A sermon by Associate Minister Elsa A. Peters, November 15, 2009
1 Samuel 1:4-20
This past weekend, while attending a family reunion, I was asked by each member of my family when I was going to have children. I have no idea why this was the question they asked, but they did. Over and over again, each member of my family asked when I would have a child. Now, I come from a big family with lots of cousins who are all mixed up in each other’s lives but this question seemed so strange. I know that I’m 30. And so, by some standards, it’s time for me to start having kids but it’s not what I want.
I’m not like Hannah. Her entire “prestige was based at least partly on her demonstrated ability to produce offspring.” For too long, this is what it has meant to be a woman. No matter what else we might do, women have been most celebrated for our ability to bear children. Hannah is no different. Of course, there’s a problem. God has closed her womb so Hannah can’t have children. But it’s all she wants. It doesn’t matter how much her husband loves her. She wants a child. Of course, her husband doesn’t get it. When Hannah is most upset, Elkanah asks his wife:
Hannah, why do you weep?
Why do you not eat?
Why is your heart sad?
Am I not more than ten sons?
Now, I’m not married. My worth is not defined by the number the children I may or may not have. But, if any one in my life dared to ask me this question, I would have some harsh words. Don’t you get it? This is what she wants most. This is what Hannah believes will give her life meaning. More than anything, she wants to have a child. She wants to be a mother. This is what she believes will make a sad heart sing.
Isn’t that what we all want? We don’t all want a child but there is something that defines our hope. For some of us, it’s a very personal thing like meeting the love of our life or finding a way through the end of a marriage. For others, those hopes flirt with political ideals of marriage equality and equal access to healthcare. For still others, it’s something else. It’s something that they might never ever share aloud but when that insensitive question comes, the answer rages. Why shouldn’t I weep? Why should I eat? My heart doesn’t sing. My heart is just sad. It hurts so much that it feels as though it might explode.
But, still, it doesn’t come. We don’t get what we want. Our hope is still so far off as is certainly true for Hannah’s hope that God will open her womb. And so, like Hannah, our hope feels lost in legislative vote or an explosion of tears. So, what do you do then? Or as the poet asks: What happens to a dream deferred? In his poem A Dream Deferred, Langston Hughes asks this very question:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
What does happen when our hope doesn’t come? What do we do? How do we survive? We do lots of things. But, if we’re honest, we start with blame. We blame ourselves for being too sensitive. We blame our neighbors that didn’t understand our love. We blame our senators for compromising too much. Or like Hannah, we blame God. Hannah believes this is God’s doing. God has closed her womb so that only God can open it. It’s only God that can make Hannah’s sad heart sing.
So, she strikes a deal. That’s a little cynical, but it is what Hannah does. She promises that she’ll give God her firstborn child in the certain hope that God will offer a “returned blessing of continued fertility,” which by the way, she gets. She has a son. And then, she has some more children – but this isn’t about the children. This isn’t about the lives they will lead or what meaning their lives will have. This is about Hannah. It’s about you. It’s about me. It’s about how we survive our deferred dreams. It’s about how our sad hearts could possibly explode.
That’s what I think happens to Hannah. It’s not exactly that she strikes a deal. Instead, Hannah allows her heart to explode. Instead of drying up like a raisin the sun or festering like a sore, she goes directly to God in the temple and starts muttering her own prayers. This isn’t the accepted religious practice of that time. After all, she comes without a sacrifice to offer. She doesn’t ask the priest to mediate. She ignores conventions and pours out her soul before God.
The priest Eli rebukes her. He accuses her of being drunk. And this is where her heart really sings. Hannah talks back. Respectfully, she corrects Eli. “No, my lord,” she says. She verbalizes to Eli what I can only imagine she was silently praying to God. She’s troubled. She’s upset. But, she won’t dry up. She explodes as she asserts that she is not “a worthless woman.” And though the priest offers her a blessing, she doesn’t need it. She blesses herself reminding the priest that she deserves to find favor too.
Now, I don’t know exactly what this means but I know that I find strength from this woman. She could have simply blamed God. After all, she believed God closed her womb. She could’ve just blamed God and been done with it. But, she doesn’t.
Instead, she tells God the truth. She’s distressed. She’s bitter and it hurts. She doesn’t blame God but dares to ask God to see her misery. And then, somehow she’s able to assert that same truth to another human. It doesn’t just stay between Hannah and God. Instead, this truth-telling affects her relationship with the world. This is how Hannah’s heart sings. No. This is how Hannah’s heart explodes.
But for us, it’s not so certain. The question remains. Will our hearts be sad? Or will they explode?