On your marks...

We are lined up at the starting post. I cast surreptitious glances at the other competitors, checking their postures and assessing who to beat. I feel sick to my stomach, my extremeties are tingling, and the starter gun fires.

I watch my beautiful 5 year old girl trot down the field.

I am a sports mum. The worst kind. The kind that desperately wants her child to win, the kind that seriously considers pulling grotesque faces at the other kids to put them off, the kind that anaylses every race and competition in retrospect to try and improve for the next time.

Luckily, my daughter has no idea.

I think I do a pretty good job of hiding it. When she manages to run a whole race without looking behind her, I cheer and high five. When she slows down at the finish line to let the person behind her catch up, I say what a good friend she is. When she runs into the high jump rope instead of over it, I... ok, I ask her to please please try and jump next time, and she gives me puppy dog eyes and says "but mummy, I did!".

It's not easy being a sports mum to a kid who has no interest or desire to win. She really doesn't care. She quite likes the games, she loves playing with the other kids when she's waiting in line and she seems to have a talent for shot put. But suggest that she may like to beat someone and she'll look at you (ok, at me) like you're crazy. She just doesn't have that killer instinct. Which is just as well really, because she doesn't have any particular talent for it either.

But that's ok. My daughter is extremely gifted in areas that are hard to measure. She is incredibly kind and really cares about other people. She shares her love and possesions equally freely. She has a finely tuned sense of social justice and is beginning to stand up for people who can't stand up for themselves. She happily asked her friends to bring presents for puppies and kittens that don't have any home instead of presents for herself - how many 5 year olds could do that? She loves her baby brother with all her heart and happily (and sometimes unhappily) helps look after him as much as she can. In this mix, does it matter that she can't run or jump as well as the other kids?

No. It doesn't. But I'm still getting Jason to take her to competitions from now on. My blood pressure can't handle it.

Sermon 18-11-12

I strongly suggest you go here
 http://www.textweek.com/yearb/properb28.htm
before reading this one! It makes more sense that way.



We all know by now how much I like stories. I'm a reader. I'm a talker. I like to think I'm a listener. And I believe that every person's story has something to teach us about God and the way God works through peoples lives.
Just as every person has a story, so every person has a family. Not necessarily the incompetent father, happy home-maker mother and 2.3 or 1.8 or however many kids that people like to hold up as an ideal when they are trying to sell us a product or an idea, but a family of origin and often a family of choice. Sometimes these are the same. Sometimes they are not. I realise that my family is an advertisers dream – we have a male and female parent (who are even married!), a male and female child and we are very close to our extended family as well. Of course, our ideality may start to crack a little when people who would like to hold us up as some kind of standard realise that my husband doesn't go to Church, my daughter is a 5 year old feminist, my son wears pink and we are all actively gay friendly.
We are one form of a family, one form that works for us. But not all people have a family that looks like ours. We know functional families who are estranged from their biological parents and dysfunctional ones who should be. We know families with 2 mothers, or one mother, or no father, or 3 fathers. We know families with no children by choice, or many children by accident, or, tragically, no children by circumstances beyond their control. And it was these people who were at the top of my mind and my heart when we read Hannah's story.
It’s curious to see how often in even the Bible (dare one say, in especially the Bible?) the purposes of God somehow move forward not just despite familial dysfunction but sometimes even through it. We’ve got a load of dysfunction coming up in the Samuel story through the shenanigans of Hophni and Phineas—and Eli’s hand-wringing inability to do a blessed thing about it all. But we’ve got nettlesome family issues right in this opening chapter, too.



Hannah was desperate for a child. Many of us will have felt that longing, that feeling that our lives, our hearts, our stories are as of yet incomplete. Added to that yearning was the cruel fact that in ancient Israel a woman's worth lay in her virginity or her motherhood. Without a son, when Hannah's husband died she would be at the mercy of Peninnah, and I'm sure we can well imagine how that mercy would play out. Elkanah also seemed to miss the point – “how could you possibly want a child”, he asks, “when you've got me?”. The Bible doesn't record Hannah's reaction, but I like to think it may have involved violence. Elkanah also seems oblivious to his other wife's constant taunting. Or maybe he thought it shouldn't matter what Peninnah said, after all, Hannah must know she was his favourite!



At first glance, God seems as cruel as Peninnah. Peninnah is obviously cruel with her taunts, yet God seems equally cruel to shut Hannah’s womb. Is God the cause of every barren womb? If we say yes, then it is an easy jump to say God is the cause of every barren and hopeless situation, of every disease and disaster.
I do not believe this. I believe we live in a broken world with several causes of trouble. Some are tied to God’s gift of free will, the consequences of our own choices and/or the consequences of other people’s choices. Some situations are the work of the evil one and some come from the general state of brokenness found in living between Eden and Heaven. It’s consistent with God’s character to bring birth out of barrenness, hope out of hopelessness, but I’m having trouble with the idea of God causing the barrenness to begin with. Was the closing of her womb a special case because God had a special plan? Was it merely a misunderstanding of God’s timing? Did Hannah have to pray in order to nudge God’s memory and resulting action?
This leads to the second difficult question. Why does God answer Hannah’s prayer with a child while so many other prayers for children receive a “no” answer? Is it because she is more faithful? (as seen in her fervent prayers) She doesn’t doubt? (as seen in her attitude change after her encounter with Eli) Is it because of the bargain she makes with God to give the child over to God’s service? In fact the bargain might not be a bargain at all, but rather an illustration of Hannah’s faithfulness since all first born are to be the Lord’s. God does not request anything of her, yet Hannah makes the vow and sees it through. She brings her precious toddler to Eli, a man who has failed miserably in raising his own children.
I know God is not genie awaiting magic words, nor is God’s favor bought with promises or acts of great sacrifice. Yet, I am left with many questions. And I struggle to find a way to make sense of what I read, to bring it in line with my understanding of a life giving God, a Spirit which connects us all and our friend and companion Jesus Christ.
But when we look to Hannah's response, to both her heart wringing trouble and joyous conclusion, maybe this is where we find our God. When Hannah is in need, she doesn't hide from God, or take refuge behind easy platitudes. She doesn't waste time finding the perfect words or making sure she has the right posture to talk to God. She doesn't wait for the Priest to help her or let him regard her as less. She speaks from her heart to the God of her heart, without artifice or posturing. Her words of praise ring out today just as they did thousands of years ago, the praise of a woman's deepest joy being found in the depths of God's compassion.
How often do we remember to give thanks to God? How often do we celebrate the everyday miracles of our lives?
Today, of course, is one of those celebrations. Today we have the privilege of welcoming into God's Church a very special child. Levi's family have heard God calling them to bring Levi to be a part of our family, and we are blessed for it. Like Hannah, this family is praising God in the best way they know how – with joy and thanksgiving, adding an essential chapter in Levi's story, the one that starts with God.
Hanna's story is paired today in the Gospel with Mark 13:1-8 and Jesus’ words about how even the tragedies of life in this world (like wars, rumors of war, and earthquakes) somehow manage to be—in God’s sovereign hands—things that portend the birth of something new and good and not merely the death of all that we have ever known.
That’s good news for all of us who are able to fess up that our own lives are hardly straight lines that always move in the direction of the godly and the good and the pious. Of course, this is no excuse for sloppy living or behaving like a witch such as Peninnah (or for being as foggy as Eli) but it does provide a light of hope that our lives can still be vehicles for good, for the constant working of God.

Let me finish with a story. Morgan Wooten was a basketball coach. He coached at DeMatha High School in the DC area. His teams won 1274 games while losing only 192 times. He was considered by everyone who knew him to be one of the great ones. Well, everyone except his grandson.

Wooten is one of only three high school coaches in the Basketball Hall of Fame. At his induction, he told a story about his grandson's first day of school. The teacher asked Nick, “What's your favorite sport?” “Baseball,” he said.
The teacher knew who Nick's grandfather was. She was surprised, “Not basketball?” Nick said, “Nope. I don't know anybody who knows anything about basketball.”

The teacher was even more surprised, “But Nick, a lot of people think your Grandfather Wooten knows a lot about basketball. Nick snorted and laughed, “Oh no! He doesn’t know anything about basketball. I go to all his games and he never gets to play.”

Sometimes we see God the way Nick saw his grandfather. Because we see the game of life going on and have a hard time seeing the hand of God anywhere in it, we think, “God knows nothing about it,” or, “God cares nothing about it,” or, “God can't do anything about it,” because, after all, we never see God get in the game.

The Scripture readings today talk about the art of having faith in a world gone mad, of seeing God's hand in the wild whirlwind of life around us. They are intended to bring us reassurance of God's love when we go through hard times and God seems to be very far away. So let us pray.

Lord of Hosts, there are so many things we do not understand. Our lack of understanding does not diminish your goodness or your power. Help us to follow you even when the situation is desperate and the way unclear. Build in us a faith that seeks you boldly and honestly, that will persevere in the midst of disrespect and ridicule. Teach us to stand and to defend our faith when others question and misunderstand. You are our only hope and salvation. We need you near. Amen.