A Reflection for the 26th Sunday after Pentecost Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant
St. Luke/St.Anne's Roper and Grace, Plymouth November 17, 2024
1 Samuel 1:4-20 1 Samuel 2:1-10 Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25 Mark 13:1-8
Beginnings of Birth Pangs
As I was looking through the lessons for today, I saw a theme of people living lives that they wanted to change, and yet and the same time feared, to change. What was seen with fear and loss of hope was transformed to be the beginnings of the birth pangs for something beyond imagination.
In the Hebrew Testament Lesson from Samuel, Elkanah was a Levite, a tribe that was given responsibility of being intercessors for God's people to God. Elkanah, makes a yearly pilgrimage to the shrine of Shiloh, with his two wives. His first wife, Peninnah, has given birth to children. But his favorite wife is Hannah, who has no children. On that pilgrimage, he sees her acting strangely and thinks she is under the influence of spirits of alcohol. However, she is under the influence of God's spirit in prayer with God, asking for a change in her life, to bring forth a child. God grants her that prayer and she gives birth to Samuel, the name could be something like “Borrowed from EL” El is the Hebrew word for God.. Thus the story continues that Hannah will wean Samuel, a gift from God, and then she will not give, but lend, Samuel, to God through the Priest Eli, who will raise up the child. Hannah will live with her husband and have three sons and two daughters and every year she and her family would come on pilgrimage to see her son whom she had loaned to God. For Hannah, what was seen as a lack of hope, turned into the beginnings of the birth pangs to a new life for her and the people of Israel.
Her son Samuel, the one borrowed from God, will be one who will preside over the birth pangs of a new Nation of Israel with Saul and later David as King.
Hannah sings the song,The Song of Hannah, a song where she gives thanks for the reversal of her life, from barren to full of blessings. The song will be an influence to the Virgin Mary who sings her Prayer, The Magnificat, whose life has changed from being a a woman who might be under the shame of being an unwed mother to being the Blessed Mother of Jesus. Biblical Scholar, Walter Brueggemann, suggests that the Song of Hannah paves the way for a major theme of the book of Samuel, the "power and willingness of Yahweh to intrude, intervene and invert." To change life from what seems like a failure and allow it to be transformed into a life of joy; a life following what became birth pangs of a new life..
Before I went to seminary, one of the things I used to do was to work with people who had been addicted to substances and they came to a decision that they could no longer live as an addict. They knew what the past looked like, but now they had to leave that behind and enter into a new way of living. My job was to help them see that they were not alone in facing a new unknown. They came to realize that sheer will power was not enough, and they would need a power greater than themselves to make it into wholeness. Almost every thing in their lives is going to change. If they have a job; the eight hour job tasks may remain the same, but the spaces between each moment of those eight hours needs to be seen in a new light in how they deal with those hours, which can now be filled - rather than killed. Their lives begin to have meaning. They will go through new birth pangs; bringing forth a new life in place of the old.
The writer of the Book of Hebrews echos this promise of strength given to people in difficulty, and reminds them that the waiting for the return of Jesus, will need to be seen as living into daily birth pangs into a deeper faith.
“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. “
In the Gospel story, Jesus and disciples are wandering through the magnificent Temple of Solomon which had rebuilt and then expanded and all dolled up by the Tyrant Herod the Great, the King who wanted to kill the child the Wise Men sought to worship. The disciples are really impressed. The death of Jesus in 33AD, put to death by the Romans, will be the beginning of the end for the Temple which is destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, 27 years later. But Jesus sees into the future where that splendid temple will be turned into rubble, but that failure will be the new birth pangs beginning of leading into the new life of following the Risen Lord.
“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”
In my life, I went off to college and majored in Drama so I would be a professional actor. I loved the idea of immersing myself in the lives of characters which were parts of my own psyche. Then a couple years into my four years as an undergraduate, that dream became uninviting as I saw a need in people's lives. So, instead of heading off to New York to be a legendary actor, I graduated and got married and later we had a child, the birth pangs of being a parent. I think of that often when I realize that we do not own our children, we are only loaned them, to bring them up and pray for the best.
My mission in my working life was in the birth pangs of a life of helping others, I started working as a counselor with school drop outs, then a therapist with people, then a college professor teaching people how to work with people, then I went to seminary to help people find the strength if God's love in their lives within a Parish of faith. Now I am retired and when my wife died, I thought that it was the end of my life. It was. I mourned and then asked for signs how my life might find meaning. Looking for the new Birth pangs.
Next month, I will turn 78 years old and I still don't know what I am going to do when I grow up! I am still in the waiting for the birth pangs; of the next part of my life. I don't know what these birth pangs will look, or feel like. But, every day I end my prayers with two special prayers. The first is using the words of St. Francis, found in the back of our Prayer Book:
Lord, make us
instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where
there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is
darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to
understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we
receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying
that we
are born to eternal life. Amen.
Then I use my loose translation of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, a Swiss 19th Century Moral Philosopher, Teacher, and Poet, to show me a way I can help live into my faith.
“Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
Today, this Sunday can be just the same old, same old life you had yesterday. OR it could be the beginning of birth pangs into a new life. A new life where you are not the center of your universe.
Beginnings of Birth Pangs
My first appearance as a discomfort,
was tolerated by my mother awhile
But then at birth, I gave a big wail,
she whispered sounds of comfort.
When my wife informs me of a birth.
to be expected in the months to come,
I alternated between wanting to run,
or giving support for all I was worth.
I was clumsy, figuring how to dad,
after years of my being for myself,
there was no easy book on the shelf,
yet I learned how to be a loving dad.
It wasn't perfect, I made mistakes,
but I learned loving was what it takes.
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