"Light, Salvation, Glory...and a Sword?"

Preached Sunday, December 28, 2014 at Gregory Memorial Presbyterian Church in Prince George, VA

Text: Luke 2:22-40

Merry Christmas! Christ is born! Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad! "Glad tidings of comfort and joy,” “Peace on earth and goodwill to all people!” The songs the angels sing are still echoing in our hearts and world as we gather for worship this morning. For these last four weeks of Advent, we've been singing "O come O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel," and at long last, Emmanuel has come!

In our text today from Luke, we meet two faithful saints who have been waiting and crying out for Emmanuel alongside us. We meet the prophet Anna - a widow who lives in the Temple and spends her days and nights worshiping, fasting, and praying in anticipation of the redemption of Jerusalem. And we meet Simeon, a "righteous and devout" man who Luke tells us has been awaiting the "consolation of Israel".

That consolation that he has been waiting for takes on flesh and blood in the little child in the manger - Jesus Christ. The consolation for which Simeon has been waiting is the salvation that God promised through the prophet Isaiah. You remember, don't you, the opening words of Handel's Messiah? "Comfort, comfort ye my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term...every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill be made low?" I'll stop before I start singing. But the point is, we've all been waiting for the same salvation. And in our text today, in the dimming light of his old age, Simeon sees that the promise is fulfilled.

And, as often happens in the Bible, especially in Luke's Gospel, this glorious moment causes Simeon to burst into song! "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."

Mary and Joseph are amazed, and perhaps we are as well, that Simeon can say so much about a little baby. And then Simeon turns to Mary, looks into her eyes, and continues his prophecy: "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed, so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too."

When I hear these words - I can't help it - a very clear image pops into my head. You may be familiar with it too. I think of "Debbie Downer," Rachel Dratch's famous Saturday Night Live character. The one who always interrupts a good time with a reminder of some deadly disease, world tragedy, horrific event from her past. I picture Debbie Downer listening as Simeon is singing about his joy at witnessing the Christ child: she steps in, throws a look at Mary, and says, "Yeah...this one...let me tell you, a sword will pierce your soul!" Wah-wah

It doesn't really seem fair, does it? Why, just after we finally get a glimpse of the manger, do we have to already look toward the cross? Our refrains of "Hark the Herald Angels Sings" are still echoing in the background when Simeon steps in and reminds us of the grief of Good Friday. Really, Simeon? Wah-wah.

Then again, I don't know, maybe I understand where Simeon is coming from. Maybe you do, too. Even amidst the joy of Christmas, it's hard for us to forget for too long that we live in a broken world. We need only turn on the news and hear about the deaths of black men like Michael Brown and Eric Garner, or of the two New York police officers recently murdered, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, or the terrorist attack on a school in Pakistan that killed 132 children. Our world knows what it means to have a sword pierce our soul.

Or maybe we don't even have to turn on the TV to remember those swords. For some of us, many of us, perhaps all we have to do is open our eyes and breathe in the courage to face another day, to remember the pain and the grief in our lives and the lives of those around us. There is a sadness, a darkness to life that can penetrate even our moments of greatest joy, celebration, and blessing.

I'm new to this place, a guest in your house of worship, but I have to look no further than the list of prayers and concerns, and to imagine the many more unspoken prayers in this room, to know that your souls, too, have been pierced.

Even as we stand around the manger and rejoice, we are people who have seen the cross who know what it means, like Mary, to weep outside of the tomb. Indeed, a sword will pierce Mary's soul, a sword that Biblical scholar Fred Craddock calls that "reversal of nature which carries in it a pain unlike any other": a mother will bury her child.

If you ask me, though, I think that sword may have begun to pierce Mary's soul long before that. Just a few chapters after we hear Simeon's prophecy, Luke's readers hear Jesus inaugurate his public ministry at a synagogue in his hometown, Nazareth. And they very people among whom he grew up will get so angry that they'll try to push him off a cliff.

Even before the cross, even before Jesus' passion and death, a sword will pierce Mary's soul as she watches her son grow and live into his call - his greater purpose as the Messiah, the Son of God - the one who will bring salvation by turning the world as we know it upside down.

Truth be told, if we listen closely to our text this morning, we can see that this little baby starts turning everything upside down even before Simeon tells Mary about that sword. Did you hear it, earlier in the text? It's easy to miss, to be sure.

But Simeon's prophecy about what it means that the Christ child has come into the world already begins to hint at this soul-piercing, topsy-turvy reality, this world turned upside down. When Simeon describes Jesus as God's salvation, he calls him, "a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."

It may not sound like a big deal to us as Christians two thousand years later, but the order in which Simeon names these two parts of Jesus' mission - a light of revelation to the Gentiles and then glory for Israel - is actually rather subversive.

This reversal of the usual order would have been jarring and unsettling to Luke's first-century readers. Simeon, after all, is described as one of the most faithful of the Jewish people - the long-suffering people of God who have waited for and anticipated the Messiah for hundreds of years! And the Gentiles? That would include the Roman occupiers, wouldn't it? When those first-century Jewish people like Simeon, Anna, Mary, and Joseph, were crying out for Emmanuel to come and ransom captive Israel - well, they meant that word "captive" quite literally. By the time Luke put his Gospel into writing, the Jewish Temple in which this whole story takes place has been utterly destroyed by the Romans. And yet, here we have Simeon, rejoicing that this little baby has come as salvation and light for the Gentiles?

And we know, looking forward, that this little child Jesus will grow up and go on to cross many other social, religious, and political boundaries that will make everyone around him uncomfortable - and eventually lead to his crucifixion. He'll touch lepers, befriend Samaritans, sit down to eat with sinners of all kinds, extend salvation even to exploitative tax collectors like Zacchaeus and the criminal hanging next to him on the cross as he dies.

This salvation that Jesus brings is in no way "decent and in order." It crosses lines we've been told not to cross. It upsets a status quo that we've come to believe is just the way things are - and always will be. It messes with our assumptions of who is "in" and who is "out".

We still struggle with this today, don't we? The question of who is "in" and who is "out". Of how salvation is supposed to look and feel - and how it actually does.

I feel like I witness this struggle every time I open my eyes and look around. I think of the varied reactions across our nation to President Obama's recent executive order redefining the boundaries of who is "in" and who is "out" when it comes to undocumented immigrants. Or our own Presbyterian Church's continuing debate of what "in" and "out" means for LGBTQ people in the Church. Or the deep-seated racism and distrust that still exists in our communities, that we have seen erupt into protests in recent months. Or the places in our own individual lives where the Gospel works in a way that unsettles us, offends us, turns things upside down.

Sometimes, the sword that pierces our souls is one of grief and pain that the world into which God as Christ has come to dwell in human form remains so broken. Other times, that sword is one of discomfort - even anger - at the way that our God has chosen to save God's world and God's people - every last one of us - by turning the world as we know it upside down.

Jesus brings salvation and a sword; both are true, and that's ok. In the words, again, of Fred Craddock, "As much as we may wish to join the name of Jesus only to the positive, satisfying, and blessed in life, the inescapable fact is that anyone who turns on light creates shadows." Sometimes those shadows are places of deep pain, grief, and loneliness. And sometimes, the light of Christ shines on parts of our world and ourselves that we would rather not see.

I think the good news is that the angels keep singing. Christmas comes again, Christ comes again, every year - every day, really - into our broken world. Even as we experience grief and pain in our own lives, we still sing "Joy to the World", "Love has come!", "O tidings of comfort and joy!" Even as we look around us at a world that knows little peace, we hear those angels out in the shepherd's field, singing, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth, goodwill to all people."

Maybe it's naive...escapist...a refusal to acknowledge the painful realities of life. Or maybe...it's a taste of salvation. The taste that caused Simeon to burst into song: "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation!" Maybe it's how salvation begins, how Christ comes to us even "beneath life's crushing load" of our pain and grief; even in our suffering, violence-stricken world. Regardless, wherever we find ourselves, those angels never do seem to stop singing.

So rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.

"Together at the Table"

Preached February 2014 before being examined by the Presbytery of the James in Richmond, VA

Text: Romans 14:1-17

Things are always more complicated when we have to sit down together at the table.

I imagine many of us can picture the scenario. A family can be happy and well-functioning 364 days a year, but when multiple generations of parents and children, aunts and uncles, maybe even an in-law or two, sit down for Christmas dinner, things start to change. To be sure, a family dinner can be a time of genuine fellowship. But sometimes, when we all sit down together, the arguments slip in before we even realize it's happening. Perhaps the conversation wanders to politics or religion, to what on earth Sarah plans on doing with her art history degree, or to why Ed got remarried so soon after his divorce. Sparks fly, and before we know it, what started as a joyful shared meal is reduced to shouts, anger, and tears. Things are always more complicated when we have to sit down together at the table.

In our text this afternoon, the Apostle Paul is seeking to address just that: a time of table fellowship gone horribly awry. For the Christians to whom Paul is writing, the argument this time is about the contents of the meal itself - specifically, whether or not Christians gathered together should eat meat. Now we don't know exactly what it is about eating meat or not eating meat that has the Roman Christians at odds, but from what we know of early Christianity - and from what Paul writes in his other letters - we can make some guesses. We know that the first generations of Christians faced the challenge of bringing together into community people who came from both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds. The Jewish Christians, who knew the God revealed in Jesus Christ to be the same God who established the covenant with their ancestors and who gave them the Law, had to wrestle with the question of what their new life in Christ meant for their relationship to that Law and that heritage, just as the Gentile Christians wrestled with what calling Jesus "Lord" meant for their relationship with their Roman culture and religion. And between these groups, it seems that food was a sticking point.

Paul doesn't explicitly say it in our text today, but in his first letter to the Corinthians, he deals with a similar debate that had to do with meat that had been sacrificed to pagan gods. In Paul's time, you could pretty fairly assume that any meat you bought in the market had been part of such a sacrifice. And for a Christian, that might constitute idolatry. One group, which Paul calls "the strong," had no problem eating this sacrificed meat since, as Christians, they knew there was only one God and that the pagan gods to whom this meat might have been sacrificed didn't exist in the first place. But others, the group Paul calls "the weak," believed that eating such meat was engaging in the very act of idolatry, worshiping a God other than the one revealed in Jesus Christ. Eating this meat disturbed their consciences and violated their very Christian faith.

For us today, this debate may sound rather arbitrary, but for the early Christians, it was a real point of contention. It was disrupting their worship and their fellowship. When they gathered for shared meals, as Paul tells us, the weak passed judgment on the strong, and the strong despised the weak. Sacred table fellowship devolved into name-calling and contempt.

Brothers and sisters in Christ despising and judging one another over the way we live out the Christian faith. We in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) today know something about this, don't we? Whether it's over ordination standards, or questions of theology, or the social witness positions our church takes, Presbyterians of good faith regularly find themselves on different sides of issues of conscience. And to be sure, we're not the first ones. People of good faith being divided over issues of conscience is a problem as old as Christianity itself.

It's interesting, then, that in this text, Paul spends very little time worrying about who is right in the debate. Sure, he identifies himself as one of the "strong" - one of those who does eat meat. But he remains remarkably unconcerned about teaching doctrine, about who has the right answer. He is much more concerned with how they, with how we, treat one another and live together in community in the process of disagreement. Paul tells them not to despise and judge one another but to welcome one another into community, because God has first welcomed them. He admonishes them not to injure or put stumbling blocks before the consciences of their brothers and sisters, for when they do so, they are no longer walking in love. Paul reminds them, and he reminds us, that those brothers and sisters with whom we are fighting are people for whom our Lord Jesus Christ died.

Things are always more complicated when we have to sit down together at the table.

We know that this radical welcome and love that Paul advocates is not easy to practice, and it bears mentioning that Paul himself does not always take his own advice. For example, what happens to this call for Christian welcome when we turn to Paul's letter to the Galatians? There we hear his enraged and impassioned argument against those who believe that Gentile Christians must first be circumcised and observe Torah regulations. He calls his opponents false teachers, claims they preach a false gospel. In Philippians, he calls them "evil workers" and "dogs". (In a moment of particular fury in his letter to the Galatians, he scrawls out, and-I-quote, "I wish that those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!")

Or what about I Corinthians 6, when he insists that the readers expel from the community a man who has been sleeping with his mother-in-law? What has become here of Christian welcome and unity despite disagreement over moral behavior?

The traditional explanation, I imagine, is familiar to many of us. As the argument goes, Paul focuses on acceptance in the face of disagreement in passages like Romans 14 because this matter of eating meat is among the "things indifferent," a "non-essential" to what Paul understands to be the heart of Christianity. On the other hand, on essential matters - like justification by grace through faith, or how one's new life in Christ affects his or her moral behavior, Paul has much more to say about who is right and who is wrong.

Many of us here today would likely agree with Paul that what we eat is not essential to our faith. But for the people to whom Paul was writing, it was hardly a ‘thing indifferent,' or a non-essential. It was a fundamental question of whether or not they were being faithful Christian disciples! It was a Second Commandment issue. Were they practicing idolatry by eating this meat? If, as many Biblical scholars and Christian historians believe, the earliest confession of faith was simply, "Jesus is Lord," then eating meat sacrificed to idols - or even to Caesar himself! - felt for some of these Christians like confessing ultimate devotion to a lord other than their Lord, Jesus Christ.

These Roman Christians were wrestling with an issue of conscience that addressed a fundamental question of their worship, their witness, and their salvation. And aren't we wrestling with the same? I've heard many in the Church say that it's time for us to stop fighting about these non-essentials and get back to focusing on 'what really matters.' But I think to say that is to miss the deep and fundamental way that many of the questions we're wrestling with touch on the very core of our faith. Our questions about theology, and Christian practice, and ordination standards, and so many other things delve into what we believe about who God is, who God has created us to be, and how we are to live as Christ's faithful disciples.

And you know, if I understand what's going on in Romans 14, I don’t think Paul misses that. Paul is not only a preacher and a theologian; he's also a pastor. Before he writes this letter to the Romans, he has spent years preaching, teaching, and living in Christian communities that were wrestling with other issues that were vitally important in their own contexts. He listened to the pain and fear of the Thessalonians as they worried about what would happen to those Christians who had died before Christ returned. He counseled the Corinthians on everything from marriage and sex to death and resurrection to how to deal with abuses of the Lord's Supper. He wrestled with the Galatians' question of the relationship of Christianity to circumcision and the Law.

So when we hear Paul’s words in our text today, I don't think what we're hearing is simply an overly hopeful, naïve vision of what Christian community should look like. No, I think Paul knows just how difficult his teachings about “welcoming our brothers and sisters” and “walking in love” with the people we disagree with really are. And yet, out of his tireless work in the midst of conflict, fully aware of the blood, sweat, and tears involved in working out what it means to be a Christian community, this is what Paul tells us. Welcome one another. Walk in love with one another. Do not cause your brother or sister to fall.

I don't claim to know the answers to our present struggles as a Church - far from it. But I can say this with full assurance of faith: we are called to keep coming back to the table. For as Paul reminds us, "We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." As our own Brief Statement of Faith puts it it, "In life and death, we belong to God." And in this community of faith, if we belong to God, we also belong, in part, to one another.

Things are always more complicated when we have to sit down together at the table. Let's do it anyway.

"Bearing Fruit Worthy of Repentance"

Preached Ash Wednesday, February 13, 2013, at Union Presbyterian Seminary and First Presbyterian Church in Richmond, VA.

Texts: Isaiah 55:1-13

          Luke 3:1-22

[Pouring water from a pitcher into the baptismal font] Each time we gather here for worship, the waters of our baptism are before us. In these waters, we are sealed in the new covenant of Jesus Christ. Our sins are washed away as we acknowledge that we have been loved and claimed by the God who knows our name before we can say God's name. In these waters, the Holy Spirit empowers us to live as disciples of Jesus Christ - to die daily to our sins and to rise again with Christ to righteousness and to new life.

Our Gospel lesson this evening reminds us that Jesus, too, passed through the waters of baptism. Luke tells us about John, the one who prepared the way for Jesus, baptizing and preaching to the crowds. The one who baptized Jesus himself. John "went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." And to be sure, John minces no words in his call to repentance. I think it's safe to say that most of us are grateful that when we celebrate a baptism here at First Pres, we do not begin by addressing the congregation, "You brood of vipers!" 

Yes, John is a prophet: He calls it like he sees it, and he is concerned - very concerned with repentance. Certainly repentance is something that we associate with baptism. We ask the one being baptized, or the parents, if we baptize an infant, to renounce evil and affirm their reliance on God's grace. Furthermore, each week, all of us gathered for worship confess our sins together and turn to God for forgiveness. But this concept of repentance can make us a little uncomfortable, can't it? Perhaps it's our Presbyterian heritage showing through, proclaiming that it is God's grace that saves us, nothing of ourselves. Perhaps "repent" is a word we hear too often from street preachers as part of their doomsday proclamations. Still, we can't deny that living into our baptism, living as disciples of Jesus Christ, involves this uncomfortable word - repentance.

John's listeners, though, understand the urgency of this call. They ask him, "What then should we do?" In John's time, repentance could mean putting on the clothes of mourning - sackcloth and ashes - ashes like those we will receive today. It could mean offering sacrifices for atonement and restoration. It could mean a sincere confession of sin. But John has a larger, more holistic idea of repentance. For John, repentance has to do with a change of lifestyle. He tells the crowds, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none." To the tax collectors, he says, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." To the soldiers, he says, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

John gives real, practical advice on how to live a life that bears fruit worthy of repentance. Care for those around you by sharing whatever you have that goes above and beyond what is necessary for survival. Whatever your profession, go about your work in a way that does not exploit other people for your own lifestyle or personal gain.

Certainly as twenty-first-century Christians, our understanding of baptism is different from that of John - a first-century Jew. In our own baptisms, we look back not to John, but to Jesus. But in John's call to repentance, don't we also hear Jesus' call to discipleship, to new life in the covenant community? God claims us in baptism by God's grace alone - and yet, we can also feel the way the Gospel claims our lives, the way that, as disciples, we are new people, people who have died and risen with Jesus Christ and cannot live the same way anymore. 

And it is water - this ordinary substance of our daily lives - that John used and that we still use today in the sacrament of baptism. A day does not pass that we do not see water: water from the faucet to drink, water falling from the skies as rain, the water in which we bathe, or the waters of the lakes, streams, oceans, that make life on earth possible. Water is an ordinary substance, but it is also the substance upon which our life depends. A human cannot live more than 3 days without water. Water makes it possible for us to grow crops for food; it allows ecosystems to develop and thrive. As we have begun to explore other planets in our solar system, what have we looked for but signs of water to indicate to us whether life may have been possible on that planet? Water is an appropriate symbol for baptism because water truly is life. 

This January, I had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala to learn from Guatemalan brothers and sisters about Christ's work and ministry in their context. Guatemala has had a troubled history as they have tried to shake off the shackles of colonialism and grow into their identity as a nation. Though Guatemala officially won independence from Spain in 1821, the power structure established in colonial times changed very little in the following 150 years. In the 1950s, troubles came to a head when the CIA, fearing for US business interests in Guatemala, orchestrated a military coup to overthrow the elected president. What followed was a 30-year civil war that killed over 300,000 people. Peace Accords were signed in 1996, but the culture of violence and inequality persists. People still disappear and are murdered daily, and the poverty that existed before the civil war has only gotten worse.

In the midst of this context, our group met with an organization called COPAI, the Commission on Peace and Ecology, located in the mountain town of San Marcos. COPAI started as a social ministry of the local Catholic Church in 2003, when the Guatemalan Government gave the transnational corporation Gold Corp the license to open a mine in San Marcos. Gold Corp built the mine on land where many Maya indigenous campesinos lived and farmed, and yet they had no say in the matter. In a technicality that struck our group as incredibly exploitative, we learned that while the Maya people own the land, the government claims to own subsoil and any resources found there. They can give the land to mining corporations as they please. 

The people at COPAI explained to us that the campesinos living in the area are not opposed to giving up some of their land to the mines, but they want enough land to survive, and they want the integrity of the earth and of their own lives to be protected. But you see, mining corporations like Gold Corp aren't required to follow any environmental regulations, so the waste from the mining projects flows into the residents' water, contaminating their drinking water, their crops, and their livestock. COPAI has established labs to monitor the quality of the water. Even just 1 year after the mine opened, they were finding dangerous quantities of lead, other heavy metals, and cyanide.

As I listened to these stories of the contamination of San Marcos' waters, I couldn't help but think about other waters, these waters [gesture to the font], the waters through which God claims us in baptism. And what happens when we pollute these waters? [Sprinkle ash/dirt into the font throughout the next several sentences.] When we think of sin, of the ways we are impure, unholy, defiled before God, I imagine most of us tend to think in spiritual terms. Perhaps we think of our spirits being darkened, our souls bearing black marks or spots. But as we talked with the people at COPAI, one man, let's call him Andrés, stood up and reminded us that water is God's gift of life - physical life. Water is the substance on which our physical and our spiritual lives depend. He looked us in the eye and asked us - how can we pollute and privatize God's precious gift of life abundant? [Raise a pitcher of the dirty baptismal water before the congregation.]

John the Baptist tells us to bear fruit worthy of the repentance expressed in our baptism. Andrés gave me a glimpse of what the fruit of repentance might look like. A member of our group asked him what we, a visiting group from the United States, could do to accompany COPAI and the people of San Marcos in their ministry and their struggle. He told us, "You are our prophets. Tell our story. Announce the good news of the abundant life God has given us and denounce that which limits abundance to only one group of people." Andrés' words sound to me a lot like John the Baptist's description of repentance. He called us to participate in God's Kingdom of abundant life for all by sharing what we have with our neighbors and by not profiting ourselves through the exploitation and oppression of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

"Ho," calls the Prophet Isaiah, "Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters! And you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." It's appropriate, isn't it, that again it is water that Isaiah uses as an image of God's salvation. Water is a universal need, and we understand this just as well as the ancient Israelites, as John the Baptist's audience, and as the campesinos of San Marcos. This water is the very symbol of the abundant life God gives us. Yet how can anyone come to the waters, if we have filled them with toxic waste?

When we are baptized into the new covenant of Jesus Christ, we enter into covenant relationship not only with God, but also with one another. Through our baptism we are joined with believers in all times and places. Not only here in Richmond, VA, but also in San Marcos, Guatemala. We are bound in covenant relationship with people we'll never know from places we've never heard of. And as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to love them as ourselves.

This kind of living requires great trust in God's Word and God's claim on our lives. It requires that we repent - that we turn from our sin, from ourselves, and rely on God's grace for a new future. It requires that we change live so that we might bear fruit worthy of repentance. 

So will we? As we come forward and receive the imposition of ashes this evening, will we announce God's abundance and denounce those who would keep it all to themselves? Will we see the world around us through the lens of our faith in Jesus Christ, and will we respond accordingly? Will we listen to the voices of our brothers and sisters from around the world about the way our actions and decisions affect their daily lives? Will we live in such a way that people can see we belong to a covenant community?

God has called us, claimed us, and washed us clean in the waters of our baptism. Will we now bear fruit worthy of our repentance?

"Change-the-World Chili"

Preached November 25, 2012 at Ashland Presbyterian Church in Ashland, VA

Text: I Samuel 1:1-20

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of our liturgical year. Next week, we'll begin the process anew with the familiar season of Advent, with its candles and familiar carols. But today, we anticipate Christ's glorious return and celebrate the salvation that God has prepared for all people since the beginning of time. It's the big picture - it's the salvation story. But this morning, I'd like to invite you to look at our salvation story on a slightly smaller scale. I'd like to invite us to experience salvation through the eyes of Hannah.

When we come to this text, we encounter Israel in trouble. God has brought the Hebrew people out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the Promised Land, but recently, things haven't gone exactly as they had hoped. The Philistines and the other nations surrounding Israel are pressing in on them, threatening their safety and security. What's more, these nations are tempting the Israelites to reject the one true God of their ancestors, the God who brought them out of Egypt, and instead to worship idols, the false gods of other nations. This political and theological confusion has caused internal divisions among the twelve tribes of Israel and has led them to the brink of civil war. The very people who are called to be God's chosen ones, the nation through whom all nations of the earth will be blessed, have engaged in the brutalities of pillaging, rape, and murder, even among their own people. The Book of Judges chronicles these horrors, always repeating a single refrain: "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes." Without any form of long-term, concrete leadership, Israel can only envision a future characterized by suffering.

In the midst of this chaotic scene, we meet Hannah. We aren't told too much about her, but we learn enough to know that she, too, is in the midst of great suffering, is wondering why God has forgotten her. You see, Hannah is married, but she has no children. And in the patriarchal culture of ancient Israel, where women were valued primarily because of their ability to give birth, to bring new life, to continue the family line, barrenness was one of the worst fates a woman could suffer. And Hannah's barrenness is not just a physical problem - it's a theological problem. "The Lord," the text tells us, had "closed Hannah's womb." It's not just that Hannah's people look down on her, it's not just that she has to endure the taunting of her rival wife Peninnah. There is a sense in which Hannah feels that her very God has rejected her. 

And nothing, for Hannah, can overcome that rejection. Not the love that her husband has for her, not the preferential treatment that he shows her in giving her a double portion of the offering. None of these things can satisfy, can deliver her from her distress.

For Israel and for Hannah, the situation seems hopeless. Hannah is loved by her husband Elkanah, Israel is loved and chosen by God, and yet, suffering remains. What happens to change things, then, to turn this story of suffering into a story of salvation? The answer is surprisingly simple: Hannah prays.  

          

Her prayer is one of desperation, one of deep, deep need. She weeps bitterly, and when Eli confronts her, she describes herself as a woman deeply troubled. The text tells us she pours out her very soul before the Lord.

And at the same time, Hannah's prayer is incredibly bold. You see, there are in fact two ways to interpret that phrase that Hannah uses to describe herself to Eli, the one that in the NRSV reads, "a woman deeply troubled." It can also mean someone who is stubborn, obstinate, persistent -- someone who will not take no for an answer.

Desperate and bold, Hannah has the faith and the courage to believe and demand that the God of Israel, the mighty Lord of Hosts, will come to the aid of someone in such a broken and lowly state. She prays in the conviction that her God is deeply invested in the salvation of those who are hurting and at the bottom of the social pyramid.

And God hears Hannah's prayer, God remembers her, and salvation comes as an answer to this prayer. Salvation not just for Hannah, but also for the whole of Israel. Hannah the barren one conceives and bears a son. But in the grand story of Israel, it is not just any son that Hannah bears. Hannah gives birth to the beginnings of deliverance. She gives birth to the new beginnings of God's salvation.

In Hannah's prayer, the private becomes public, the individual becomes communal, the personal becomes political. For you see, this child born to Hannah will be a very special child indeed. Her son Samuel will hear the call of God while he is still a child. He will become a great prophet, and he will rule as a judge over Israel in righteousness and in accordance with God's commands. He will be the prophet who initiates the monarchy. And finally, Samuel will anoint King David, the greatest king of Israel, who will deliver his people from their marginal status. In King David, Israel will experience a taste of God's salvation, just as Hannah did in the conception and birth of her son.

In a quite literal way, then, it is Hannah's prayer that gives birth to the beginning of Israel's monarchy. The glory and joy of Israel united under King David begins in the bold and desperate prayer of a humble woman in despair.

And maybe, after all, this is how salvation begins. In the small things, in the mustard seeds of our lives. A child is born when everyone believes it is no longer possible, hope is kindled, the Kingdom breaks in, and salvation begins anew. Hannah teaches us about the things that make for salvation. The little, ordinary, seemingly insignificant things that are infused with divine purpose.

Some of you may have heard of David Lamotte, a Presbyterian folk-singer and an advocate for justice and peace. When David speaks about advocacy and peacemaking, about being disciples of Christ, he likes to tell the story of Rosa Parks. Many people look back at Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat as a beginning of sorts. It was, after all, a watershed moment, an action that launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott and gave a public face to the Civil Rights Movement. But David invites us to look a little further back in the story. Before Rosa made history that day on the bus, she had been secretary of the Montgomery NAACP for 12 years. And in fact, it was her husband, Raymond Parks, who brought her to her first NAACP meeting. And then, taking even another step back, David asks how did Raymond get involved in the movement? 

Using a bit of imagination and artistic license, David likes to speculate that Rosa's husband was invited to his first NAACP meeting by a friend and colleague at work.

"Come on," his friend said to him, "Come with me to the meeting tonight. There's good work being done there. I think you're gonna wanna be a part of this."

"Man, I don't know," said Rosa's husband. "I'm tired; it's been a long day. I gotta find something to eat and get to bed. I'm working the early shift in the morning."

But Raymond Parks' friend was persistent. "You lookin' for something to eat? Listen, my wife's making chili and bringing a big batch to the meeting for supper. Come with me tonight -- we'll make sure you don't go to bed hungry. I'm telling you, my wife makes some darn good chili..."

And so, as David imagines the story, Rosa Parks' brave and fateful act of civil disobedience on that bus in Montgomery traces itself all the way back to a bowl of chili prepared by a woman whose name we'll never know. What resulted was the Civil Rights Movement - an immense experience of salvation on both the personal and political level. And it began with a simple bowl of change-the-world-chili.

A bowl of chili. A mustard seed. The birth of a long-awaited child. These are the things by which salvation, day by day, takes hold of our lives. Hannah's prayer was answered. Rosa Parks' bold act of civil disobedience paid off, in the long run.

But of course, we know of prayers that aren't answered. We know of times when people stand up for justice, for faith, for doing the right thing, and it seems that their hard work, that our hard work is in vain. Not all prayers, it seems, are answered. We know that. And you know, I think Hannah knew that. But she kept praying, and through her example, she teaches us to keep praying. For Hannah knew, and we confess, that the same world that contains tears and brokenness, death and suffering, is the world into which our Lord Jesus Christ came, fully human, to be present with us, and to suffer alongside us.

Yes, it's fitting that on Christ the King Sunday we hear Hannah's story. For the salvation that her simple prayer brings does not end with King David and the glory of the Kingdom of Israel. We know that King David is ancestor to none other than the one we call Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As we look today toward the great completion of the salvation of the world, we remember the simple things - as simple as a desperate woman's prayer, or a meal offered in hospitality - that anticipated this salvation and set it into motion.

Perhaps today, when we anticipate Jesus' glorious and triumphant return, it is most fitting to hear stories like Hannah's. For the one who today comes with clouds descending is the same one who, as we will begin to anticipate next week, was born in a lowly stable and laid in a manger. 

This, my friends, is the good news. We worship a God who answers the prayers of the lowly. Who enacts the political in the personal, who works out salvation in the smallest of moments. And we are invited to take part in this great salvation story, just like Hannah and so many of our mothers and fathers in the faith. For surely we, even we, can fix up a bowl of change-the-world-chili!