When you pray, think like a man…and like a woman.

1 Samuel 1:9-18

April 11, 2010 – Holy Humor Sunday

Prayer is kinda funny

Today is Holy Humor Sunday, when we celebrate God’s last laugh on the devil, when he raised Jesus from the dead.  We have joined millions of congregations (or at least three) in resurrecting (pun intended) an ancient custom of following Easter with a day of jokes and fun.  I think maybe the custom was originally for Easter Monday, but we have a hard enough time getting people to church the Sunday after Easter.  The Fellowship of Merry Christians (joyfulnoiseletter.com) offers our inspiration and some of our material, including the cartoons in your bulletin and some of these jokes.

One of the other churches is North Bay Community Church in Clearwater, Florida – a relative newcomer to Holy Humor Sunday.  This will be their fourth year.  Last year the Tampa Bay Tribune reported that Pastor Daniel McDonald “gave one of the world’s shortest sermons on Holy Humor Sunday.  He announce that the focus of his talk would be on sin.  ‘Don’t do it,’ he said from the pulpit.  ‘Amen.’  Then he sat down.

I thought about copying his idea.  Nah.

I always look for a Scripture text that has some amusing angle.  For today it was the story about Hannah pouring out her heart to God in prayer – and Eli thinks she’s drunk!  That seized my funny bone – more on that later.

But prayer itself can be kinda funny.  Especially when kids pray.

True story:  a five year old boy was headed to McDonald’s when his Mom passed a car accident.  The mother was in the habit of praying for people who might be hurt in a scene like that, so she pointed to the accident and said, “We should pray.”

From the back seat, her little boy said, “Please, God, don’t let those cars block the entrance to McDonald’s.”

How about the four-year-old boy who was asked to give the blessing before the Thanksgiving meal.  He named every family member – “Thank you for Mommy, Daddy, brother, sister, Grandma, Grandpa….” and every aunt and uncle and cousin.  Then he started with the food – giving thanks for turkey, dressing, fruit salad, cranberry sauce, pies, Cool Whip.”  The family was starting to wonder if they’d ever eat.

Then there was a long pause in the prayer.  Everyone waited.  Who wants to interrupt a four-year-old praying so sincerely.  After an interminable silence, the boy looked up at his mother and said, “If I thank God for the broccoli, won’t he know that I’m lying?”

One more:  Two boys were spending the night at Grandma’s.  At bedtime, they knelt beside their beds to pray.  The youngest one said at the top of his lungs,

“I PRAY FOR A NEW BICYCLE….

I PRAY FOR A NEW HDTV….

I PRAY FOR A NEW PLAY STATION….”

His older brother interrupted.  “Why are you shouting your prayers?  God isn’t deaf!”

“No, but Grandma is.”

A family possessed

Enough jokes about prayer.  Let’s get back to the story of Hannah.

I’ve decided the main reason Eli thinks Hannah is drunk when she’s praying is because he’s a guy.  Men and women pray differently.  If a woman had been in charge of the temple, she would have understood.  But a guy thinks, “If there’s that much emotion going on, you must be high.”

Men and women really are different.  Neil Forrest recently sent me the link to a great video on the difference between men’s and women’s brains.  (Click here to watch the video.)

Mark Gungor says men’s brains are made of boxes.  The rule is that the boxes must not touch. If a man wants to discuss a particular subject, he pulls out that particular box.  He has a box for sports, a box for his wife, a box for his job, a box for his mother-in-law, which he keeps in the basement.

Women’s brains, by contrast, are a mass of tangled wires.  Everything is connected to everything else.  The car is connected to the family, which is connected to the past, which is connected to the future, which is connected to the house.  The energy that moves along those wires is emotion.

There is a biological basis for this difference, by the way.  The corpus colossum, which connects the two halves of the brain, is much thicker in women than in men.  That’s no joke – it’s true.

Men not only have a smaller range of feelings (notice I didn’t say we have none), one of our boxes is the “nothing box.”  Unlike women, men can sit and think about “nothing.” 

“What’s on your mind, dear?”

“Nothing.”

In her mass of jumbled up wires, that is a ridiculous statement. It borders on the absurd.  How can you think about “nothing”?  He can.  She can’t.

Now that whole box thing really helps explain 1 Samuel 1.  As the story opens, we are introduced to a man named Elkanah.  His name means (I’m not making this up), “Possessed.”  (OK, “possessed by God,” but let’s shorten it.)  I like to call these people in the story by the meaning of their names, because that’s how a Hebrew reader would have read the story.

“Possessed” is married to two different women.  It’s legal in his time, but still really stupid.  Gotta be a variation on that box theme.  I’ve got a “Wife #1” box and a “Wife #2” box.   The sad truth is this is why more men than women have affairs.  It’s not only that their desires work differently than women; they can compartmentalize more easily than women.  As the Florida preacher said, “Don’t do it.”

I’m always amazed when people make a reference to polygamy in the Bible as if to suggest that because biblical heroes do it, the Bible approves.  In every single reference to polygamy in the entire Bible, there is either a negative command (“Don’t do it”) or there are negative consequences in the story. 

So it is with “Possessed.”   His two wives go by the names “Gorgeous” and “Prolific.”  I’m not kidding.  “Hannah” means “charming, attractive.”  “Peninah” means “fruitful, fertile.” 

Apparently what happened is that Possessed marriage Gorgeous, because she was gorgeous.  But the union failed to produce children, so Possessed was, well, possessed with the idea of having offspring.  So he married Prolific, and she started churning out young’uns like peach trees produce peaches in a warm spring.

Now let’s pause here and think about this.  There are only two possibilities.  They either all lived together as one happy family or, as some commentators suggest, Possessed owned two different homes.  He had one house with Gorgeous and the other with Prolific.  He’d just move his box back and forth.

I’m trying to imagine how many home improvement projects this might have created.

Ah, home improvement.  That’s what I have been doing since last Sunday.

I have to tell you up front that I consider my wife to be very low maintenance when it comes to home improvement demands – move this furniture over there, replace this carpet, dig a new basement, things like that.

But she has been saying for a number of years that she’d like to have a larger living room.  Ours is too small for having groups come over.  We have been talking about taking out a wall between two rooms and, guess what, this was the week.  Tools like a sledgehammer and a Sawz-all became my friends and companions for a couple of days.

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re looking around the congregation and thinking, “OK, confess.  Who knew about this and when did you know it?  We love our pastor and one thing we know about him is that is he is NOT Bob Villa.”

You’re thinking this because you have evil in your hearts.

You also have some questions.  Was there any electricity?  (Yes, but I turned that part over to Hoppy Huffman.)  Was it a load-bearing wall?  (Can’t you picture those possibilities for Holy Humor Sunday?  I had Larry Henline come over and check before the first blow with a sledgehammer.  Then I had him come again before the studs came out!  All clear on that front)

I have learned a few things.  Doing this kind of project can give you the stigmata (scars of Jesus) – based on the condition of my wrists.  My left index finger is now terrified when my right hand holds a hammer.  I’m thinking home improvement stores should have a First Aid department.  Aleve would be a big seller.

I also learned that refinishing a wood floor is more than meets the eye.  Especially when the wood floor in the “new” living room is like a woman’s brain – it’s connected to almost everything else. 

We’re getting there.  I hope to be finished in early 2013.

I just can’t imagine, though, why Possessed would want to do projects like this in two different houses.  My hunch is that Gorgeous was the more high-maintenance of the two wives.  After all, she had nothing to do all day but think up projects for him.  In those days, women didn’t work outside the home.  She had no kids.  Soap operas were still in black and white, so they weren’t very interesting.

Prolific may not have been high maintenance, but Possessed kept having to add a new bedroom for the kids every year.  So he was into “home improvement.”

As the story unfolds, we learn that Possessed is, indeed, possessed by God.  He loves to go to the temple where an aged high priest and judge, very rotund, a man named Eli, was in charge.  Every year Possessed took the whole family with him.

And here’s where the story takes a sad turn.  It might even make you cry. 

Women, on the other hand, move easily back and forth, because sad is connected to happy.  Tears and laughter are all on the same circuit.  It’s called emotion. Guys, have you ever watched one of those Beth Moore videos with your life.  Beth Moore has ‘em laughing, then crying, then laughing, then crying, on and on. 

Men don’t function that way.  Of course, men don’t get together anyway in Bible study to cry.  But if there is a sad moment that quickly turns around  “Wait a minute!  I’m in my ‘sad box.’  I need some time to get out my ‘happy’ box. 

Apparently when Possessed took his family for the annual trip to the temple at Shiloh, the whole fam was along.  Most of the year, Gorgeous could sort of avoid Prolific.

But Prolific apparently used these opportunities to taunt Gorgeous.  Now at this point I want to be sure and say there is absolutely nothing funny about infertility.  Few things in life bring more pain than a woman’s monthly reminder that she can’t bear children, for whatever reason.  Gorgeous lived out that pain.

Prolific was not only fertile, she was downright mean.  The Message says that Prolific “taunted her cruelly, rubbing it in and never letting her forget that God had not given her children.”

That’s pathetic.  It was so bad that Gorgeous would not even eat.  She was depressed.  She would weep the whole trip there and back and refused to join in the otherwise festive atmosphere or eating and drinking.

So Possessed would try to comfort her.  Typical for a guy, his first instinct was to do something for her.  So at the feast, he gave her a “double portion” of the meat.  Literally, this means “two noses.”  Apparently the head of the animal was the delicacy, and when they all sat down for the feast, Gorgeous not only had twice as much food – she had two brains.  Boxes or wires, we’re not told.

It didn’t work.  She was still so very sad.  She wouldn’t touch anything.  Possessed took her aside.  “Why are you crying, Gorgeous?  Why don’t you eat?  Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?”

That has to be the very top of the list for the most insensitive thing a guy has ever tried to say to comfort his wife.  You’ve got to be kidding me!  Here’s a guy who was married to Gorgeous first and because she couldn’t have any kids went out and found another wife.  Prolific starts poppin’ ‘em out, and now Possessed says to Gorgeous, “Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?”  He needs to find his sensitivity box.  It’s down there in the basement with the mother-in-law box.  (Of course, he has two mothers-in-law – imagine when they got together.)

“Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?”  The Bible doesn’t tell us the answer Gorgeous gives him, but I’m guessing it’s something like, “No.”

I’m quite convinced the reason this quote by Possessed is in the Bible is really to help men.  If a man’s wife ever says to him, “Honey, that was the most insensitive remark a man has ever made,” he can always answer, “No, honey, there was that comment Possessed made in 1 Samuel 1.”

“OK.  But yours is second.”

Well, anyway, Gorgeous is now praying – weeping, pleading, making a deal with God to give her son to God’s service if God will open her womb.”  And because of the depth of her emotion, Eli the priest accuses her of being drunk!

I tell you, it’s because he’s a guy.  He doesn’t understand how women pray.

Here’s the difference between how women pray and men pray.

I stand before a wall, sledgehammer in hand, pull out the box marked ‘prayer,’ “Lord help me take down this wall.”

My wife prays about the same project.  “Lord, help us to know if this is the right time to take down the wall.  Should we even do this at all?  How will it affect our schedule if it takes longer than we thought?  What about those people who are coming over next week?  Help him to cut the breaker off.  Please, Lord, let there be no unexpected plumbing in that wall.  May the dust not consume our whole house.  Lord, bless his knuckle when he hammers.  May this larger living room draw us closer as a family.  And may it help us get a good Supreme Court justice and feed the starving children in Africa.”  See, everything’s connected.

So with deep emotion and pleading – combining the longing in her heart with the humiliation her culture inflicted on the childless and worship, fear, trust, and bitterness, Gorgeous pours out her heart to God in a way that no man can understand.

And God hears her prayer.  Gorgeous has a son, and she calls him “God’s Boy” (Samuel).  We will pick up the story next week.

Boxes and wires in prayer

So what’s the take home for today?

When you pray, think like a man…and like a woman.

God is not male or female.  The Bible uses masculine nouns and pronouns for God, but God made all of us, male and female, in his image.  So I wonder if that shouldn’t guide how we pray.

A man wants you to (a) get to the point, and (b) trust.  Think like a man when you pray. Even Hannah (as a woman) knew how to “get to the point” in her prayer in 1 Samuel 1.  She eliminated all the ancillary and unrelated prayers and zeroed in on her desire for a child. 

She also left the matter in God’s hands.  God wants us to express our desires to him, but to tell him that we trust him to do what’s best.

A woman wants you to (a) focus on the relationship, and (b) be real.  Think like a woman when you pray.  God wants us to talk to him person to person.  God is not the “candy man” we go to for favors.  He values us and wants us to value him. 

He doesn’t just want us coming to him with what the Bible calls “vain repetition.”  I remember hearing one friend thank God before the meal, saying rapidly and rotely, “Demly Father (Dear Heavenly father), thank you for all your many blessings.  Bless this food to our body and our bodies to Thy service, in Jes’ namen.”  He wants us to be real.

There’s a lot to learn about prayer from the story of Gorgeous, Possessed, and Prolific.  Amen.