By Pastor Phil (please feel free to send comments or questions)

November 15, 2009

1 Samuel 2: 1-12; Mark 13: 1-8

Our readings today come from situations in which people felt totally at a loss. Their present was grim, their future seemed worse.  

On any given day, I imagine all of us here have known those feelings. For some, those feelings may define their reality right now.

They may seem like odd readings on a day when we are celebrating some joyful events.  Welcoming Katherine and Adam back so we can bring Ella into our community is certainly a moment of great joy. 

Gathering together to make our commitments to the life of this congregation for the coming year may seem a bit more serious, but it really is also an opportunity to celebrate, which is why we’ll have a great lunch together afterwards.

But we don’t need to go far today to find people who wonder where there may be hope in their lives.  

Some of you have been following the debate in Dane County over funding for human service providers. It’s no secret that this is a very tough budget year for the county. Employees are seeing their pay cut in the coming year, programs are being tightened in many areas. Yet for the most vulnerable in our county – those served by these human service agencies – the safety net is fraying faster than ever. 

Where will they find hope?

We have come off a week of agony over the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, grieving with the families of those who were killed, worrying about the safety of loved ones who are in precarious places. If you are a Muslim in this country, you have a new burden of suspicion placed upon you because of the deranged act of someone who is part of your faith tradition. 

Where will all these people find hope?

While I was traveling through Israel and Palestine earlier this month, I had a chance to talk with parents worried about the disparity in education for Jewish and Palestinian children in Israel. I talked with a father who had to carry his wife through the dark on icy paths to the hospital to deliver their baby daughter because the ambulance could not get through checkpoints. I talked with a Jewish woman who knew the fear of being in Palestinian territory yet took risks to try to create bridges across this vast gulf. 

Where is there hope in this troubled land? 

The list can go on and on.

The words that we heard from Hannah in our story from the Hebrew Bible this morning are a song of rejoicing after she found hope in the midst of her despair.  The words of Jesus in our Gospel today are the way the Gospel writer Mark tried to offer hope to the early Christian community as they saw the world they knew literally crashing down around them.

First, the story of Hannah. She was one of two wives of Elkanah, who is simply described as a man from the hill country north of Jerusalem. Having two wives was not all that uncommon in these early Biblical times, but it did add complications to life, not unlike what you might see now on the HBO show, “Big Love.”  

One of Hannah’s wives had several children. Hannah had given birth to no children. That undercut her own self-image. It also gave the other wife something to regularly taunt her about.

Like so many of the strong women we have been hearing about over the last few weeks in the stories from the Hebrew Bible – Esther, Ruth, Naomi – Hannah refused to give in to her despair.  The story tells how she bypassed the priest in the holy place and took her frustrations directly to God. Soon, she and Elkanah were headed toward parenthood.

That’s the context for Hannah’s song that we heard today. If it does not sound exactly tender, think of it more in the genre of a victory song in battle.  After all, Hannah felt like  she had just won a great victory that would silence her foes.

Earlier in the Hebrew Bible, we heard Aaron’s sister, Miriam, grab her tambourine after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea and sing that God “has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” And here is Hannah singing how God “breaks the bows of the mighty” and cuts off the wicked in darkness. 

It’s the song of one who has felt oppressed for so long and now experiences a moment of victory – victory over her own self-doubts, victory over her tormenting by Elkanah’s oh-so-fertile other wife.

And it’s a song of how in God’s realm, things do not always turn out the way according to the old norms. It’s a song that sets out some themes we will hear next month on the Sunday before Christmas as Mary sings out in amazement that she is about to become the mother of Jesus in the midst of the strange and wondrous happenings in the life of this pregnant, teenage peasant girl.

We sang a version of Mary’s song as our opening hymn today. It is more joyful, it doesn’t have the same edginess of Hannah’s song, but it is filled with the same sense of hope renewed. “My soul magnifies the Lord and my soul rejoices in God, my savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of this servant.” 

It’s not just hope for Mary, but for all those who are downtrodden by the order of the world: God has “brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

The Christians living around Jerusalem in the year 70 needed to have some hope to cling to. The powerful were still in their thrones and the rich were getting the best food. The Roman forces were destroying the city. They had even destroyed the temple, a building so large, so strong, it was inconceivable that it could come crashing to the ground.

These early Christians were still a sect with Judaism, so for them, the temple was still a holy place. The Romans were a feared occupying power.

Mark was writing his gospel around this period of time. He knew that his Christian companions feared that this was the end of the world. It was the end of the world as they knew it. So this story of Jesus and his followers was a powerful antidote to their fear, to their despair.

I love the wide-eyed portrayal of the apostles at the beginning of this: “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” They sound like the tourists just in from the country.

So Jesus takes them up on the Mount of Olives, where they can look down over the city of Jerusalem, where they have a clear view of the temple across the valley. And he tells them not to get rattled by all the turmoil around them. 

Yes, things are going to get very rugged, he tells them. “But this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

Now I’ve never given birth myself, but I’ve been present at four of them, so I have seen birth pangs in action. It’s a very rugged time, as many of you can attest. But it is not the end. Women breathe through the birth pangs because they know a whole new reality is about to begin.

I think these stories of Hannah and of Jesus today offer us places to search for hope when our lives hit the rough places that are part of being human. 

They speak to a world where political upheavals need not define the meaning of our lives. 

They offer us a path to let God’s love and grace define our lives, to help birth that new reality of a world where justice and peace, where care and compassion will overcome all the power trips that distort what God’s vision is for this life.

Let us join with Hannah in rejoicing in God, in clinging to the rock of God’s care, to trust that God will continue to raise up the poor from the dust and to lift the needy from the ash heap. 

And then let us act so that those parts of God’s vision can become a reality for those we encounter.