Women Speaking Justice

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 

October 13th 2024

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,
                        who came to prominence as young schoolgirl in Sweden,
                        and who is incredibly still just 21 years old.
 
Similarly, one of the strongest voices calling for gender equality in education in Pakistan,
            has been 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, if we head back in time a century,
            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.
 
And 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.
 
You may have heard of the Bechdel Test,
            which is a simple measure to evaluate the representation of women
            in films, books, and other forms of media.
 
To pass the test, a work must meet three criteria:
1.     It features at least two named women.
2.     These women talk to each other.
3.     They discuss something other than a man.
 
Wel, it won’t surprise you to know that the Bible consistently fails the test!
 
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.
 
This is where our reading for today is so unusual,
            as Hannah is both named, and speaks,
            which makes her a rarity 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 some control over reproduction,
            from effective contraception to IVF treatment.
 
But there are still plenty of women in our world
            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.
 
Just as we need to remember 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.
 
Within the ancient Israelite context in which this story was written,
            motherhood was considered an essential part of a woman’s identity,
and being without children
            carried significant social and emotional consequences.
 
A woman’s worth and well-being were thus closely tied to her ability to bear children,
            and it was commonly believed that infertility was the woman’s burden,
            often overlooking other causes.
 
And it was believed that God controlled fertility,
            granting or withholding it according to the divine will.
 
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.
 
When we were in China recently,
            our local guide told us that he was born during the one-child policy,
            and that he was a third child, with two older sisters.
 
The one child law said that if you had a male child, you couldn’t have any more,
            but if you had a female child, to avoid the risks of infanticide,
            you could try for a second child to see if it was a boy.
 
But if you had two girls, you had to stop there.
 
However, our guide’s parents tried for a third,
            and had the son they wanted.
But his mother had to go from the city to the country to give birth in secret,
            and then brought him back a couple of years later,
            telling everyone that he was her nephew who they were caring for.
 
And so, in an ancient culture with similar desires for a male child,
            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.
 
This child 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 concerns or desires.
 
She starts with her personal traumatic 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
            nor 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 that son back to God.
 
Her own decisions about Samuel
            reflect her understanding of how God works in human affairs.
 
For Hannah, God is not some localised, family-centric deity;
            God is not some household-god to whom you bring your personal concerns;
God’s blessings are not for the fortunate favoured few;
            Rather, 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 moreover a God who 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.
 
Hannah’s action, in defiance of religious authority,
            to make her prayer in the sanctuary
            and subsequently to dedicate Samuel to Nazirite service,
sets a powerful tone for the books of Samuel
            insofar as Samuel her son grows into a key figure in the Jewish story.
 
It will be Samuel who transitions Israel
            from the violent chaos of the period of the Judges
            to the relative stability (but still with flaws) of the monarchy under Saul and David.
 
And indeed Hannah and Samuel
            present a stark contrast as a parent/child pair
to the subsequent story of Eli and his faithless sons
            which follows in the next chapter.
 
Hannah’s prayer has often been considered a theological key
            for interpreting the books of Samuel
insofar as it introduces the themes of God bringing down the mighty (i.e. Saul)
            and raising up the lowly (i.e. David),
though the ways in which these events unfold
            are presented as complex, fraught, and full of human decisions,
            deeply flawed as they often are;
the bringing down the mighty and the raising up of those who are downtrodden
            is never a straightforward story.
 
But the theme, later echoed in the song of Mary (Luke 1:46–55),
            that God will bring down the powerful and raise up the powerless
            is not limited to the books of Samuel.
 
Rather, it can be traced throughout the whole Bible,
            including the stories of the life of Jesus and those who follow him.
 
As in Samuel, throughout the Bible God works to do this
            not by fiat, but through the messy, flawed, halting lives of human beings.
 
And so Hannah’s song echoes down the millennia,
            to 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.’