Sermon for the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday, November 15, 2009

1 Samuel 1:4-20

It is good to be back among you today. As you will see this week in the e-news, Elizabeth has a new blog where she is posting sermons and that sort of thing, and so I was glad to be able to read what she had to say last week in her sermon. I smiled at the part where she said that I had set her up to preach on that story about the widow who gave her last coins. I was supposed to preach on stewardship and I had left town right in the middle of the stewardship drive and left her with that story.

Well I thought maybe karma had caught up with me this week when I found myself needing to preach on the story of Hannah pleading with God about wanting to have a baby. I mean anyone can talk about the widow’s mite, but when it comes to talking about the deep desire to bear a child, come on. Elizabeth was there when we set the preaching schedule. I’m not sure who was set up.

We have today the story of Hannah, a familiar story in which Hannah, who has not been able to bear a child pleads her case with God. She promises that if God will grant her request, she will offer the child back to God for a life of service in the temple. God does give Hannah a child, the great transitional leader of Israel who ushers in the period of the monarchy, Samuel. And in a part of the story we don’t have today, Hannah does indeed return to the temple with young Samuel and offer him back to God. It’s a great story and a familiar motif. God creates life and possibility where none existed before.

I wondered too, if I had been set up because the men in today’s story are so clueless. Listen guys--and here I do mean guys--take a lesson from today’s story. When Hannah pours her heart out to her husband about the angst of not being able to have a child, he says, “awe come on honey. Aren’t I worth a whole lot more to you than a bunch of kids?” If you aren’t sure what’s wrong with his answer, call me on Monday and we’ll find a time when you can talk…..with Elizabeth.

Then Eli, who really was a good guy, sees Hannah praying in the temple, and because she is so agitated that she is actually moving her lips as she pleads with God, Eli jumps quickly to the conclusion that she is drunk.

All I can say is, Careful out there fellows.

As is often the case, though, I have discovered once more that God and the lectionary are good, and that when they lead me into places I had not thought to go, there is often some learning to be found there. So having been warned off by Elkanah and Eli, I went looking for some other way of connecting Hanna’s story and came, strange as it may sound, to her desire to bear a child.

Mary and I were away last week, traveling with our old friends John and Mackie Rice. Many of you know John from his time among you when I was on sabbatical five years ago. When I say John and Mackie are old friends, that really isn’t accurate. They are family--my closest family beyond Mary and Margie. They kind of adopted me forty years ago and we have shared our lives ever since.

I met them when I was a druggy kid of sixteen, serving for the first time as counselor at church camp. My home life was a mess and my family of origin was, in those days, pretty much coming apart. The Rices befriended me that week and kept in touch afterward through letters and an invitation to visit them at the other end of the state where they lived.

I was delighted to hear the next year that John had accepted a call to a church in my city. That meant they would be close. I had pretty much given up church in my teen years, except for camp, but these folks were not about church, they were friends. I was glad to have them in town.

I was really glad to have them there one night when I was a freshman at Memphis State. That night I ended up having a bad experience with something recreational I had taken and John came out after midnight, clergy collar and all, to help me out and talk me down. As we headed out of the dorm parking lot, we walked toward Central Avenue and when we reached the street, John put a hand on my shoulder and said very seriously, “it’s time to make a decision.” “Yes?” I answered in a trembling voice. He smiled and said, “Are we going to walk into the road or turn onto the sidewalk.” In my altered state of consciousness, I was pretty sure he was talking in code, so I came back with a reference to one of Jesus’ sayings, trying to hold up my end of the conversation. “Let’s take the narrow one,” I said. The rest of the night included some story telling and a little preaching and some talk about Jesus, but what stuck with me was that question--that call for a decision. And whether John intended it in his question or not, his black suit and collar, and his talk about Jesus that night left me knowing that the decision I was being offered had something to do with where and how my life would be shaped. And, I knew the question had something to do with God, and the Church, and my place in that Church.

It was in those days that I chose to really be a part of this family we call the body of Christ, the one we all belong to. It was then that I chose for myself, not because someone else had signed me up. I think I understood, even then, that if my life was to bear fruit, if I had any chance of becoming a whole, complete person, those things had their best chance in this place I was being invited to belong. I had wondered as my home life became chaotic in my teen years what sort of life I would have. My hopes and dreams were set against a background of uncertainty. There was much I hoped was possible in my life, but I couldn’t imagine how those possibilities might come to life in the setting where I found myself. Looking back today, I see that as the time when I discovered my need for a place in the body of Christ. That was when I made a shift in my thinking about Church. I saw church no longer as a set of obligations I had to fulfill, but as a community that might be able to nurture in me and call forth from me that which I only hoped might lie within.

Soon I was sitting with the children’s chapel kids on Sundays at John’s church playing my guitar and singing songs about Jesus and Moses and Abraham, all those folks who had found their true calling in and among the people of God. Oh I didn’t understand at the time that that was who they were, people who had found their lives in this community. I didn’t pay much attention to the words of the songs in those days, it just felt good to be singing and to have been asked to offer something I valued. But as the community around me became a reference for me--began to figure in the decisions I was making about my life--I came to realize that the life I was discovering among them really kind of belonged to them. More and more, what I was receiving from and in the community of the faithful I was offering back to that community,a nd most of the time, pretty gladly.

It was many years before I began to understand that the cycle of receiving and giving back is what Christianity is all about. All my life I had seen the bread and wine we offer be taken, broken open, blessed and shared. I had heard the words of the offertory sentence after the Peace calling us to offer ourselves in a similar way. But it is only in looking back now that I can see the rhythm of that cycle at work over time, creating us, calling forth gifts, knitting us into the body of Christ where our lives are defined by our relationship with God and the people around us. Die on Friday, shout with joy on Sunday. Give your life away and get it back in spades. That’s the gospel.

Hannah longed for a child, and when that child was born she understood him to be a gift from God. And so she returned to the temple and said, “here he is God. He’s yours.” All that wanting , hoping, and now the giving back.

How many of us have discovered gifts in this place. How many of us have found our true selves here or have seen enough to believe we will. I have seen the faith community call forth from its members undiscovered gifts of leadership, music, listening, passion for justice, deep concern for the welfare of others. I have watched people discover in this place the ability to persevere, to trust, to network, to dream, to make and keep friends. All these fine gifts serve us well in all aspects of our lives, but how often do we remember who gave them to us. Hannah knew. And what she had desired more than anything she gave back.

If you are wondering about the stewardship sermon, and have notice that I haven’t said anything today about numbers or percentages, I can explain. The deeper I find myself in this community of faith and trust, the harder I think it would be to speak in terms of ten percent or anything near that. I’m pretty sure the number we should be using is more like a hundred percent. And if you think you haven’t heard a stewardship sermon this year, give me a call and we’ll set up a time to chat.