Hannah’s Yearning (1 Sam 1.9-18)
A few months ago, a man named Don Hewitt died. He was a journalist and the creator of the 60 minutes news magazine. They did a retrospective on him, with interviews from previous years.
In one of those interviews, he said something that struck me: “I have never been interested in an issue. I am interested in stories about people facing issues.”
This is how I approach the Bible and preaching. I’m not interested in abstract issues, theoretical questions. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” I don’t know… because they do? It’s not that this is unimportant. It just needs some flesh and bone to it.
Give me a story about someone facing a hard issue, and then it comes alive.
Which brings us to our Bible story today. It’s on Hannah, who is facing an issue… childlessness. Hannah has no children, and she yearns for children of her own.
Hannah lived during the time of the Judges. It was a long period in Israel before King David centralized the state. During Hannah’s lifetime, Israel was a loose collection of tribes and peoples, each living and worshiping in its own way.
Hannah was married to Elkanah. He loved her very much, we are told, but no amount of love or consoling could make up for the absence of children for Hannah. The only children in their home belonged to Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah. He was wealthy enough to have two wives.
Yes… this is a stranger aspect of the Bible, the polygamy in the Old Testament. We might marry more than one person in our life, but not at the same time. We don’t have to condone this practice in the Old Testament, only acknowledge that it was part of that time.
Actually it was fortunate for Hannah that her husband had another wife who had children. Back then, children were your insurance policy in old age. They didn’t have Medicare or retirement plans. You had to have children to make sure you were cared for when you were old.
Since Peninnah had children, that meant all three adults – Elkanah, Peninnah and Hannah – would have someone to care for them when they grew old.
But it was also unfortunate for Hannah because she and Peninnah didn’t get along well. There was a rivalry. Peninnah lost no opportunity to remind Hannah of her childlessness. Hannah lived every day yearning for children of her own.
You’d have to be childless yourself to understand Hannah’s yearning. The young couple today struggling with infertility can understand Hannah.
But we can take the emotion of yearning itself… this we know and understand. We yearn for something we might have but don’t have. The possibility of it happening adds the pathos and pain.
(We also can yearn for things that are not possible to have, but that’s a different kind of yearning. Hannah’s yearning points us to yearning for possible things.)
Think of the woman who yearns to talk to a brother she hasn’t talked to in 20 years. The phone is there… they could talk… but they won’t today. She yearns to hear his voice. Or think of the rehab patient who yearns to walk again… she makes a little progress day by day, but the goal seems so far away… she just wants to be able to walk across the room and not rely on other people for help. Or think of the man who stares at a computer screen all day at his work, but he really yearns to make his living as an artist. He loves to paint.
You can think of more examples… or you can identify yearnings in your own life. And you can understand the feeling Hannah lived with.
But Hannah not only helps us identify our yearnings, she also helps us cope with them. She shows us two practical things we can do in response to the deepest yearnings of our hearts.
Every year Hannah and her family made a pilgrimage to Shiloh. It was a village up in the hill country. There was a stone temple for worship. The family would go, offer sacrifices and pray, or have the priest pray on their behalf. They’d stay for a few days and then return home.
On one of these trips, Hannah left the tent where they were staying, late one afternoon while it was still light. She walked slowly toward the stone temple at the top of the hill. She weaved her way through the scrub brush, and she listened to the sound of the wind.
When she reached the temple, she paused. Then we are told, “She presented herself before the Lord.” Let me rephrase that. Hannah went to her sacred place, a place where she sensed the presence of God.
Do you have a sacred place? Do you know of a place where you sense a presence beyond yourself? If you don’t, you should. We all need a sacred place.
For many, this sanctuary is a sacred place. It’s our temple, made out of Indiana limestone. We come here to seek a presence beyond ourselves, as Hannah did.
I’d say there are three things that make this sanctuary sacred. The public reading of scripture, the music sung or performed, and the prayers prayed – these are sacred acts, and they’ve made this room a sacred place.
There are other sacred places, beyond the walls of a church building. My sacred places lately involve trees. I don’t know why. The oak tree out by fellowship hall… the pear tree at the back door… the maple trees out front. Trees mark sacred places for me.
There is a stand of oak trees on the campus of the old training school. It’s the oldest grove of oaks in the state, up to 200 years old. If you walk among them, you feel so small… the trees reach up so high. They’re so tall they draw your eyes upward… which is exactly what happens when you walk into a cathedral, where the architecture is designed to draw your eyes upward. Those oak trees are nature’s cathedral… they’re a sacred place.
If you don’t have a sacred place, find one. When you go there, take your yearnings with you, as Hannah did. That’s the first step Hannah shows us.
But once she was there, Hannah did something. It says she was ‘praying silently’ to the Lord. She began talking to the presence she sensed in that sacred place.
We all conceive of this presence differently. Most people call the presence God. But in whatever way you understand God, talk to God, once you’ve reached your sacred place.
This is what it means to have a spirituality. You have a sacred place, and you talk to the presence you find there.
Other people may misunderstand your actions. Eli the priest at Shiloh thought Hannah was drunk at first. But it doesn’t matter. Your spirituality can be real and authentic even if others don’t get it. Hannah’s was certainly genuine.
Years ago I knew a couple who struggled with infertility, as Hannah did. In church one day, the husband talked about it and about his prayers during that time. He said at first he prayed, ‘Lord, help my wife to get pregnant.’ But it didn’t happen. Then, for some reason, he changed the prayer to ‘Lord, help us have a baby.’ Right after this, an unexpected opportunity for adoption fell out of the sky into their lives. It was the first of two adoptions for them.
I don’t know that prayer always works this way – it’s not this linear. But talking to God, taking your yearnings to God, this is a part of the process of how things happen in our lives.
And we are changed in the experience. After Hannah prayed, she went back to their tent. It says she ate and drank with her husband, and her face was sad no longer. The act of going to her sacred place and talking to the presence she found there, this lifted the yearning from her heart for a time. It gave her peace.
Of course there’s a happy ending to the story. Hannah has a son, Samuel. When he’s weaned, she’ll take him back to the temple and dedicate him to God’s service. She gives him up for adoption, so to speak.
God gave her a gift, and she gave it back. It’s a touching thing. Later on she’ll have three more boys and two girls.
But I don’t want to leave the focus today on Hannah the happy parent. I’m thinking more about Hannah the childless nobody, who went to her sacred place and talked to the presence she found there – God as she understood God. And what does this God do? God listens to her. God listens to all of us nobodies… to God, we’re somebody.
A last thought. Hannah’s name means grace. Her name points our attention to the gracious God who listens to our yearnings, dreams and heartaches… and weaves them and builds them mysteriously into something strong and beautiful.
That’s what Hannah’s story can tell us today.
