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Sermon - The Song of Hannah - 19th November 2006
St Alban's Epping 7:00 am, 8:00am & 10:00am
Readings: 1 Samuel 1:4-20, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 Mark 13:1-8
As you have noticed, the psalm for this morning does not come from the Psalter but the First Book of Samuel, following on from the first reading. 1 Samuel 2 begins by telling us that Hannah prayed, but what follows is not just a prayer but also a hymn. Hannah sings! Her song is offered to us as the only appropriate response to her experience of God’s wondrous grace. Hannah’s song is only loosely connected to the narratives that precede and follow it; nevertheless, on several different levels it serves an important role in the opening chapters of 1 Samuel.
First, these verses are a song of praise and thanksgiving by a barren woman whose womb has been opened. There is much in this hymn appropriate as a response by Hannah to the miracle that has issued in the birth of Samuel. Her language is the language of personal praise to God, and Hannah gives praise for “my victory”. The “enemies” she mentions and the references to arrogant and proud speech can be read as references to Peninnah and her taunting of Hannah. She speaks of God’s reversal of fortunes to give the barren one seven children while one with many children is left forlorn. Although Hannah is later recorded as bearing only five more children, her hope for seven (a common number representing completion and fulfilment) is appropriate at this point in the story. She has certainly experienced the reversal wrought by God’s power.
It has long been recognized, however, that the reference of this hymn is broader than the story of Hannah’s barrenness and the birth of Samuel. Many have noted the similarities of language and style to Psalm 113 and other hymns of praise in the Psalter. It may well be that Hannah’s praise has been drawn from a pool of praise known to Israel in its worship traditions. This possibility has led many to treat Hannah’s song as a late addition the text. It functions here as a key text to introduce the whole of the books of Samuel by relating Hannah’s new future to a new future opening up for Israel.
As a result, a second level of meaning for the song of Hannah becomes evident when we recognize that she sings not just as the mother of Samuel but also as a mother of Israel. It is a song that moves from Hannah being exalted to lifting high the horn of God’s anointed. The song suggests hope for the movement of struggling, perishing Israel to established nation, which is the story of the books of Samuel. Hannah’s singing further that Samuel’s birth is tied to the birth of kingship in Israel. Israel’s fortunes, like Hannah’s, can be reversed. Thus the song of Hannah is intended to broaden our horizons beyond that of Hannah’s personal story. Her song speaks of a whole catalogue of reversals that are possible through the power of God: weakness made strength, the lowly made exalted, the hungry filled, the poor made rich, the barren given children. At the end of Hannah’s song, God’s anointed one, the king, is to be understood as the gift of God as surely as was the child whose birth is celebrated at the opening of the song.
The song of Hannah is one of the Bible’s most eloquent voices, testifying to God as the true source of transforming power. Its key line, “For not by might does one prevail”, is needed to be heard in every generation, for it speaks to one of the most perennial of human temptations: the temptation to believe that we can control our own destiny and, perhaps, the course of history as well.
We live in a world that constantly evidences a belief in human might. Militarism, in its modem technological guise, made the twentieth century the bloodiest century of human history, yet it is easier to raise budgets for weapons than for diplomacy. Consumer-driven market realities control our cultural preferences and appetites and elections are influenced more by financial resources than by political ideas. Even at the personal level we live within a culture that worships self-fulfilment and the many programs to achieve it. Even in the church, energy seems too often directed to issues of membership growth, institutional maintenance and popularity of programs than to discernment of what God is doing in the world.
The experience out of which Hannah sings offers hope to Israel and to us that a different reality is at work in the world from what we acknowledge. Hannah’s hope becomes hope for Israel and for us that power is not irrevocably tilted in favour of those the world defines as powerful; definitions that leave many powerless and without hope. Hannah sings of a God whose transforming power can reverse those patterns. She sings of a God who does not accept the world’s power arrangements. She sings of a God whose might is not wielded in a disinterested fashion. God is heavily invested in the welfare of the weak, the powerless, the poor, the hungry, the bereaved, the dispossessed and the barren.
It is not accidental that Israel’s hope for a king is made plane through the experience and the song of a barren woman whose petition has been heard. If God’s transforming power for Israel takes the shape of a king, then Israel’s king cannot be disinterested. Israel’s king must be God’s king, God’s anointed one. The leadership of such a king must reflect the priorities of a God invested in those without power and might by the world’s standards; those the world believes cannot possibly prevail. God’s anointed one must serve the reversals of power about which Hannah sings.
This connection of anointed king to barren woman suggests that leadership in God’s community in every generation cannot be either disinterested or self-serving. Leadership of God’s people must reflect God’s investment in the transformation of social realities that are biased against the weak, the poor and the powerless. The church must identify with those who wait for God’s reversals of grace. It is the surprising shape of God’s power to which Paul points out,
“God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”
The raised horn of those who have been anointed to leadership in the church must be based in the raised horn of those who once were barren but are given new life in God’s grace and power.
For Christians, the melody of Hannah’s song is echoed in the song of Mary, the Magnificat. They enjoy strong similarities of language and theme and both songs celebrate a wondrous birth, enabled by God’s grace. Both songs come before and look to the coming of an anointed one (Messiah), although only Hannah’s song uses this actual word. Both songs see the power of God as transforming power on behalf of the powerless.
Therefore Mary, the mother of Jesus, is part of a long tradition. The mother of the Messiah for the church has an ancestry that includes the mothers of Israel, like Hannah. Many of these mothers, like Hannah and Mary, were singers. Miriam sang of God’s deliverance in Exodus 15. Deborah sang of God’s victory in Judges 5. These mothers were singers of new possibilities. They were singers of new communities and new power arrangements. The songs of mothers remind us that our story as the church is a part of what God has been doing since creation itself, since the first giving of God’s promise to raise up a people. The history of God’s salvation does not originate with Jesus or with the church. The church is a part of the larger activity of God from creation onward. To be the community of Jesus as the Messiah is to be related to a God whose story is always larger than the church’s history. It is to be related to a God whose transforming power on behalf of the powerless does not originate in Jesus Christ but was already known to Hannah and simply finds new expression in the song Mary sings for the church.
“And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my†Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me†blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him†from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his†arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good†things†and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’