Today’s scripture tells us that Samuel’s birth, indeed his very conception, is remarkable because his mother Hannah, like Sarah before her and like Elizabeth much later, is “barren,” or childless. Being “barren” in a patriarchal society in which women count for little except to bear children puts a woman even more at the mercy of a man.

But Hannah has her husband’s Elkanah’s love in spite of her inability to produce a child, which was supposed to be her primary function and means to honor. Elkanah’s profession of love for Hannah just for herself sounds remarkably modern, and is a glimpse of what marriage is, at its best, in any culture or time. On the other hand, Elkanah’s other wife, Penninah, taunts Hannah mercilessly for being unable to have a child.

The story notes that Elkanah lavishes extra portions on Hannah and clearly loves her better, and one wonders how that makes Penninah feel. Is she without feeling, or, in her own way, suffering, too?

It was probably heartbreaking to Peninnah to feel eclipsed by Hannah in spite of fulfilling the expectations of those around her. Each woman may have felt the system working against her, each in her own way.

Hannah’s pregnancy, an amazing gift from God in response to prayer and promises, is fulfillment and future to all Israel, for Samuel will be the man of God to help Israel establish a monarchy. Then the people would have a leader so that all of them wouldn’t just do what was right in their own eyes, but would be led and accountable to something greater than themselves. And that something would be blessed by God.

For us today, the notion of God’s “ordaining” political leaders is a hard one. Awareness of the past millennia of religious wars and persecutions make many of us wince when political leaders claim they are called by God. But we might also long for our systems of leadership to be worthy of God’s blessing, to be fashioned in such a way that they further our shared ability to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God,” as the prophet Micah said.

At the other end of the power spectrum is a distressed and powerless woman at prayer in the sanctuary at Shiloh. At that time, Shiloh was a very important place of worship, home of the Ark of the Covenant.

So the priest Eli probably had a sense of his own importance and responsibilities, and keeping the order would have been one of them. He wouldn’t want someone to come into the holy place and be odd, or drunk, or disorderly.

But, for Eli, even after he’s assured that Hannah is not drunk, there is something more deeply wrong here. There is a problem for him, an uneasiness, about people going “straight to God’ with their prayers, without the intermediary that Eli represents. To Eli, the normal way of prayer is by means of ritual, incense, and animal sacrifice, a gathering of the community directed by himself, a priest.

And then Hannah shows up. She doesn’t bring a sacrifice, doesn’t ask directions or help or permission from the priest, and simply prays, soaring past all the liturgical conventions of her age, boldly presenting her petition before God without benefit of clergy, in her own words, her own voice, without need for an intermediary.

Since the Reformation, we take private prayer for granted. In church and in our homes, on our deathbeds and in hospital rooms, in swerving cars and at moments of desolation and loneliness, as well as moments of great joy, we too approach God directly with the prayers of our hearts.

What a mysterious and sacred thing it is, then, to encounter one another in worship, not knowing what is in the heart of others, but honoring their prayers and their longings and their pains and their hopes and joys nevertheless. What tragedy, when we don’t!

Finally, in Hannah’s longing prayer, even before it is answered, there is gratitude and generosity, for she promises to receive the child and then turn around and return him to God as a nazirite, that is, one set apart from ordinary life and consecrated to the service of God. That means that she will take the child as soon as he is weaned and leave him there to be raised in the temple rather than staying at home with her.

It is a mystifying act of thanksgiving and gift-giving, because she will lose the very thing she wanted so badly. Gratitude and generosity, then, are things of mystery and grace in every age.

I can’t just leave this story there, though. I can’t because it might not feel like Good News to anyone among us who has prayed for a child and not become a mother or father. It might not feel like Good News to anyone among us who might take away from this story a message that if your heart is pure enough and you pray hard enough you’ll receive what you pray for.
I can’t leave it there because the reverse of that message is that if you pray earnestly and don’t get what you pray for, you must not be worthy enough, or you must not pray hard enough, or maybe God just plain doesn’t care for you. That’s not a message I want to risk anyone taking away from this story.

It’s not a story to define who’s worthy of having prayers answered, or how, indeed, the mystery of prayer works. It’s not about cause and effect.

This story is not meant to be a universal truth in that way. It is meant to let people know what an important figure in Israel’s history Samuel was, by making his birth a miraculous one — a common literary convention of the time. Further, it is meant, I believe, to show in an extravagant way that the appropriate response to blessings is gratitude and generosity.

I still have plenty of questions of my own about prayer and how it works. I don’t have answers to questions about why tragedies happen to some people while others escape them. I don’t understand the role of prayer and faith in healing disease, addiction, violence and hostility, but I believe they do play a role.

So I’m left to fall back on my own experience, on the stories people tell me of their experiences, and finally on my acceptance of God as the Mystery beyond us, within us, and among us. I fall back on the most basic beliefs I have regarding that Mystery.

Briefly stated, they are:
#1. that God is constantly at work in all of creation, including you and me.
#2. that Life is good, and God’s work is always toward wholeness, life, and renewal.
#3. that, therefore, disease is often restrained or reversed, and that faith and prayer can play a part in that restraint or reversal.
#4. that the why and how of how faith and prayer fit into all of this is beyond my understanding.
#5. that my faith is not dependent on understanding, but is a trust in the ultimate goodness of Creation.

So as I come to your hospital room, or your bedside, or sit with you in the agonies of your own particular, personal trials, I can’t give you certainties, but I can share with you my faith. That faith is continually tested as I make my peace with partial understanding and with Mystery. I await further enlightenment, as I trust that all of you do too.

In the meantime, I do know that the proper response to our blessings, many as they are, is gratitude and generosity. Whatever our momentary situation or the situation of the world, we have much for which to give thanks.

That’s where to put our attention and energy, at least for this week. So as we wish everyone we meet a Happy Thanksgiving this week, let’s mean it with our whole hearts, too.
Thanks be to God! Amen.