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Plan for the Future

            Any questions about your 401(k), traditional IRA, or Roth IRA? Are you making enough contributions to those, or is your employer doing that, so that you can have at least some income when you retire? Do you even have a retirement savings plan? Are you planning to bequeath your accumulated assets to your church and your kids, or are you living out the bumper sticker, “We’re spending our kids’ inheritance”? When should a young person start saving for the future, and how much is enough? You can probably get as many answers to those questions as there are analysts and advisors.

            The first lesson today from the book of 1 Samuel chapter one introduces us to Elkanah and Hannah, who were planning for their future, but not with a 401(k) or IRA. They had planned to have children, but as yet had none. As time went by, Hannah fell into a bit of depression, for two reasons. She not only remained childless, but another woman on the scene poked fun at her being childless—if you can believe it—not just once but day after day and year after year like the incessant drip, drip, drip of a faucet. Hannah soaked her pillow with tears every night. She had no appetite, no hope, no future. Finally, at one of the annual church suppers, she left her lamb chop untouched, got up from the table, went out behind the church tent, and fell to her knees, “Dear God! Help me!” No screams, no shouts, but silently, her lips moved faster and faster, her heart pounding with a gentle rain of tears. The old priest Eli, who happened to be around the corner, observed her silent praying and concluded, “You’re drunk. Sober up, woman!” Hannah explained her plight. Eli backed off and offered a blessing, “May the God of Israel grant you what you have asked”(1 Samuel 1:17). For the first time in years, she was beaming with joy, confident of her future, because she understood that blessing to be God’s promise of a child. She in turn made her own promise: “Lord, I’ll set him apart for a life of service to you.” That was no rash promise. Hannah knew what she was doing because that baby was tied to her future, which gets at the core of what we learn from this account, knowing that:

God makes the future secure for us

            Among the Israelites of old, planning for the future revolved around having children, not selfishly to preserve a family name out of a sense of pride and not to guarantee a place for people to park their RV in their golden years. No! The primary reason for desiring children, besides the obvious joy of parenting, was to preserve the promise of the world’s Savior. Even if an Israelite family was not in the Savior-bloodline from the designated tribe of Judah, each of the twelve tribes and each clan and each family had a role to play in treasuring and guarding that promise and then proclaiming and passing on that fabulous news to all within earshot. Every Israelite baby was tied to that promise. Every baby made the nation larger and stronger, bringing the possibility of more Israelite babies who would grow up both to guard and to share that promise. That was not the case for babies born to Amorites or Philistines or Midianites, only Israelite babies, all leading to the birth of the most important Israelite baby, the one born in Bethlehem.

            The future seemed bleak for Hannah. Without a child her family would die out, and her connection to and contribution to the future of her nation would die out. Add to that the setting. “Elkanah went up with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the Lord.” You might be thinking, “What’s the big deal about that? We go to church every week. How can going to an annual festival be important?” But the next chapters tell us that Word of Lord was rare—no prophets, no preachers, no teachers proclaiming the promises of God. Hardly anyone went to church, even for the required annual sacrifices. Elkanah and his family must have stuck out like sore thumbs amid their fellow Israelites. How much flack do you think they took for being “church people” and “Bible thumpers”? And here’s something else to consider. If the tabernacle at Shiloh was packed like the 9:30 services usually are at Grace, Eli the priest would not have noticed Hannah praying silently. But if she was the only one in an otherwise empty church—a sad commentary on Israelite society—think of how she must have felt, not just in childlessness but in practicing all alone what she believed. It must have been a struggle for her to cling to God’s promises.

            But cling she did, in a marvelous way. We see it in the family’s annual trips for special worship and in the sacrifice at the dedication of their son, which was not skimpy. This was a spiritual family. Elkanah and Hannah did not have an easy time of it, but they were convinced that clinging to God’s promises was worth it, especially the big one to forgive their sins through the Savior. The child God was going to give to Hannah was tied like a harbor-master’s rope to the mooring of God’s promise to send a Savior from sin who would make sure their future was secure.

            Let me say a word about babies. Yes, there are lots of them lately at Grace and more on the way. Yes, they can get a bit wiggly and squawky and distract us once in a while. We’re working on helping parents negotiate that, like the glass in the doors to create a place to pace. But think of the alternative—no babies. Then we’d begin to worry about the future of our church. Yet never would we say that babies born today guarantee our eternal future. Lots of couples don’t have children, to say nothing of all the wonderful single folks here. Only one baby has been born or ever will be born who has made an eternal difference. The point of this Bible account is not cute little babies. The point is God making promises regarding our future and being able to keep them, especially the promise to take us to heaven. That can only happen if the Baby of Bethlehem grew up and bled out on a cross. That happened. God made good his promise to the Israelites and to us. Easter guarantees that promise to be true.

            If we doubt God’s promise of full forgiveness and eternal glory, either thinking it’s our job to help God make our future secure or thinking God can’t or won’t keep his promises or thinking that his promise of heaven is not as important as our 401(k), then we’re sinning. God forgive us. It’s all about God’s promises. With those we have a joyful and secure future. So, Plan for the Future by trusting that Jesus alone, our risen Lord, makes our future secure.

God uses us to make the future secure for others

            Some of you know what it is like to send away a child to college. I’ve told a few parents of teens, “Get ready! That day won’t be easy.” It’s usually OK for the teenager, but Anne and I had tears shooting out almost the entire six-hour drive home. There are some who have eighth graders who have sent their kids to a dormitory prep school with a view to helping their children aim for college or focus on ministry. That, too, must be traumatic. But imagine sending your child away at age 6 or 7! Imagine Hannah, who had been childless, weeping pitifully at her plight, begging God for a child, having her prayer answered, a little one to hold, to cuddle, to play with, to watch as he rolls over the first time, then crawls, as he cuts his first teeth and shifts from formula to moosh to solid food, as he pulls himself up on furniture, takes his first steps, starts to climb steps, as he grumbles and giggles and plays patty-cake. Imagine Hannah bonding with her son, her only son, only to keep her promise, “I will take him and present him before the Lord, and he will live there always.” Elkanah was fully supportive: “Do what seems best to you” and even provided the rather expensive tuition—“a three-year-old bull, a [half bushel] of flour and a skin of wine.” Hannah kept her promise. “I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord—for his whole life.”

            She’s crazy! She’s nuts! Who would give away any child, much less an only child, much less an only child whom you waited and waited to have, much less an only child whom you waited to have and who was only 6 or 7? But Hannah and her husband, Elkanah, did. Why? They saw the big picture. They trusted in future glory promised by God not just to them but to all sinners, a promise as sure as the ground on which they stood. They were confident that God would bring that about, but just as confident, yes, thrilled, that God was going to use them through their son to make that happen for others.

            It wasn’t all fun and games for Samuel, not just living away from home as a young boy, but living under the schooling of Eli. Surely he was treated well and learned well, but he had to watch as Eli failed in properly parenting his own sons. Yet the little phrase at the end of this account cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet. “He worshiped the Lord there.” That sums up the wonderful training Samuel did receive. Do you know how it paid off? Samuel became the leader of the entire nation, serving as a priest, a prophet, and a ruler in Israel at a time when the people desperately needed all three. In that threefold job, whom did he picture? Jesus, of course!

            You are not required to send your sons to be pastors and daughters to be Lutheran school teachers. But you can send them out prepared to handle life and to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God who will declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Peter 2:9). Every little one can grow up to be like you, whether you are single or married, whether you are childless or toting a car seat and diaper bag—but like you, positioned by God as an Israelite of old, not to keep all kinds of extra rules and regulations, but to carry out the central role of any and every follower of the true God from Adam and Eve in Eden to Andrea and Steve on the east side of Milwaukee. That role for every believer in Jesus, for every Christian, is treasuring and guarding the promise of a secure future through Jesus and then proclaiming and passing on that fabulous news to all within earshot. You see, God actually uses us in the same way he used Hannah and her boy Samuel. “The woman stayed at home and nursed her son until she had weaned him.” Surely her tender care included more than 2 am feedings. Don’t you think she was singing hymns to Samuel, telling him Bible stories, and teaching him to pray? From whom do you think he learned of the Savior? How else would he be so firmly grounded in the truths of God, clinging so firmly to his secure future, and then able to pass those promises on so others could have a secure future?

            The point of this part of the account is not whether you can nurse and teach children but the incredible thrill that God uses sinners like Elkanah, Hannah, Samuel, and us to make the future secure for others. “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” crooned Ed Bruce 35 years ago. But do help them grow up to be Christians, and don’t be afraid to encourage them to grow up to be Samuels. The salary may not put them into the Fortune 500, but the privilege to handle the promises of God daily and to pass them on to real people—priceless. Our world needs scientists and technicians and accountants and cabinet-makers who know and believe in Jesus and can make heaven secure for others, but we will also need people to stand in this pulpit when Pastor Lindemann and I are dead and gone. “How…can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14).

            I’m not a financial advisor or retirement planner. I just think it’s good common sense to save up. Who knows what the economy will do? But there is something about the future I can tell you about. God has made our future in heaven secure for us. You can count on it and communicate it. Plan for that future! Amen.

      Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on June 5, 2011

Services

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Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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