As Long as He Lives, He is Lent to the Lord

Epiphany Season: Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, 2 February 2014.  Also known as Candlemas - forty days after the birth of Christ it is the Festival of the Purification of Mary & the Presentation of our Lord. 

Rev. Bruce Skelton, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch, Colorado

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The text for this morning’s meditation is the O.T. lesson which was read earlier (1 Sam 1:21-28). I would like to focus specifically on the final verse of that text. Therefore, I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives he is lent to the Lord.

The beginning of the book of 1 Samuel unsurprisingly begins with the account of the birth of its namesake. The parents of Samuel are portrayed as devout, God-fearing, Israelites. It is clear that Elkanah and his wife Hannah believed in and reverently worshiped the one true God, the God of Israel. the God who comforts and saves the afflicted. And this was crucial because as read about Hannah we see that she was indeed afflicted. She was unable to have children, which was seen by many in those days as a curse from God. And Elkanah’s other wife Peninnah, who had born children, made sure Hannah was regularly reminded of it, which made her sorrow all the greater.

If all of that wasn’t bad enough when she did go to pray earnestly before the Lord at the tabernacle, the chief priest, Eli accused her of being a drunk. But God was merciful and He knew her sorrow and heard her prayers and answered them, and she in turn kept her vow and gave Samuel to the Lord’s service for his entire life.

But this idea of lending or giving someone to the Lord is not something one hears too much about these days. I would submit that this is because it is foreign to the way we often think about things. Most people, and perhaps even many of us, think that we are all sort of free agents and that we are own and that we may do whatever we will with ourselves and whatever we have, but this type of thinking flies right in the face of what the Word of God says. St. James in his epistle writes:

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you… you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.  So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

What this tells us is that everything we are and have is ultimately the Lord’s, including our time and what we do with it. The old expression, you are living on borrowed time is abundantly true for all of us. All our time, from the moment we draw our first breath to the moment we breathe our last is a gift from our Almighty Creator who made everything, including us and these bodies we inhabit as St. Paul reminds us in the sixth chapter of First Corinthians:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

And therein lays the problem, because it runs contrary to everything the world we live in teaches us and what we ourselves often choose to believe. The world teaches us that the three most important people in the world are me, myself, and I. It is interesting that the last of them is always capitalized, unless you are e.e.cummings of course, (a little humor for you poetry buffs out there).  Yes, it just so happens that the first person singular personal pronoun as subject is always capitalized. We always capitalize the word: “I” just like we always capitalize the word, “God,” because “I” likes to play God. And yes, I know that sounds like bad grammar, but it is still true.

The fact of the matter is that we are all natural born idolaters, every one of us, and the biggest idol we have is the one who stares back at in the mirror in the morning.  He or she, will do everything within his or her power to gain the upper hand over others and to take all the credit and give all the glory to him or herself and leave none for God or anyone else.  That is why God, so often in his divine providence, chooses to humble those he loves the most, especially his beloved children. He humbles them and brings them low so that He can later exalt them or lift them up and redeem them.  And that, beloved, is the one constant reoccurring theme that you will find in every story in the Bible, from cover to cover.  It is found in the stories of Adam and Eve, and Noah, and Abraham, and Jacob, and Joseph and Moses and David, and Peter and Paul, and Hannah, and Mary, and most especially Jesus.

Yes, just as Hannah lent or gave her son to God for life, so God the Father lent his Son, Jesus Christ to us for death. Jesus willingly humbled himself and came to live among us and to die on a cross in order to save us from sin, death, and the power of the devil. As it says in our epistle lesson this morning:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

As Samuel, humble Hannah’s son, later became a great judge and prophet, so Jesus, humble Mary’s son, became our Savior from sin and death.  And beloved this is important for us to remember, as we, live out our lives in this fallen world where the devil seeks to make us slaves again to sin and the fear of death, and where our own sin-fallen natures seek to cause us to exalt ourselves and our desires over God.

Instead by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, working through the Word and sacraments (the means of grace), He enables us to surrender all that we have and all that we are to His will. In view of His grace and mercy, poured out upon us in abundance through His Son who humbled himself even to death on a cross for us, how can we not humbly submit our minds, our hearts, and our bodies unto His service and to our neighbor’s, as David wrote in the 25th Psalm:

Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.

All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great…

Indeed our guilt is great, but as Jesus showed us, God’s love is greater, because it humbles itself to save us and all who would believe in Him.

It was Hannah’s faith in God, her belief that he was a loving God who heard the humble and delivered the afflicted, that caused her to pour out her heart to Him in prayer. And as our text shows God heard and answered her prayer. My friends what troubles you? What it is that weighs heavy upon your heart? Why not take it to the Lord in prayer?

Why not humbly lift your sorrows and burdens up to the Lord in prayer, knowing, trusting that He will lift you up in due time just as He did Hannah and so many other faithful people in the past? For He has already granted us the forgiveness of all our sins, life and salvation, and in the end He will exalt all who believe in Him to the highest place, which is heaven, where there will be a joyous reunion with those we love.

In the meantime, as we all continue to live on borrowed time, let us heed the words of St. Peter in his first epistle:

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.  Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

What can one say to that but, “Amen.”

And now may that peace of God that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  You can depend upon Him He will do it. 

Amen.