“God Answers Hannah” 1 Samuel 1:9-11, 19-20; 2:1-10

This week I have been playing around with a bit of a controversial thought, but here it is - I think one of the worst things we can do in scripture is jump right to the happy ending. What do I mean by that? When we only look to the ending of scriptural stories that satisfy us, we miss so much of the breadth and depth of what God is trying to reveal to us. 

Case in point - the story of Hannah. 

If we jump to the end of Hannah’s story - we find that a woman who was barren goes on to have a son who would be part of the turning point of the story of Israel. Praise be to God! But when we take time to sink into Hannah’s full story, we see that there is more for us to find out about both this woman and about the God we worship.

Hannah was married to Elkanah. Only she was not Elkanah’s only wife. She was one of two. The other wife, Peninnah, was bearing all of the children in the household. In other words, Hannah was barren. As if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough, Hannah was barren in a day and time when women only had one purpose - to bear children, and more specifically, to bear male children to carry on the family legacy. 

All of this left Hannah feeling broken. Angry. Inadequate. Filled with sorrow. 

A few months ago, I took a course offered in our annual conference entitled, “Shared Sorrow: A Faith Community’s Response to Grief and Mourning.” Here’s a list of some of what folks can experience in grief and mourning: numbness, guilt, loneliness, sadness, anxiety, emptiness, vulnerability, fear, yearning, anger, pain, bitterness. The list goes on and on. But those are just some of the words that encapsulate what Hannah is feeling in today’s scripture passage. She is in a place of darkness. Even though she was the preferred wife of Elkanah. Even though everything else in her life seemed to be going well. There was a deep ache within her soul.

A deep ache that Elkanah couldn’t fully understand. He tired to comfort her but his words missed the mark. They rang empty to her. It would be like us going up to someone who is grieving and saying things like “At least…”, “God always takes the best first.”, “God needed another angel.” Or “God gives the most difficult battles to the strongest warriors.” We may mean these statements as something to bring comfort, but they often do more harm than good. 

One day, in the midst of a party, Hannah was so overwhelmed that she simply left and went to present herself to God. Only she walked right past the priest, Eli, in doing so. She totally ignored the way things were done in order to throw herself down before God in prayer. 

Her words were pretty. She didn’t come offering a sacrifice or even a petition. She came to the Lord presenting herself, in all of her brownness and vulnerability and made a vow - if you give me a male child, he will be yours, God. 

What would lead Hannah to pray such a thing? It was an intertwining of so many things in her life. Her humiliation at the other wife’s fertility. Her honesty to God. Her disgrace at a place and time when her worth in society was based off of bearing a child. Her anguish. 

But also her belief and dependance upon God. Hannah didn’t believe that God was some far off cosmic force. No, God was intimately involved in the lives of his people. He cared about them and what happened to them. So she came to the one who loved her most and just poured her heart out in prayer. 

Friends, sometimes we need to do the same thing. When we are at that place of utter despair and brokenness, all of the fancy phrases and proper postures in prayer go out the window - as we simply throw ourselves down before the one who loves us most and pour out our hearts.

The Biblical word for this is lament. When we have a hard time putting our suffering into words, we just come before God and cry out in despair. Paul in Romans even says that sometimes words just aren’t going to cut it, and the spirit intercedes for us when all we can do is groan. 

Lament is something that we don’t talk about enough today. Even though we know, deep down, that we need space to lament, no one taught us how. No one gave us permission. No one made space for us. 

But Hannah comes right before God with her lament and lays herself bare. 

And here’s the thing we miss, Church. Hannah’s lament - laments in general - are also a radical act of hope. They come from a place of trusting God. In utterly depending upon God alone. 

And Hannah’s prayer was answered. She conceived and bore a son whom she named Samuel, saying “I have asked him of the Lord.”

Then in the tradition of Miram at the defeat of the Egyptian army and what would become the Magnificant of Mary, Hannah starts to pray. This is sometimes called Hannah’s prayer or Hannah’s song in our scripture today. And Hannah starts to make declarations about who God is and what God is about. Hannah takes no credit for her conception. She doesn’t give her husband any credit for her conception. She gave all go the glory to God. 

But she didn’t just claim God’s power and might in the miracle in her life. She claimed it in all sorts of places where people experience victory. Not their victory, Hannah would quickly say, but the victory of the Lord. That is why she sang her song of praise. And that is why we praise today. 

Friends, its so easy to read Hannah’s story and skip right to this part. But I think we need to sit in the mourning in order to fully appreciate what God had done. I think we need to use Hannah’s story to explore our own broken hearts and places of deep longing in order to be reminded that God hears. 

And for those of us who may not currently be in a season of mourning, we still need this story to remind us of the compassion that is at the heart of God. The comfort that God brings. The comfort that we are called to share that doesn’t come from telling people not to be sad or just to get over something deeply wounding, but instead sitting with them in moments of honest prayer. 

In order to get to the praise, sometimes we need to get through, Church. In order to get to the place of making meaning of the grief we had or have, we need the freedom to cry out in lament to God. 

Because whether we are in the valley or on the mountain top - God is still God. God is still the God who cares about us. Who loves us. Who lets us come before him in honest prayer. If we just skip to the happy ending, we can trick ourselves into thinking that the power in this story comes from the miracle, when really, the power comes in a God who was present all along. 

Friends, I don’t know what’s on your heart today. But I just want to give us space to cry out to God. To come to the God who knows you and loves you. To come and just sit in the arms of God. Know that the alters are open. Will you come? Amen.