I’ve Been Meaning to Ask: Where Does It Hurt?
1 Samuel 1:1-18
June 6, 2021
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/6MEqzTz7ezY
It happened every year. They packed up the family and went to celebrate Thanksgiving. At Shiloh, they went to church where their food was cooked. Some of it was burned up on purpose. That was God’s part. A certain portion went to the priest. The rest was to be enjoyed by the family over the next two days. So when they sat around the table, Elkanah carved the roast that was theirs to share. The tradition in the land was that the oldest son got two helpings, but Elkanah did not keep that tradition. His tradition was to give two helpings to Hannah, who had no sons at all. He made no secret that Hannah was his favorite wife. That understandably angered Peninnah, his not-favorite, other wife.
Year after year, they packed up the family and celebrated Thanksgiving. Year after year, Elkanah carved the roast and gave twice as much to Hannah as to Peninnah. That made Peninnah feel hurt and rejected, so she took it out on Hannah by taunting her. Then Hannah would get upset and lose her appetite for the holiday meal. And Elkanah, in his clueless way, would say “Why are you so upset, Hannah?”
Hannah is a childless woman in a time and place where bearing sons is the total measure of her worth and honor. Elkanah loves her, but he doesn’t seem to understand the depths of her pain and despair. His efforts to help only make things worse.
This pattern goes on, year after year, until Hannah just cannot take it any longer. She leaves the table and goes to the temple to pour her heart out to God.
You probably remember other Biblical women who suffered with infertility. Women like Sarah and Rebekah. In their case, it was Abraham and Isaac, their husbands, who prayed and pleaded with God for a child. But in this story, it is Hannah herself who goes directly to God. It says “she was deeply distressed and she wept bitterly.”
She was broken-hearted and telling God about it. Perhaps she rocked back and forth, perhaps she paced. Either her lips moved in silent prayer, or Eli the priest was hard of hearing and couldn’t hear the words she said. He also did not expect to find a woman praying there. He jumped to the conclusion that she was drunk and told her to stop making a spectacle of herself.
Her pain is mocked by her sister-wife, diminished by her husband and invalidated by her spiritual leader. Perhaps something like that has happened to you. These are the things that teach us to hid our pain, to be ashamed of it. We may even start to believe that it is wrong to feel what we feel and we bury it deeper, which of course, does not heal anything.
Hannah’s pain and hurt is long-lasting. It is about one thing – infertility -- and also about many other things which have become part of its complexity. The writer of 1 Samuel devotes 18 verses to describing her hurt, so I invite us to sit with that for a bit, to recognize that this should be a place where we don’t have to pretend that everything is fine. This is a place where we can be real with each other.
. . .
Many of you will remember Leymah Gbowee. Several years ago we watched the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell. It was about the nonviolent movement of women who played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s devastating, 14-year-long civil war. Leymah Gbowee was a key leader of that movement.
Leymah was the fourth of five daughters. Her name, Leymah means “what about me?” as in “why can’t I conceive a son?”[1] Her name suggests, what her memoir bears out, that there was pain and hurt in her family of origin.
Then when she was 17, her country went to war with itself. She personally endured much of the suffering inherent in war – the terror of enemy soldiers on her street, bullets through her living room, fleeing with her children to a refugee camp. She also managed to get some education during those years and she became a social worker, specializing in trauma counseling.
She became an organizer, organizing women whose voices were never heard in public arenas or private spaces where decisions were made, but who were always the victims of displacement, rape, starvation and other war crimes.
When she met with women, she would write the word NONSENSE on the chalkboard and then cross out the prefix NON. She told that women “Everything we will say in here makes sense. So don’t be afraid to talk. Say what is true for you”
In her book, Mighty Be Our Powers, she describes travelling to a camp for internally displaced people. In an outdoor shelter, fifty women gathered to share their experiences during the war. She called this exercise “Shedding the Weight” because it encouraged the women to divest themselves of the emotional burdens they were carrying. Listening to women unburden themselves was always hard, but on this one day, there were so many stories of violence and shame and grief, so many sobs and wails, that she reached a point where she didn’t think she could take any more.
“We can just stop,” she said. “It’s okay.”
Then a very old woman rose up on her walking stick, “Don’t let us stop!” she said. “The UN brings us food and shelter and clothes, but what you’ve brought is much more valuable. You’ve come to hear the stories from our bellies. Stories that no one else asks us about. Please, don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”[2]
That old woman understood the power of being heard, of sharing your story, of having your pain acknowledged and validated.
That is the power that was healing for Hannah. After she poured out her hurt and pain to God, after Eli the priest finally respectfully acknowledged her, and prayed for her, the text says that she went home and ate and drank and was no longer sad.
There are two pivotal points in Hannah’s story. The first one is in verse 9, when she has carried her shame and despair as long as she can, the text says “Hannah rose.” After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord.
Hannah rose. She did not give up. She did not bury herself in bitterness or continue to lash out at Elkanah and Peninnah. Hannah rose. She got up and took action. With vulnerability and courage, she bears her whole story, her whole self to God.
Rev. James Forbes, former pastor at the Riverside Church, preached a now famous sermon called Hannah Rose. [3] In it, he suggested that anyone looking for a name for a daughter might choose that one – Hannah Rose – for what Hannah did in her hour of distress. There are at least twenty women who bear that name now, including his own grand-daughter.
The first turning point in this story is Hannah’s ability to rise and speak her truth. The second turning point happens in the encounter with Eli. Hurt is shared. Pain is acknowledged. And there is healing.
Where does it hurt? Beloved ones, for some of us, it is an act of faith and real courage to answer that. It requires trust that God is listening, that God cares.
When we stop to name what breaks our hearts, as some of us did this week, we get a glimpse of all that God is holding for us. We see the enormity and the depth of the pain in our families and neighborhoods, in our country and across the world. When we bear witness to the pain of others, when we listen with openness and acceptance, we share their suffering. And sometimes, we may be an instrument of peace and healing. It is one way that we follow the Christ who gives rest to those carrying heavy burdens and binds up the brokenhearted. Thanks be to God.
[1] Leymah Gbowee, with Carol Mithers, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War, (New York, Beast Books, 2011), p. 9
[2] Mighty Be Our Powers, p.121