November 15, 2009: BLESSING IN ABUNDANCE
1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10
Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church
Conventional wisdom these days is that you don’t have the pastor do the “ask.” Churches all over the presbytery this season have invited guest preachers to preach about stewardship and to then talk the congregation through filling out their pledge cards. We’ve done that, asking both Jim Belt and Bill Creevey to speak to us. But this year, session decided to have me preach the Consecration Sunday sermon. The decision was motivated by a tight budget, and I encouraged it, because making a financial pledge to the church is all about discipleship, and I’m your pastor. Who more appropriate than me to discuss with you your walk with God?
If we thought your pledge was about paying the bills, then since we’re experiencing negative cash-flow, it might have been a better strategy to invite in a high-powered preacher to help you straighten up and fly right financially. But session and I apparently think money and discipleship are connected. Giving money to the church is not about how much we pay the pastor or whether we can afford to buy curriculum for the Sunday School or heat the church during the week. Giving money to the church is an act of gratitude for blessings received. How do I know? Look at the story of Hannah.
Hannah is a woman who wants something so badly she puts herself personally on the line to get it. You’ve gotta know that, in the patriarchal culture of the Old Testament, women were divorced for not producing male children, and divorce equaled death in those times. It’s not just a statement of financial well-being that Elkanah is in possession of two wives. Hannah may have been the beloved wife, but Peninnah was the fruitful one, the one producing heirs. Functionally, Elkanah could at the least demote Hannah to servant status if not divorce her outright if she proved unsuitable. That he did neither is a testimony to his virtue.
That Hannah is a named woman in scripture is testimony to her importance. The song attributed to her (that I read as we poured the baptismal water) sounds familiar because it is the model for Mary’s Magnificat, the one she sang to her cousin Elizabeth when she was first pregnant with God’s son . Within the text, Hannah’s importance is borne out by the language. She (a woman) is the subject of verbs. Hannah weeps, refuses comfort, faces down priestly rebuke, makes vows, names her own son. She herself prays. She has several speaking parts, something allowed only a few women in scripture. She successfully disagrees with her husband, and seems to unilaterally make the decision to dedicate her son to service of God outside the family.
And this is what I want to speak about. Hannah wanted something so badly she could spit. Her prayer is granted, she conceives and has a son. And then she gives the son back. Out of gratitude. Hers is a recognition that our blessings are not “ours,” that “ownership” is for a time only. Hannah is model for more than the mother of our Lord. Hannah is a model of gratitude for us. She receives her gift, but she doesn’t cling to it. She receives the gift, apparently cognizant that the gift is more about the Giver than it is about her. The gift she gives back to God is Samuel, and Samuel becomes a critical player in God’s plan for Israel. We learn that, after she drops him off at the Temple, she is given three more sons and two daughters, but these are nameless gifts. Doubtless, they were blessings to their parents and cared for them in their old age, while the firstborn is off gallivanting all over the countryside judging and sacrificing, fighting off Philistines and leading Israel into the monarchy. Only the one Hannah gave away bore fruit significant enough for us to know about 3,000 years later. Only the one she didn’t hang onto was actively and conspicuously instrumental in God’s plan.
I don’t mean to make it sound like our humble, anonymous service is not part of God’s plan. For each of us, how we live out God’s call on our lives is critical for the full realization of God’s kingdom in the here-and-now. I’m not talking about who we are. I’m talking about what we receive and our response of gratitude, what we return. Maybe God’s plan for us is not to hang on too tightly to the gifts we’ve been given. Maybe part of that plan is to let go and spread it around. Every farmer knows that even manure does some good if you spread it around a little.
Service resumes with Affirmation of Faith
Invitation to fill out pledge cards
Eventually my mother didn’t need to ask us kids, “What do you say?” when we received a gift. The expression of gratitude isn’t a skill children are born with; it is a learned behavior. The same is true for followers of Jesus Christ. If you’ve been blessed, unless you are taught gratitude, had someone model it for you, it’s not an automatic response. Humans are built such that if something good happens for us, we tend to think we deserve it. Or we’ve done something to earn it, or that we bought it fair and square, or worked hard for it. When bad things happen to us, we tend to ask, “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” Why is that? Truth be told, what we receive is not about us. Good or bad, we don’t deserve either. Sometimes things happen, but mostly, as St Francis says, “Everything is gift.” It is God’s nature to give. What we heard during children’s time is that it’s our nature to be grateful. And if grateful, then to be like Hannah.
Hannah’s song celebrates the birth of a child, but its larger meaning is that the life and future of Israel have been reopened—that God is actively working to save Israel. For Hannah, the birth is not private wonderment, it is a gift of possibility for all of Israel. What if gratitude was about seeing all of life as the gift of possibility? How would your life change if you were able to see it all as possibility and gift—good and bad, abundance and scarcity, full and empty, complicated and simple. How would you express that gratitude? How would you say “thanks”?
It has become the custom during stewardship season to invite the congregation to “take a step up,” to ask people to give more than they gave last year. And you know, that’s not a bad thing. Even in our dreadful economy, it’s not a bad thing to ask people to grow in their faith, because that’s what we mean when we say, “take a step up” in giving. We’re asking you to grow in your faith. To trust that God will care for you. To learn to express your gratitude, to share your faith with others, to become a model for others.
While session and I would appreciate your increased giving, I’d like to point out the benefits of your giving in the last year. Namely, the ministry of our church. If you read the Pastor’s Perspective in the most recent Currents (our newsletter), you know the irony of our negative cash flow is that there is more going on now at Springwater than ever before in my ten years here. More is going on with less burn-out of volunteers, because our ministry is energizing. For the first time in over 30 years, we have more than 2 Sunday School classes; we have four. For the second time in 10 years, we have a confirmation class. Last summer our youth took our first ever mission trip. There is something going on at church 4 days a week. If someone gets sick or is in a tight corner, the congregation pitches in to help. When other pastors visit us, they make two remarks about us: that we are a congregation, not just a group of people who happen to get together Sunday mornings, and that we seem to enjoy each other. Friends, this is Body of Christ stuff. This is kingdom coming.
So much of public discourse is about cranking up anxiety. It’s what the talking heads and journalists do—get us riled up, wound up, upset. In the face of all this anxiety it is counter-cultural to give money away. And the gospel is all about counter-cultural. God asks for your gift as much as God asks for Hannah’s. Hannah gives Samuel back to God, and he becomes a critical player in God’s plan. Who knows what your gift will become? Have you ever wanted anything so badly that you want to give it back in gratitude for having received it? Will you return to God your first fruits, your best, the answer to your deepest prayer? Or will you return what’s leftover when you’re done with it? We have been given the tremendous gift of Springwater here and now. Let us give thanks to God with our gratitude and pledge.