In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” – Luke 1:26-28

We are jumping from the Old Testament to the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament now. In the previous 25 verses, the birth of John the Baptist has been foretold, John’s father Zechariah has been struck mute for not believing the angel telling him about the impending birth of his son, and John’s mother Elizabeth has conceived him, taking away the disgrace she had endured among her community for being barren.

Are you feeling caught up now? Good! Moving on…

An angel comes to an unmarried teenage girl in Nazareth who is engaged to a much older man. It is probably a good thing that the angel’s first words to her are that she is favored and that the Lord is with her because I cannot imagine the terror she would be feeling at a heavenly visitor suddenly appearing to her. The message he (the angel) is bringing is one that could potentially threaten her life or undo the marriage arrangement that was supposed to be happening because it was a huge stain on the family if a woman was found to be pregnant out of wedlock.

Ignoring the societal realities at play here, we are about to receive some amazing news: God is coming to dwell with us! God is putting on skin (paraphrasing the words of the Lutheran pastor, author, and speaker Nadia Bolz-Weber) and coming to live with us! The amazing part? God isn’t just descending on earth with a huge light show and a massive choir of angels visible everywhere. Instead, God is coming in the womb of a teenage girl in the backwaters of some obscure Roman territory. What does it say about God that the “favored one” is someone who has some of the least power on earth?
Thank you, God, for turning the expected order of things on its head and sending Jesus to come to one without status or prestige. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

The Lord! His adversaries shall be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king, and exalt the power of his anointed. – 1 Samuel 2:10

The word that comes to mind when I see this passage is “braggadocio”. Also, the name of a font found in Microsoft Word, it means “empty boasting, arrogant pretension: cockiness” according to the Merriam-Webster website. My mental picture of this word is a combination of the song “We Will Rock You” by Queen, an MMA fighter trash-talking their opponent, and the yelp Tim Taylor makes in the TV show “Home Improvement”. I mean, Hannah sings about the Lord’s adversaries being “shattered”—that is not a mild statement!

In the context of the rest of Hannah’s song, however, it works well. Much like today, she was perceived to be weak as a woman, and there were political powers at play where she lived that threatened her and her people. Israel had judges, but they would frequently stray from the path dictated by the Ten Commandments and the 613 laws in Leviticus, resulting in the Lord sending some foreign nation to rule over them for a bit to punish them. At any moment, some massive foreign power could come in and rule over them again. I mean, the last verse in the book of Judges talks about how “in those days there was no king in Israel” and “all the people [doing] what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21:25, NRSV) There is about to be a takeover, and Israel might not come out on top in this one. The belief that the Lord was going to “shatter” the adversaries would be incredibly comforting because it meant that the Lord was in control and everything was going to work out in the end.

Is our world that much different today? Are we living in a situation where we feel like we are being ruled by enemy forces in the form of the other political party? What side is the Lord on, anyway? We need to take heart that the Lord has a plan for all of this and what is right will triumph in the end.

This is my Father’s world;
Why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is king, let the heavens ring;
God reigns, let the earth be glad!
Lutheran Book of Worship #554
-Jen McCabe

He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness; for not by might does one prevail. – 1 Samuel 2:9

I was betrayed by a friend. It happened years ago. The details aren’t important, but I was betrayed and left for dead. Darkness surrounded me on all sides; there was no light to be seen or perceived. It was such despair that the platitudes of God always being there – footprints in the sand – God being on the side of the righteous – none of that mattered.

None of that “God is there even when you don’t see him” would be true for me until I reached the end of that part of my journey. It wasn’t until I had hit the other shore that I could look back and see that God, indeed, had been there. But if you had told me that in the midst of my grief, the midst of my travail, I would have made some unsavory suggestions of what you could do with your platitudes and good cheer. Despair frightens all of us, with good reason, but we should not sugar-coat it, hide it, or deny it. It is a critical part of the human experience – the detritus out of which the real presence of Christ can grow.

It isn’t until one is past the night that one can see the dawn begin to break. I kept the faith, not because I had any, but because God kept it for me. That allows the prayer of Hannah to become the prayer of my heart.

God, you guard the feet of your faithful ones. Even if we don’t feel it or believe it, you guard us all because of your great love. When our lives grow dark, be there with us. We do not need the light as long as we are held in your warm, strong embrace. Let us not worry about prevailing, but about staying deep within your soft hands! Amen.
-Keith Axberg

He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world. – 1 Samuel 2:8

The Bible is replete with passages that hew to a theme cherished by many of us who grew up in the ‘60s: “The arc of history bends toward justice.” Back then it was a theme made particularly relevant by Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. For Cold War kids like me, who were in high school and college during that period, it was a theme we embraced with all the brash confidence of youth, in spite of the chaos that seemed to engulf us. It’s one I stubbornly cling to even as I enter my dotage — even after losing faith in the power of Woodstock Nation to realize it.

Truth be told, I think we failed our children and grandchildren to a great extent. To be fair, the country we helped shape has made a lot of progress in terms of social justice, but the world as a whole seems more sharply divided between the princes and the poor — and the evening news just seems to underscore the disparities between those few with a seat at the table and the multitudes still mired in the ash heap. Today, the vigorous optimism of youth is being gradually replaced in my heart with a calmer and more abiding faith that justice and reconciliation are in far more capable hands than mine.

The promise of 1 Samuel 2:8 will come about, but it will happen in the Lord’s time. For those of you fond of wordplay, you might think of it as the “arc” of the covenant. If you consider the mission statement of St. Paul’s, our role and that of our children, grandchildren, and generations to come, is not so much to bend the bow of justice, but to do our best not to thwart the power of the Lord to fulfill the promise of 1 Samuel. Not that we could.

Lord, we believe that God is healing and restoring the world and that we are recipients and participants in that healing and restoration. May your love give us the strength, courage, wisdom, and compassion to live into our faith. Amen.
-Michael Boss

The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts. – 1 Samuel 2:7

I think we have all had that moment where we wish our circumstances were different. Maybe we were the bullied child in school and wished our bully would be brought down, or perhaps we had a supervisor who persecuted us, and we wished that Human Resources would catch on and fire the person. Whatever the situation, it is almost universal that we would be in a situation in life where we were on the wrong side of a power dynamic.

In today’s verse, Hannah has just had her power dynamic shifted. Previously the barren wife of Elkanah, she has now been blessed with a son. Her status and worth as a woman and a wife would have been based on her ability to bear children, so now she has been transformed from the lowest of women to a position of strength.

A twist of this story that is in the previous chapter is that once she bore him, she gives him to God to serve. It is an interesting twist because it reminds us that everything we have belongs to God—we have nothing that is our own. Understanding this is the key to true richness.

As for her son, he became the prophet and judge Samuel. You might have heard of him?

Lord, help us to remember that nothing we own is of our own making—everything we have comes from you. Help us to share our riches that your name might be glorified and your work on earth be magnified. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up.– 1 Samuel 2:6

“The LORD killeth, and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.” (King James)

“GOD brings death and GOD brings life, brings down to the grave and raises up.” (The Message, Peterson)

No matter what translation you read, the message is the same. God is in charge. God is the God of life, and death is God’s too. A quiet moment of reflection reminds us: God loves us, God moves through our lives with us, and God holds each of us as God’s unique and treasured child. We have one life and we’re privileged to be given time to choose to walk with God just as God chooses to walk with us. So, God be with you. (God is with you, you know.)

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at my end, and at my departing.
Hymn 694
-Tom Worrell