Giving Our Kids To God - 1st Samuel 1:21-28

Can you imagine?   I mean, really, can you imagine what it had to be like?  It was not the first time and the means and method are a little different, but at its core it is the same.

The first instance we read of is with Abraham.  Abraham and Sarah are childless.  By the time we encounter them, they, evidently, are past the point of longing for a child and Abraham is resigned to the fact that all of his belongings will be passed along to his nephew or one of his servants.  Then he and Sarah receive this promise that they will have a son.  Without going through all the details of what comes and remains a complicated story, we find, with Abraham at the ripe age of 100 and Sarah 90, the two of them celebrating the birth of their son Isaac.  Finally, Sarah has a child, removing the decades of stigma of being barren—and Abraham finally has the heir that God has promised.

Years pass and Isaac grows through his childhood into his late teens and into early adulthood when God speaks to Abraham.  God asks Abraham to do the unthinkable.  God directs Abraham to take Isaac to the top of a mountain and sacrifice him—offer Him back to God.  It is unthinkable—human sacrifice in itself is unthinkable—but here is the request for Abraham to come before God and offer up his and Sarah’s only son, his heir, the one who was the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promise that he, Abraham, would be the father of a multitude of people.

For those of who don’t know the whole of the story, just to set your minds at ease, once God sees Abraham’s willingness not to withhold his son—and to put his whole trust in God—God provides a ram to be the sacrifice in place of Isaac.  We get a picture, though scholars disagree on just how it took place, of Abraham and Isaac walking back down that mountain, side by side, and returning home.

Hundreds of years later we come to the scene of Elkanah and his two wives.  One of the wives was Peninnah…she had given birth to both sons and daughters.  The other wife, Hannah, had remained barren, like Sarah.  Peninnah would regularly give Hannah a difficult time because of her barrenness, most likely bragging that she was more special and that Elkanah would love her more, because she had provided heirs that would continue the family line.   Hannah became deeply depressed and while the family was in Shiloh to worship God and make their sacrifices, Hannah went before Tabernacle and prayed, feverishly that God might let her bear a son.  She even entered that bargaining stage of begging and pleading with God, saying, “God if you will just give me a male child, I will bring him back here and give him back to You.” Later, after Hannah, Peninnah, and Elkanah return home to Ramah, Hannah and Elkanah conceive a child.  Hannah gives birth to the child, it is a boy, she names him Samuel, meaning, among other things, “God hears.”

You know, what Hannah did is not that uncommon, so many of us bargain with God.  “God, if you will help me pass this test, I will study next time”; “God, if you will get me home safely, I’ll never stay out this late again”; “God, if you will get my wife through the surgery, I’ll be in church every Sunday;” or “God, if you help me get this job, I’ll tell all my coworkers about You;”. How many times do we make those kind of promises, and then back out?  We hang out with our friends instead studying; we stay out till the early morning hours and have to still have to drive home; we might go to church a few Sundays, but then the bed sure is comfortable, and a sunny day and the pool call to us the following week, and soon it’s Christmas; or we find out our coworkers think Jesus is a joke, and we’re scared to even bow our heads for a blessing during lunch meetings, much less witness to those in the office. 

For Hannah, it was, “God, if you will give me a baby boy, I will give him back to you.”  If there was ever someone who might back out on their vow…here’s a mom who has longed for a child for what seems like forever.  She has him now, so what if she made a promise? Wouldn’t you hold on to him as tightly as you could?  Wouldn’t you spoil him with every breath he took?  Yet she didn’t.  As soon as he was done breast feeding, scholars suggesting in that day it was between the ages of two and three, Hannah took Samuel back to the Tabernacle and offered him back to God, giving him to the priest to raise.  She gave her son to God, that he might one day serve Him.  Can you imagine the pain in her heart as she pried his fingers from her hand, or, more likely, her fingers from his hand, and placed his hand into the hand of the priest, Eli?  Can you imagine the tears that rolled down her cheek as she hugged him one more time, then turned and began the journey home?  She knew she would see him again.  She knew that he could not be anywhere safer or better.  Yet it hurt all the same.

Could we do that?  If God has blessed us with a child, could we take our child to the Tabernacle, to the Temple, here, to the church, and give them back to God?  Could we entrust the raising of our child to God and to God’s servants in the Church?

I hope they realize it, but that is just what Charles and Brittany and Jimmy and Michelle did this morning.  As they brought Zoey Danielle and Sadie Rose forward for Baptism, they were bringing their girls forward and offering them back to God.  They were saying, “I no longer claim her as my own, God, I am entrusting her to You and Your servants.”  The truth of the matter is that whenever we bring a child to be baptized, whenever we bring them to recognize that the grace of God is at work in their lives, we are giving those children back to God, and allowing God to take them from our biological families and make them part of His greater family.  Have you noticed at all of our baptisms, whether as infants, toddlers, children, teens, or adults, that when the person is baptized, only their first and middle names are used?  I have had someone question that before, thinking that I had become confused about their last name, or simply forgotten to include it.  It is actually intentional.  As we offer our children or ourselves to God, our surname no longer holds the significance it had before…the waters of our baptism move our family membership from our biological families to the family of God.  We are a lot like Hannah.  We bring our children.  We offer give them back to God, and commit that they will be raised in service to God.  The only difference between Hannah and ourselves?  God allows us to take our children back to our homes with us.

What happens when we entrust our children to God?  God can do amazing things with their lives.  Consider Samuel.  Hannah followed through on her promise and brought Samuel to Eli—giving Samuel back to God and entrusting him with God’s people.  Many of us know what became of Samuel, but some may not.  Samuel became the last of the judges and the first of the prophets, anointing first Saul, and then later David, as kings of Israel.  Hannah had no idea this is what would become of her son, yet God did, and because of her trust in God, we find both Hannah and Samuel were part of God’s plan that eventually led to our being here today, followers of Jesus, both God’s Son and descendant of David.

As we offer our children to God, if we truly entrust them into His care, we have no idea what God might do with them.  Will they anoint a king?  Maybe not, but they might.  Will they become a prophet or preacher, a judge or a priest?  Maybe, maybe not.  We don’t know what God has in store for them, or for us, for that matter.  Yet, if we will entrust our children to God, and keep the vows of ensuring that they are raised to follow Christ, then, when they become of age, if they surrender their lives to God in the same way we have surrendered them to God, then we can be sure that God will use them in some mighty way.

Some may be saying, “Preacher, I don’t have any children.”  Others may be saying, “Preacher, my children are grown.”  I hope no one tuned out because of that long ago thinking, “none of this applies to me.”  Why?  Because this applies to each and every one of us.  For each and every person in this congregation has children.  You just gained two new children today—Sadie and Zoey—within the family of God, they are now as much each of our responsibility as they are of Michelle, Jimmy, Brittany, and Charles.  Each of us here today have made a vow to do all within our power that these two girls, along with all the other children that have been baptized in our presence, will be raised to know what it means to follow Christ.  As they have been entrusted to God, they are entrusted into the care of the people of God, each of us.  May we each not only entrust and give our kids to God, but may we cherish the responsibility that God has given us to care for His children.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.