Pouring out your soul to the Lord.
I’ve got a short series of videos of the Archbishop of Canterbury speaking about prayer, and in one of them he begins by saying that prayer is not polite. It is respectful and awed, but not polite. Christian prayer, he says, often expresses lament, sorrow, rage and protest. I can just imagine tens of thousands of church goers marching along Swanston Street yelling, what do we want? Prayer! When do we want it? Now!
Today’s
readings from 1 Samuel, and the story of Hannah, is one example of such prayer.
Let’s look at it, noting how lament and sorrow can turn in to joy and
celebration. It is the story of a relationship between a woman of great faith
and God; a journey of travail and grief leading to transformation. It also
records Israel’s origin of kingship in that Samuel, Hannah’s son, becomes the
king maker.
Children are
a blessing from God, certainly the game of the day at any baptism. Celebration,
families, everyone dressed up to the nines for the occasion. And why not? The
arrival of children to parents has been a cause for celebration for millennia,
and ancient Israel of 3500 years ago (when Hannah lived) was no exception. In
those days motherhood and fatherhood were signs of prosperity and of being in
favour with God. So what became of men and women who had no children? For a
woman it was a disaster. Hannah endured the sorrow of childlessness in a
culture that defined a woman’s significance in terms of motherhood. She was
exposed to ridicule, gossip, and rejection.
Hannah’s
grief at not having children was very strong, and this is reflected in the
story as she weeps in bitterness of soul. Yet she doesn’t turn her distress
into anger and lash out at all and sundry, not even towards Peninnah, who was
her main antagonist. But what does she do? She’s found in God’s house at Shiloh
bringing her sorrows to him in fervent prayer.
Now what’s
notable about Hannah’s prayer is this: she doesn’t question God and ask why me?
She doesn’t accuse God of being unfair. You can never accuse God of being
unfair, and those who do have the temerity to assume they know the mind of God
and can instruct him in each and every situation. But Hannah’s prayer is simple
yet profound: remember me, and that meant asking God to act in mercy and
graciousness.
It’s not
bargaining with God, or reminding him of whatever, or claiming some sort of
merit which she thinks she’s entitled to. No. She simply pours out her heart to
God with tears in honest and open dialogue, laying out her feelings in no
uncertain terms and in (respectful) rage and protest. Where are you God? Don’t
you see my distress? Can’t you see my tears? It was focused, intense personal
petition to the point where she uttered silent prayer – only her lips moved. A
rare form of prayer indeed in those days. Even the local priest didn’t
recognise what was going on. Today we might say she was on mute, but far from
it was the truth.
That’s the
kind of prayer that goes straight up to God’s ears. Why? Because God’s name
means the one who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness. Also, God has a heart that can feel pain and
the sorrow of his loved ones, and there’s more than one place in scripture that
tells us so. God knows our tears and sorrows. And as any caring parent knows
when their child cries out in real distress, what do they do? They’re right
there at the child’s side.
Hannah
turned first and only to Yahweh, the one and only God, not to the gods or gurus
or the other peoples around her. Why? Because she knew that her strength and
salvation lay in God alone, as it does with us today in our century. And anyone
who has been through lament in prayer knows the futility of trying to prevail
by one’s own strength and power. It’s human, it’s limited and it’s feeble. Why
would you rely on your own hopeless puny attempts when you have direct access
to God through our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of the Holy Spirit?
When was the
last time you laid bare your heart and soul and feelings before God? What was
it like? What was the outcome? What’s your testimony to that? Were you open to
change, new possibilities and a new disposition towards God and life?
Hannah
remained faithful to God despite her circumstances, and in the end she
experienced his mercy and graciousness towards her, turning her lost years and
grief into a time of fulfilment and joy. And that’s what the Song of Hannah
celebrates at the start of chapter two.
Now the Song
of Hannah is not only her expression of profound thanks and praise to God for
hearing her laments, intervening in her circumstances, and granting her request
for children, it’s also a testimony to how she has changed. You see, prayer
changes us. It doesn’t change God. God is who he is. That’s his name, I Am Who
I Am. We can ask God to intervene in whatever our circumstances might be, lay
before him whatever is troubling us, but prayer doesn’t make God see things our
way so that we somehow enable that change to happen within him. What prayer
does do is change us so that we see things his way. And when Hannah came out
the other end of her struggle, she was a profoundly different person for the
better.
Firstly of
course, she was given the gift of pregnancy. It was a blessing then, and is
still a blessing for parents today. The Lord Jesus had a lot of time for
children and taught the value of them within the Kingdom of God, didn’t he. Let
the children come to me. Do not hinder them because theirs is the kingdom,
he said.
How else was
Hannah changed?
Lament gives
suffering the dignity of language. It won’t stay silent. It’s the language and
heart of movement towards God. God’s heart towards us is soft, empathic and
loving, and when ours is hard, stoic and unloving, God finds himself shut out
from us. Now I’m not saying Hannah was hard and unloving, but in her distress,
she could easily have become like that. The passage does say she wept in
bitterness of soul.
However, by
reaching out to God in such a state of anguish, Hannah experienced what it’s
like to open herself up to God and become emotionally vulnerable. That is to
say, it takes considerable personal courage when confronting issues to be open
in a relationship that is honest and authentic, for hearts to soften, and for
the stoic in us to dissolve. Real connectedness between people lies not in the
mind, but in the felt experience of the heart. It’s a trust building process
between partners that becomes safe within the relationship. That’s why God
wants soft hearts. God is patient, and he will lead us through hard yards if he
has to, but the reward of a restored relationship with him in the end is second
to none.
What’s
another point of change that happened to Hannah?
We Anglicans
have this line in our prayer book, “the peace of God which passes all
understanding, keep you hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God”. The
Song of Hannah celebrates Hannah’s move from hopelessness to renewed
confidence. She said this, there is no one holy like the Lord; there is no
one beside you; there is no rock like our God. And a few verses later, he
raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.
Seems to me
that Hannah experienced a deep peace within herself that transformed her
circumstances, and it’s not a peace that the world can give, but one that can
only come when you give yourself to God with all heart, mind, soul and
strength, and allow him to accompany you in your times of distress. And the thing
about this God given peace is that times of distress will not overwhelm you.
Not at all; they won’t defeat you. How can they when you have a God who is a
sure solid rock.
Let me give
you a quick illustration. When I was much younger and visited the beach more
often than I do now, I would wade out in the sea, stand still and note how the
wave action sucked away the sand under my feet until I fell over. Then I stood on
a submerged rock, stood still and the wave action couldn’t shift me. Hannah’s
worldview around her was like the sand always undermining her. But when she
found peace with God, she stood on the rock, as it were, and she was no longer assailed
by the culture and worldview of her day.
So, ladies
and gentlemen, to sum up: there are valuable lessons to be learned from
Hannah’s experience. Children are a gift from God to be thankful for and to
praise him for. They are of great value in his kingdom. Also of great value in
God’s kingdom is the softening of the human heart towards him, and that
softening is learned through the tears of lament and sorrow, rage and protest.
And that is why we Christians can give thanks in all circumstances, be they
happy times or sad, joyous times or sorrow, anxious times or peace filled.
There is a
time and a season for everything: a time for happiness and a time for sadness;
a time for joy and a time for sorrow; a time of anxiety and a time for peace.
And God will bring all things under his watchful eye as he cares for us. But
he’ll do it his way.
Philip Starks
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