Proper 28
Preaching
Preaching And Reading The Old Testament Lessons
With an Eye to the New
Let us first give an historical accounting of the text. It obviously forms the introduction to the Samuel stories, 1 Samuel 1 to 2 Samuel 25:1, showing how Samuel was dedicated to the service of the Lord as a Nazarite from the day of his birth to his death. The time is the period of the Judges, 1220--1020 B.C., and Samuel is the last to fill that office in Israel, the judges then being replaced by the monarchy under Saul. During this time, Israel was united in a loose federation of twelve tribes, who met together once a year at the central shrine of Shiloh to renew their covenant with the Lord. In our text, Eli's two sons are serving as priests at that shrine, although Eli himself is also present. The sacrifice that Hannah and Elkanah offer at the shrine has the characteristics of a covenant communion meal (a forerunner of our Lord's Supper), in which portions of the sacrifice are shared with those at the ceremony. Hannah's distress over her failure to conceive a child mirrors the plight of any barren woman in Israel who did not bear heirs for her husband (cf. Isaiah 4:1). Such barrenness was attributed to the Lord, and children were always considered to be gifts of God, the Giver of all life (cf. Genesis 4:1; Psalm 128:3--4).
However, it is always the human side of this story, with its interesting characters, that intrigues us. People don't change very much over the centuries; even if this story comes to us from the eleventh century B.C., we recognize the persons in it. First of all, there is the loving marital relation between Hannah and her husband Elkanah, which is disturbed by the scorn and taunts of Eli's other wife, Peninnah. There is no particular notice that Elkanah loves Peninnah; she may have been taken as a wife simply in order to give Elkanah heirs (cf. Genesis 16:1--3), in order to preserve his name in Israel. But Peninnah has the upper hand, and we can just hear her taunt. "N'ya, n'ya, n'ya, n'ya, I bear children and you don't. The Lord loves me and not you. I'm better than you." That's like a taunt that we often hear in groups of children, when one child has more or does better than another. But here it is given a religious basis, which makes it all the worse. And maybe, just maybe, we can recognize ourselves when we look down on someone else because we think the Lord loves us and not some other person. "N'ya, n'ya, I'm pious and you're not. God loves me more than he loves you." Our Lord Jesus had a good deal to say about such pharisical pride (cf. Luke 18:9--14).
Then there is Elkanah, whose egotism causes him to misunderstand his wife's suffering. "Hannah, why should you weep? After all, honey, you've got me. What more could you want?" Elkanah is the husband who feels that he fulfills all his wife's needs. To be sure, he loves Hannah, and he takes good care of her. But she has a desperate need beyond him, and he does not understand that need. What is the equivalent in our time? A woman's need for recognition as an accomplished and intelligent person in her own right? A wife's longing for the love of friends and children, beyond the love that a husband gives her? A desire for a secure status in a circle beyond her marriage? Every person, whether male or female, needs to feel important, and Hannah, above all else, wants to know that she is important in the sight of her community and of her God.
So Hannah prays fervently for a child, and then we encounter the officious religious leader in the person of Eli. Seeing Hannah's lips move, Eli thinks she is drunk. He immediately attaches a stereotype to her on the basis of the religious rules. That's not the way to pray, so she must be doing something unseemly at the shrine. Have you ever known any clergy like that, who immediately diagnose your spiritual condition, or lack of it, because you don't fit their stereotype? You can't possibly be a dedicated person, because you don't attend certain meetings. Or you can't possibly be pious because you don't utter the right words. Or you are troubled because you haven't gone through such and such a procedure. And if you will just follow the clergy person's instructions, everything will be fine with you. Unfortunately, we have a lot of clergy roaming the landscape who think in such terms. But the Lord works where and how he will in human hearts, and he doesn't always follow the rules.
Fortunately, in our text, Hannah makes clear her situation to Eli, who finally listens sympathetically. He backtracks to utter the prophetic statement in verse 17, and Hannah is granted a child. Samuel is born to the woman who has placed her life and that of her child in the hands of God. After the child is weaned, usually after some three years, Hannah takes Samuel to Shiloh to be raised and schooled in the faith by Eli. It is the beginning of a new chapter in God's history of salvation.
Lutheran Option: Daniel 12:1--3
Although the Book of Daniel is included among the prophetic books in our Bible, it is not prophecy but apocalypse. That is, it contains a highly imaginative and creative account of what will happen at the end of history, when God intervenes in a sinful world to set up his final kingdom of righteousness on earth. The prophets of the Old Testament always announced that there would come a Day of the Lord when God would break into human history to defeat all of those opposed to him, to exalt the faithful, and to transform the world into a kingdom of righteousness and peace under his universal lordship. But apocalypticism is more radical than that. It sets forth the view that the world has become so evil that God must do away with it and replace it with a new heaven and a new earth (cf. Revelation 21). The Book of Daniel shares that view, and our text is specifically concerned with that radical transformation and new world.
Apocalypses are not intended to predict the future beyond their own time, however. Daniel is not detailing what will happen in the twenty--first century A.D. or any other. Rather, apocalypses are written in times of persecution in order to strengthen the faithful and to give promise of a bright future to them as they are persecuted for their trust in God. Specifically, Daniel is directed in the years 167--164 B.C. to faithful Jews who are being persecuted under the Hellenistic reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Antiochus desecrated the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the autumn of 167 B.C., erecting a pagan altar within it and sacrificing a pig upon it. (Daniel 8:9--13; 9:27, and 11:31 refer to that event as the "abomination that makes desolate.") Daniel 11:40--45 depict the death of Antiochus inaccurately, and so probably the book was written before 164 B.C.
Our text portrays the end of human history in terms similar to those found in the teachings of Jesus in Mark 13, another apocalyptic chapter. Before the end comes, there will be a time of great trouble - as Mark has it, war and rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, suffering of all kinds (Mark 13:7--8). But then will come the end. Notably, however, for us and in all biblical apocalypses including Daniel and Mark, no one knows when the end will come. Modern--day calculations, of which we often hear, are little more than nonsense.
Our text is noteworthy, however, because it contains the first mention of the resurrection of the dead to be found in the Old Testament. At the end, writes Daniel, many who have died will arise, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Isaiah 26:19 and Psalm 73:26, as well as Job 19:25--27 have earlier given intimation of such life after death, but this passage in Daniel is the first specific reference to a resurrection that becomes a foundational belief in later apocalypses. In the New Testament, it is held that at the end of history, after God has defeated all of his foes, there will be the resurrection of the dead and the final judgment. Our Lord Jesus is sure of that (cf. Matthew 25:31--46) as is the Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 5:10).
It is not surprising that the Old Testament has not earlier set forth a view of the resurrection, because after all, Christ has not yet been raised in historical time to defeat the grave. But the Old Testament here in Daniel is preparing the way for that final victory. Daniel envisions a resurrection of all, some to everlasting life, to shine like the stars, and some to everlasting contempt and judgment. Our Lord Jesus' advice to us, therefore, is "Watch!" Be found faithful! Trust God in everything! Our lives on this earth will have eternal consequences.
However, it is always the human side of this story, with its interesting characters, that intrigues us. People don't change very much over the centuries; even if this story comes to us from the eleventh century B.C., we recognize the persons in it. First of all, there is the loving marital relation between Hannah and her husband Elkanah, which is disturbed by the scorn and taunts of Eli's other wife, Peninnah. There is no particular notice that Elkanah loves Peninnah; she may have been taken as a wife simply in order to give Elkanah heirs (cf. Genesis 16:1--3), in order to preserve his name in Israel. But Peninnah has the upper hand, and we can just hear her taunt. "N'ya, n'ya, n'ya, n'ya, I bear children and you don't. The Lord loves me and not you. I'm better than you." That's like a taunt that we often hear in groups of children, when one child has more or does better than another. But here it is given a religious basis, which makes it all the worse. And maybe, just maybe, we can recognize ourselves when we look down on someone else because we think the Lord loves us and not some other person. "N'ya, n'ya, I'm pious and you're not. God loves me more than he loves you." Our Lord Jesus had a good deal to say about such pharisical pride (cf. Luke 18:9--14).
Then there is Elkanah, whose egotism causes him to misunderstand his wife's suffering. "Hannah, why should you weep? After all, honey, you've got me. What more could you want?" Elkanah is the husband who feels that he fulfills all his wife's needs. To be sure, he loves Hannah, and he takes good care of her. But she has a desperate need beyond him, and he does not understand that need. What is the equivalent in our time? A woman's need for recognition as an accomplished and intelligent person in her own right? A wife's longing for the love of friends and children, beyond the love that a husband gives her? A desire for a secure status in a circle beyond her marriage? Every person, whether male or female, needs to feel important, and Hannah, above all else, wants to know that she is important in the sight of her community and of her God.
So Hannah prays fervently for a child, and then we encounter the officious religious leader in the person of Eli. Seeing Hannah's lips move, Eli thinks she is drunk. He immediately attaches a stereotype to her on the basis of the religious rules. That's not the way to pray, so she must be doing something unseemly at the shrine. Have you ever known any clergy like that, who immediately diagnose your spiritual condition, or lack of it, because you don't fit their stereotype? You can't possibly be a dedicated person, because you don't attend certain meetings. Or you can't possibly be pious because you don't utter the right words. Or you are troubled because you haven't gone through such and such a procedure. And if you will just follow the clergy person's instructions, everything will be fine with you. Unfortunately, we have a lot of clergy roaming the landscape who think in such terms. But the Lord works where and how he will in human hearts, and he doesn't always follow the rules.
Fortunately, in our text, Hannah makes clear her situation to Eli, who finally listens sympathetically. He backtracks to utter the prophetic statement in verse 17, and Hannah is granted a child. Samuel is born to the woman who has placed her life and that of her child in the hands of God. After the child is weaned, usually after some three years, Hannah takes Samuel to Shiloh to be raised and schooled in the faith by Eli. It is the beginning of a new chapter in God's history of salvation.
Lutheran Option: Daniel 12:1--3
Although the Book of Daniel is included among the prophetic books in our Bible, it is not prophecy but apocalypse. That is, it contains a highly imaginative and creative account of what will happen at the end of history, when God intervenes in a sinful world to set up his final kingdom of righteousness on earth. The prophets of the Old Testament always announced that there would come a Day of the Lord when God would break into human history to defeat all of those opposed to him, to exalt the faithful, and to transform the world into a kingdom of righteousness and peace under his universal lordship. But apocalypticism is more radical than that. It sets forth the view that the world has become so evil that God must do away with it and replace it with a new heaven and a new earth (cf. Revelation 21). The Book of Daniel shares that view, and our text is specifically concerned with that radical transformation and new world.
Apocalypses are not intended to predict the future beyond their own time, however. Daniel is not detailing what will happen in the twenty--first century A.D. or any other. Rather, apocalypses are written in times of persecution in order to strengthen the faithful and to give promise of a bright future to them as they are persecuted for their trust in God. Specifically, Daniel is directed in the years 167--164 B.C. to faithful Jews who are being persecuted under the Hellenistic reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Antiochus desecrated the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the autumn of 167 B.C., erecting a pagan altar within it and sacrificing a pig upon it. (Daniel 8:9--13; 9:27, and 11:31 refer to that event as the "abomination that makes desolate.") Daniel 11:40--45 depict the death of Antiochus inaccurately, and so probably the book was written before 164 B.C.
Our text portrays the end of human history in terms similar to those found in the teachings of Jesus in Mark 13, another apocalyptic chapter. Before the end comes, there will be a time of great trouble - as Mark has it, war and rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, suffering of all kinds (Mark 13:7--8). But then will come the end. Notably, however, for us and in all biblical apocalypses including Daniel and Mark, no one knows when the end will come. Modern--day calculations, of which we often hear, are little more than nonsense.
Our text is noteworthy, however, because it contains the first mention of the resurrection of the dead to be found in the Old Testament. At the end, writes Daniel, many who have died will arise, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Isaiah 26:19 and Psalm 73:26, as well as Job 19:25--27 have earlier given intimation of such life after death, but this passage in Daniel is the first specific reference to a resurrection that becomes a foundational belief in later apocalypses. In the New Testament, it is held that at the end of history, after God has defeated all of his foes, there will be the resurrection of the dead and the final judgment. Our Lord Jesus is sure of that (cf. Matthew 25:31--46) as is the Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 5:10).
It is not surprising that the Old Testament has not earlier set forth a view of the resurrection, because after all, Christ has not yet been raised in historical time to defeat the grave. But the Old Testament here in Daniel is preparing the way for that final victory. Daniel envisions a resurrection of all, some to everlasting life, to shine like the stars, and some to everlasting contempt and judgment. Our Lord Jesus' advice to us, therefore, is "Watch!" Be found faithful! Trust God in everything! Our lives on this earth will have eternal consequences.
