The Song of Hannah

A sermon preached by the Very Revd Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury

Sunday 2 August 2026

‘Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’.

Choral Evensong is frequently commended for the beauty of its music. It is less frequently commended for the drama of its liturgy. Yet when Thomas Cranmer deconstructed the offices of Vespers and Compline and from them built a new act of worship for the English Church it was a drama that he created – a carefully choreographed drama.

Evensong is more than a sequence of word and song that evokes a sense of peaceful wonder. Evensong takes its worshippers on a time-travelling and globe-shrinking journey from the ancient origins of their faith among the Jewish people, on to the birth, life, and death of Jesus of Nazareth, and on still further to the era of the Church in which we live and work and worship. Evensong is more than lovely. It has direction and purpose. Its very form instructs us.

It begins with the recitation of the Psalms, the hymns of ancient Israel. Cranmer intended that the faithful should read all the Psalter’s 150 psalms every month. Evensong’s curtain rises with these songs that the Israelites sang as they approached their Temple or greeted their royalty or celebrated their festivals. And as the daily psalms conclude a lesson from the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) is read. The psalms have returned us to the world of the patriarchs, the kings, and the prophets; now the reading holds us there, with the words of Isaiah or the poetry of the Proverbs or the Chronicler’s account of the misdeeds of King Zedekiah.

And then we reach the drama’s hinge. We reach the Magnificat, read as our Gospel this morning, the song of an expectant mother who has received extraordinary news. Mary belongs in the world of the patriarchs, the kings, and the prophets. She is one of the Jewish people, brought up on the Psalms, familiar with ancient prophecy, and conversant with the vicissitudes of her ancestors’ fortunes. Yet in her song Mary heralds the dawn of a new era. She does so months before Jesus has been born, years before he has spoken one word and decades before he has died and been raised.

Mary’s song ushers Evensong’s worshippers into the world of Jesus. A lesson from the New Testament is read, and the good news that is presages is affirmed in the words of the Creed. These are the words of the Church, the words of God’s people among whom you and I are counted. In Cranmer’s great drama, the song of an expectant mother who has received extraordinary news is the turning-point in the story of our redemption. Mary is the first among her ancestral people to recognize what God is about to do in and through Jesus. But she is not the first among her people to sing to God. And she is not the first mother or expectant mother to sing to God.

The second Secret Song of Scripture studied in our summer sermon series is the Song of Hannah. You may remember its context. God’s people have come into possession of the land promised to them. They go to worship him at the shrine of Shiloh. Hannah is one of the wives of one of the shrine’s priests. His other wife has many children, but Hannah has none. Like Mary, Hannah belongs in the world of the patriarchs, the kings, and the prophets. She too is one of the Jewish people, conversant with the vicissitudes of her ancestors’ fortunes. She vows that if she is granted a son, she will dedicate him to God’s service. She prays with such fervour that her husband’s boss chides her for being drunk. But God hears her prayer and gives her the son she longs for, Samuel. Hannah fulfils her vow and takes him to serve God at Shiloh. And she opens her mouth to sing.

Hannah praises God: ‘My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God’. So too does Mary: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’.

Hannah rejoices in the displacement of the mighty: ‘The bows of the mighty are broken’. So too does Mary: ‘He has scattered the proud’.

Hannah exults at the lifting-up of the defenceless and despised: ‘He raises up the poor from the dust’. So too does Mary: ‘He has filled the hungry with good things’.

Hannah, and Mary. Hannah’s song, and Mary’s song. Two young women who have conceived children in extraordinary circumstances. Two young women who have been brought up on the promises made to their ancestors: that God is their God; that – just as God once lifted up a nation of slaves, made them sovereign in their own land, and drove out their enemies before them – so too will God never fail to exalt his people and overcome their enemies. Two young women who have seen God’s promises realized in their own lives. They are a wife who is childless and an unmarried woman who is pregnant. They are among the despised – and yet they are the recipients of God’s favour.

Hannah and Mary stand at hinge points in history. Through their faithfulness inconceivable change will be wrought in God’s world. The kingdom of Israel will be inaugurated by Samuel; the kingdom of God will be proclaimed by Jesus.

Cranmer rightly places Mary at the pivot of his liturgical drama, but Mary’s song has been foreshadowed by Hannah’s song, and Hannah’s has been foreshadowed by Sarah’s. Remember that the story of God’s people begins when a son is promised to another childless woman, the wife of Abraham, who has in desperation given her slave girl to her husband lest the family should have no heir. At the great hinge moments of salvation history, a woman lifts her voice to God.

Across the generations, from Sarah to Hannah and from Hannah to Mary, God’s promise to God’s people does not change. God is for the defenceless and despised; God’s promise issues from their mouths; and God will not allow their oppressors to triumph over them. God’s promise is good news for them and for all people. Cranmer’s liturgy is no nostalgia-fest, no romantic looking back to the glory days, set to exquisite music by Tallis or Howells. Evensong brings us to the Church’s today; it requires us to pray; and it sends us out, energized for the realization of God’s promise, of which Sarah, Hannah, and Mary all sing. Amen.