1 Samuel 1:4-20

The time of the late Judges was not a good time for Israel. After the affair of the Levite and his concubine and the destruction of the Israelite Civil War (Judges 19-21), it is hard to imagine something like regular worship happening in Shiloh. And yet the Deuteronomist gives us just that. Yes, the people in the land are in a deep state of ignorant rebellion. Yes, they are lost and far from God. But there are still a few who worship.

Elkanah starts out 1 Samuel, but he is really just a means of introducing Hannah. He is wealthy enough to support two wives and to provide one with a double portion at worship. He is also clueless enough to be offended at his wife’s sorrow. “Aren’t I enough for you, Hannah? What do you need a child for anyway?” It is comforting to know, I suppose, that human density in the face of deep personal pain is not a new phenomenon. Elkanah likely married Penninah rather than sharing in the pain and longing of Hannah’s infertility and then callously asks her to get over it because, hey—she has a pretty good husband, doesn’t she?

So Hannah’s wisdom and righteousness comes despite her husband. What about her priest?

I am writing this commentary in Wilmington, Delaware. Although officially a part of the Union in the Civil War, Delaware was a slave state that voted against Lincoln twice. Sympathies were deeply divided and the real engine of the region, it seems, was the du Pont family and their gunpowder operation which made a killing selling to both the Union and the Confederacy. You see, one way through a difficult time is to do your job, get paid, and not ask many questions unless someone starts to disrupt things. That’s where Eli is. Yes, worship in Shiloh is profoundly corrupt (see chapter 3). And of course the people are largely not worshipping at all (who has time to worship old Yahweh when there are many more relevant gods in far-flung Dan and Beersheba!), but Eli is getting paid. If he speaks up and starts demanding heartfelt worship from people, there is no guarantee that they will even come back. So just let people do what they want to do until they start getting a little too charismatic. This is religion accommodated to the empire to be sure—all the form and ceremony, none of the challenge or difficulty.

Eli is a sign for us pastors, I think. The ease with which we slip into accommodated worship, not even expecting true worshippers to arise is remarkable. Because our job feels repetitive and uninteresting, we expect that it is the same for others. But this is God. This is Yahweh! Recently when preaching on the rich young ruler, my associate pastor reminded me not to be surprised if someone actually gets up and sells all they have and gives it to the poor. This is the Gospel and the Gospel has power. Hannah, this powerfully righteous woman in the midst of a bunch of dopes, knows the power of this prayer to God and she not only worships truly, but she lingers in that space until Eli struggles to believe that it is real. But of course it is.

Using Eli and Elkanah as a guide to what not to do, we can see the righteousness of Hannah, this proto-Mary. She receives this word of comfort from Eli who is the high priest, after all. She does not wallow, but trusts the Lord to do what he says, goes home and conceives. How much in your life is there because you asked for it from the Lord (v. 20)? I know this cuts against the idea of us being self-made masters of our own destiny. I know this challenges the notion that we are all cogs in the machine called The Universe and “God” is a nice way to describe what would have happened anyway. We have this claim that Hannah’s faithfulness matters. Her prayer and devotion for years on end matters. To quote some of the old holiness preachers, her “total devotement to God” is no light and momentary thing. It is what aligns her with the one and only God of the universe in the midst of a world gone mad.

I love this chapter. I love the clear picture of holy worship. I love how it pushes me into a place of worship by the end of it. I love the challenge it places before half-hearted priests and husbands. Mostly, though, I love the way that Hannah cries out and God answers because in this most tender and intimate interaction is the very heart of God’s love. God is eager to catch us up into his story of salvation and whether that is overcoming infertility or empowering us to do the ministry we say we want to do, God is able and our holiness as a response matters. Be strengthened for that work today.