1 Samuel 1:20-28 and 1 John 4:7-16
New Year is a suitable time to think about dedication and the story of Hannah and Samuel is a story of dedication at its most demanding and difficult.
For the full story we need to look back a bit, a few verses before the passage which we have just heard from the First Book of Samuel. Hannah was the second and childless wife of Elkanah.. Every year she came to Shiloh to make sacrifice and worship the Lord, with Elkanah and his other wife, Peninnah, and her children. At the feast, Penninah taunts Hannah for her childless state. Hannah prays to the Lord and makes a vow that if she bears a son, she will dedicate him to the Lord; “Oh Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look upon the affliction of thy handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thy handmaid, but wilt give unto thy handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.”
In the passage which we heard, she comes to fulfil that vow. It is a harsh story, even allowing for a long weaning, little Samuel must have been sent away from home to live with strangers, even younger than the English upper middle classes were used to send their sons off to boarding school. We are not told much about the home life of Eli and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, and their wives, but they are a bad lot and it doesn’t sound like a welcoming home. If they had any inkling of God’s purpose in sending Samuel to them, that is, to foretell their ruin, their welcome would have been decidedly chilly.
Although told in stark terms the story has little details which add to the poignancy. Although the exact nature of the “ephod” is unknown, but the implication is that it’s an unsuitable garment for a small child. I’m perhaps letting my imagination go, but I think of those tiny prep school children in ludicrously stiff and uncomfortably ill fitting blazers. Doubtless Samuel comes to look forward to his new little coat each year, but one wonders whether he recognises his mother, and, if he does, what he thinks of her. When a child myself, I thought the sleeping arrangements at Shiloh especially creepy. I imagined the temple as our local parish church, full of magnificent (as I now think) recumbent tombs of medieval knights. They were especially gloomy sleeping companions. It was also very cold. Perhaps the amenities at Shiloh were more child friendly. I doubt it.
Appalling though the story is, we should not, however, be too sentimental about little Samuel. We live in an age which thinks itself particularly attuned to the needs of children, or at least generally more sympathetic to them as something other than miniature adults. A rather different attitude in Biblical times is seen in Jesus’ treatment of children; that he placed them first in the Kingdom of Heaven seems natural to us, but was clearly a radical suggestion at the time.
Further, Hannah’s own motivation is not quite as we might want or expect it to be; it is Peninnah’s taunting and her own disgraceful childless state that move her; I find it hard to sympathise wholly with her. Her desire for a son (a daughter won’t do) is unappealing to a western 21st Century mind and then there is Elkanah’s attempt to comfort her: “Why is thy heart grieved? Am I no better to thee than ten sons?” I suppose we can see that wasn’t quite going to do the trick. There remains the profound and disturbing paradox at the centre of the story; why does Hannah vow to give away the very thing she so desires?
We need to read the story in the context of God’s grand plan for his chosen people; Hannah, Samuel, Hophni and Phinehas all have different roles to play in this bigger story. I am not suggesting that they are without responsibility, or self determination, but they do have a destiny, and to a greater or lesser extent an awareness of that destiny. Samuel’s is to be a leader of his people and to bring them kings (against his advice). His youthful experience is training for this. Prophets need to be outsiders, eccentrics who can look into society from different angles. They look, to some degree beyond social structures such as family life and its gamut of emotions; love and jealousy, affection and rebellion. There is no contradiction between God’s great plan for Israel, (and for us), and his reliance on human actors to achieve it, but it may often mean that achieving his purpose makes high demands of our emotions, and indeed runs counter to our deepest instincts.
Perhaps the cruellest element in the story is the most familiar, and from the point of view of the unrolling of Israel’s history, the most important. Samuel’s first task is to tell Eli of his son’s wickedness and the inevitable punishment and destruction waiting for his house. I find it hard to think of a greater emotional burden to lay on a child; we would go to great lengths to avoid such an imposition and yet here, it is the main point of the story. Apparently Eli could only understand the truth about his family’s wickedness, from a child. Stranger still, by the time Samuel does tell Eli, it is too late; Samuel’s message is that no amount of sacrifice can expunge their iniquity.
Of course, Hannah does not know this, nor any of the subsequent history in which her son will play such an important part. Her role is to be obedient to her vow and despite the cost she keeps her promise. Her story foreshadows the story of Mary, the mother of our Lord. They have in common is their acceptance of what God proposes for them. They trust God despite the obvious difficulties, pain, embarrassment and shame which will follow.
Happily, we live in a different world; the nature of the covenant has changed and we are less tempted to bargain with God, although it is often hard not do so. Instead, as John explains in our second reading; God has taken the initiative; God has “first found us” and it is for us to respond to that love. That response may well require some dedication on our part- not I hope as great a sacrifice as Hannah, but surely some sacrifice of our comfortable certainties, some acceptance of the new and strange, so as to enable us to step outside ourselves and see more clearly our position and our place on God’s great plan. And for that we need trust; acceptance that the right path for us is as God chooses and not necessarily what we think the easier or more familiar. Discerning our vocation, or what it is we are to dedicate to God, will always be a mysterious process in which God will be the initiator; our response requires Hannah’s qualities of trust, humility, courage and perseverance.
Amen.