Date: 11/7/2003
Time: 1:19:03 PM
Looking to do a Thanksgiving series beginning 11/9 running through Thanksgiving - using Hannah as the first text - next week the woman and coin - and ending on Thanksgiving Sunday. Anybody have anything good on Hannah and the thanksgiving she offers. Desperate in Georgia
Date: 11/11/2003
Time: 10:27:21 AM
I can't believe there's not more here! Hannah's song is one of the most powerful texts in the Hebrew Scriptures, IMHO. Here we have the reversal of the world's order in God's kingdom, prophesied long before Mary sang her song or Mary's Son began his work, telling us that the last would be first and the first, last.... Maybe we shy away from it because most of us using an online lectionary website are pretty onbviously among those who God will bring low... Heather in Sharon
Date: 11/11/2003
Time: 7:30:25 PM
Working with a sermon on servant leadership with Hannah as the paradigm of what servant leadership looks like- leadership that is faithful to core values, faithful to commitments that count, courgaeous, opotimist in the face of great adversity, hopeful in the face of seeming defeat, and visionary in the sense that she looks beyond herself to a promise that will be fufilled in part in the life of Samuel but will live on through the years to be found again in Mary and her son. Isn't she a better example of servant leadership in the sense in which Jesus will talk about and live out leadership. Are not the Beatitudes an example of his standards for servant leadership? I know all this seems a little off the wall but wasn't that what Hannah points to and Mary points to and Jesus brings to full expression? Pastor John from Ga.
Date: 11/12/2003
Time: 2:51:32 PM
Heather in Sharon:
I imagine that many are concentrating on the birth story, rather than the song, although I agree on its importance. The song helps me put the birth story in perspective, lifting it out of the particulars of a woman going crazy to have a baby, even one she won't get to raise. It says instead that God uses all sorts of things to transform the world, even (especially) women considered BARREN (what a word). It's basically the prelude to resurrection--dead womb gives life, weeping turns to joy, poor and empty are filled.
You're right, though, we do soft-pedal the bringing low of all the people who are rich and full and have internet access. I just try to make sure that my people hear that word, that they hear that they wherever they are on the ladder, they'd darn well identify themselves with the ones who are going to be lifted up.
Anyway, I'm glad to have this text to complement the birth narrative.
Laura in TX
Date: 11/12/2003
Time: 2:53:05 PM
"...darn well BETTER," I should have said. Got to get the grammar right.
Laura
Date: 11/13/2003
Time: 6:34:45 AM
The Song of Hannah is central to the whole of the two volumes of Samuel. In it is both the beginning of Samuel, the birth of the prophet Samuel: "I rejoice in my victory." And the lifting up of King David: "he will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed.".
In it is the laying low of those in power religiously at the time, Eli and his family, and the lifting up this "barren" woman's child. It is about reversal. It is about hope. It is about thanksgiving. It is about liberation.
I'll be using this passage along with the gospel of Mark on Sunday. As I use Hannah's song I will be working to connect it to the rest of the story.
I'm wondering if the Heather who's commenting this time around is the same Heather who wrote three years ago about false labor pains which were still fresh in her memory having just had a baby 6 months before.
Mark in WI
Date: 11/13/2003
Time: 11:28:40 AM
I too will be using this one with the gospel lesson. The verse that jumps out at me is "talk no more proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge..."(v.3), and later in v.9 "For not by might does one prevail". I'm thinking of how we tend to go for power and pride in the United States, over knowledge, (as is evident in Iraq these days). What is it about us as individuals and as a people, that belittles knowledge (and God's view of things, rather than our own)?
We do need to be reversed, mixed up, put in our place, but who wants it?
DGinNYC
Date: 11/15/2003
Time: 11:48:14 AM
Mark in WI,
I had forgotten, but yes, that was me! Heather in Sharon