11/15/2009
Empty Hands
I Samuel 1:4-20 and Hebrews 10:19-25a
November 15, 2009
Nancy E. Lowmaster
I want you to take a moment to look at your hands. Lay down your Bible and the hymnal and the bulletin and just look at your hands. Your hands say quite a bit about you. The places on your palms that have toughened into calluses tell something about what you do for a living or perhaps what you do for a hobby. Turn your hands over. That bump on your middle finger reveals how you hold your pencil or pen. The jewelry you wear might indicate if you have ever been married or perhaps where you went to school - or whether or not you like to wear jewelry.
Right now your hands look empty, but my guess is that they are actually quite full. Concerns about our health, worries about school or work, to-do lists a mile long, demands from others or pressures that we place on ourselves - I’m sure we all can say, “I’ve got my hands full!”
Together we are called as the body of Christ to love and to serve others. “Bear one another’s burdens,” Paul writes to the Galatian churches, “and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” We are to open our hearts and hands to those around us and to help carry their cares and sorrows. But helping is hard: not because we don’t want to serve but because our hands are sometimes too full of our own loads to help carry someone else’s burden. But this dilemma is not new. Our text today from First Samuel tells of one person in trouble — carrying a heavy burden - and of several individuals who, like us, had their hands full with the problems and concerns of life.
As the story begins, Hannah finds herself in the midst of a time of personal distress. Despite her best laid plans, Hannah’s life had not turned out as she had imagined it would. Her life started well: Hannah married the man that she loved, Elkanah - a solid citizen with deep family roots in the community, a man who shared her faith in the Lord God and who would be a good provider for Hannah and for the family that they dreamed of having. But as time went on, Hannah’s concern began to grow. She longed to hold a child in her hands, but no child was born to her. In Hannah’s culture, having a son who could inherit the family’s land and carry on the family name was considered crucial - so crucial that men were permitted to marry a second woman if the first wife was unable to bear children. So Elkanah did just that: he married Penninah in order to obtain an heir, and the strategy was successful. We are told that Penninah bore Elkanah “sons and daughters”. So Hannah, who began her married life so full of dreams, now found herself ridiculed as a “barren woman”, a mark of disgrace in a society that prized women for their ability to produce and raise a family. Hannah’s life was falling apart. Who was there to help and support Hannah? Who could help bear Hannah’s burden?
First, there was Penninah, Elkanah’s second wife. If anyone in this story was in a position to understand the social pressures and the disappointment that Hannah was feeling, it was Penninah. The fact that Penninah already had children of her own could have evoked a generous and sympathetic response toward Hannah. But Penninah, perhaps acting out of her own jealousy at knowing that Elkanah loved Hannah more than her, didn’t act in a kindly way toward Hannah. Penninah’s hands were so full with her own load of pain that she was unable to help bear the burdens of another. She looked down on Hannah for having no children. Instead of easing Hannah’s pain, Penninah was clearly adding to Hannah’s misery, as the text says, “year after year”.
Hannah’s husband Elkanah loved his wife dearly and tried - in very sincere ways - to demonstrate that love. Elkanah was generous to Hannah, giving her a double helping of the best portions of the meat dedicated for the feasts that took place after worship. It is easy to imagine Elkanah’s voice saying, “Don’t cry Hannah. You have me, don’t you?” But look carefully at Elkanah’s hands. They were also full: full of his own self-worth and his own perspective on life. Elkanah had gotten over Hannah’s not having children - after all, Penninah had provided him with many children — and he expected that Hannah also ought to be able to move on with her life. But perhaps what Hannah needed most at that moment was just to have someone hold her hand and listen and, in listening, to share the pain. I imagine that Hannah would have appreciated having Elkanah say not, “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” but rather “You are more to me than ten sons.”
Then there was Eli, the priest at the temple. Eli watched Hannah as she cried and set before the Lord all that she had suffered. Certainly Eli would see her distress and, as priest, come forward to comfort Hannah! But when Eli looked at Hannah he saw her through a lens distorted by his own experiences. You see, Eli had his hands full with his sons, the priests Hophni and Phinehas, who were abusing their positions of power, sometimes even having sex with women right outside the entrance to the temple. Later in the book of I Samuel the two sons are called “scoundrels” and “worthless”. As a result, Eli misjudges Hannah, thinking her to be “worthless” as well — drunk in the house of God (tsk! tsk!). Rather than reaching out to help Hannah, Eli almost makes her burden worse by piling some of his burden onto Hannah.
Penninah, Elkanah, and Eli each had their hands so full of their own problems that they were unable to help Hannah with hers. We can be like that sometimes as well. But since we do want to fulfill Jesus Christ’s command to love and serve others, how can we empty our hands so that we truly are able bear one another’s burdens?
Hannah herself provides us with the answer: Hannah trusted God. The text tells how Hannah faithfully made the special pilgrimage to Shiloh year after year, even though Penninah used the annual visit as a particular opportunity to ridicule and provoke Hannah. God drew Hannah close to him: while at Shiloh she went to the temple even more often than the regular worship services and called God by a name more intimate than the name for God used by the priest Eli himself. She had an ongoing relationship with God, a relationship that had carried her through the times of joy in her life. So when she found herself in pain, it was natural for her to lift her hands to God and pour out her soul in prayer, confident that God would hear. In faith, she entrusted her burden to God.
But notice that Hannah had to stand at the outside of the temple proper to pray to God. In Hannah’s day only the high priest would have been permitted to walk into the Holy of Holies - into the very presence of God at the temple - and only on one day each year. If Hannah had tried to enter the inner sanctuary, Eli, sitting on the seat by the doorpost, would have told her in no uncertain terms that entry for her was impossible.
But all that has changed for us. Listen again to what the preacher in the book of Hebrews tells us, “We have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us”. Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can have a new kind of relationship with God. Jesus Christ is our High Priest. Eli sat on a seat by the doorpost to keep people out of the Holy of Holies. But we don’t stand outside the temple - Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to enter into the presence of God. Eli made a sacrifice every year - year after year - for the sins of the people of Israel. Jesus Christ Himself is the sacrifice made once for all our sins. We are baptized and forgiven. We are linked by Jesus to the sure promises of the Father. So in faith and confidence we can approach God and live in hope, knowing that that the promises of God are sure. We can empty our hands — bringing all of our burdens to our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ. And once we have entrusted our burdens to God, our hands are emptied - and we are freed to serve others. We live in gratitude to God, performing deeds of compassion for each other and encouraging one another.
We want to love others by helping to bear one another’s burdens. But when we look at our hands, they sometimes seem too full to be of much use at all in serving our neighbors. How can we empty our hands so that we can offer them in service to others? Hannah knew the answer: Trust God. But we know the answer in an even more complete way than Hannah, since we have been given access to the Father through his Son Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has taken on our burdens so that we can bear the burdens of others. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be Christ to others.
When you find that your hands are full, so full that you are no longer able to reach out to help others, perhaps it is time to trust God with your burdens. Remember that Jesus has carried your cares and sorrows to the cross. Jesus says to you, as he said to the disciples after his crucifixion and resurrection, “Look at my hands.” Jesus’ hands carry the marks of his death in which he bore all your sins and burdens so that so that your hands can be empty - ready to carry the burdens of others. May it be so. Amen.
