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Sunday "The Giver and The Gifts" 1 Samuel 1:4-20 |
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Because God is God, God is just and generous, lavish in grace and forgiveness. God loves loving us. God likes nothing better than bestowing all the gifts and blessings of life upon us. Not because we are entitled to them, but only because God loves doing it. What does God then require of us? – gratitude and humility, and the determined effort to treat others with the very same generosity.
That is how it is supposed to work. But the human story is that, over and over, our relationship to God gets poisoned because we take the gifts of God for granted. We suppose all the gifts of life, material and spiritual, come to us because God prefers us to others, or because we are just better. We think we have God figured out and know how to get what we want. And in the process our relationship with the gifts gets poisoned as well. We become attached to what God has freely given and can freely withdraw. We feel entitled to what we have. Like the meal-time grace of TV’s Simpson family, we think “we earned it and it’s ours.” But God says, “Receive my gifts. Care for them. Enjoy them. But do not possess them. Do not become attached to them. For the gifts belong to me as fully as you yourselves belong to me.”
On this Thanksgiving Sunday, which is also a baptism Sunday (big-time!), what greater gift can come to us from God than children? A baby or small child is the perfect example of a gift from God that is beautiful and fragile. How humbling to be able to say “This child has come to me.” And yet, what a responsibility for the care and nurture of this gift! And consider also how sad, how tragic it can be, if having a child is not possible.
Look at the story of Hannah from the Old Testament. It comes from antiquity, a different time and culture in so many ways. Polygamy was still being practiced. A wife’s identity was tightly bound to having a male child. To be “barren” was seen as a curse. And poor Hannah was also taunted by her rival wife. But still, after 3,000 years, there is something heart-wrenching in the sincerity and intensity of her prayers that she might bear a child. And, even in that male-dominated patriarchal society, there is something moving and tender in her husband’s assurances of his love, though I doubt he can feel the true depth of her pain. And the priest, Eli, seems clueless to the point of cruelty.
But Hanna prays and prays. And, as we so often do – consciously or unconsciously - she proposes a bargain with God. If God gives her a son, she promises that, as soon as he is weaned, she will bring him back to the shrine at Shiloh, and dedicate him. He will be a Nazarite, that is, a student who will live there and study under Eli. And, in due time, it all comes to pass.
It is amazing that Hannah can pray for a son with all her heart, and then, when that child comes, so freely give him away, give him back to God. There can be no doubt that she truly wanted young Samuel, as he came to be named. There can be no doubt that she loved him. And yet she could give him back to the Lord. In other words, she loved him, yet she was not attached to him.
On this Thanksgiving Sunday, think of our children as among God’s most precious gifts. What does it mean to love them, but not be attached to them? To receive them gratefully, yet be willing to let go of them?
It means understanding that our children don’t belong to us, but still we are responsible for them. I am convinced that the best parents are engaged parents. They do know where their children are at 10:00 o’clock. Such parents know how to coax, prod, encourage and rebuke. To be indifferent to or absent to our children is a tragic loss for both parent and child, and can be disastrous. But good parents distinguish between “letting alone” and “letting be.” To be over-involved, enabling, or controlling is to be hurtfully attached. Many parents stay too invested in their children. Then concern for our own needs and egos clouds our vision of what is best for them. Getting the right balance is very hard. That is why seeing our children as gifts is so important. Gifts are given to us not to be controlled but to be enjoyed. It has been said that one of the reasons God created human beings in the first place, was that God wanted someone to play with.
But beyond this, the love and nurture we want for our own children is the same love and nurture all the children of the world are entitled to. In our service of Baptism, we ask you, the whole congregation, to join in the care of these children and the support of these parents. And many of you pledging this love and support are also parents yourselves with your own children. We are all parenting one another’s children. And we are asking people without children to join in that parenting. For me this means that the gifts that come my way are never just for me alone. The Angel Gabriel told Mary that she would bear a child. But at Christmas we sing, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” Typical of our times, my two grandsons have three sets of grandparents. In some corner of my ego, I want to be loved the most. But I cannot help but be delighted that Oscar and Soren have two other grandfathers who really are unique and wonderful each in their own way, not to mention three world-class grandmothers. So much the better for everybody.
One of the best Thanksgivings I ever spent was in New York City. I was in the midst of a divorce and far from my own family, staying with my dear friend David, his partner Ira (both of them dying of AIDS), David’s ex-wife, Linda (an Episcopal priest), and their twelve year-old daughter Maggie. They had long prayed for a child. At last Maggie was born, and they were desolated to learn that she had congenital brain damage. Yet, with the help of many, especially their congregation, they had come to accept the reality and cherish this gift of Maggie. And even after David came out as a gay man, and he and Linda had divorced, they remained the most dedicated and co-operative of parents. In fact, they became fierce advocates for the rights of children with disabilities. Fighting at the local and state level, they made a big difference in Maggie’s and many children’s lives. At our Thanksgiving dinner, the food was supplied free by a non-profit organization that delivered gourmet meals to people with AIDS. And it was Maggie, God’s gift to us all, who was the glue that day. She radiated happiness and gratitude. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she would leap up from her seat and run to one of us, throw her arms around the person and cry, “I love you! I love you! I love you!”
The gift of Samuel was not just to Hannah. He was a gift to the people of Israel – a gift that changed the course of history. Hannah sings of a God who turns the world upside down, overthrowing the mighty, uplifting the poor. Gifts are the bearers of life and justice. They occasion our most wonderful and healing feelings – surprise, humility, gratitude, and play. When we think the gift is just for us, we are amazed to discover that each gift is for everyone, all God’s children. And as we realize this, we become less self-centered, more generous, more human, more alive, and more playful – more fully God’s playmates, just as we are created to be. AMEN.
