This is the sermon delivered by Rev. Akiko Van Antwerpen to the people of Unfinished Community on Sunday, November 17, 2024, and draws from 1 Samuel 1:1-18
Let us pray. God, may the words of my mouth and meditations of all our hearts this morning be pleasing in your sight O Lord. You are our rock and redeemer and you are the one who fulfills us. In your name we pray, Amen.
I think that, if you have been Christian for a while, it can become kind of easy to devalue the gift of what we have been given as believers in Christ, and today’s story just reminded me of that.
The gift we have been given is the ability to spend time with God.
And this is a free gift, by the way. You don’t need to have lots of money to receive it, do not need to have a perfect record of “Good Christian Behavior” to earn this gift. You don’t have to be a certain age, race, gender, or sexual identity to spend time with God. As long as you are willing to open your heart and be honest, God is with you, always. You never have to worry about setting up an appointment with God, and you don’t have to worry that God might have family members or friends to take care of first. (Time zones are never an issue either!) As long as you are willing, God will always choose you as a God’s top priority.
It’s sort of like having Doraemon’s dokodemo door; all you have to do is call and, just like that, God is there for you!
When we sing, and when we praise God during worship, calling out to God like this seems easy enough: ♪There is none like you. No one else can touch my heart like you do. I could search for all eternity long and find there is none like you. ♪
But I would say, spending time with God is actually one of the hardest things to do, especially in times of trouble.
Some of you might not know, but I do a lot of counseling, both here in our community and in general, so I have had many chances to listen to people, and to hear about their life stories and struggles. In my experience, people are very talkative, people want to share what is on their minds and in their hearts with me, but when I use that terrifying “P” word - when I say, “Let’s pray; let’s bring this to God,” - people often find it quite difficult to do.
Please don’t get me wrong. I find myself in the same boat sometimes. For example, I really found myself struggling to write my sermon this week. Maybe it was because I haven’t preached for almost a year now, maybe it was because I felt a lot of pressure to get this right; maybe it was because of all the toxic baggage hanging over me from people and places I’ve been before. There were a lot of things, to be honest, and in the middle of all that I knew that I should spend time with God, that God would help me to write. I even felt God’s presence, inviting me to just…hang out.
But still, I was resistant.
So what did I do instead? How did I deal with my anxiety about today’s worship? Well first, I tried to ignore it by eating lots of mitarashi dango (that’s a type of Japanese sweet, for those of you don’t know), and a whole lot of crunchy chocolates, which has been a recent favorite of mine. I also kept trying to binge-watch Netflix, but I didn’t find anything I wanted to keep watching. I also tried to meditate, but all that happened is that I somehow kept falling asleep!
Finally on Friday, with Sunday fast approaching, I finally sat down at the desk. I opened the Bible and reread today’s reading. I listened to “Listen to the Word of the Lord.” Then I went downstairs to get that beautiful artwork of Jesus that we have, and I placed it in the room I was working in.
Then I sat down at the desk again and just…sat still.
Soon enough, I found myself starting to tear up. I felt overwhelmed, because as much as I felt that I wanted to spend time with God, I also really felt that God wanted to spend time with me too.
Today, we read a story of a woman who was rejected by society, looked down upon by others, ridiculed and bullied by a member of her own family. Her name was Hannah, and she lived in what is currently Israel around 1100 BCE. As many of you know, this was a time and place where the ability to have children was the only thing that determined a woman’s worth in society. Hannah lived in a time when a man could divorce his wife if she was unable to bear children and, in a time when women were unable to support themselves financially apart from a man, divorce was basically a death sentence.
Hannah’s husband, Elkanah, was married to another woman - which was normal at the time - and he had had many children with his other wife. But the years went by, and Hannah remained childless. She became agitated and stressed, because this other wife started to notice that Hannah wasn’t yet pregnant. With her whole social worth - and her own self worth - coming from her ability to have children, the bullying that came from not having children really affected her. Her health began to deteriorate, and she reached a point where she could no longer even eat.
At least though, she was not nearly as alone as she felt. What she actually had going for her was the fact that her husband deeply loved Hannah. He loved Hannah more than he did his other wife, in fact. But that wasn’t enough for her. That didn’t cure her sadness. She cried and cried, while others would eat and party besides her.
Her grief was intense, and overwhelming. Others were happy, others could get what they wanted and needed, but Hannah…still she sat, and cried.
Finally Hannah could no longer bear it, and she decided to spend some time alone, with God. She went to the temple - the place where the people would come to worship and give sacrifices to God - and she prayed. She talked to God openly, and honestly, and just cried her eyes out. She cried, and she cried, and she continued to pray so hard and so emotionally that the priest who was there though she must have been insane, or worse!
Oh, the social consequences! The priest nudged her and said, “Don’t get drunk anymore, woman!”
She got caught being all crazy and emotional, and by her pastor for that matter! If the social pressure was bad before, surely this would just be too much. If her pastor saw her bearing all her pain and misery, and just thought she was drunk - if even he couldn’t understand - what was left for her to do? Would she even have the energy to talk back to this man, when she didn’t even have the mental energy to explain to her own husband how she felt?
Hannah! What are you going to do?
But Hannah hadn’t just been crying. She’d been spending time with God, pouring out her troubled soul to God. She was already a different woman! So not only did she clarify that she wasn’t drunk at all, but she is able to assure the pastor that she was a woman of worth because she had been in the presence of God. She might still be infertile, but her sadness had fallen away, her burdens had been lifted. She looked happier, more assured in who she was, rather than who she though she needed to be.
Her appetite returned, and she went back to her husband.
As a pastor, it is my great blessing to be able to hear people’s life stories, and to sit with them through all of life’s struggles. I get to meet, and hang out with people of all different ages, genders, nationalities, backgrounds, and other life experiences. I get to meet so many different people, but as I have gotten to know more and more people, I have to come to realize something.
Humans all mourn for the lack of similar things. We mourn for a lack of love, support, money, status, respect, safety, stability, good health, friends, and family.
I hear people cry out such heartbreaking things as,
“I just want to be loved.”
“I cannot forgive what they did to me and my family.”
“I am lonely.”
“I can’t continue to live like this anymore. No one understands me.”
“Why do I have to go through this misery? Everyone else seems better and happier.”
“I need to earn more money cause I need to support my family…“
“I am scared. What if I lose my job? What if I change my job? What if I cannot provide for my family?”
“What if I cannot get good grades? What if I don’t get into the school I want to go to? What if we lose this game? What if I fail in this performance?”
“What should I do?”
“If you were me, what would you do?”
When people share their troubles, this is something they often ask .
And my answer is usually the same, and even though it can often be disappointing for some to hear, this is what I usually say:
“I can’t answer that. Only God knows. All I can do is to pray with you.”
I cannot promise that your situation will resolve the way you like. I can’t promise you that your pain will go away. I can’t promise you healing, safety, security, or understanding from others. I can’t promise you that things will get better soon, or even that they won’t get worse.
But there is one thing I can assure you of, with absolute certainty.
That that God hears you, that God loves you, and that no matter what you may be facing, no matter how dark the night might seem, God will be with you the whole way through.
I know this from my experience spending time with God in my own times of deep trouble. I know this from my experience seeing people spend time with God in their own most difficult times. Spending time with God doesn’t mean that our circumstances will change, but it does mean that our countenance will change. Spending time with God changes our hearts, gives us a few moments of true peace, true comfort, true assurance and, above all else, true hope - just as Hannah experienced.
So, as I wrap things up, I want to invite you all into a time of prayer, just like Hannah did. You don’t have to do anything special, just open your hearts and be honest. Tell God what’s hurting you. Tell God what’s bothering you. And if you don’t have any stress, if there’s nothing weighing on your soul today, well then give your thanks to God instead! Share your joy and gratitude with God. God wants to hear all that is in your hearts and in your life.
Share all these things with God and see how the presence of the Lord rests on your heart.
God wants to hear all that is going on in your life, all that is in your heart, because as much as we want to spend time with God, God wants to be there with us too.
Be still and know that God is here. With you. With us all.
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