June 2, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.

The First in a Series of Sermons on Elijah

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 8
1 Samuel 2:1–10

Over the next four weeks, I’m going to talk about prophets, and mostly about the story of a prophet named Elijah. For some of you who come to worship because you want to learn more about the Bible, this series should help: Elijah is one of the most important figures in the Old Testament. Others of you may already be thinking, what does this have to do with me? So I’m starting out the series today with a very practical, down-to-earth story from the book of Samuel about a woman named Hannah. Hannah has a problem that is just as real today as it was back then. Hannah wants to have a baby and she can’t get pregnant.

Hannah’s story has all of the signs of a modern-day struggle to have a baby. Hannah’s inability to get pregnant has become a problem in her marriage. It’s driving her and her husband, Elkanah, apart, and that’s true even though Elkanah tells Hannah that it’s OK, that he loves her whether they ever have children or not. The story also includes a woman named Peninnah, who had no trouble having children and who would make off-handed remarks teasing Hannah for not being able to get pregnant, which of course made Hannah feel even worse. And because Hannah is a religious person, the story includes the important detail that Hannah routinely goes to the temple and prays to God, asking for a child. This detail is important, because she gets into bargaining with God, as desperate people often do. “Oh God, if only you give me a child, I promise . . .”—and in Hannah’s case, the promise is a strange one. It may seem ironic to you as it does to me: Hannah promises to dedicate the child to the temple. The child will essentially become a monk and will be sent to begin religious training at a very young age. In this desperate act of bargaining—Hannah’s willingness to give up the child—we are left to wonder if Hannah really even wants to be a mother that badly anymore, or if she is just so overcome by her feelings of inadequacy that she just wants to know if she can get pregnant. The whole story is very emotionally and psychologically complicated, as so many human stories are. The story has all of the marks of the deeply troubling emotional situation it can be to not have a child when you want one. And anyone who has been in that place themselves or knows a couple who has can instantly see how very real this Bible story is.

Why am I telling you this story? Well, I’m going to try to address a couple of questions: first, why is this story here? What does this story teach us about prophets? Then, what does the story mean for people like us?

As I get back to the story, let me say that both in the Bible and in my experience with regular folks like you and me, bargaining with God does not usually work. I don’t recommend it, and my hunch is that that detail is mostly here in this story to move the plot along. But for whatever reason, Hannah gets what she wants: she gives birth to a son, she names him Samuel, and when the appropriate time comes, she takes him to the temple and gives him up to a life of service to God.

This part of the story seems at least as heart-wrenching and unfair as the way Hannah’s story began: this mother, who hoped for so long to become a mother, must take the child and essentially give him up for adoption. When she does this, she deliberately visits the priest who had sat with her and helped her pray for a son and says to him, “This is the child we prayed for. I promised I would give him up, and I am keeping my promise.” The whole thing seems unusually cruel and deeply disappointing. Could God possibly want it this way? There must be something else going on.

Well, at this point Hannah does something that sheds some light on what is going on in this story: she prays a prayer, which is recorded in 1 Samuel 2, and it’s a surprising prayer for at least a couple of reasons: first, Hannah’s prayer is not sad, and second, it’s not about her. The prayer is tonight’s scripture lesson, and as I read it, I want you to remember the story I have told you about Hannah first begging for and then giving up her child. This is the surprising prayer that follows, the prayer that begins the stories of the prophets.

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This prayer isn’t about Hannah; it’s about prophets. Many people think prophets are people who foretell the future, and that’s not really true. Prophets, in the Bible, are people who comment on the present: they observe the way things are and talk about the way things should be; they examine the world as we have allowed it to become and remind us of how God wants it to be. Prophets examine political situations and speak out against the powers that be; prophets enter situations that appear to be hopeless and remind people not to give up; prophets speak to people who don’t seem to have a good chance in life and tell them that in the long run they will find that God is on their side.

Elijah, whom we will be talking about for the rest of this month, is one of those people. He lives in a time when Israel is ruled by a king and queen named Ahab and Jezebel, who are selfish and cruel and persecute the people, and Elijah stands up against them and tells them to put their personal desires aside and rule on behalf of the people who need help. You and I live in a country where citizens are continually frustrated by the inability of our leaders to put aside their petty politics and electioneering and instead do what is right for the people. We need our own prophets to put things back the way they are supposed to be. We need prophets because prophets help to clarify complicated public situations by telling real, accessible stories that we can understand.

Often the best way to increase one’s understanding of a vast public issue is to hear a personal story. I’ve listened on the news to the stories of federal employees who run programs affected by the sequester, and I’ve heard them say what it has to do with me. I’ve witnessed the closing of Chicago Public Schools in which those who told compelling stories about the importance of their neighborhood schools were able to keep four of them open. I have heard a statistic that when Congress tries to decide within the whole of the U.S. budget what to do with 100 million American tax dollars, it is equivalent to one person who makes $60,000 a year trying to decide whether or not to buy a coffee at Starbucks. Those individual stories help me understand the bigger picture.

Prophets clarify complicated public situations by telling real, personal stories that we can understand. The Bible tells stories about individual people so that we can gain a clearer understanding of God’s intention for the world. The prophets need to speak about big-picture political and social situations, so they engage us with stories about individual people like you and me—people like Hannah—so that we don’t forget that those big-picture situations are also about people like us and are our responsibility.

Over the next three weeks, we are going to hear the story of the prophet Elijah. Elijah was a man who held out hope that people would not go hungry in the midst of a drought; he prayed to God to change the injustice of the government. Then, at the time of his death, when not all of his political dreams had been accomplished, he found an apprentice named Elisha and told him to continue the work, because one day things would change.

Elijah’s story may seem distant or disconnected from us, so it begins with the more accessible story of a woman named Hannah. Hannah held out hope in the midst of the hopelessness of not having a child; Hannah prayed to God to change the injustice of her situation. Near the end of her story, when she has a child but things are still not right, she gives up the child to be a prophet so that the work can continue. And then she connects the dots for us: she says a prayer, not about herself, but about the world.

The great biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “[Hannah’s] birth story is not a private wonder but a public gift of possibility.” We are engaged and moved by Hannah’s story of childbirth and adoption so that when we look at other people, we won’t forget the pain of despair and hopelessness, the joy of redemption and birth, and the complexity and sacrifice and patience that come with enduring times of change. Prophets are there to look at the big picture and help us remember the human situation within it.

The Bible uses personal stories in case some of us are not close enough to the poor and oppressed, the weak and disenfranchised, the hungry or fearful ones to have a real sense of their pain. We feel pain in Hannah’s story so that we will not forget to notice pain where it exists in our own world.

So now you’ve heard the story of Hannah, a woman who suffered real difficulties but who never forgot God’s good intentions not only for herself but for the whole world. As this series on prophets begins, my question to you is this: What about you? Where do you think God might be calling you to a greater awareness of the suffering in your world and your responsibility to do something about it? Amen.