I Samuel 1:1 - 2:11
Midweek Advent 3
✠ In the name of Jesus ✠
Christmas is not always a happy season, but for some, a down time of year. Not only is it darker and overcast more often it seems. But as I mentioned this past weekend, feelings of loss or discontentment or inadequacy can get amplified when expectations for the holiday aren’t met or when everyone else seems more cheery. All the music and the gifts and the get-togethers leave many feeling left out or just tired.
That may have been something like how Hannah felt in today’s reading. Every year Elkanah went up with his two wives to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. But this annual event only seemed to remind Hannah that she was childless, that the Lord had closed her womb. Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah, had several children. When Elkanah made the sacrifice, he would give portions of the food to Peninnah and her children. But because he loved Hannah he would give her a double portion, as if she also had a child to feed. But Hannah wept and would not eat. For it was bad enough that she had no children–to her it felt like she was cursed and not blessed by God; furthermore, as the Israelites waited for the coming of the Messiah from among their offspring, the fact that she had no offspring made her feel as if she was outside of that divine promise. But on top of all of that, Peninnah would provoke her and mock her and make her life miserable because of her barrenness.
We can also be tempted to feel like Hannah when our earthly circumstances aren’t so good, when our marriage or family life isn’t so great, when all the things we hoped for and expected don’t come to pass. We can fall into the trap of thinking that we are cursed and not blessed by God, that His promises only apply to somebody else and not to ourselves. The devil then becomes our Penninah, trying to provoke us to unbelief and despair.
Elkanah tried to comfort Hannah by saying, “Am I not better to you than ten sons?” The question also rings in our ears in the midst of our disappointments, “Is not the love and the providing of your heavenly Father sufficient?” But in the end it is only the birth of a son that truly comforts Hannah, and it is only the birth of the Son of God that brings real comfort to us.
Even in the bitterness of her soul, Hannah still looked to the Lord in faith and called upon His name. Hannah prayed and made a vow to the Lord at the tabernacle, that if He would grant her a son, she would dedicate that son to the Lord and give him over for the Lord’s service all the days of his life. This wasn’t mere bargaining with God. Hannah was entrusting the entirety of her situation into the Lord’s hands. By making this particular vow, she was acknowledging that if she received a son it would be solely by the grace and giving of the Lord. So also we 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, the hands of Him who alone can help and save us. Though our faith be weak, yet we still believe and confess, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
Hannah prays without making any sound, only moving her lips. When the priest sees this, he thinks that she is 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 a blessing. “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition which you have asked of Him.” And with that blessing from God’s priest, she went in peace. She ate, 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.
Even as the birth of Samuel brought peace and joy to Hannah, so the birth of Jesus brings peace and joy to us. For in Jesus God has answered your prayers in a most profound way. In Christ all of your needs are supplied; every petition finds its “yes” in Him. Christmas is living proof that you are blessed and not cursed by God, that God does indeed love and forgive you and care about you. For the Son of God took on your very nature, your own flesh and blood, in order to redeem you from all that brings you bitterness and sorrow and weariness in this life. He became like you in order to rescue you from your isolation and bring you into everlasting fellowship with Him.
The birth of Christ is an unmistakable sign that God is with you, that God is for you, that God is on your side. And it is written in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us? . . . Christ Jesus, who died, more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” And then St. Paul concludes, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Having that unconquerable certainty of God’s love for us in Christ His Son, receiving God’s blessing in the benediction, we are made to be like Hannah, with a face that is no longer sad, able to eat and drink in peace at His table.
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, “It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer.” Just as Samuel entered into the tabernacle to appear before the Lord and remain there all his days, so also the Son of God entered into the tabernacle of our human body and soul to remain there forever as both true God and true man and to intercede for us before the Father. So fully did Christ assume our humanity that He who created the Blessed Virgin Mary 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.
Through the humility of the cross Jesus has brought low and defeated all the Peninnahs of this world–even the devil himself. And through His resurrection He has lifted up and exalted all those who trust in Him. This is what Hannah proclaims in her prayer after Samuel’s birth, that canticle that we just sang, 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 bows of the mighty men are broken, and those who stumbled are girded with strength. . . Even the barren (woman) has borne seven (children), and she who has many children has become feeble. The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory.”
This is the way of the Lord, to turn the thinking of the world upside down, to take down the strong and self-sufficient who trust in themselves, and 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 his victories through humility, the humility of the manger and the cross, the humility of the font and the altar. As this Advent season draws to its close, let us therefore humble ourselves before the Lord in faithful trust, that He may exalt us in due time.
✠ In the name of Jesus ✠