while the first couple of lines were very personal and she said things like “My heart exults in the Lord and I rejoice in your salvation, the prayer quickly became about who God was and what he would do to do on the world stage – He was going to lift up the lowly and bring down the haughty and He was going to strengthen his anointed.  Again, this shows that Hannah was one who thought beyond herself. 

And in this case, I think it also shows that Hannah had embraced a deeply abiding posture with the Lord.  Previously, she had wrestled deeply with the Lord about her barrenness, and in that wrestling, the Lord did not just hear Hannah, but Hannah heard the Lord.  By trusting the Lord enough to be honest with Him about her intense feelings and desires, by pressings in and not suppressing how she felt and what she wanted, she was able to release her desires to him, even pledging a child to the Lord’s service, even when that would mean she would forgo the joy of raising this child.  Hannah was also able to see what God was doing for her people, even seeing a righteous king, an anointed one who would lift up the humble in the future just as God had lifted up her, a person so desperately needed in this time of the Judges.

So, by the time Hannah got to this moment, the day she brought Samuel to dedicate him at the Tabernacle, she was bursting with joy and insight.  There is no doubt that her previous barrenness had been very painful, but it had also come with a purpose.  It seems that God had closed her womb for a time period (the author of this book actually tells us this is the case) so that in the interim, God could shape her into a faithful, trusting, and prophetic woman.  It also seems He had also closed her womb and then later answered her heart-felt prayers so that she could become an icon of God’s faithfulness and work in the people of Israel and in the Church as they waited. 

For just as Hannah had experienced both barrenness and bounty, desolation and consolation, and delay and fulfillment, so would the people of Israel, and so would the followers of Jesus.  God’s people could absolutely trust in God’s faithful character – that He would fulfill his promise to right the wrongs of this world, to wipe away all tears, and to bring about a new heavens and new earth ruled by Jesus, the ultimate righteous king, but like Hannah, they would have to wait.  And we as modern followers of Jesus also have to wait.  This, waiting, however, is not without purpose. 

So, at this point, we might ask – how does Hannah’s story help us understand our own lives with God?  Well, the most obvious way this story helps us is by showing us that the lives of God’s people are not ones characterized by continual mountaintop experiences, instant answers to prayers, and spiritual formation that comes at a snap of a finger.  Rather the lives of God’s people are marked by ups and downs, waiting and going forward, and gradual growth.  For any of us who have journeyed as Christians for any length of time, we know this by experience. 

Still, I think this truth is worth meditating upon because I think many of our faith communities have set us up to think that once we accept Jesus, we will continually have wonderful experiences with God, and life will mostly go well for us and our communities.  I think that many of us in the middle to upper class American church, whether we have come from specifically Prosperity Gospel backgrounds or not, expect life will bring an abundance of faith and an abundance of good experiences, good relationships, good work, and good things. And for sure, there will be many, many blessings in our walk with Christ, but what are we to do when doubts arise; when the things we most desperately want in life don’t come to fruition; when crisis strikes, or when our faith, spiritual practices, and participation in a faith community just don’t work like they used to?   Well, for many people these days, it means leaving the church and even leaving the faith.  The Christian life is just not how we imagined, so we leave it. 

But what if instead of having skewed expectations of the Christian life and of quitting when things don’t turn out the way we expect or hope, we were to lament like Hannah before the Lord, we were to hold nothing back and bring him our tears, our anger, our grief, our doubts, our sadness, our petitions and the deepest parts of ourselves?  What if we were to wait and trust in the Lord and remember his character, knowing that while there are many tears now, one day, God will wipe away the tears.  What if we were to know deep down in our hearts that  while we wait, God has got us.  We rest in the palm of His hands, and He who has known many sorrows, is right there with us. 

Friends, the right posture in our times of desolation and barrenness is not stuffing down our desires and feelings, but bringing them to the Lord.  And as we do this, we cannot only expect that God will hear us but that we will also hear from the Lord, just as Hannah did, that we’ll slowly be able to release our requests that have become demands, we’ll be able to let go of control, and we’ll be able to see what God is up to in our lives and in the world, even in our delayed or lost dreams.  We’ll become more open-handed people, ones able to praise God when He answers our prayers in the ways that we want, and also people who can praise God when He does not answer our prayer in the ways that we want.

 This latter point is really important to keep in mind because one of the possible misunderstandings we could take away from these passages today is that if we just have enough faith or pray in just the right manner, that God will answer our prayers exactly as we desire, but we know from experience this is not the case.  For example, my deep laments years ago did not result in my life dreams coming true.  Now, in the case of Hannah, sure God did answer her specific prayers for a son, but keep in mind that God’s answer was not really a response to her petition but the fulfillment of His plans all along.  He was the one after all who closed her womb and He was also the one who opened it, in the right timing. 

So then why the delay and why the lament?  Well, as I said before, as Hannah brought her whole self to Him in this time of waiting, God was able to draw close to her and to form her into a woman of patience, trust, authenticity, hope, wisdom, love, and even celebration.  God was far more interested in her character, in who she was and who she was becoming than in her having exactly what she wanted in her own timing.

And, friends, the same is true for us.  God cares deeply about our character, that we would become the people that He always intended for us to be, and in our own valleys and deserts, in our own waiting, God can shape us so that when we do arrive at our mountaintops and paradises, we are more  other-centered, open-handed, and wise people, people who do not take God’s gifts for granted, but recognize them as gifts, praise the Gift-giver, and then offer these gifts back to be used in His service, again just as Hannah did.

In a world of desolations and consolations, barrenness and bounty, waiting and fulfillment, our correct response in life is neither to continually wallow in the brokenness of the world nor to take on a posture of happy-clappy living and worship that ignores the pain of our lives and world.  The proper response to this beautiful but broken world is to live into a rhythm of both lament and praise, bringing our whole selves before the Lord in every situation, good and bad, of trusting in the Lord’s faithfulness, waiting expectantly for the return of our King Jesus, and opening ourselves up to God’s loving, transformative work in our lives in the meantime.

So, Mission Cincinnati, let us take Hannah’s story to heart and live out this beautiful and life-giving rhythm of lament and praise.  When we do so, we will experience the abundance that God wants to give us – not the abundance that comes with getting everything we want in this life, but the abundance of drawing close to God; of being known, heard, and seen by God; of more fully knowing God’s heart; and of becoming people who are more and more like Jesus.  

Holy Spirit, work within us and make this be so.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.