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A sermon preached by Mr Antony Weiss The Second Sunday of Christmas – Solemn Evensong Christ Church St Laurence – Sunday 3rd January, 2016

1 Samuel 1:20-28

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Ps 19:14). AMEN.

The First Book of Samuel, dated at around 1050BC, from which this evening’s First Lesson is taken, reveals how God restored leadership to Israel. Israel, a fledgling nation which had just come out of a 200 year period of astonishing social turmoil, moral deprivation and lawlessness.

This dysfunctional period was the two centuries after the Israelites had come into the Promised Land of Canaan having been under the leadership of Joshua as the successor to Moses. An era summed up in this verse from Book of Judges, ‘In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25).’

The First and Second Books of Samuel cover the birth and lives of the first three leaders of the nation of Israel. Firstly there’s Samuel whose birth occurs in this evening’s reading and who turned out to be a modest prophet and not an effective ruler in his own right. He is followed by Saul, the first king of Israel who first appears later in Chapter 9 though Saul proved to be a noble but rather tragic figure. And then there’s David, the real hero who becomes Israel’s second and greatest king who enters in Chapter 16 and whose deeds are covered in detail in the Second Book of Samuel. King David is a very human hero, who does both noble and dastardly deeds the latter of which are in no way hidden by the author of Samuel. Weaknesses indeed yet God used each as a part of His plan pointing forward to the coming of the faultless leader and saviour, Jesus Christ.

Before considering further the context of tonight’s First Lesson, it is blindly obvious that governance woes are not merely limited to biblical historical times. Closer to home leadership challenges have become the new ‘normal’ in Australian politics. It appears that the revolving door of the Australian Prime Minister’s office has taken grip and we have ushered in five PMs in as many years with John Howard being our last Head of Government to have served a full term, now on near a decade ago. Since 2005, the Australian Labor Party has had six leaders (counting Kevin Rudd twice). The Liberals have had five (counting Turnbull twice) all these changes

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appear to make Australia look more like Paul Keating’s “banana republic” rather than one of the world’s more stable parliamentary democracies. Speaking of Paul Keating, who is certainly conversant with machinations of ousting a sitting PM, he divides world leaders into three types: ‘straights’, ‘fixers’ and ‘maddies’.

To the United States, you may have seen the latest episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s current web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” during which he and President Obama take a car ride around the grounds of the White House. “How many world leaders, you think, are just completely out of their mind?” comedian Jerry Seinfeld asked Barack Obama. “A pretty sizeable percentage,” Obama replied. So it would be a thought-provoking exercise to hear how Obama would categorise the aspiring Presidential candidates using Keating’s categories of ‘straights’, ‘fixers’ and ‘maddies’.

World leadership is a serious concern. Ian Bremmer, an American political scientist and the author of Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World states that for the first time in seven decades, there is no single power or alliance of powers ready to take on the challenges of global leadership. Bremmer argues that the world power structure is facing a leadership vacuum and I quote; “In a world of emergencies, leadership matters—and in 2016 it will become unavoidably obvious that the world lacks leadership. The days when heads of the G-7 industrial powers like the U.S. and Germany controlled geopolitics and the global economy are gone for good. The international group of today is the expanded G-20, including important emerging powers like China and India, nations that agree on much less.”

The result is what Bremmer calls a G-Zero World, a global caucus whose members do not share political and economic values or priorities. They don’t have a common vision for the future and with this leadership vacuum here for the immediate future at least, it is evident that no-one will take the lead in destroying ISIS, stabilizing the Middle East, containing the flow of dangerous weapons let alone dealing realistically with extenuating climate change and so forth and so on...

So let’s return to Chapter 1 of the First Book of Samuel. It sees the birth of Samuel, the first of successive leaders God raises at a time when Israel too had been faced with its own G-Zero predicament of existing in a fragmented and divided tribal power vacuum, much like the world in which we find ourselves.

1 Samuel 1 commences with the childless woman Hannah, the favourite of the two wives of Elkanah who is desperately sad about not being able to bear a child. Hannah ‘… was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. And she declared, “O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thy maidservant, and remember me, and not forget thy

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maidservant, but wilt give to thy maidservant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life … (1 Sam 1:11)”’ And God responded, ‘and in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel (which sounds a little like ‘asked for’ in Hebrew), for she said in the opening line of tonight’s lesson, “I have asked him of the Lord (1 Sam 1:20).”’

Thus a period of two or three years passed during which Hannah ‘…remained and nursed her son, until she weaned him (1 Sam 1:23b).’ True to her vow of giving her new born son Samuel to the Lord (verse 11), ‘And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine; and she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh; and the child was young (1 Sam 1:24).’ ‘“For this child I prayed; and the Lord has granted me my petition which I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord. And they worshiped the Lord there. (1 Sam 1:27-28).”’ Thus the First Lesson concludes with the boy Samuel worshipping at the temple at Shiloh.

However the account is not about a troubled woman who came to the Lord in prayer and had her supplications answered through the birth of a son. Hannah, who had been ‘…deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly (1 Sam 1:10)’ is the agent for providing the first prophet-leader of Israel as intended by God. We must not conclude therefore that God did not care for Hannah, because he did. He was concerned primarily for His chosen people in providing Hannah with a longed for son Samuel who in turn was raised to be the first in the next line of leaders of God’s people.

So God once more works through unexpected means. Hannah’s story is not typical of any troubled person in Israel at that time although we have seen God has raising leaders through enduring, prayerful and once ‘barren’ mothers who longed for the blessing of a child and who had relinquished hope of bearing one. Sarah (Gen 17:16-19), Rebekah (Gen 25:21-26), Rachel (Gen 29:31, 30:22-24), the mother of Samson (Judges 13:2-5) and Elizabeth (Lk 15:17), the children of whom were all dedicated to accomplishing God’s specific purposes.

So the Books of Samuel are chiefly about God’s plans for meeting the void of the leadership left over from the chaos of the period of the Judges. Hannah’s son Samuel was promptly surpassed by other leaders, by Saul and by the great but flawed King David all of whom and all of their descendants are exceeded by the one great anointed perfect leader, God’s only Son, born of the Virgin Mary. Just as Hannah gives birth to the leader who makes way for the successive

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leadership of Israel at a particular time in history. One thousand years later Mary in her humble greatness, as a servant leader herself accepts willingly her mission, ‘“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word (Lk 1:38)”’ giving birth to and raising our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, true God and true Man in whom and through whom servant leadership finds it fullest expression in love and unfailing example.

The Hebrew Bible reveals to us the astounding story of leadership crisis in Israel at the end of the second millennium before Christ and we only have to look at the state of the governance in the current milieu to see that the world’s spot-fires in 2016 are not going to go away under the G-Zero leadership vacuum of our epoch.

There is a prevailing sense to be made of the world when we engage with Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, as God’s unfolding of His entire plan for salvation and redemption which only come through the One whose Nativity, Life, Death and Rising in Glory we share every time we gather together in worship and to share in the breaking of the bread, for there is only One High Priest who can take away all the troubles of this world, ‘Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9-11).’

+In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

AMEN