Friday 16 October 2020

Women Speaking Justice

A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation, 

the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 

October 18th 2020


1 Samuel 1.9-11, 19-20; 2.1-10


Sometimes, when calling for social justice,

            the most effective voice is the most vulnerable voice.

 

Martin Luther King may have been the great orator,

            but it took Rosa Parks to strategically sit in the wrong seat

            before she, and the Alabama bus boycott she triggered,

            became national symbols for change in the civil rights movement.

 

Similarly, we might ask why it is,

            that the most effective international voice in recent years

            in the fight against fossil fuels is Greta Thunburg,

                        a young schoolgirl Sweden,

                        who is incredibly still just 17 years old.

 

Similarly, the strongest voice calling for gender equality in education in Pakistan,

            is Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban as a teenager

            and recovered to win the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17.

 

Similarly, the right for everyone to vote in elections in the UK

            was won by the steadfast witness and courage of the suffragettes,

            including Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Wilding Davison.

 

Similarly, the modern feminist movement found its origins

            in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir.

 

And I could go on, for the entirety of this sermon,

            naming people like Claudia Jones,

                        the Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist

                                    deported from the USA for becoming a Black feminist leader

                                    in the American Communist Party.

 

And then of course there is Mary the mother of Jesus,

            whose song of justice in Luke’s gospel, often known as the Magnificat,

            heralded the birth of Jesus.

 

And all these women, the named and the unnamed,

            who have opened their mouths

            and sung or spoken the songs and poems of justice,

are the spiritual descendants of Hannah,

            who we meet in our Bible reading for this morning.

 

And Hannah is truly a remarkable woman,

            not least because we actually know her name.

 

Most of the women in the Old Testament are unnamed,

            known only as the ‘wife of’ or ‘daughter of’ a named man.

 

Additionally, it is equally rare in the Old Testament

            for a woman to be heard speaking.

 

Whereas Hannah is both named, and speaks,

            which already makes her rare within the biblical narrative.

 

But even more unusual is that fact that this woman,

            whose name we know and whose words we hear,

            is, in social terms, a nobody.

 

She’s not married to someone significant,

            and she’s not done anything to establish her reputation.

 

She’s just an ordinary married woman with no children,

            which in the world of the Old Testament

            was about as insignificant as you could get.

 

These days, we are used to women having control over reproduction,

            from effective contraception to IVF treatment.

But there are still plenty of women who long for children but can’t have them,

            and who hear the desires of their own hearts in Hannah’s prayer for a child.

 

And although the focus of our sermon this morning is not on issues of childlessness,

            we do well to recognise that a story where a woman prays for a child

                        and then immediately gets one

            is a difficult story for some women to hear.

 

And we need to remember together

            that when we bring children to church for dedication,

            there will be those present who find such services profoundly painful.

 

So let’s return for a moment to the social world the Old Testament,

            where barrenness was often regarded as a curse from God;

and parents who got to old age without children,

            were not just at risk economically, with no-one to look after them,

            but they were also outcast socially,

                        stigmatised as having not been blessed by God.

 

Culturally therefore, in the Ancient Near East,

            the pressure to have children was overwhelming,

and Hannah’s request for a male child

            would have echoed the desire of most women.

 

Female children, at that time, were a liability that cost you money;

            whereas male children could work and bring money into the family.

If you could only have one child,

            you wanted a boy, so that was what you prayed for first.

 

Even down to our world today,

            there are still some cultures that prefer sons to daughters,

            and female infanticide is one of the tragedies of human history.

 

So this makes what Hannah says next to the Lord so remarkable:

            She says that if she is granted a male child,

            she will dedicate that child to God.

He won’t be the answer to her security in old age,

            because he will have been dedicated as a Nazirite,

            offered in lifelong service to God alone.

 

And here we get our first glimpse

            that the significance of Hannah’s story

            is bigger than her personal desires or concerns.

 

She starts with her personal experience of childlessness,

            but then moves beyond this

                        to a recognition that how God responds to her,

                                    in her time of powerlessness,

                        is in fact a profound revelation of who God is;

            and that this in turn places a call on her

                        to respond to that revelation of God’s nature.

 

In other words, if God is the kind of God

            who looks with favour on a powerless, childless woman,

then God is also a God who looks with favour on all those

            who live with poverty, injustice, and oppression.

 

But Hannah also realises

            that God’s response to those afflicted

                        is not through a simplistic answering of prayer,

                        or the granting of heartfelt desires.

 

The blessings that God gives to the world

            are not to be taken individually

            and horded personally;

they are for the common good,

            because God is working for the good of all people.

 

And so Hannah prays for a son,

            but as she does so she promises to offer that son back to God.

 

Her own decisions about Samuel

            reflect her understanding of how God works in human affairs.

God is not some localised, family-centric deity;

            God is not some household-god to whom you bring your personal desires;

God’s blessings are not for the fortunate favoured few;

            God blesses the world,

                        and does so by remembering the vulnerable and the oppressed.

 

So then Hannah prays this remarkable prayer,

            and in doing so, she herself becomes a prophet of God,

            proclaiming God’s nature into being in the world.

 

Extrapolating from her own experience,

            Hannah realises that God is not on the side of the strong and the powerful,

                        but is rather on the side of the weak and the powerless.

            She realises that God’s blessings are not found in fine food or abundant living,

                        but in the feeding of the hungry and the care of the dispossessed.

            She realises that many children are not, in fact a sign of God’s favour,

                        and that life is a gift given for the blessing of many.

            She realises that God is not a local, tribal, or regional deity,

                        who pours goodness upon those who worship faithfully;

            but is rather the God of all people near and far,

                        and longs to raise up the poor and lift up the needy.

 

As Hannah puts it,

            ‘For the pillars of the earth are the LORD's,

            and on them God has set the world.’

 

Her son, of course, will be the great prophet Samuel,

            who anoints the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David.

 

But her greatest legacy was not her son,

            it was the vision of God that she articulated.

 

And Hannah’s song was echoed, a thousand or more years later, in the song of Mary,

            who similarly proclaimed the overthrow of the dominant social order

            when she sang with joy at the imminent birth of her son Jesus.

 

Within the Christian tradition, the vision of Hannah’s song

            finds its fulfilment in the revelation of God

                        that comes into being through Mary;

            another insignificant woman

                        who dared to respond with faith.

 

And it continues to find its fulfilment in our world

            as women speak out from the truth of their experience

            to challenge oppression and highlight injustice.

 

From the courage of those

            who have told their stories as part of the #metoo movement,

to the women who have blessed our Baptist family

            through their gifts of ministry, leadership, and preaching,

            despite those voices that have tried to deny their right to do this.

 

The insights of those who have been disempowered

            by society, patriarchy, and misogyny,

can still speak truth to power

            just as Hannah’s voice three millennia ago

            revealed the bias of God towards the poor and the vulnerable.

 

This is not, however, to fetishize the voices of the abused,

            or to excuse their treatment,

as if we somehow need those who have been oppressed

            in order to hear God speak.

 

Rather, it is a recognition that when human failings

            create structural oppression,

whether on the grounds of gender,

            ethnicity, sexuality, or social status;

God is always at work with and within

            those who live with disempowerment,

and God’s nature is always

            to bring justice to those facing injustice.

 

So can we hear the gospel of Hannah?

            Can we rejoice that God raises up the poor,

                        and empowers the weak?

            And can we, with her, learn to dedicate to God

                        the deepest desires of our own hearts,

            as we catch a glimpse of God

                        as one who is above all, in all, and through all.

 

‘For the pillars of the earth are the LORD's,

            and on them God has set the world.’

  

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