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“Mom” by C. David McKirachan
“Not One Stone” by Frank Ramirez
Mom
by C. David McKirachan
1 Samuel 1:4-20, 1 Samuel 2:1-10
My mother told me that if I’d been a girl, I’d have been named Hannah. It was always an incidental detail. Then my nephew and his wife gave their daughter the name and I realized it ran in the family. So I got interested. The Bible keeps surprising me. This time when I read the familiar story, I ran into something new.
Hannah’s prayer in verse 11 is familiar. ‘…I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life…’ That’s the prophet Samuel. But down in verse 28, she alters the deal. ‘Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.’ Now that’s interesting.
I always thought the baby contest between Hannah and the other wife, Peninnah was the primary issue for her. In such a paternalistic structure, producing sons was top of the list for a woman. She had few rights and few ways to get credit for anything. Popping out boy children was priority one. Their understanding of the reproductive process was not only rudimentary, it was shrouded in misconceptions and as such placed men in the driver’s seat. If there were no kids, the ‘barren’ woman was guilty, automatically out of favor to say the least. Husband Elihu seems to have been an exception to the contemporary norms. He loved Hannah, in spite of her ‘shortcoming.’ A real enlightened guy.
But she, living under the pall of ‘barrenness’ felt cursed. How could she hold her head up? How could she be anything but second class trash, a charity case in her marriage, and an object of ridicule and scorn in the relationship with her fellow wife? Tough going. But it always got to me that she gave up the kid. Seemed kind of shallow, using a baby as collateral for her deal with God. Then I ran into the version of the deal in verse 28.
One of my professors in seminary told us that biblical Hebrew is not a language of fine lines. The brush strokes are broad and their meanings are fuzzy at best. Okay. But this specific translation sent me off on a tangent that opened Hannah to me in a new way.
She had carried this kid for nine months, she had given birth, she had nursed, and weaned him. Quite a bit of bonding going on there. To give him up would have been devastating.
When I visited the Qum Ran community near the Dead Sea, they told us that people brought their kids to be ‘brothers,’ left them there, but they visited them. We know she visited Samuel. In the second chapter she brought him a robe every year. He may have been living the life of a temple attendant, but he still belonged to Hannah. He was her kid and he knew it. She probably reminded him of it on a regular basis. Mothers are like that. They have an authority that very few are willing or able to deny.
Hannah had moved beyond being a pawn in some game whose rules denied her importance or her authority. Such movement is a kind of salvation. It gives the one who’s discovered their authority a freedom. They are no longer victims. They may be abused. They may be bullied by people or systems, but whatever they face, they face it with a sense of self rather than self-denial.
God doesn’t want us to be cyphers, pushed and pulled by the gravity of the whims of culture or family. The story of God’s people reveals journeys toward relationships rather than an erosion of personalities. We are not meant to be constrained by law, or custom, or tradition, or even death. We are free. We are valuable. We are loved.
Hannah discovered that and claimed it, though she was a woman in a culture that denied her importance and her power. And she taught that to Samuel, prophet of the Lord. Her kid, lent to God.
All of that from one word? Well, that’s the whole point of the story, isn’t it?
* * *
Not One Stone
by Frank Ramirez
Mark 13:1-8
"Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." (Mark 13:2)
The war between the Roman Empire and the Judean portion of the Syria Province was long and brutal and bloody. Although many thousands of Roman legionnaires died in the struggle, and despite political instability in Rome and the succession of a new emperor to the throne, in the end the might of the Empire prevailed.
The war began in the year 66 AD when the Roman procurator Gessius Florus massacred 3,600 Jews in the city of Jerusalem. The response of the Zealots (guerrillas who had harried the Romans for decades) surprisingly resulted in the defeat at the Roman garrison at Masada. Further victories against the local governor of Syria followed.
This led the Emperor Nero, who had scapegoated Christians some years before for the fire that destroyed great portions of Rome, to send Vespasian, one of his most capable generals, to quell the rebellion. The war that followed was long and bloody. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, writing decades afterwards, the Judean people ignored what the Romans considered heavenly signs that they would be defeated because of their belief that their scriptures told them they would one day rule the world.
Prodigies had occurred, which this nation, prone to superstition, but hating all religious rites, did not deem it lawful to expiate by offering and sacrifice.
By this Tacitus meant that the Judeans did not act as Romans would have. If one did not believe in the Roman gods, one was godless and irreligious. He went on to write:
There had been seen hosts joining battle in the skies, the fiery gleam of arms, the temple illuminated by a sudden radiance from the clouds. The doors of the inner shrine were suddenly thrown open, and a voice of more than mortal tone was heard to cry that the Gods were departing. At the same instant there was a mighty stir as of departure. Some few put a fearful meaning on these events, but in most there was a firm persuasion, that in the ancient records of their priests was contained a prediction of how at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and rulers, come from Judaea, were to acquire universal empire. These mysterious prophecies had pointed to Vespasian and Titus, but the common people, with the usual blindness of ambition, had interpreted these mighty destinies of themselves, and could not be brought even by disasters to believe the truth.” (Tacitus, The Histories, Book 5, 13).
By this time Vespasian, hearing reports of Nero’s suicide and political turmoil in Rome, left his son Titus in command and headed westward, where eventually he was proclaimed Emperor. Tactius tells us how Titus besieged Jerusalem, but his history breaks off before we learn what happened to the city and its great temple.
The one historian who does describe the Temple’s destruction in 70 AD was Josephus, who, though Jewish, came to believe that the Hebrew scriptures predicted that Rome would rule the world. Some consider him a turncoat, and his contemporaries held him in contempt because he worked with the Romans to convince the people to surrender.
This they never did. Josephus insists that Titus wanted to preserve the Great Temple after Jerusalem’s fall, and blames the defenders for fighting too hard to preserve the Holy City. Wall after wall was destroyed, and tens, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of defenders died. The defense was not helped by the fact that rival Judean leaders failed to cooperate with each other. At last, Josephus tells us, that on August 30 of 70 AD the city fell and the Temple was burned by soldiers infuriated by the resistance they had encountered. He writes:
As the legions charged in, neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command. Crowded together around the entrances many were trampled by their friends, many fell among the still hot and smoking ruins of the colonnades and died as miserably as the defeated. As they neared the Sanctuary they pretended not even to hear Caesar's commands and urged the men in front to throw in more firebrands. The partisans were no longer in a position to help; everywhere was slaughter and flight. Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the Altar the heaps of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom.[9]
Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury (for they would not have spared any, had there remained any other work to be done), [Titus] Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as they were of the greatest eminence; that is, Phasaelus, and Hippicus, and Mariamne; and so much of the wall enclosed the city on the west side. This wall was spared, in order to afford a camp for such as were to lie in garrison [in the Upper City], as were the towers [the three forts] also spared, in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall [surrounding Jerusalem], it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it [Jerusalem] had ever been inhabited. This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind.
And truly, the very view itself was a melancholy thing; for those places which were adorned with trees and pleasant gardens, were now become desolate country every way, and its trees were all cut down. Nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judaea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change. For the war had laid all signs of beauty quite waste. Nor had anyone who had known the place before, had come on a sudden to it now, would he have known it again. But though he [a foreigner] were at the city itself, yet would he have inquired for it.
And so the words of Jesus a generation before: "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." (Mark 13:2) came to pass. These words of Jesus were long remembered by Christians who abandoned Jerusalem before the Roman assault, it is said because of a prophecy that they were to take to the hills.
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 18, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Mom” by C. David McKirachan
“Not One Stone” by Frank Ramirez
Mom
by C. David McKirachan
1 Samuel 1:4-20, 1 Samuel 2:1-10
My mother told me that if I’d been a girl, I’d have been named Hannah. It was always an incidental detail. Then my nephew and his wife gave their daughter the name and I realized it ran in the family. So I got interested. The Bible keeps surprising me. This time when I read the familiar story, I ran into something new.
Hannah’s prayer in verse 11 is familiar. ‘…I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life…’ That’s the prophet Samuel. But down in verse 28, she alters the deal. ‘Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.’ Now that’s interesting.
I always thought the baby contest between Hannah and the other wife, Peninnah was the primary issue for her. In such a paternalistic structure, producing sons was top of the list for a woman. She had few rights and few ways to get credit for anything. Popping out boy children was priority one. Their understanding of the reproductive process was not only rudimentary, it was shrouded in misconceptions and as such placed men in the driver’s seat. If there were no kids, the ‘barren’ woman was guilty, automatically out of favor to say the least. Husband Elihu seems to have been an exception to the contemporary norms. He loved Hannah, in spite of her ‘shortcoming.’ A real enlightened guy.
But she, living under the pall of ‘barrenness’ felt cursed. How could she hold her head up? How could she be anything but second class trash, a charity case in her marriage, and an object of ridicule and scorn in the relationship with her fellow wife? Tough going. But it always got to me that she gave up the kid. Seemed kind of shallow, using a baby as collateral for her deal with God. Then I ran into the version of the deal in verse 28.
One of my professors in seminary told us that biblical Hebrew is not a language of fine lines. The brush strokes are broad and their meanings are fuzzy at best. Okay. But this specific translation sent me off on a tangent that opened Hannah to me in a new way.
She had carried this kid for nine months, she had given birth, she had nursed, and weaned him. Quite a bit of bonding going on there. To give him up would have been devastating.
When I visited the Qum Ran community near the Dead Sea, they told us that people brought their kids to be ‘brothers,’ left them there, but they visited them. We know she visited Samuel. In the second chapter she brought him a robe every year. He may have been living the life of a temple attendant, but he still belonged to Hannah. He was her kid and he knew it. She probably reminded him of it on a regular basis. Mothers are like that. They have an authority that very few are willing or able to deny.
Hannah had moved beyond being a pawn in some game whose rules denied her importance or her authority. Such movement is a kind of salvation. It gives the one who’s discovered their authority a freedom. They are no longer victims. They may be abused. They may be bullied by people or systems, but whatever they face, they face it with a sense of self rather than self-denial.
God doesn’t want us to be cyphers, pushed and pulled by the gravity of the whims of culture or family. The story of God’s people reveals journeys toward relationships rather than an erosion of personalities. We are not meant to be constrained by law, or custom, or tradition, or even death. We are free. We are valuable. We are loved.
Hannah discovered that and claimed it, though she was a woman in a culture that denied her importance and her power. And she taught that to Samuel, prophet of the Lord. Her kid, lent to God.
All of that from one word? Well, that’s the whole point of the story, isn’t it?
* * *
Not One Stone
by Frank Ramirez
Mark 13:1-8
"Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." (Mark 13:2)
The war between the Roman Empire and the Judean portion of the Syria Province was long and brutal and bloody. Although many thousands of Roman legionnaires died in the struggle, and despite political instability in Rome and the succession of a new emperor to the throne, in the end the might of the Empire prevailed.
The war began in the year 66 AD when the Roman procurator Gessius Florus massacred 3,600 Jews in the city of Jerusalem. The response of the Zealots (guerrillas who had harried the Romans for decades) surprisingly resulted in the defeat at the Roman garrison at Masada. Further victories against the local governor of Syria followed.
This led the Emperor Nero, who had scapegoated Christians some years before for the fire that destroyed great portions of Rome, to send Vespasian, one of his most capable generals, to quell the rebellion. The war that followed was long and bloody. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, writing decades afterwards, the Judean people ignored what the Romans considered heavenly signs that they would be defeated because of their belief that their scriptures told them they would one day rule the world.
Prodigies had occurred, which this nation, prone to superstition, but hating all religious rites, did not deem it lawful to expiate by offering and sacrifice.
By this Tacitus meant that the Judeans did not act as Romans would have. If one did not believe in the Roman gods, one was godless and irreligious. He went on to write:
There had been seen hosts joining battle in the skies, the fiery gleam of arms, the temple illuminated by a sudden radiance from the clouds. The doors of the inner shrine were suddenly thrown open, and a voice of more than mortal tone was heard to cry that the Gods were departing. At the same instant there was a mighty stir as of departure. Some few put a fearful meaning on these events, but in most there was a firm persuasion, that in the ancient records of their priests was contained a prediction of how at this very time the East was to grow powerful, and rulers, come from Judaea, were to acquire universal empire. These mysterious prophecies had pointed to Vespasian and Titus, but the common people, with the usual blindness of ambition, had interpreted these mighty destinies of themselves, and could not be brought even by disasters to believe the truth.” (Tacitus, The Histories, Book 5, 13).
By this time Vespasian, hearing reports of Nero’s suicide and political turmoil in Rome, left his son Titus in command and headed westward, where eventually he was proclaimed Emperor. Tactius tells us how Titus besieged Jerusalem, but his history breaks off before we learn what happened to the city and its great temple.
The one historian who does describe the Temple’s destruction in 70 AD was Josephus, who, though Jewish, came to believe that the Hebrew scriptures predicted that Rome would rule the world. Some consider him a turncoat, and his contemporaries held him in contempt because he worked with the Romans to convince the people to surrender.
This they never did. Josephus insists that Titus wanted to preserve the Great Temple after Jerusalem’s fall, and blames the defenders for fighting too hard to preserve the Holy City. Wall after wall was destroyed, and tens, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of defenders died. The defense was not helped by the fact that rival Judean leaders failed to cooperate with each other. At last, Josephus tells us, that on August 30 of 70 AD the city fell and the Temple was burned by soldiers infuriated by the resistance they had encountered. He writes:
As the legions charged in, neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command. Crowded together around the entrances many were trampled by their friends, many fell among the still hot and smoking ruins of the colonnades and died as miserably as the defeated. As they neared the Sanctuary they pretended not even to hear Caesar's commands and urged the men in front to throw in more firebrands. The partisans were no longer in a position to help; everywhere was slaughter and flight. Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the Altar the heaps of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom.[9]
Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury (for they would not have spared any, had there remained any other work to be done), [Titus] Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as they were of the greatest eminence; that is, Phasaelus, and Hippicus, and Mariamne; and so much of the wall enclosed the city on the west side. This wall was spared, in order to afford a camp for such as were to lie in garrison [in the Upper City], as were the towers [the three forts] also spared, in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall [surrounding Jerusalem], it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it [Jerusalem] had ever been inhabited. This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind.
And truly, the very view itself was a melancholy thing; for those places which were adorned with trees and pleasant gardens, were now become desolate country every way, and its trees were all cut down. Nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judaea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change. For the war had laid all signs of beauty quite waste. Nor had anyone who had known the place before, had come on a sudden to it now, would he have known it again. But though he [a foreigner] were at the city itself, yet would he have inquired for it.
And so the words of Jesus a generation before: "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." (Mark 13:2) came to pass. These words of Jesus were long remembered by Christians who abandoned Jerusalem before the Roman assault, it is said because of a prophecy that they were to take to the hills.
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 18, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
