Sermon: Asked of the Lord

Poor childless Hannah, scorned by her prolific rival in marriage, Penninah with all her sons and daughters.  ‘For the Lord had closed her womb.'  In ancient society, a marriage without children was not simply a disappointment: it was a failure.  Women like Sarah, Abraham's wife, Michal, David's wife, and Hannah the wife of Elkanah were destined to go through life at best pitied, more often mocked and despised for their infertility.  It's a terrible word the Bible uses - barrenness.  Her husband, one of the best men in the Old Testament, tries to comfort her: ‘Why is your heart sad?  Am I not more to you than ten sons?', surely one of the most beautiful sayings in the Old Testament.  But Hannah knows where to take her distress.  She goes to the sanctuary, where she makes a vow that if the Lord grants her desire, the child will be offered to him for ever.  Pouring out her grief produces catharsis.  ‘The woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer...'  Hannah conceives, and bears a son, who is given back to God.  He will be the first of the long line of Hebrew prophets.  His name is Samuel.

Narratives of distress, annunciation and miraculous nativity belong to this season.  We're familiar with this pattern from the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus.  But there's a problem with this Old Testament story.  ‘In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son.  She named him Samuel, for she said, "I have asked him of the Lord"'.  The trouble is, Samuel shemuel, doesn't mean ‘asked of the Lord'.  It means ‘God has heard' or ‘name of God'.  There's all the difference between ‘asking' and ‘being heard' as Hannah knew when she prayed for a child without knowing whether she was ‘heard' or not.  And in the setting of the First Book of Samuel, the difference between ‘asking' and ‘being heard' takes on an even greater significance, because ‘asked of the Lord', shaul, is precisely the name of someone else, the man who dominates the story of 1 Samuel.  That man is King Saul.

Could it be that the text has forgotten whose story it is telling here?  The amnesia, if that is what it is, extends right across the chapter which plays extensively on Hebrew words for asking.  When Eli the priest accepts that Hannah is not drunk but deep in prayer, he says to her: ‘go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have asked of him'.  At the end of the story, Hannah takes up those same words: ‘for this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me the petition that I asked of him' - underlining the words sha'al from which the name Saul is derived.  Some Hebrew scholars go so far as to say that the story has got displaced.  It was originally not about Samuel's birth at all, but about Saul's, the first of Israel's kings.

Maybe something similar is going on in the New Testament story of the birth of John the Baptist.  In the opening chapter of St Luke's Gospel, where Luke seems to have the story of Samuel in mind, the angel comes to Zechariah when he is on duty in the temple and says to him: ‘Don't be afraid... for your prayer has been heard.  Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you will name him John (meaning ‘gift of God').  You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth.'  I remember how that line once appeared on a Christmas card I was sent, as if it referred to Jesus.  For years I misremembered its true position in the story.  Yet it gave me a clue to the possible original context of the Song of Zechariah, the Benedictus, with its magnificent language about being delivered from our enemies, bringing the knowledge of salvation, giving light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and guiding our feet into the way of peace.  This is what Christ our Saviour brings.  In the narrative, it is not so much the birth of John that is celebrated in the great gospel canticle of matins.  It is the coming of Jesus himself. 

I am saying that the birth of John, the last of the prophets, and of Samuel, the first, mirror each other exactly.  Neither event stands by itself.  Each points forward to something greater that is about to happen.  Samuel is of interest to the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible not for himself, but because he will be the one to inaugurate the era of the monarchy.  He looks forward to Saul, then David and all that he symbolises for Israel.  This is why, perhaps, there is so much play on the name Saul in the stories of Samuel.  In the same way, John the Baptist is of interest to the gospel writers, not for himself, but because he too inaugurates an era in which a king is promised.  This king comes to judge and deliver the world, and invites men and women to become his subjects and embrace his rule.  This is why so much of the salvation language that belongs to Jesus is referred to John.  In the salvation history of both Testaments, events and the language used about them are merged, for in both, promise and fulfilment are one, now and not yet, asking and being heard.

This seems to me to have a particular resonance at this time of year when hopes are high for peace on earth and good will among men: ‘when with the ever-circling years comes round the age of gold' as the carol so delicately and beautifully puts it.  It isn't for the preacher to say that hopes will inevitably be dashed once January inaugurates another circling year and the cold gets colder.  God forbid: if we do nothing else, we must keep hope alive in a world that holds out so little of it.  But one of the ways we do this is by embracing it ourselves, cherishing it, speaking of it, and above all living it out as a life-changing energy and inspiration.  The songs of both Hannah and Zechariah are Magnificats of joy and praise, not because of the reality - yet - but because of the hope.  To say ‘yes' to Jesus is to find a new reason for being alive, a new purpose for doing something noble and worthwhile with life, a new hope to drive our commitment to the God's mission for justice, peace and the integrity of all creation. 

Monarchy, empire and glory must have been a long way from Hannah's mind when she wept tears of frustration in the sanctuary that day.  She simply ‘asked for' a child, but what she ‘asked for' changed Israel's history.  Perhaps it was similar for Zechariah.  How could he have conceived that what took place in the temple would lead to the overturning of the world's history?  How could he have guessed that it pointed to a different kind of monarchy, empire and glory, what our second reading from Revelation describes as a new heaven and a new earth.  For Hannah, for Mary, there was an undreamed, un-glimpsed future enfolded in the divine promise of motherhood.  So much hangs on such a slender thread. 

How can we ever know what our own ‘yes' to God may lead to?  What matters is to say it in humility and hope, entrust the outcome to God, and go on living and working in the best way we can as we bear witness to the promise of what is yet to come.  The name Hannah means ‘grace', and grace means gift.  In this holy season we see the glory of the only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth.  In him, we are truly heard, for he is all that we could ever ask for, the fulfilment of all our hungers and desires.  In him, the thing prayed for does not come short of the prayer, for where expectation meets reality, hope is emptied in delight.   

Durham Cathedral, 23 December 2007.  1 Samuel 1.1-18.