Untitled

June 18, 2023
by Sara Baron

“Responding to Pleas” based on 1 Samuel 1:1-6, 9-18 and Matthew 15:21-28

What do you want most in life? Or perhaps, what have you wanted most? For many, I know the answer is that of the Canaanite woman in the Gospel lesson: healing for a loved one. For some the answer is that of Hannah: fulfillment of a lifetime desire. There are more answers of course, but those two cover a lot of ground.

They cover a lot of humanity too – the utter horror that we can feel when we face the pending death of a loved one, the discontent that can come when we are unfulfilled, and even the ways that society tells us who we should be and the pressures that puts on us to want particular things.

There are some challenges in these texts. The first one, I think, is primarily for people who believe that Jesus was perfect. Because in the Gospel story, he definitely isn’t. He’s human and quite fallible. Now, if this is an impediment to you being able to hear the story, it is always possible to tell yourself that Jesus was “acting like a human to make a point.” Because a point gets made here. Jesus, honestly, dismisses the human value of another person because her ethnicity is different from his.

Worse, it is rather consistent in the book of Matthew with how Jesus talks about Gentiles. They are OTHER. Gentiles are non-Jews, and they’re not people of faith, and they’re less important. They are THEY, the “not us.”

Which definitely seems like the energy Jesus brings into the conversation. Now, he’s tired. Let’s admit it. He had left the Galilee to get a break from all the demands being made on him. He is on retreat, or something like it, taking a break. He is trying to fill himself up so he can go back to giving away what he has.

And while he’s on retreat, yet another person has heard of him, and yet another person asks things of him, and he is DONE and he draws a boundary and says “she is not my problem. I was sent to the Jews, she isn’t a Jew, I’m on a retreat, let’s ignore it.” (I kinda get it. This far at least. You can’t fix the whole world – and maybe not even if you are Jesus, or at least the Jesus who lived in a human body which is inherently finite.)

But still she approaches him, and asks him directly, “Help me!” And then Jesus says the awful thing. The thing inconsistent with what we teach about Jesus in Sunday School, and even most of the time at church. He says, “ “It is not appropriate to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” And from what I’ve read, calling a woman a dog back then was about as unkind as you might think it would be today.

But, I’ve got to give it to this unnamed Canaanite woman. Because she wants her daughter healed, and she won’t back down. She is willing, even to take the insult, if that’s what it takes. She is already kneeling before him, pleading, and having her humanity attacked isn’t going to stop her now.

She sticks with his metaphor and says, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

She blows him away. I don’t know what it was like for him in that moment. Did he finally see her? Was he convinced by her argument? Was she like the persistent widow and he realized he better just give her what she asked? Was he impressed with her rhetorical brilliance?

The Gospels don’t tell stories of Jesus getting bested by the priests or the scholars or the empire. But they do tell stories of Jesus getting bested by women. This is one of them.

And not only does the story say that he healed her daughter, from that point forward Jesus started talking differently about Gentiles. At the end of Matthew we hear, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” The ministry of Jesus expanded in this story, and suddenly he wasn’t called only to the Jews, but to all of the people.

One might call this Jesus’ conversion story, if one wanted to.

Or, one might take this as a VERY GOOD example of what to do when one is called out for an unconscious bias – and how to let the wisdom of another person transform you into a better person.

And, one might see in this story the utter desperation of a parent with a sick child. That woman would have done ANYTHING for her daughter.

So would many of you. So have many of you. And so many of you, also, would have done anything that could have been done IF ONLY something could have been done.

For me, the part of this story that feels most universal is the desperation of the mother, of the person whose loved one needed healing. The one who couldn’t heal their loved one themselves, but would do anything to get someone else who could heal to heal.

That is one of the hardest parts of life, for those who experience it. Which over time is most of us. That desperation is part of being human. It is part of loving.

(I’m going to just mention this and move on, but the needs for universal access to great health care AND adequate support and care for medical providers are implicated in this passage too.)

I struggle a little more with Hannah’s request. Now, as a whole, I love Hannah. She speaks amazing words about God. But I worry that Hannah wanted to be the mother of a son because the culture around her told her that her entire value in the world was being a mother of a son, and she was trying to gain status with this request. That is, of course, unfair. Right? Because when society tells you that your value is based on something, humans tend to want that thing. I know that. But I want Hannah to just know she’s OK without the thing. I want her to know she’s enough as she is. I want her to throw away the expectations and just be awesome as she.

I’m tough.

(I’m tough on myself too, not just on Biblical characters.)

And maybe Hannah wants to parent because she wants to parent, but she kinda makes a deal with God here that if she gets to parent a son she will give him to be raised in the Temple and not actually get to be with him all that much. Which gets me back to thinking she wants status. But, OF COURSE SHE DOES. What other recourse does she have??

OK, so now I’m back to being compassionate for a woman who thought she had one job and wanted to do it and be recognized for being capable of doing her ONE job.

Great.

But once I start bringing in compassion, then I start seeing Penninah too. Because Penninah has the things she’s supposed to have. She is a mother, including being a mother of sons. Yet she knows herself to be unloved. She is said to “provoke” Hannah, and yet it seems perhaps she felt provoked as well. She had what society said mattered, but she she didn’t have fulfillment in it.

Well, she’s not the first or last one, huh?

A final complication exists for us in these stories of women pleading for what they want most. They have their pleas answered, in the positive. Hannah becomes a mother, the Canaanite woman’s daughter is healed. These stories tell of infertility being erased, and healing happening. Which means these stories can be painful for those for whom infertility remains or healing isn’t found.

Because we know in life that sometimes the thing we want most, sometimes the thing we need most, sometimes the thing we are willing to get onto our knees and beg and plead for …

we still don’t get.

Sometimes we plea and pray incessantly for something, and it doesn’t happen.

Sometimes our worst fears come pass.

And if not for us, then definitely for others, and we see suffering of God’s beloveds far too often for our souls to be at rest.

This is a known problem in theology – we have a God we say is good, and terrible things happen. And likely you have heard various “answers” to the problem from well meaning people of faith. Things like, “God always answers prayer, sometimes the answer is no.” or “Who are we to know what is good, only God knows” or (getting worse here) “maybe you didn’t pray hard enough” or (OYE) “maybe God is punishing you.”

I don’t have an “answer.” I don’t believe in God as a punisher, or in having to prove oneself in prayer, or that we are unable to identify bad things in the world. Indeed, I know that bad, sometimes horrible things happen. And they break my heart over and over again. And I believe they break God’s heart too.

And yet I believe that God is with us, all of us, and God is working toward good, all the time, and even the worst things in the world can be healed by God’s love. I believe bad things happen, but I don’t believe they’re the whole story. I guess I’m back to the whole Easter thing, once again. I believe God, who is Love, has the last word. I believe love wins in the end, even if it may take a while. Even if I will never see it. Even if I can’t see the way from here to there. I believe God is with us, and somehow, someway, that’s enough. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 18, 2023

Sermons

“Justice-Seeking Mothers”based on 1 Samuel 2:1-10 and Luke 1:46b-55

December 11, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It
has been said about Mary, “No woman in scripture is more honored,
blessed as she was ‘above all women’ (Luke 1:42), and she holds an
iconic status shared by no other woman in Christianity. Through the
accounts of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke, Mary is one of the
first biblical characters many children encounter. Along with Eve,
Mary is integral to shaping how Christians understand the nature of
womanhood and motherhood.”¹
What is said is true. Mary, along with Eve, has both shaped how
women are understood in Christianity AND the inverse: perceptions of
Mary (and Eve) are indicators of how Christianity is understanding
women. How Mary is seen is a bell-weather for how women are seen.
Cary Gibson, the author of the opening quote, also says, “Mary is a
container into which we pour ideas of what it means to be a woman. In
turn we then draw from her image ideas about our own womanhood.”²

Most
commonly, Mary is said to be meek and mild. Usually, it is her
subservience that sets her up as the ideal woman. The pedestal of
womanhood that Mary most frequently occupies as the ideal woman is
the pedestal of the selfless mother, the one who exists simply so her
son can exist. She’s faithful, sweet, and biddable. There is,
however, one issue with this common perception Mary: it completely
ignores the words of Mary found in the Gospel of Luke.

Now,
I’m not saying that I really think some literate scribe was following
Mary around during her pregnancy to record her insights for
posterity. However, I am saying we have a rather long monologue
attributed to Mary that defies the way she is most commonly defined.
The meek and mild ideal does not match the actual Gospel. The myths
around her are more about what Christian women have been told to be
than they are about the actual stories about and words of Mary.

Therefore,
it seems worth exploring the words attributed to Mary. Whether the
words are what Mary said, or something Mary could have said, or
simply what it made sense to someone that the Mother of Jesus WOULD
have said, they are attributed to her. Since the general perception
of Mary is based on 20 centenaries of trying to put women in their
place, and I’d prefer to get to know Mary as presented in the Gospel.
It may be that we can take a look at Mary-the-ideal-woman and get a
different answer about what it means to be an ideal woman.

For
starters, these words are not meek, nor mild. In fact, Cary Gibson
says Mary, “voiced a defiant and righteous hope in the face of
violence and injustice.”³
It is true. These words express a HARDCORE faith and a great ideal
for women to seek to live up to. 🙂 Men too. This is the sort of
faith we can all aspire to!

First
of all, Mary’s song is deeply rooted in her faith tradition. It
echoes Hannah’s song of celebration after Hannah fulfilled her
promise and brought her son Samuel to Eli to serve him as a priest.
It also echoes with phrases from the Psalms. The version of this
song that we have is a work of theological and scriptural brilliance
and sophistication. Hannah’s song is powerful, but reflects a less
mature faith. Hannah yearns for God to smash the powerful, deride
her enemies, and break the mighty. In her mind the powerless are
lifted up BY making the powerful small. There is violence in her
imagery, even as there is celebration of the goodness of God and of
her sense of becoming more significant in the world.

Mary’s
song, though, is not vengeful. She also speaks of lifting up the
poor and lonely. Like Hannah she speaks about God’s power, but she
also adds God’s mercy. Mary speaks of lowering the mighty, but the
lowering isn’t violent or dangerous for them: the proud are
“scattered in the thoughts of their hearts” which sounds like a
way to be more humble; the powerful step down from their thrones (but
she doesn’t suggest they’re harmed afterward); the rich are sent away
empty – as if they don’t need any more. Hannah had the the
formerly “full” “hire themselves out for bread.” Mary is
interested in lifting up the lowly and removing their oppression, not
in oppressing the oppressors. She is a actually meeker and milder
than Hannah, Hannah’s is pretty rough. Mary is simply less violent!

Hannah
speaks of her victory, Mary speaks of being treated with God’s favor.
While both are grateful for the child they are able to nurture, and
while both express incredible gratitude to God and deep theological
reflections, they have different energies. The insertion of material
from the Psalms into Hannah’s original poem changes it into a more
gracious piece. One scholar found that in addition to the source
material of Hannah’s poem, the song of Mary includes 7 pieces of
different Psalms, as well as a quote each from Deuteronomy, Job,
Micah, and Isaiah. By that scholar’s reckoning all of the words of
Mary’s song are attributable to Hebrew Bible quotations.⁴

Mary’s
song starts in the specific. She is grateful to be useful to God,
humbly aware of her status as a poor woman in her society, and
attentive to the change of her status because of God’s favor. She
attributes her life change to God’s greatness, and she praises God.
She expresses who God is: merciful,
consistent, strong, and powerful. She talks about a God who cares
about the lowly,
and feeds the hungry with GOOD food.
Her song makes another journey outward, celebrating God’s care for
all of the Jews and then attributing God’s care to God’s merciful
nature and God’s promises. She moves from celebrating God’s work for
her, to celebrating God’s work for the vulnerable, to celebrating
God’s work for all her people. It is as if she is expanding her
gratitude in increasingly wide circles.

While
it is unlikely to be factual, this text suggests that Mary knew her
scriptures well enough to combine them creatively into a truly
beautiful and majestic song celebrating God WITHOUT demeaning anyone
else. It suggests that her humility was real, but it wasn’t a form
of self-deprecation. It says she was genuinely honored to be able to
serve God and be useful in forming the world in God’s kindom of
shalom. She was delighted and amazed to be chosen. She recognized
the depth of the blessing she received, seemingly without thinking
that it made her more important than others. She said she was
blessed, and was amazed that people would remember her as blessed.
That indicates she didn’t think she’d done anything right or worthy,
it was God’s choice not her worthiness that mattered. Her gratitude
was expansive and celebratory and still focused on lifting up the
lowly and attentive to the hungry. She kept her head!

The
Mary of this song is wise, strong, compassionate, creative, humble,
and grateful. She knows and celebrates a God who is a fierce
advocate of justice. John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, in their
book “The First Christmas” point out that each of the Gospels
start with a “Gospel in miniature” (with the possible exception
of Mark which starts at a gallop and just keeps going!). Luke 1 and
2, which likely do NOT represent authentic memories of things that
really happened, DO represent themes of the Gospel, understanding of
Jesus, foreshadowing of things to come, and ways to see how God is
known in the Gospel. Luke pays particular attention to women – as
we can see here where Mary gets a prolonged monologue – as well as
to the poor and vulnerable. We can also see that here in the words
Mary speaks. The writer of Luke, and/or the Christian tradition,
and/or the editors who came later attribute these words to Mary
largely to help those of us who came later to understand her son.

Now,
I don’t want anyone to think that I’m disparaging Hannah’s song. Her
song is FIERCE and profound, and reflects an era one whole millennia
before Mary’s. Hannah, as well, sought justice. She sought it for
herself and she sought it for all of God’s people. She understood God
to be one who cares about the poor, the hungry, the feeble, the
barren, the low, and the needy. That is a reflection of the unique
tradition of Judaism, from a pretty early time. Other ancient
peoples believed in god and goddesses. The Israelites were unique,
however, in believing in a God who cared about how they treated each
other, and in a God who cared about the people who had the least
power and influence. There is a constant tension in the Bible
between this belief – in a God who cares for the poor and lowly –
and the human tendency to prefer the rich and powerful. Hannah
reflects the God who cares for the poor and lowly without being
pulled toward the rich and powerful at all. Then Mary manages to
take it a step further and acknowledge a God who cares for everyone.
They sought justice, and believed in a God who wanted justice. This
is our radical tradition. This is the wonder of worshiping a God of
compassion.

Those
sons of those women took their justice-seeking natures and their
understandings of the God of Compassion, and changed the world. We
mostly know about the mothers because of the sons. Samuel anointed
kings. Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, ate with sinners, and
told parables that still confound us today. Both sons changed the
world. Both mothers are presented as sources of wisdom for their
sons. Their stories are preludes to their sons stories, and yet I am
so grateful that the Bible gives them voices and songs and stories!
They are not ONLY vessels through which their sons come to be, they
are interesting in their own right.

I
do wish for all of us to be able to be a bit like these justice
seeking mothers. And if we are going to hold up Mary as the ideal,
then I hope it takes the form of being moved to sing our gratitude
to God and celebrating the wonder of God’s good work in the world. I
hope we can become so steeped in our faith tradition that we can use
it in creative ways that bring more caring, compassion, and justice
to our tradition. I hope that we can see and name the goodness of
our lives without taking ourselves too seriously. And I do hope that
when push comes to shove we are more like Mary than like Hannah, and
that we can hope for the transformation of oppressors – not the
oppression of them. I hope we too can always remember the people of
God who are struggling the most, and find ways to help lift them up.
I hope we can be part of our tradition that remembers God as a God of
compassion for the least, the last, the lost and the lonely.

If
Mary is the ideal, and she seems to be well set up to be the ideal,
then let’s seek to be like her: fierce, grateful, and brilliant.
Amen

1
Cary Gibson, “Mary, Jesus’ Mother” in an email from The Common
English Bible send by Abingdon Press on December 2^nd,
2016.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

4Joseph
A. Fitzmeyer “The Gospel According to Luke I-IX” in the The
Anchor Bible Series (Doubleday and Co.: Garden City, NY, 1981) p
356-357.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

December 11, 2016

Sermons

“SILENT Prayer!?!”based on 1 Samuel 1:1-20

December 4, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Hannah may be the most well-behaved woman in this Subversive Women sermon series. In this story she expresses exemplary faith and devotion for God. She a common example used for the idea of “taking it to the Lord in prayer.” All in all, she feels like enough of a goody-two shoes to be the mother of the king-maker. As we see time and time again, when you hear a birth stories, you know that you are getting the story of someone important. When you hear about a barren woman in the Bible (much less a virgin 😉 ) you know you are hearing the beginning of the story of someone VERY important. The baby born to THIS barren woman will be the last of the judges, one of the great prophets, and the one to anoint kings Saul and David. This story seems designed to prove that he came from good stock.

To be honest, the Young Adult Bible study found her a little bit boring. Hannah is presented as a weeping mess, having internalizing the cultural narrative that her value was based on her ability to produce sons. She is one of two wives of reasonably wealthy man. (No poor man could afford two wives.) Their family goes to the holy place to worship once a year – not three like the really faithful families – but also not less than once. They’re moderately faithful Jews. She has a loving husband, which in and of itself makes her unusual in the Bible. She believes that God is in control of the world, and she seems to believe that a blessing by God’s priest will help her get what she wants. She makes a vow with very serious consequences: she wants a child so badly that she offers the child to God. (This is, of course, a promise she makes good on. She brings Samuel to Eli as soon as he is weaned and then sees him only once a year when she brings him new clothing.) She is a bit of a naive heroine: good, sweet, doing what she’s supposed to do, and sad because her society says she is worthless.

Despite the Young Adult Bible Study, there are a lot of interesting things going on in this story. They’re just hiding rather well! Are there any people in this room who immediately zone out when you hear genealogies – you know, like the one in the very first verse of this story? Me too. However, this one has a point! Hannah’s husband was of the clan Ephraim (one of Joseph’s sons). That is a Northern Tribe, which fits as this is a northern story set in the north. He was of that clan, as were the 5 generations before him. Which means he was NOT AT ALL a Levite. And the Levites were supposed to be the priests and holy men. The baby who will be born will be raised as if he is a priest, but he isn’t one. He is an insert into the holy man tradition. This is particularly relevant because Eli (a Levite) has sons who are corrupt priests, but the clan of Ephraim raises up a good priest. Things aren’t going as they should be. The system is broken.

Like the genealogy, the location has some hidden interest. The story is set in the Temple in Shiloh. Which would be a pretty boring detail except for one piece of historical knowledge: there is no Temple in Shiloh. Shiloh was a worship center, and there would have been official priests working there, but there was no Temple. The Temple would be build by David, who Samuel would make King – and it would be in the Southern Kingdom. This story has the fingerprints of later Southern editors on it, ones who couldn’t quite comprehend a worship space other than the Temple.

Now I mentioned that Hannah was a beloved spouse, which was a bit unique. The expressions of adoration from her husband are totally unique. He asks her why he isn’t worth 10 sons to her – which seems to imply that she’s worth 10 sons to him! Furthermore, he gives her the “double portion” to use in sacrifice. That’s odd. The double portion is the portion the eldest son inherits, where the younger sons each get only one. Hannah’s husband treats her as if she is as valuable to him as his eldest son and heir. He values her as she’d value her eldest son. He sees values in HER. This is particularly interesting because Hannah lacks value in her society. Women were meant to bear male children. That was what they were FOR, and from which their worth was derived. And Hannah didn’t. But her husband didn’t care. He appears to love her for HER, as she is. That may be a reason for some to be jealous of Hannah, but it surely doesn’t make boring. Because being loved can be so transformative in human life, I wonder how much of Hannah strength comes from her husband’s love. She may struggle with what she’s supposed to be (and isn’t) but she also has an internalized sense of self worth. Her husband might have been part of that.

This question of Hannah’s value comes up in her interaction with Eli. But first, we need to mention a few truly subversive things that happened before and during that interaction. First of all, she entered the holy space. I don’t know for sure how the worship space was used in Shiloh, but I do know that women weren’t let very far into the Jerusalem temple. For Hannah, even entering the holy space pushed the boundaries of what women were supposed to be doing. I’m also not sure how appropriate it would have been for Hannah to wander off on her own in public space. I suspect she broke the bounds of normalcy on that too. Then there is the fact that she prays SILENTLY and without a sound passing by her lips. We can tell by Eli’s response that her silence wasn’t standard for prayer.

Now, if Hannah was trying to elicit a response from God, and her deal making surely suggests she was, then why wasn’t she participating in prayer the way it was known to be practiced? Was she simply too focused and authentic in her prayer? I don’t think so! I think humans of any faith tradition are deeply enculturated on how to pray, and one wouldn’t be likely to break out of that in a moment of deep prayer. Instead, I wonder if she wanted to have a PRIVATE conversation with God. She went off by herself, she went into a sacred space that was mostly abandoned, and she spoke to God only in her heart. It seems possible that what she was saying was entirely too personal for anyone to know it. I suspect there was even some shame in it, as would be expected for a barren woman begging God to help her.

Hannah also makes a deal with God, which is not generally recommended, and she makes one of the more radical ones. Her family is moderately faithful. She offers her son as a livelong nazirite, which is UNHEARD OF. The holiest of holy men were nazirites for a year or two. But she offers. (And she does it! – Hannah is faithful to her promises.)

OK. So now we are on her conversation with Eli. Eli comes up and shames her for her despicable behavior – one that he projects onto her rather than one she has participated in. Hannah ANSWERED. She answered the high priest of that place, and she defended herself. She didn’t walk away in shame. She didn’t hang her head. She defended herself and her VALUE. She WAS a worthless woman by the standards she lived in. But she demands respect from the priest anyway. “‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time”

“I am not a worthless woman.” Am I the only one who wants to cheer for her??? Even better it works. Eli may have failed to identify authentic prayer, yet, he is willing to be corrected!! He’s really an OK guy and a good priest, even though me misses some major memos. Eli believes her. That is huge in and of itself, but he also responds to her with a blessing. The blessing clearly matters to her, it cheers her up, and the story seems to think it has to do with her later success in getting pregnant.

Hannah names her son, “God has heard” and says she does so because “I asked him of the LORD”. She sounds a bit like Hagar, naming God, “the God who sees” (even me.) Hannah, whose society has told her that she is worthless, has a partner who believes in her worth, and even with her internal struggles finds that she believes in her worth too. Then it is affirmed. It seems to me that by the time Hannah gets pregnant, she is already sure that she is of value in the world and in the eyes of God whether or not she has a child. In the end, I think that’s what is so subversive about Hannah – that she finds the way to claim her own worth, despite society! May we follow in her footsteps because we are much more useful to God when we realize that we are valuable – and of use in building the kindom. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

December 4, 2016

Sermons

“NOT Worthless”based on 1 Samuel 1:4-20 and 1 Samuel 2:1-10

November 15, 2015February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I spent a lot of time thinking about what to say about the terrorist attacks in Paris, before I realized that there were also terrorist attacks made by the same group in Baghdad and Beirut which the news cycle had not taken quite so seriously. Then I realized that there were also deadly natural disasters in Japan and Mexico on Friday. Then I worried that there were likely other tragedies that I didn’t know about. Then I thought of the 200,000 deaths in Syria that have motivated 4 million refugees to leave their homes. Then I remembered that there are lots of refugees NOT from Syria. On Facebook I kept seeing these words, written by a poet named Warsan Shire from Nairobi, Kenya:

“later that night

i held an atlas in my lap

ran my fingers across the whole world

and whispered

where does it hurt?

it answered

everywhere

everywhere.”1

I asked Drew Vickery, who was here this weekend for the CCCYM (Conference Council on Youth Ministries) event what he thought I should say about the attacks on Paris, and after a few hours he got back to be and said, “Nothing. I think you should focus on hope.” #fromthemouthsofteens. I don’t have words to take away the pain of the world, I don’t have words that will stop or transform extremist militants, and I surely don’t have words that will bring any of the lives tragically lost.

The hours I spent reading up on the terrorist group last night brought one imperative sentence to light, “For certain true believers—the kind who long for epic good-versus-evil battles—visions of apocalyptic bloodbaths fulfill a deep psychological need.”2 This clarified my role for today: to offer a form of faith that is not about defining “good” or “evil” but rather about seeking wholeness for ourselves that can encourage others into wholeness. So, here we go…

Hannah is surprisingly resilient. It isn’t that painful things don’t seem to hurt her – they do – a lot! They don’t overcome her. We see it twice in her story. The first thing that we know about her is that she’s barren. Now, people in the ancient world did not think that barrenness COULD be a male problem, but even if they had, Hannah’s husband’s OTHER wife was distinctly not barren. A woman’s value came in her childbearing capacity, and to be barren was to be worthless. To be barren was to be ashamed. Hannah was barren.

And yet…her husband loved her. This is not particularly normal, nor expected for marital relationships at the time. In fact, it looks like it was true in only one of Elkanah’s marriages. He loved Hannah, and he gave her preferential treatment because of it. His words indicate that he doesn’t even care that she’s barren, which I think supports the case that he really loves her and not just her “value” in his life.

This was not sufficient for Hannah. She wanted to have a child. We are completely incapable of determining if this is about her maternal instincts or if it is about a desire not to be in shame, but let’s assume it is some of both. Her husband’s love did not take away her shame, although it may have helped her have resilience to it.

Every year when she had the chance, she went to the house of God and prayed there. We’re told that she asked God to open her womb, and even tried to strike a deal with God about it. This is imperative to her story, she eventually gave birth to the prophet who would anoint the first kings, and it better be clear how faithful his mother was in order to establish his faith.

This is the first place that I see Hannah’s unusual resilience. By most accounting, if a woman’s womb was barren, it was barren because of divine punishment. Yet, as one scholar put it,

“Hannah at once embodies both the patriarchal constructions of her worth and a deep assumption that God is concerned about her. … When Hannah seeks out God’s presence in this state of anguish, her prayer signals that she is aware of a divine concern for those who are questionable worth. She does not come to God with formal petition. She does not come with traditional sacrifice. She comes in loneliness, isolation, and despair. She lays bare all the emotion and pain.”3

She believes that God cares about her, despite her barrenness, despite her shame. She is resilient to her own shame. It doesn’t stop her from seeking the Holy One AND making requests of God and EVEN bargaining with God (which is a dangerous idea). She doesn’t let it stop her, and that indicates that she thinks God might listen to her.

That’s some GOOD theology for a mostly powerless, shamed woman 3000 years ago.

There is a repetition of her resiliency as well. Eli, the priest, is often presented as not knowing a whole lot about God. He isn’t a bad guy, he just hasn’t had much contact with the Divine. So, when Hannah was praying with all her heart, Eli confused this with a drunken stupor, and decided to come up and shame her about that.

She might have slinked away.

But not Hannah. She, a lowly, barren woman corrected him. She is such a delight! She wasn’t mean about it, she correct his assumption. She has NOT been drinking. She explains that she was PRAYING (we don’t know if she gets this out with or without sarcasm in her voice), and she makes a request of him, “Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” She not only asks favors of God, she asks one of the high priest.

And we should know something is going on by now, because Eli receives her correction and grants her request. Then God does too, and she gives birth to a child and names him Sam-u-el, “God has heard.”

I wish more people were like Hannah, refusing to be put in their place, denying the capacity of anyone else to define their value to the divine. I wish more people took the mantle of shame that other people tried to put on them and simply refused to wear it because they KNOW that they are worthwhile to God.

The Magnificat of Mary which celebrates God’s mighty acts is song that fell from Mary’s lips when she was pregnant with Jesus. It is based strongly on Hannah’s song that she sang to celebrate God’s mighty acts when Hannah was pregnant with Samuel. Hannah’s song, just like Mary’s, focuses on God’s power to care for the poor, the broken, and the vulnerable. It also emphasizes God’s capacity and willingness to bring down the high, the mighty, and the rich. They are songs of celebration of God’s work for the disenfranchised. They are RADICAL claims about God that anyone with a vested interest in the status quo should worry about.

Hannah is the Biblical predecessor to Mary. She’s a big deal, in large part because she knows that God cares about the people that the people don’t care about – including her.

Hannah is a model of shame resilience on the basis of God’s grace, a model we desperately need in modern day Christianity. This week I read Karen McClintock’s book Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations, and she had a lot of wisdom to share about shame and grace. Early on in the book she points out that, “We are encouraged by the dominant culture to self-improve rather than self-affirm and to strive for more rather than to be content with what is and satisfied with ourselves. The pervasive and soul-defeating presence of cultural shame leads to perfectionism, addition, and self-hatred.”4 Later, she clarifies that, “Shame is not a course-correcting emotion. While guilt says, “I made a mistake,” shame says, “I am a mistake.‘”5

At two point she offers the words that make SO MUCH sense of the world, “Shame is often the first tool grabbed off the workbench by those entrusted to maintain the status quo,”6 and, “Because shame feels so terrible, we avoid it through the use of blame.”7 But it wasn’t until she said, “You can never be satisfied with yourself if you are constantly striving to be as wise, good, kind, or as generous as God,”8 that I knew she was preaching to me. She continued that point with a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor who said, “I thought that being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was, and it was not until this project failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.”9

Finally, since this is a quick run through of an excellent book, I want to offer one of her stories:

“I had the opportunity to mentor a clergyperson I’ll call Sam during his first few years as a parish pastor. … To help him integrate his adult self and his ashamed little boy, I had him spend a few weeks between our conversations thinking of himself as ordinary. I encouraged him to ask himself, ‘What would an ordinary person feel right now? What would an ordinary person want, do, say? The exercise provided him with a reflective distance between his idealized self and his ordinary self. Once he accepted his ordinariness, he could balance service with replenishment and encouragement with separation."10

I think Hannah knew how to do that. She was just an ordinary woman, so was Mary, and they knew God to care for ordinary people.

With the possible exception of Jesus, every character in the Bible is visibly and deeply flawed. This clarifies that God works with and through real people, not perfect ones. They called on their actions sometimes, but God doesn’t ask them to “shape up or ship out” when it comes to their flaws. They’re just accepted as they are.

Dear ones, God created you as you are and loves you are as you are. You need not be perfect, you need not be particularly GOOD, you need not be extraordinary. You are enough.

May that knowledge fill the world.

I suspect it will help. Thanks be to God and may God help us ALL. Amen

____

1 Accessed at http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/812310-later-that-night-i-held-an-atlas-in-my-lapon 11-14-15.

2 Graeme Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants” in The Atlantic March 2015 Issue. Accessed athttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ on Nov. 14, 2015.

3 Marcia Mount Shoop “Theological Perspective of 1 Samuel 1:4-20” in Feasting on the Word Year B Volume 4 edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2009) page 292.

4 Karen A. McClintock, Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations (Herndon, VA: The Alban Intitute, 2012) p. 4.

5 McClintock, 22.

6 McClintock, 52.

7 McClintock, 67.

8 McClintock, 95.

9 McClintock, 101, quoting Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), 218-219.

10 McClintock, 107-109.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

November 15, 2015