The Power of Purr
Have you heard the gospel according to cats? Purr changes things! (I know you don’t come here for the jokes.)
Today’s scripture would certainly seem to support the sentiment, though. Prayer does change things. But lest we jump too quickly to any conclusions, I would like to keep one question open. What, exactly, does prayer change?
Not a Transaction
It is one of the most beloved storylines in ancient Israelite tradition. A barren woman miraculously gives birth to a child. What better story to illustrate grace, the giftedness of life, the goodness that is not of our own making but from God the Giver of good gifts?
In today’s iteration of the story, Hannah “pours out her soul before the Lord,” the Lord “remembers” her, and she “conceives and bears a son” (1 Sam 1:16, 19-20). It seems like a cut-and-dried case of prayers being answered. The priest Eli suggests as much when he says, “May the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him” (1 Sam 1:17).
But this straightforward interpretation of “prayers answered” does not rest easy with me. For one thing, scripture itself is curiously reticent to attribute Hannah’s pregnancy directly to God. Whereas in previous cases (such as the matriarchs Sarah and Rebekah and Leah and Rachel), scripture designates God as responsible for the barren woman’s conceiving and bearing a child, saying something like, “God opened her womb” (e.g., Gen 30:22), in today’s passage the narrator simply says “the Lord remembered her” (1 Sam 1:19). Perhaps we’re meant to connect the dots and assume that God’s remembering Hannah led straight to God’s opening her womb. But we could also interpret God’s remembering Hannah as a simple expression of God’s companionship and care. God heard her prayer, and God will not leave her side in the midst of her travails.
This interpretation—that God hears and cares but does not necessarily wave the magic wand—recommends itself to me on one simple basis: reality. That is, I know several individuals who have been desperate for a child, whose prayers have not been answered in such direct fashion. More generally, I think we are all familiar with the experience of praying desperately for something—a cure, perhaps, or a reconciliation, or a windfall—and it never comes.
To me, it seems that an oversimplified reading of Hannah’s story as “prayers answered” founders on the rocks of reality, on the stony shoreline of our own actual experience. We have all learned the hard way this lesson: whatever prayer is, it is not a transaction. It is not a straightforward matter of getting what we ask for.
Getting Honest with God
Perhaps part of what inclines us toward reading Hannah’s prayer as transactional is that we read it as one single, decisive prayer. But in fact, the surrounding verses make it clear that this particular prayer is one among many. Year after year, Hannah has gone up to the temple with her husband Elkanah, and every year it ends in tears (cf. 1 Sam 1:7). Why? Elkanah’s other wife, Penninah, “provokes her severely” because she has no children (1 Sam 1:6). I imagine Penninah doing this in the most infuriating way. You know, never saying anything directly, but rather complaining about all the “problems” of having children. “Oh, what am I going to do this year? My boys and girls have outgrown their best clothes—what will they possibly wear to the temple?” Or, “I wish my babies would stop crying in the middle of worship—it’s so embarrassing.” And yet she says it all with a smile. “The gall of that woman,” Hannah would have thought to herself, “to talk about the blessing of children as a burden. What I wouldn’t do for her ‘burden’!"
For his part, Elkanah tries to reassure Hannah. He gives her twice the sacrificial meat that he gives to Penninah and his children. He tells her the truth: she is his favorite. He prefers her to Penninah. “Why is your heart sad?” he asks. “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (1 Sam 1:5, 8).
And yet Hannah cries. Every year, she cries. We don’t know the particular words that she prays the previous years, but we do not need to know the particular words. The tears tell us all we need to know. Hannah is getting honest with God. She is praying her heart. Maybe it is anger and resentment toward Peninnah. Maybe like the psalmist, she prays, “Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain I have kept my heart clean…. For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning” (Ps 73:12-14). Maybe her prayer is more inclined toward despair and self-pity, as when the psalmist prays, “I say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppressed me?’ As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’” (Ps 42:9-10).
Whatever the content of her prayers, it is perhaps the simple fact that she even prays in the first place that is most instructive. Most people in Hannah’s situation would likely be tempted to look for their identity in their achievements and in what others think of them. In the case of barrenness, which was looked upon in ancient Israelite culture as a grave failure at best or God’s judgment at worst, a woman might do as the matriarchs Sarah and Rachel do, and try to find a surrogate mother. A son to their name was better than no son at all. Or another woman might find security and satisfaction in her husband’s love and favoritism. She might even occasionally flaunt her husband’s love and favoritism in the face of her rival (not unlike the way Joseph flaunts Jacob’s favoritism in front of his brothers).
But Hannah does neither of these things. She does not look for her identity and worth in either her achievements or what others think of her. Instead, she places herself before God and expresses her honest, messy feelings. Year after year, she turns toward God.
A Desert Interlude: Getting Closer to God
And here is my suspicion. Here is my interpretation. Year after year, through one honest, messy prayer after another—there is change. But it is not Hannah wearing God down, like water on stone. It is God slowly transforming Hannah’s heart.
I’m reminded here of a couple of anecdotes that come from the Desert Mothers and Fathers (those Christ-followers who retreated to the wilderness once Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire and the church started feeling more like a tool of Caesar than the body of Christ).
The first anecdote is just a saying attributed to Abba Ammonas, “I have spent fourteen years [here] asking God night and day to grant me the victory over anger.” Fourteen years. That is not the kind of testimonial for prayer that you would hear from a televangelist. Who wants to wait around fourteen years to get what they ask for?
The second anecdote comes from Amma Syncletica, who explains that enjoying the presence of God involves prayer and tears. “There is struggling and toil at first for all those advancing toward God; but afterward, my children, inexpressible joy. Indeed, just as those seeking to light a fire at first are engulfed in smoke and teary-eyed, thus they obtain what they seek…. So, we ought to kindle the Divine Fire in ourselves with tears and toil.”
Tears and toil. Again, not a very attractive testimonial for prayer. But what strikes me about Amma Syncletica’s teaching is that she frames the object of prayer not as getting what you want, but as getting close to God (“advancing toward God”). And that, she says, is “inexpressible joy.”
Not Mine, but Yours
The only prayer of Hannah’s that we actually get to hear is the last one, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. In her final prayer, we see the fruit of her years of prayer. We see her transformation. If originally her honest prayers were for a son that would bring her personal fulfillment, her final prayer makes clear that it is no longer a matter of personal fulfillment. She lets go of her son before she ever comes to hold him and effectively tells God, “He will not be mine; he will be yours.” Which, perhaps, is the difficult truth of all parenthood. Perhaps Hannah is only accepting the reality of her situation, whether she has a child or not, and entrusting God with whatever happens.
I’m reminded of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane: “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want” (Matt 26:39). Jesus’ prayer follows a remarkably similar arc to Hannah’s. First there is honesty. For Jesus, the honesty of wanting something other than a cross. For Hannah, the honesty of wanting a child so she can be seen as normal, complete, a respectable Israelite woman. But then this honesty, which may begin as messy and even selfish, naturally opens up and matures into a desire for God’s will. This honesty grows into the awareness that God’s will is in fact what is best for us. And therefore it becomes our will too.
When Hannah leaves her son Samuel at the temple, probably around the age of three, she prays one more time. It is not a tearful prayer, although I would be surprised if there weren’t some tears in her eyes. Instead it is a triumphant prayer, glorifying not only what God has done in Hannah’s particular situation, but what God is doing throughout the world: breaking the power of the prideful, guarding the faithful, lifting up the lowly. In other words, it is not a selfish prayer but selfless, celebrating what God is doing all over the world. And, for me, the key to the prayer is toward the end: “For not by might does one prevail” (1 Sam 2:9). How does one prevail? Through honest, messy prayer. Prayer that slowly changes us, maybe through years and tears and trials, gradually aligning our will with God’s will. It is, as Amma Syncletica says, “an inexpressible joy”—not to get what we first want, but ultimately to be with God and to give flesh to God’s goodness in our world.
Prayer
Compassionate God,
Who is always with us in prayer—
May Hannah’s example inspire us
To be courageous and honest with you,
To pray messy prayers,
To be changed according to your will.
In Christ, who prayed, “Your will be done.” Amen.
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