Sermon Archive

Shortly after I graduated from college, I went to live in Brazil for a while. When the season of Lent drew near that first year, I became excited about my first Carnival, that famous weeklong Mardi Gras festival. I had heard about the parades and the dancing in the streets. I had seen pictures of the fabulous costumes. I was even learning to samba. I knew that every brasileiro and brasileira lived for that week when they could let loose and forget the troubles and hardships of their lives. So I was surprised by the attitude of my roommates. “We don’t like Carnival,” they’d say. All that hoopla! The noise, the drinking, the crowds, the tourists, waiting for invitations. It may have been the official national week of joy and revelry, but not everyone was with the program. Indeed, if you were a quiet, introverted type, Carnival could be irritating; if you were without friends or family, Carnival was painful.

We are about to launch into the official national Thanksgiving-Advent-Hannukah-Christmas-Kwanza-New Year- Holiday Season. The snowflake lights are already up on Columbus Avenue; we’re singing those Thanksgiving hymns; the Grinch came out on Friday. It can be a fun and joyous time – I’m especially looking forward to the church party on the 17th - but it’s also a time when we especially feel the loss of loved ones, when we’re likely to get depressed, when suicide rates go up. Between the parties and the shopping and the glitter and carols it can seem like everyone is conspiring in a colossal and frenzied case of denial. Denial that those family holiday get-togethers are often violent and destructive; denial that most children in the world don’t get presents and go to bed hungry or frightened; denial that the waste we generate from wrapping paper alone surely raises the global temperature a degree or two. And the church is often part of that conspiracy. I understand that at Rutgers we’re pretty good at keeping Advent and Christmas separate - that we save Christmas carols until the 24th and hang the greens the very last Sunday before Christmas – but even Advent can seem oppressively special. All that candle-lighting and holiness and talk about waiting patiently for the Christ child. It can be hard to stay with that program.

Today, on the eve of Thanksgiving and the holiday season, we are reading a story about Hannah. Hannah is not thankful, and she is not happy. Hannah had no children. In that time and place – not so unlike our own – a woman’s worth was measured by the number of children she bore, especially male children. So when Hannah goes down to Shiloh with her husband, she doesn’t sing songs of praise; she weeps, and refuses to eat. We may consider her a bit petulant: after all, she has a husband who loves her despite the fact she’s childless, a husband who gives her a double portion. “Why is your heart sad?” he asks Hannah. “Am I not more to you than 10 sons?” But Elkanah – well-meaning as he was - just didn’t get it. After all, he was not childless, or provoked by a rival in the household. He thought he should have been worth more to Hannah than ten sons, but as one commentator pointed out, he never said to her “you are worth more to me than 10 sons.” So when Hannah goes to the temple, she’s vexed, and anxious and deeply troubled. When she prays, she doesn’t present a pretty picture of a devout and demure woman. She’s acting like she’s drunk, and Eli – the keeper of the temple – rebukes her. But Hannah defends herself, and Eli is chastened. He tells her to go in peace and asks that God grant her petition. And something has happened to Hannah: when she goes home, she eats and drinks, and her countenance is sad no longer. She does not yet know that God is going to grant her petition, that God will give her a son she will name Samuel, that she will have a chance to fulfill her vow. She does not know that she will be blessed with even more children. She has only spoken out of her great anxiety and her vexation, and prayed out of her distress.

So maybe one lesson – in this lesson – is that pouring out our soul to God can be therapeutic. Hannah felt better after she spoke out in her distress, and heartfelt and honest prayer can lift our spirits and give us peace, even when our prayers have not yet been answered. Or maybe the lesson is that God answers prayer if only we petition as Hannah did – after all, she bore a son. But there’s something wrong with looking at Hannah as a role model. It seems too simple. So often our prayer does not bring any kind of peace or serenity, if we can even bring ourselves to pray at all. And we know that, more often than not, our prayers are not answered – at least not in any way that we can recognize. Even the story itself is not so simple – why did the Lord close her womb in the first place? Later on Hannah raises a prayer of thanksgiving where she claims that the bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength; that those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. Does that sound like any world we know?