Hannah's Justice

November 19, 2006
West Side Moravian Church

Hannah's story is an example of narrative theology. This is a story about one particular woman who gave birth to one particular baby boy, but it tells us about our relationship to God. I want to hold up three lessons we can learn from the story of Hannah. I list them under the words Confidence, Constancy, and Conquering.

• Confidence
  Hannah was full of distress, anxious and miserable. But it is her confidence in the midst of anxiety which is more important to the story.
  • Hannah had the confidence to approach God. Hannah went to church at Shiloh, following the custom of the day, but she had confidence to do more than just slip in with everyone else to sit through the worship service. The story says that after worship she "presented herself before the Lord". This tells us two things.
    • First, Hannah had confidence that she was worthy enough to come before God. Hannah's dignity and self-worth had been mocked by "the other woman". Yet she had the confidence to approach almighty God.
    • Second, Hannah had confidence that God would be willing to hear her and she had hope that God might grant her request. Hannah's self-confidence derives from this confidence in God. Even though she felt small and worthless, she was confident that she was not so worthless that God would not care about her.
  • Hannah's confidence in God was so great that she had confidence to share her deepest feelings and desires. She told God how she felt. She told God exactly what she wanted.
  The story does not say that Hannah's confidence extended to her dealings with Peninnah or the other women. The story says she was miserable under the taunting of the women. Hannah was unhappy but her confidence in God won out.
• Constancy
  Hannah was faithful and God was faithful. This story lays out a model of constancy for the relationship between us and God.
  • Faithfulness in worship is the background of the entire story. Elkanah, Peninnah, and Hannah went every year, regularly, to make their offering.
  • The only exception to this constancy is Hannah, shortly after giving birth to Samuel. But this exception is an illustration of Hannah's constancy in another way, for she remained at home with Samuel as part of honoring her promise to dedicate her son to God's service.
  • Similarly, this story illustrates God's constancy in keeping promises. The story reminds us that God is reliable.
  God's constancy and reliability was the foundation for Hannah's confidence. Hannah's constancy and reliability is her response to the constancy of God. We should be as constant in worship and obedience to God as God is constant in care for us. We should be as faithful in approaching God as God is faithful in love for us. This was Hannah's example to us, and it brought her victory.
• Conquering
  Overall, the narrative of Hannah is a story of conquering difficulties and obstacles.
  1. The most obvious victory is that Hannah conquers childlessness; she becomes a mother.
     • Hannah gains victory over her detractors, especially the other wife.
     • She also turns the tables and brags about her victory. She opens her mouth wide; one translation says she gloats.
  2. God also conquers.
     • God conquered Hannah's selfishness.
       • It is no secret that Hannah's desire for a child originated in her concerns about her reputation with the other women.
       • God gave Hannah what she wanted and helped her to want something greater.
       • God gave Hannah what she asked for, and rather than grasping it Hannah gave that gift back to God.
       In this way, God gained a woman who was loyal and who lived up to her promises.
     • God also won a boy, Samuel, who would be raised to become a mighty prophet and the annointer of kings.
     • Finally, God's victory resulted in a story through which all of us can understand how God acts in our lives and in our world.
     God's victory doesn't eliminate Hannah's triumph. She has still become a mother, but the meaning of her motherhood has been fundamentally changed. She is not remembered as a woman who had a baby, but as the woman who gave Samuel to God.
  3. Hannah's full victory comes by joining her life and her son's with God's overwhelming victory.
     • Hannah's song begins with her personal victory but it turns quickly to praising God.
     • She praises God for giving children to barren women, but only after remembering God's preference for stumblers and hungry people.
     • Hannah celebrates the fact that no person's victory comes from her own strength but only from the strength of God.
     When Hannah sings her prayer to God, she celebrates God's victory more than her own. When Hannah "lends" her son to God, she acknowledges that it is God who has conquered.

The story of Hannah is a narrative within which we can see something of what God is like. The story shows us that we can have confidence to come to God and to share our hopes and our distress with God. It shows that, if we respond with constancy to God's faithfulness, we may also join in God's victory.

Hannah's Story

• Reading: 1 Samuel 1:1-8 [NRSV]
• Hymn: 729 — To the Hills I Lift My Eyes
• Reading: 1 Samuel 1:9-11 [NRSV]
• Hymn: 755 — God When I Stand
• Reading: 1 Samuel 1:12-19 [NRSV]
• Song: W&P 132 — Step by step

Prayers of the Congregation

• Choir Song: W&P 162 — You, Lord

The Rest of Hannah's Story

• Time with Children and Youth
• Reading: 1 Samuel 1:20-22,24-28 [NRSV]
• Song: 723 — I Am Jesus' Little Lamb
• Responsive Reading: 1 Samuel 2:1-10 [NetBible]

  Hannah prayed saying, "My heart rejoices in the Lord; my horn is exalted high because of the Lord.

  I loudly denounce my enemies, for I am happy that you delivered me.

  No one is holy like the Lord!

  There is no one other than you! There is no rock like our God!

  Don't keep speaking so arrogantly, letting proud talk come out of your mouth!

  For the Lord is a God who knows; he judges by what people do.

  The bows of warriors are shattered, but those who stumble find their strength reinforced.

  Those who are well-fed hire themselves out to earn food, but the hungry no longer lack.

  Even the barren woman gives birth to seven, but the one with many children withers away.

  The Lord both kills and gives life; he brings down to the grave and raises up.

  The Lord impoverishes and makes wealthy; he humbles and he exalts.

  He lifts the weak from the dust; he raises the poor from the ash heap to seat them with princes and to bestow on them an honored position.

  The foundations of the earth belong to the Lord,

  and he has placed the world on them.

  He watches over his holy ones, but the wicked are made speechless in the darkness,

  for it is not by one's own strength that one prevails.

  The Lord shatters his adversaries; he thunders against them from the heavens.

  The Lord executes judgment to the ends of the earth. He will strengthen his king and exalt the power of his anointed one."

• Hymn: 687 — God Teach Us Peacemaking

Reflection (above)

Response

• Hymn: 400 — Jesus Great High Priest of Our Profession
• Offering
• Anthem: W&P 97 — May You Run and Not Be Weary
• Responsive Reading: Hebrews 10:11-24 [NRSV*]

  Every priest stands day after day at his service,

  offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins.

  But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, "he sat down at the right hand of God," and since then has been waiting "until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet."

  For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

  And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds," the Spirit also adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."

  Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

  Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God,

  let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

  Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.

  And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.

  For our Lamb has conquered.

  Let us follow him.

• Hymn: 587 — Our Lamb Has Conquered

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