In the middle of the night, most of us hope to be sleeping. Some of us are up roaming the floorboards in search of sleep as if we walk a few steps more we might come to a place called sleep. Some of us are caring for someone else: an infant who desires comfort and nourishment, a child unsettled by pain or fear, a teenager or young adult not yet settled back into the nest, a loved one whose mind or body does not allow them to settle into the quiet rhythm of the night.
When I did overnights at the hospital as a chaplain, you find that pain and suffering keep many more awake than that fall asleep easily. More than once, a page came from a distraught nurse looking for someone else to assuage the fears of a patient. In the middle of the night, it seemed that the neatly tied theology of God always present and wanting the best for all, seemed to unravel in the pain of how did that fit my specific self? In the middle of the night, suffering seemed a more constant companion than faith and hope.
I wonder if we might find Hannah pacing the broken ground by the Temple, waiting the morning to call on the name of the Lord in God’s house. I wonder if we will not find Nicodemus pacing his way to Jesus. I wonder if we might not find you…
While the story of Hannah specifically highlights the pain of infertility, her story gives a structure for all who suffer. Hannah appears to be in an enviable position. She is the most loved wife, from her devoted husband. We can assume some wealth and privilege, since she is the first of two wives. From the mention of his family, we hear deep roots in the establishment of Israel. Hannah is given a double portion in times of celebration and doted on. However, even in the midst of apparent success, she is sad of heart. Isn’t this the cause for many: for those who suffer in silence with infertility, for those who suffer with mental health issues, for those who suffer with caring for an ailing parent, spouse, child, friend, for those whose physical health limit them, for those whose loved one is in prison, for those who grief is crippling, for all who appear to wear one face and find themselves wearing another in the comfort of their home.
Hannah’s husband, Elkannah, does what every loving person might seek to do upon finding a friend or spouse, child or parent suffering. Elkannah offers his sympathy in the ‘What’s wrong, dear’ mode? While he is deeply compassionate, we place beside his compassion, Penniah’s painful taunts and the misunderstandings of the priest Eli, who mistakes her earnest prayer for drunk disregard. She has to explain herself, reveal her deepest soul in order to seek a blessing from the priest Eli. Hannah’s suffering seems almost too much to bear.
Hannah sought the Lord’s power to change her life, knowing that while change and redemption was her deepest desire, true comfort and presence from God was deeper than even the good intentions of others. Elkannah’s generosity of spirit does not negate the fear of vulnerability. When Elkannah dies, the sons of Penniah will receive all of his inheritance and Hannah will be destitute. Elkannah’s generosity of spirit does not negate the shame that Hannah experiences from a culture that only has language for women as producers of heirs.
This is not a mere story of prayer applied, solution received. This is the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the Israelites. However, it is a story that begins in suffering, and it is a story that is never far from its suffering. The story of the people of Israel is our story. We are never far from the pain and the suffering that originally afflicted us. The background to Hannah’s personal suffering was wider suffering.
[The rising strength of the Philistines has created a significant external threat. The end of the book of Judges describes a political situation in which the people do what is “right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). In a related crisis, the establishment priests had experienced corruption. It seemed as though political, moral, and religious leadership was in disarray and Israel may not survive this generation. As was the way of the God of Israel, God sought renewal through a specific family, the household of Elkanah and his wives Hannah and Penninah, which does not look promising at first. Instead it resembles Israel: Elkanah comes from a distinguished line, and he is pious according to the order of the day, but the household is marked by internal conflict. Penninah has children, but Hannah, whom Elkanah loves, has none. Like Israel, the household is torn by rivalry. And like Israel, its future,at least through Hannah, is in doubt. Like Israel, it is Hannah’s pain and suffering that she models the faithful response. She is not assuaged by half-hearted efforts to calm her: she rejects her share of sacrifices, refused attempts to be consoled. Hannah presents her case to God! ]
We often refer to pain and suffering in one foul swop. However, they are different. Pain is most specifically acute experiences of distress in the body or the mind. Suffering is to sustain or endure ongoing experiences of pain without an acute origin. Pain seeks a cure; suffering can find redemption.
It is also in the suffering of Nicodemus that we see the movement of God. The existential suffering of one who comes under the cover of night seeking salve for his soul and solutions for his mind. He comes with the questions that dog him. He comes with fear and trembling. He comes to Jesus, without knowing how this will end. In fact, in the portion of the passage, we read, he ends with the thought: “How can these things be?”
Wisdom comes from unusual sources. Vice President Joe Biden, a man acquainted with grief after burying his wife and young daughter at the age of 30 and now preparing to bury his oldest son, says these words about the tenacious nature of suffering and grief as he speaks to families who have just lost a family member through military sacrifice: “Just when you think, ‘Maybe I’m going to make it,’ you’re riding down the road and you pass a field, and you see a flower and it reminds you. Or you hear a tune on the radio. Or you just look up in the night. You know, you think, ‘Maybe I’m not going to make it, man.’ Because you feel at that moment the way you felt the day you got the news. “There will come a day – I promise you, and your parents as well – when the thought of your son or daughter, or your husband or wife, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye,” Biden says. “It will happen.”1 What is rarely reported is the depth of faith from which Vice President Biden speaks. This feels even more tender with the death of his son, yesterday.
[God offers slow and gentle redemption. God offers moments of redemption in the midst of a sea of suffering. Nicodemus goes on to know Jesus deeper and more fully. We see Nicodemus again at the trial of Jesus, reminding his fellow Sanhedrin that the accused (Jesus) must be heard before being judged. Lastly, he offers spice and ointment alongside Joseph of Arimathea at the death and burial of Jesus. Hannah’s story continues in chapter 2 as she praise God in the midst of suffering for God’s faithfulness and revolutionary commitment to the sad of heart, the abandoned, the forsaken. ]
One night, when I was on call at the hospital, I was paged to the room of a double amputee. After painful experiences of war, Ray found it hard to re-enter a peacetime situation. He had spent time in prison and was now under arrest in the hospital as he had yet figured out how a solider was to live in wartimes. He was living with some aggressive bone cancer that produced fantastical pain. The doctors expected he had maybe a few weeks left. We had spoken before and he was rough. In fact, he had thrown me out of his room a few times. But this night, he was looking for someone to keep watch with him through the pain of the early morning hours. He was the first to say he was not a man of faith, it seemed too neat and tidy for him. He was however a man of questions and wonderings. He seemed to me like a Nicodemus that night. Under the cover of night, he found a moment to be able to ask with just a little less venom in his throat, how are you sure that God is with you? As I shared the story of Jesus and the God who suffered with people in pain and suffering, he closed his eyes as like a child who is hearing a storybook for the twelfth night in a row. I would like to think that for just a moment he experienced what Hannah and Nicodemus did and what you and I are blessed to experience the presence of a God who never leaves us, even when we feel absolutely abandoned. The presence of a God who knows the pain and suffering, not because God sends it to us, but because God holds us in the middle of it, rocking us as you rock a feverish child, kissing our foreheads as you gently kiss the head of a loved one who is dying before you, and loving with a love so fierce and gentle, even the uncertain among us feel at home.
This is the Gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/30/8693325/joe-biden-beau/in/8456948
Old Testament Lesson: 1 Samuel 1
Samuel’s Birth and Dedication
There was a certain man of Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.
Now this man used to go up year by year from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though then Lord had closed her womb. Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. Her husband Elkanah said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?”
After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. She made this vow: “O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.”
As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.” But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before theLord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” Then Eli answered, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.” And she said, “Let your servant find favor in your sight.” Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.
They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, “I have asked him of the Lord.”
The man Elkanah and all his household went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice, and to pay his vow. But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, “As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, that he may appear in the presence of the Lord, and remain there forever; I will offer him as a nazirite for all time.” Her husband Elkanah said to her, “Do what seems best to you, wait until you have weaned him; only—may the Lord establish his word.” So the woman remained and nursed her son, until she weaned him. When she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine. She brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh; and the child was young. Then they slaughtered the bull, and they brought the child to Eli. And she said, “Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed; and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.”
She left him there for the Lord.
Gospel Lesson: John 3:1-9
Nicodemus Visits Jesus
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”