Hannah's Prayer (Sermon)

“Hannah’s Prayer”

1 Samuel 1:1-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/8/15

         Some years ago I listened to an iconographer – a painter of religious icons – talk about his art. The most interesting thing I learned was that iconographers do not pick their own subjects. They have a very specific canon of images. These artists simply create new expressions of the ancient visual texts. One of the most popular icons to artists and beholders alike is The Madonna and Child.

         As with any work of art, what one sees and experiences while viewing a religious icon is purely subjective. But a visual representation of the gaze between mother and child can take us where words cannot. To me, the vortex of Love, wonder, gratitude, and hope that surrounds so many mothers and newborns creates its own gravity. In the meeting of their eyes, the rest of us have the opportunity to get pulled into the love-at-first-sight experience of God looking upon the shimmering stillness of a new creation and saying, ‘Oh, this is good.’

         Many theologians, Christian and otherwise, regard the creation as God’s most personal self-revelation. This is certainly the view within the ancient Celtic tradition. Through the centuries, a host of thinkers, writers, and mystics have made similar associations. Few have been as direct as Julian of Norwich who, after years of prayer, service and ecstatic visions came to the conclusion that the creation is not simply made by God, [but] made of God.

         When human beings create, they participate in the divine act of becoming a fully God-imaged creatures. And the desire to create can be understood as God within us seeking relationship, seeking to be known, loved, and shared. Acting on that desire and creating something new – a painting, a garden, music, children, laughter, community, pound cake (there are as many ways to create as there are people) – is to open oneself up to exciting transformation and terrifying vulnerability. To create something that will have a life of its own, something we will freely turn loose of for the sake of the creation, this is the excruciating euphoria of God’s incarnation in Jesus. And in her heart of hearts, this is the experience Hannah desires.

         Hannah is married to Elkanah. He is a nice guy. He is stable, dependable, church-going. He keeps his grass mowed, pays his bills, tithes, and drives the kids to soccer practice and swimming lessons when Mom cannot. The story tells us very little about Elkanah, but he seems creative enough, even if in a rather artificially-flavored-vanilla kind of way.

         Peninnah, Hannah’s wife-in-law, has the capacity for physiological creativity. But because Elkanah loves Hannah, Peninnah treats her children like trophies on a shelf. She rubs Hannah’s nose in them. Personifying selfishness, and congested by envy, Peninnah may never even desire the kind of relationship with her children that creates transforming blessing for everyone. She may never learn to live gratefully and generously.

         Hannah is different. Her barrenness becomes openness, openness to a fullness that Elkanah’s second helpings cannot fill, and to a hope that Peninnah’s cruelty cannot extinguish.

         “Lord of hosts,” she prays, ‘if you’ll give me a son, he will be yours. Let me give birth to him. Let me nurse him. Let the two of us gaze into each other’s eyes. That’s all I want. I want my life changed by a child, and when he’s old enough, I’ll turn him loose. He’ll be yours.’

         Hannah moves us with her prayer. The creation process includes, and perhaps necessarily so, the anguish of emptiness. Like a painter staring at a blank canvas, like a gardener standing over unbroken ground, Hannah bargains with the primordial source of the very desire to create. She wrestles with the teeming emptiness inside her.

         One problem with tapping that deeply into our creativity is that some folks may think we are completely nuts, or at least under the influence of something. As a priest, Eli should know better, but when he sees Hannah on the ground, lip-synching to some inaudible song, he sneers at her.

         ‘Sober up,’ he says. ‘You look pitiful.’

         ‘I’m not drunk,’ says Hannah. ‘I’m down here duking it out with Yahweh. Like Jacob at the Jabbok. So bless me or leave me alone.’

         A stunned Eli says, ‘Peace be with you. Bless your heart…and the rest of you, as well.’

         I have never met a mom who would give up her child as Hannah does. But every parent worth their salt knows that no child finally belongs to them any more than they want to belong to their parents. All human beings need to be raised, of course. We must be loved and cared for, educated and empowered. And we must be appropriately disciplined and affirmed.

         But first, we must be gazed upon in speechless, grateful awe.

         Hannah’s story does not promise that God will answer all of our prayers in happy accord with all of our wants. Her story does give us courage to pray as ferociously as a psalmist, to wrestle the angels like Jacob, and to implore God as Jesus does in his Thursday night garden. Hannah dares us to discover our fullness by plumbing the depths of our emptiness. And through such life-altering labor we often deliver into the world some new expression of God’s presence, Love, and purpose for all creation.

         A human being is a stunning, sacred, God-revealing work of art. You are such a work of art. So are the people next to you. So is the candidate you cannot stomach, and the terrorist you fear – all of us are stunning, sacred, God-revealing works of art. And as co-creators with God, we are capable of adding to the beauty and the wonder of God’s creation in some way, even if only by recognizing, calling attention to, and giving thanks for all of the feral beauty that still shines through the smog of human idolatries.

         I think the Church’s legacy of evangelism has, in many ways, borne greater witness to idols than to God. We have elevated conformity to static doctrines above a dynamic relationship with a living God. In so doing, the Church has shifted its gaze from the vortex of Love, wonder, gratitude, and hope to sterilizing screens of selfishness, fear, and despair.

         This is a somewhat simple thing, but look at these prayer shawls.*

         I have a stack of them in my study. I take them to folks who are in the hospital or confined to home. The knitters and quilters who create these shawls occasionally ask for help in purchasing materials, but they do not ask to be paid. God only knows how many years all their collective minutes of labor would make. Behind and within these shawls live the artists’ desires – desires for people who are sick, grieving, and lonely to remember that they are remembered. They want them to feel the warm, embracing love of this congregation.

         But first, these Hannahs gather around their new creations, and gaze upon them. They hold them in their hands and pray over them.

         Then they turn them loose – for the sake of others.

*Regretably, the pictures of the prayer shawls would not load onto blog.
**For a little more on the holy gaze, and for a couple of references, see Fr. Richard Rohr’s mediation from August 10, 2014: http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation--Mirroring.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=RQDkCmXdGwQ