It’s not all that scientific, but it’s fun. And it does seem to say something. Last week, I typed into Google the phraseseeking spiritual enlightenment to see how many results popped up. By the way
it was 2.7 million. So this week, I
wondered what would happen, if I popped in more general spiritual terms. And what came back kind of blew me away.
If you type the word Spirituality into Google, you
get over 122,000,000 results. When you
type in prayer, it almost triples to 330 million. And when you type in God, well, that’s the
big Kahuna. There, you get over one anda half billion results! That’s one
result for every four people on the planet!
So lots and lots of people are talking about God, prayer; spiritual
connection. Is that good? Sure.
But here’s the conundrum. With all that searching out there, does the
world seem all that spiritual or prayerful?
Does our world, our nation even, the wealthiest in human history, feel
like one that has spiritual peace; that has much sense of spiritual well-being
at all? If it’s out there, I don’t see
it. Do you? Instead, I see anger, fear, dissatisfaction,
a lot of desperate searching for happiness.
So how can all this searching for God be going on, all this writing
about God even, yet the world seems so disconnected from what a relationship
with God should bring? What’s the
problem?
In the words we’re about to hear, God shows us where
the problem lies. More than that, God
shows us where the answer does to. So,
let’s listen and hear what God has to say.
We live in a world where spirituality has become a big
buzz word, where so many are seeking God, though they may not use that exact
word. Yet in the midst of all the
spiritual seeking, where is the peace?
Where is the sense of security? Doesn’t
our world seem more angry and fearful than ever? Why is that?
Why doesn’t all that God-seeking, all that spirituality talk lead to a
world that is freer of fear and anger rather than one that seems more full of fear
and anger than ever before? Here, in
the midst of one woman’s fear and anger, God shows the way. God shows you that before you can experience
the freedom God brings, you have to let go of what holds you tight, even if
what holds you tight feels good, maybe even is good.
What do I mean?
In this story, Hannah finds herself in tremendous pain. And the words translated here don’t do her
pain justice. In verse 6, where it says
that her rival, Peninnah, her husband’s other wife, provoked her, it says that
it irritated her. But in Hebrew it says,
she roared with anger. That’s way more
than irritation. In vs. 10, where it
says, she was deeply distressed, the word here is actually pain, the same word
that describes physical pain. And, that
makes sense. A few years ago, a study
showed that to our brain, physical pain, and an intense experience of socialrejection feel exactly the same.
And that’s what Hannah is experiencing, intense
social rejection. In her culture, if
you didn’t have children, you didn’t have worth. Today, some of that still exists. Just last week, one of the two candidates
for prime minister in Britain, Andrea Leadsom, gave an interview to the Times
of London. Do you know what she said was
a major disqualification for her rival, Theresa May? She said.
Her rival had never been a mother, and thus she had no real stake in the
future of her nation. Now, her
criticism back-fired, and Theresa May is now prime minister not Andrea Leadsom,
but still, she said it. One of the two candidates for the leader of
one of the world’s most powerful nations said her rival shouldn’t be prime
minister because she had never been a mom.
Wow.
But while what Andrea Leadsom said about her rival
got immediate blowback, what Peninah says about Hannah doesn’t get any blowback
at all. Why? She was saying what everyone already saw as
true. To survive in that world, you
had to have kids, a lot of kids. First,
they provided labor on the farm or with the herds. So the more kids you had; the more labor you
had, and likely the more wealth. And as
only four out of ten kids even lived to adulthood, you had to have a lot just
to get a few. And, when you got old,
if you didn’t have kids, well, you probably just died. Social security didn’t exist, and nobody
else would take care of you. So as far
as that culture went, if as a woman, you didn’t have kids, you didn’t have
worth. You almost didn’t even have a
reason to live.
And Hannah knew that. She felt that rejection, that shame every day
of her life. Now before, we get judgy
about the oppression of women in that culture, don’t think our culture doesn’t
have its own ways of twisting women up.
Today, one of the new norms in dating culture is for a girl to get a
guy, you’re expected to send a selfie sans clothing. Why? Well, this culture values women for their
looks, for their sexual allure, for their romantic success. As a
brilliant French-Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi put it this way in an interview
in the New York Times. “If in Muslim
countries, they try to cover the woman, in America, they try to make them look
like a piece of meat.” Harsh, but a bit
true. In our culture, if a woman doesn’t
look a certain way, how the judgment comes, how the shame rises up. Think about it. Do you think eating disorders existed in
Hannah’s day?
Here’s the truth, whatever culture you are in will
try to twist you up in some way. For women,
it may be looks or children or romantic success. For men, it may be not showing weakness or
experiencing failure. For both men and
women, you have the pressures for success or popularity and the list could go
on.
Now here’s the thing. All of that isn’t bad necessarily. It can be good even. What makes them bad is whenever we feel
pressures to make anything, even a good thing, an ultimate thing. And cultures have powerful ways to pressure
you to do just that. They will try to
push you to find ultimate meaning or satisfaction or worth, in things, even good
things that can never deliver that.
Interestingly, Hannah gets those pressures here in
two ways. On one hand, she gets the
traditional pressure from Peninnah, her rival wife, mocking her for her lack of
children. Then on the other hand, she
gets a more modern pressure from, Elkanah her husband, who asks. Aren’t I enough? Can’t
I be the source of your worth?
But how does Hannah respond? The text tells us in two powerful
words. Hannah rose. I once heard the preacher James Forbes make
a great sermon out of just those two words.
Hannah rose.
But what’s the
significance of Hannah rising? In
Hebrew, it means more than simply someone getting up. It means someone getting up to take action,
to do something about a problem.
And what does Hannah do? Hannah goes to God. She takes her anger, her pain, her fear and
shame, and she lays it all out before God.
She gets so emotional that if you read a little further, you’ll see that
the priest even thinks she’s drunk.
Let’s be honest. All of us feel fear or pain about
something. Some of us hold it all
in. Some of us let it all out. Some of
us do a bit of both. But the Bible says take it to God, lay it all before God
like Hannah does. Now, I heard that sort of thing a lot growing up. And I thought it was a sort of religious
platitude, true maybe but not all that life-changing. But then reading this, I realized. Bringing
it to God is the most life-changing thing imaginable. After all, why do you bring it before
God? You don’t do it for God’s
sake. God knows it already. You bring it to God, because always, always
the ultimate answer to your fear and pain is found there. Hannah realizes that, and when she comes
before God, that answer comes.
Do you see how her prayer begins? It doesn’t begin with her problem. It begins with who God is. And only after she remembers who God is,
does she lay out her misery before God.
But in that prayer, something has already changed. Do you see what she asks for?
Now, you might think nothing has changed. After all, she asks for a son. She even proposes a deal with God to get one. But the deal she proposes tells us that
something has radically changed. When
she promises that her son will become a Nazirite, she is giving up whatever
value to her this child would have. In
Israel, only members of the tribe of Levi could become priests. But a member of another tribe could enter
full time service to God, and assist the priests by becoming a Nazirite. And Nazirites didn’t cut their hair or drink
strong drink. But more than that, they
began serving as a young child. So her
son will contribute nothing to the family, and when she’s old, he won’t be able
to take care of her either. And as from
an early age, he’ll be away so she won’t even get the joy of seeing him grow
up. She’ll only see him once a
year. What is going on here? Why would she want a child under those
conditions?
It’s because before she wanted a child for her, to
assuage her pain, to remove her shame, to give her worth but now she goes to
God, and says, I don’t want a child for me anymore. I want a child for you, God. You see.
Beyond all the cultural reasons to have children, Israelites had a
deeper reason. God had told their
ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, that through their descendants, God would bless
the world. So in having children, you
participated in that divine plan. And
for Hannah, that reason has now become the only reason to bring a child into
the world. She has let go of all the
other reasons that drove her before.
When she first came to God, having a child was the end, and God was just
the means. But now, God has become the
end, and having a child has become only the means. And that changes everything.
Hannah’s reason for living, her source of worth was
to have a child. (If she had a child, can you imagine the burden that poor kid
would have to bear?) But now her reason
for living has shifted from having a child to loving God. God is her hope now, not some cultural
standard of motherhood. How do we know
that has happened? Right after she
finishes her prayer, if you read further, it tells us that she ate and drank
with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer. Then a few verses later, it tells us that she
conceived and bore a son. But do you see
the order? It wasn’t that she had a
son, and then she lost her sadness. No,
she lost her sadness, and later she had her son. She lost her sadness, way before she even
knew a child was to come. Why? Having a
son was no longer the source of her worth, God was. And that shifted everything.
What twists people up is when you make anything,
even a good thing, an ultimate thing, when you make that the source of your
value or worth. But when God becomes your end, you become
free. Whatever pressure you feel the
world putting on you has less and less power over you. Why?
You have a source of worth that goes beyond success or kids or beauty or
approval or whatever it is that seizes that place in your life. Sure, you may still strive for those things,
but they’re no longer your end. They’re
simply means by which you yearn to bring God’s beauty and God’s love into the
world. God has become your end, nothing
else, and nothing less.
So what happens with Hannah’s son? He becomes Samuel, the powerful prophet, whom
God makes one of the greatest saviors of his people. But do you see how Samuel came to be? Only when Hannah let go of what she thought
would save her, does she not only save herself, but bring salvation to her entire
people. And when Hannah lets go like
that, not only does she point the way to what saves us all. She points to the One who did save us
all. In Jesus, God walked away from all
that we think God has to be to save us, all powerful, totally
invulnerable. Instead, God became weak
and vulnerable, even unto death. And in
that ultimate letting go, God opened up the way of salvation for everyone.
If God did that, if God in Jesus let go of
everything, and changed everything forever, what could God do in you, if you
let go? What binds you up? What has become way too important? Where do you need to let go and let God?
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