Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Hannah’s Faith
Do you know those people that reveal God to you?
For me it is Hannah.
I barely knew her.
She never even spoke to me, but she taught me more about faith than I ever learned in the Temple.
Because of my family name, I spent a lot of time in the Temple.
Mostly helping Eli, the high priest, and his wretched children perform the priestly duties.
For our festivals folks would travel from all over, some out of duty, some out of true pious worship.
I will never forget the mixed bag of Elkanah’s crew.
Elkanah seemed like a decent man.
For reasons unknown, he had two wives which can always be more than complicated if history of God’s people tell us anything.
But he loved them well enough it seemed.
Penninah and Hannah.
Penninah had provided numerous children for Elkanah.
In an understandable fight for status in society that provided protection and the expendible attention of a husband Penninah could be ruthless to Hannah who was unable to have children.
Hannah wore this pain like it was part of her story.
But her suffering in the midst of it was something that affected us all, if we are honest.
Every year for the feast of tabernacles the family would come to our Temple in Shiloh and perform the appropriate sacrifices.
No one understood the pain
See here is the deal, no one fully understood her pain.
No one fully saw her.
Penninah: Blinded by her own pursuit of status in a world that would not recognize her otherwise, taunted Hannah.
She would make fun of her in her prayers for a child.
She would describe her children, showing pictures of the kids growing, talking about their experiences.
No one understood the pain.
No one fully saw her.
Elkanah: Was a little more aware.
But not much.
When it came time for the sacrifice he would give Hannah a double blessing of the meat.
But when Hannah wept, his consoling was shallow.
His care was not absent but it was tone deaf.
Thinking that he could easily erase the hurt with shallow gestures.
No one understood the pain.
No one fully saw her.
Eli’s boys, the acting priests: they were silent.
Did not offer anything.
Just going through the religious rituals pretending that they were enough to help.
No one understood the pain.
No one fully saw her.
Eli: the high priest himself: When Hannah wept and prayed for God to give her a child, from the depths of her heart, he assumed that this woman was drunk or weird or crazy.
No one understood the pain.
No one fully saw her.
Let’s be honest, I did not know what the pain was either, just watching these characters in a story of inhuman disconnect.
But.
She talked to one who did know her pain.
Through it all she talked to God about this like God was listening.
This was strange for me.
Even a priest of the family.
How can you pray when everything is hard?
How can you trust when there is no sign of remedy?
Then everything changed, well almost everything
One year Elkanah and the family came back for their sacrifices.
And this time Hannah was not with them.
I remember thinking, goodness, grief has overcome her.
Elkanah told Eli that a miracle happened.
God provided.
God answered a prayer and Hannah was with child.
Later when the baby was old enough for the journey she came to dedicate the child to God.
It was such a scene.
Even the absent minded sons of Eli and the disconnected high priest noticed.
It was incredibly moving.
In an act of worship Hannah began to pray again, well more sing out of a well of worn out experiences:
Here is the thing.
Everything changed but not quite everything.
Hannah seemed to have the same faith in loss that she did in victory.
She was not praying like someone who finally got what she wanted but praying like she was talking, singing, to one who was singing with her.
She seemed like someone who knew well “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” but also “not my will but yours be done.”
What kind of faith is this?
And do I know this God that is present in anguish or is my faith reduced to transactional history?
Questions:
Check in: How is your life in God?
(how are you living like a child of God?)
What do you need from God this morning?
(not material things, but his character.
Do you need to be reminded he is good?
He is present?
Do you need to be reminded you are loved, healing?)
What do you need to confess this morning?
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