• I Samuel 1:4-20

When Elkanah [perhaps a son of Korah who led the revolt against Moses] made sacrifice, he gave some portion to one wife, Penniah, but to another wife, Hannah, he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had “closed her womb.”  For many years Penniah had taunted Hannah because she could not bear a child.  After Elkanah attempted to console Hannah, she “rose and presented herself before the Lord.”  She poured out her soul with great agony and promised that if “You will give your servant a male child,” she would raise him as a “nazarite,” one who abstains from alcohol and does not cut his hair.  A priest, Eli, has been observing  Hannah’s intense pleading, seeing her “praying silently; only her lips moved.”  He concludes she must be drunk.  Hannah assures Eli she is not “troubled,” not just some “worthless woman.”  She is “speaking out of my anxiety and vexation….”  Eli offers a blessing, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made….”  She returned to Elkanah with a changed demeanor.  They celebrated and the next morning, “Worshiped before the Lord.”  They returned home and Elkanah “knew his wife Hannah….”  She gave birth to a son, whom she named Samuel, because “I have asked him of the Lord.”

• “Song of Hannah” (I Samuel 2:1-10)

Inserted in the narrative just after Samuel’s birth, this song “exults in you, O God” for a long list of reasons.  “…Only God is knowing and weighs all actions.”  God is “mighty, yet dotes on the hungry and brings life/casts down and raises up….”  “The Almighty will judge the earth to its ends….”

OR

• Daniel 12:1-3

No matter how fantastical they might become, biblical stories have specific purposes, including this extraordinary apocalypse of Daniel.  Whatever the specific historical crisis, apocalyptic writings serve to acknowledge the enemies of God’s people and the present threat they face, but also to assure them of God’s imminent action that will save and protect them consistent with God’s past heroic actions.  A cosmic reckoning will redress historic wrongs.  “At that time,” this passage ominously begins, “Michael”– the greatest of the four archangels, the “Prince,”  Israel’s great protector– “shall arise.”  His appearance will initiate a “time of anguish” such as no nation has ever endured.  But God’s people, i.e. everyone “who is found written in the book,” “shall be delivered..!”  Many of those “who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to share everlasting contempt.” While “those who are wise” and “who lead many to righteousness” shall shine like the stars forever.

Psalm 16

The psalmist acknowledges God as “my shelter” and “my Master” and rejects any other gods, whose names will never be on his lips.  The Lord sustains me, the psalmist sings, even through those nights when my conscience “lashes” me.  “I see that the Lord is always before me….”  The confidence the poet feels is sensual:  “So my heart rejoices and my pulse beats with joy/my whole body abides secure.” (Robert Alter’s translation, The Book of Psalms.)

• Hebrews 10:11-14,(15-18)

The writer who has addressed his letter to “the Hebrews” now notes that after “Christ has offered himself for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’…”  where his enemies become his “footstool.”  By this singular sacrifice, “he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”  Echoing Jeremiah (31:33-34), the writer sees Christ as moving the covenant-making activity of God into the “hearts” and “minds” of individuals.  Due to this new work of God through Christ, “let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith….”  We can “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering….”  Let all the faithful support and encourage one another “all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

• Mark 13:1-8

Tension in Mark’s narrative between Jesus and his critics and enemies has increased significantly in what will be the last week of his life, which Jesus spends in and around the Temple.  Now the predictions and sayings of Jesus become more ominous.  An innocuous comment by one of his disciples about the massive stones and impressive buildings in and around the Temple prompts Jesus to say, “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”  Later,  sitting on the Mt. of Olives with a clear view of the city and the Temple across the valley, Jesus is asked a question by the first four disciples Jesus had invited to follow him: what will be “the sign” when the destruction will begin.  Their question launches the longest monologue by Jesus in Mark’s narrative.  First, Jesus warns, there will be those who try to exploit the impending crisis.  They will operate in his name and some will even say “I am he!”  They will have some success, he warns.  Jesus continues to say that war among nations will continue unabated.  Natural disasters, including earthquakes and famines, will not let up.  However, “This is but the beginning of birth pangs,”  Jesus says.

The First Testament of God’s people, Israel,  reacts to one crisis after another; in the Second Testament, the impending/actual crisis of the destruction of the Temple and pillage and occupation of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. is always in the background.  But in every crisis in both Testaments there is a promise of God’s action on behalf of those who have been loyal and loved the Lord.  Crises are inevitable and unstoppable in this life.  Some we bring on our selves, others are due to factors outside our control.  But the promise of biblical narratives is that no matter how dire or seemingly overwhelming any current crisis might be, God will not allow the story to end with annihilation.  When the writer to the “Hebrews” stands back and looks at the big picture, he is able to see evidence of God’s assurance in Christ, through whom humankind is exposed to evidence of a “single sacrifice,” “for all time,” which offers more than enough of God’s love for every human being.

Friedrich Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals caught the power of this promise succinctly when he wrote:

“The ‘genius’ of Christianity is none other than God sacrificing himself for man’s guilt, none other than God paying himself back.  God as the only one able to redeem man from what, to man himself, has become irredeemable– the creditor sacrificing himself for his debtor, out of love (would you credit it?)– out of love for the debtor…!” (trans. Carol Diethe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.68)

Accepting God’s love enables a “confession of our hope without wavering,” because God “has promised to be faithful.”   Crises now become the ‘contractions’ which, although excruciatingly painful and seeming endless at the time, precede a new birth of God’s latest new things.  A barren woman, Hannah, taunted by her rival, finds God’s favor and “celebrates” with her husband and in due time gives birth to a son!  Crises can be interpreted as the “birth pangs,” Jesus says, of God doing something new!  Something we could never have imagined or anticipated, but something which can be taken as further evidence of God’s abiding love.  Faith enables the interpretation of crises as birth.  Just as fear can grip us, so can hope.  The psalmist testifies: after his tortuous night,  his “pulse beats with joy/my whole body abides secure.”  Crises happen, They are inevitable and unavoidable as part of the human experience.  But these texts declare that when understood through the claims of faith, crises are not an ending, but a beginning, “birth pangs.”