Heard by God :: 1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hannah prayed, and said: My heart rejoices in YHWH. My horn is lifted in YHWH. My mouth is [opened] wide against my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation. There is no one holy like YHWH, because there is no one other than him, and there is no rock like our God. Do not speak a lot of very haughty words, for arrogance will come out of your mouth because YHWH is a God of knowledge, and actions are weighed by him. The bow of mighty warriors is broken, but those who stumble are armed with strength. Those who are well-fed hire themselves out for bread, and those who are hungry cease [being hungry]. Even a barren woman bears severn sons, and one with many sons withered. YHWH kills and makes alive. He brings down to Sheol and brings up [again]. YHWH makes poor and makes rich. He humbles, and he also elevates. He lifts a poor person from the dust. He raises a needy person from the trash heap to seat [him] with nobles, and he makes him inherit an honored throne because the foundations of the earth belong to YHWH, and he set the world upon them. He guards the steps of his faithful ones, and wicked people will be silenced in darkness, because a man does not prevail by [his own] strength. YHWH, his adversaries will be shattered. He will thunder in the heavens against them. YHWH will judge the ends of the earth.
Christmas is not a happy time for everyone. For some, it’s a downer. Feelings of loss ... discontentment ... inadequacy are amplified when it seems everyone else is upbeat. All the music and the gifts and the get-togethers leave people feeling left out ... isolated ... just plain tired.
4. That may have been how Hannah felt before her prayer in today’s reading.
Every year, Elkanah went up with his two wives ... Hannah and Peninnah ... to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh (1:3). But this annual event only seemed to remind Hannah that she was childless ... that the Lord had closed her womb. When Elkanah made the sacrifice, he would give portions of the food to Peninnah and her children, and a double portion to Hannah. “Double portions” in scripture most often refer to God's abundant blessing. They are most often given for firstborn sons. Hannah didn’t have any children.
No doubt Penninah took note of that double portion. As the first chapter of Samuel tells us, [Peninnah] provoked [Hannah] severely to make her miserable because YHWH had closed her womb. Thus it was year after year. ... So Hannah wept and would not eat (1:6-7). It was bad enough that she had no children ... but she felt like she was cursed and not blessed by God.
We too can feel tempted because of our earthly circumstances ... to think that we are cursed and not blessed by God. We can fall into the trap of thinking that God’s promises only apply to somebody else and not to ourselves, saying things like ... Sure, I know what the Bible says about God’s love, but look at all the things that are happening to me. How could God love me?
Brothers and sisters, the devil uses all kinds of means to try to provoke us to unbelief.
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So Hannah prayed. Even in the bitterness of her soul, Hannah prayed. She looked to the Lord in faith and called upon his name. Hannah prayed ... entrusting the entirety of her situation into the Lord’s hands.
We too come before the Lord in prayer, not so that we might manipulate him by what we say ... but so that we might commit ourselves and our needs into his gracious hands, into his gracious will, to trust God alone ... to trust the hands of him who alone can save us. Though our faith is weak, we still believe and confess, Our help is in the name of YHWH who made heaven and earth (Ps 124:8).
Hannah prays without making any sound, only moving her lips. When Eli the priest sees this, he thinks that she’s drunk and scolds her. But Hannah explains that she is simply pouring out her soul to the Lord in grief. And then, from the servant of the Lord, Hannah finally hears blessing. Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your request that you have asked from him (1:17).
With that blessing from God’s priest, she went in peace ... the forgiveness of sins. She received the Lord’s feast, and her face was no longer sad. In the course of time, God remembered Hannah, and she conceived and bore a son by Elkanah. She called him Samuel, which means literally “heard by God.” For God had heard and answered her prayers for a son.
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Even as the birth of Samuel brought peace and joy to Hannah, so the birth of Jesus brings peace and joy to us. In Jesus, we are heard by God. He answers your prayers in a most profound way. In Christ, all of your needs are supplied ... every petition finds its “yes” in him (2 Cor 1:20).
Christmas is living proof that you are blessed and not cursed by God. For the Son of God took your nature. He humbled himself, taking your flesh and blood. He humbled himself, taking your sin in order that he might go to the cross and redeem you from all that actually brings you bitterness, sorrow and weariness in this life ... your sin. He became like you in order to rescue you from your isolation and bring you into his everlasting fellowship.
The birth of Christ is an unmistakable sign that God is with you, that God is for you, that God is on your side. He gives himself to you in the Sacraments.
And it is written in Romans 8[:31, 34-35, 38-39] ... If God is for us, who can be against us? ... Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised to life, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? And then Saint Paul concludes, like Hannah before him, that ... I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor height, nor depth, not things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Having that unconquerable certainty of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus, his son ... having God’s blessing ... we are made to be like Hannah, with a face that is no longer sad, but now is able to eat and drink in peace at his table of presence, the altar.
Jesus truly is your Samuel, the sure evidence that you have been heard by God, even before your prayers were offered. As it is written in Isaiah, Before they call I will answer. While they are yet speaking, I will hear (Is 65:24). So he comes in Word and sacrament.
Just as Samuel entered into the temple to appear before the Lord and remain there all his days, so also the Son of God entered into the temple of his human body to remain there forever as both true God and true man and to intercede for us in the heavenly temple. So fully did Christ assume our humanity that he who created the blessed Virgin now was dependent upon her for nourishment, so that we may learn to long for the pure spiritual milk of the Word and grow up into our salvation. When Samuel was weaned, he ministered to the Lord before Eli the priest in the place of sacrifice. In the same way, Jesus served his Father by becoming both priest and sacrifice, offering up his own body to atone for the sins of the world before being raised for our justification.
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Through the humility of the cross, Jesus has brought low and defeated all the Peninnahs of this world who do nothing but provoke and persecute us. And through his resurrection, Jesus has lifted up and exalted all those who trust in him.
This is what Hannah proclaims in her prayer after Samuel’s birth, which is a precursor of Mary’s Magnificat, which we will sing in a moment. Notice how in Hannah’s prayer the exalted are humbled and the humble are exalted. The bow of mighty warriors is broken, but those who stumble are armed with strength. Those who are well-fed hire themselves out for bread, and those who are hungry cease [being hungry]. Even a barren woman bears seven sons, and one with many sons withered. YHWH kills and makes alive. He brings down to Sheol and brings up [again]. YHWH makes poor and makes rich. He humbles, and he also elevates. He lifts a poor person from the dust. He raises a needy person from the trash heap to seat [him] with nobles, and he makes him inherit an honored throne (vv 4-8).
This is the way of the Lord ... the way to turn the thinking of the world upside down ... the way to take down the strong and self-sufficient who trust in themselves, and the way to raise up the weak and the needy who trust in him.
Peninnah is put to shame in the end. Hannah rejoices. The Lord opens her womb to have five more children after Samuel, even as he opens the womb of the Church to bring new life to all who believe and are baptized into Christ. God wins victories through humility, the humility of the manger and the cross, the humility of the font and the altar. And he gives his victories to those who are themselves feeble, hungry, barren, poor, low. As he did with Hannah ...
THE LORD HEARS THE PRAYERS OF THOSE BITTER OF SOUL AND EXALTS THEM
As this Advent season draws to its close, let us therefore humble ourselves before the Lord in his temple, faithfully trust that he may exalt us in due time ... in Jesus’ name.