Scripture: 1 Samuel 1
Sermon: Praying Pilgrims
Topics: Prayer, Pilgrims, answers,
Preached: November 24, 2002
Rev. Mike Abma
1 Samuel 1
There was a certain man of Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. 2He had two wives; the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.
3 Now this man used to go up year by year from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. 4On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; 5but to Hannah he gave a double portion,because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. 6Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. 7So it went on year after year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. 8Her husband Elkanah said to her, ‘Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?’
9 After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. 10She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. 11She made this vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.’
12 As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth.13Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. 14So Eli said to her, ‘How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.’15But Hannah answered, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. 16Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.’ 17Then Eli answered, ‘Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.’ 18And she said, ‘Let your servant find favour in your sight.’ Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.
19 They rose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. 20In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, ‘I have asked him of the Lord.’
21 The man Elkanah and all his household went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice, and to pay his vow. 22But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, ‘As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, that he may appear in the presence of the Lord, and remain there forever; I will offer him as a nazirite for all time.’ 23Her husband Elkanah said to her, ‘Do what seems best to you, wait until you have weaned him; only—may the Lord establish his word.’ So the woman remained and nursed her son, until she weaned him. 24When she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine. She brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh; and the child was young. 25Then they slaughtered the bull, and they brought the child to Eli. 26And she said, ‘Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. 27For this child I prayed; and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. 28Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.’
She left him there for the Lord.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
William VandeKopple, who teaches in the English department here at Calvin, wrote a short article in Perspective Magazine on prayer and fishing. For years, 35 years if I’m not mistaken, he has been fishing with the same fishing partner. You don’t fish with the same partner for that long if you don’t get along. But this partner does have one annoying habit. He keeps meticulous track of who catches the most fish. Each time a fish is caught, there is a little “click” on a little counter in his tackle box, a counter most people would use for their golf game. Of course, as the “clicking counter,” his partner also decides which fish deserves to be counted as an actual “catch” and which is too small to consider.
Well, this bit of fishing competition had William dreaming – dreaming of having an amazing day of fishing for himself … but not his partner. He was dreaming of catching some of the biggest fish imaginable, big enough to get noticed by a local paper. And soon his dreams seemed to be straying into the area of prayers. He realized he was praying for a spectacular day of fishing. But he was bothered by this. He wondered if he should be praying this kind of prayer. He decided to get some professional advice.
He decided to ask a friend of his who had gone to seminary.
Over lunch, William explained how he had found himself dreaming and even praying for a spectacular day of fishing.
After he finished, the friend was silent for a bit, then asked, “In all of this, have you thought hard about what you are really seeking?”
“What do you mean, ‘seeking’? I’m coming to you for some advice here.”
“No, no,” said the friend, “What are you seeking?”
“O, okay, I get it now – you want to know what kind of fish I’m dreaming about and praying for – a really impressive fish, a news flash of a fish, a Guniness Book of World Records kind of fish.”
“No, no,” said the friend, “I want to know what you are seeking first of all?”[1]
HANNAH’S PRAYER
That is the way it is with prayer.
At times what we ask for isn’t really our soul’s deepest desire.
I’m going to go out on something of a limb, but the way the story of Hannah reads makes it clear that even though a child was a deep desire of Hannah’s, it was not her deepest desire. A child was what she dreamed of, but it was not the first answer to her dreams. A child is what she prayed for, but a child was not the first answer to her prayers.
Hannah was a woman living under a cloud. She was married to Elkanah, a man from a prominent Ephraimite family. But she had no children and Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah had children. It was worst during the Feast of Tabernacles, the Thanksgiving vacation of the Old Testament, when the Israelites brought their first-fruits to the Tabernacle in Shiloh. It was a family time, a huge family time. And for that reason, it became the most painful time of the year for Hannah. Elkanah knew this. He tried to be understanding. When portions were given out during the feast, he gave her extra. Peninnah, no doubt noticed, and feeling slighted herself, chose this time of the year to rub in the fact that she had children and Hannah did not.
This sad story was replayed year after year after year.
And, no doubt, Hannah tried every herbal recipe in the book, every old wife’s tale, every possible way she could think of to get pregnant.
But year after year after year went by without a child.
And so Hannah began to dread every Thanksgiving season.
You knew it was Fall because Hannah rarely smiled.
She hardly ate.
She broke out into tears at the drop of a hat.
She was depressed.
OUR PRAYER
Is it so hard to feel for this woman?
Haven’t we all been there, done that?
We are a couple who would love to have children. We’ve visited doctors, been on fertility medication, done everything we can think of, and still no child. And Thanksgiving, and Christmas and Mother’s and Father’s Days and baptisms in church become for us some of the most difficult days of the year.
You are a student who has spent the last 18 years of life in school. Year after year you have wondered what you will do, what you will be. Year after year you’ve wanted some clear guidance, some clear call that this is what you should do with your life. But it has never come. And you are about to graduate from College as unsure about your future as ever.
We are single and in the workforce. Life is full and busy. But something inside of us yearns for a friend, a companion, a soul-mate. Someone to share our joys and our sorrows.
We are married and it isn’t what we expected. We are more lonely than ever. We can’t remember the last time we shared a warm, happy, intimate moment with our spouse. We wonder if it will ever be possible to feel close again.
We have cancer. We have been battling it for years. It is in remission for now but it hangs over us like a cloud. We have a hard time getting excited about anything in the future because we aren’t sure we even have a future.
For many of us, this is life.
Life with something missing in the middle– the Life of a Donut.
Puffy on the outside but with a big hole in the middle,
a big emptiness needing to be filled.
Using the pilgrimage image, it is a life that is going around in circles.
It is a life caught in a rut.
It is a life trapped in a gerbil wheel.
No matter how fast we run, we aren’t getting anywhere no matter what we try.
HANNAH’S ANSWER
After years of trying to have a child and not succeeding,
Years of searching and not finding
Years of dreaming and not realizing
Hannah finds herself at her lowest point.
She is hardly eating, never smiling, and always crying.
She is both desperate and depressed.
So she does a courageous thing.
She goes to the Tabernacle
and as her tears are descending to the ground
her prayers are ascending to God.
She begs God to remember her.
She begs God not to forget her.
She begs God to give her a child.
If God remembers her and gives her a child,
she will remember God, and give that child to serve God.
While she is mumbling her prayer, moving her lips but not audibly saying any words, Eli, the priest sees her and immediately assumes the worst. “This must be one of the loose-living women his two sons are always hanging around with,” he thinks. “You must be drunk,” he says.
But Hannah corrects him.
“I haven’t been pouring beer or wine into my mouth;
I’ve been pouring my heart and soul out to God.”
Notice that she never actually tells Eli what she is praying for. All Eli knows is that she is deeply troubled about something. And so Eli gives her a rather generic blessing, really. He says, “Go in peace, the Lord God of Israel may grant what you have asked of him, whatever that is.”
Then notice how Hannah leaves the Tabernacle:
She went, she ate something, and her face was no longer downcast.
Why the change?
She wasn’t pregnant yet.
She didn’t have a baby yet.
Then why the change?
Hannah teaches us something about prayer.
When Hannah prays in the Tabernacle, it was a time that God seemed farthest away. She needed to know he was close.
It was a time when she felt most forgotten by God. She needed to know God remembered her.
She had determined she needed a son to be fulfilled and she had done everything she could to have a child. But in this moment of prayer she surrendered control of her life to God.
Her deepest desire was not for a child.
Her deepest desire was that she was remembered by God.
Valued by God.
Cherished by God.
Her deepest desire was answered even before she became pregnant.
She let’s go and she let’s God do as God wills.
We know that she had reached a point of deep trust in God because after she is pregnant, and after she gives birth to a boy, and after she has raised him to the age of 3 or 4, she surrenders him to God.
Just imagine how huge that was. Pining for a child all those years, then miraculously having a child, then bringing that child to the Tabernacle Daycare at age 3 and leaving him there, permanently. The climax of the story is not so much in verse 20 when Samuel is born, it is verse 28 when she gives this child to the Lord.
This action again shows us that the child Samuel was not the first answer to her prayer. That is because having Samuel was not her deepest desire of her heart.
A baby was not what she really was seeking.
The hole in her life, could not be filled by an infant.
The hole she was seeking to fill could only be filled by God
Therefore, whether she had Samuel or not,
Hannah would have died at peace.
She had learned the secret of being content whatever the circumstances:
In plenty or in want, with children or without children.
She could handle anything through God who gave her the strength. (Phil 4:12)
OUR ANSWER
In our own journey in life, we will set out a course, map out our destinations. But the reality is that things don’t always go as we planned. We may never get where we thought we wanted to go.
Or we may get there and realize it isn’t nearly as rewarding or fulfilling as we thought.
When we get stuck or lost or lonely on the way, the natural language of the pilgrim of faith is prayer. Prayer is the language we need to learn to speak.
It is the language of letting go of the need to be in control.
It is the language of putting ourselves and our futures completely in the hands of God. It is a language that does so with childlike awe and trust – to use the words of the catechism.
HOWARD RIENSTRA
My first history class at Calvin College was with M. Howard Rienstra. As some of you know, Howard battled with non-Hodgkins lymphoma for the last years of his life. There came a point when he needed a Port-a-Cath in his chest to get his chemo more quickly and more easily. Putting in this Port-a-Cath had more complications than expected. Howard began to gasp for breath and soon had the feeling he was going to die.
He was panicked, terrified. There was no time for neat prayers, only a gasping, help me, help me.
He survived the procedure.
Afterwards, when he reflected on what happened he realized that this moment of near dying had actually became one of spiritual resurrection. Sure he had known what he believed, taught what he believed, and even tried to live what he believed all his life. But he had also always tried to remain in control. It was only while floundering between life and death that he recognized the illusion of that control. He pointed out that an example of wanting to stay in control was never having prayed for healing in the six years of his illness. To pray for healing would be to lose control – but control was finally lost when he was forced to cry, Help me, help me.[2]
Prayer is the language that lifts up our dreams, our hopes, our desires.
It is also the language that lifts up our angers and envies and enemies.
It is the language that bothers God with all these things.
But God lives to be bothered in just such a way, in just such a fashion.
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