Scripture: Mark 9:38-50 and Selections from Esther

Since this morning our Jewish neighbors celebrate Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the new year, it is perhaps felicitous that the Christian common lectionary has served up for our consideration the story of Queen Esther. Buried in the middle of the wisdom literature in the Hebrew scriptures, and only presented for Christian consideration on this one Sunday out of three full years of appointed readings; it tells a story that provides the backdrop for the Jewish midwinter festival of Purim. This melodrama in ten short chapters tells the tale of the deliverance of Jewish exiles in Persia from extermination at the hands of a powerful enemy, Haman, thanks to the wisdom of the old man Mordecai and the wily, devious courage of the beautiful Queen Esther.

Here’s the story, told in brief: Esther, a virgin Jewess, wins a contest and joins the harem of King Ahasuerus, whose main talent seems to be for partying. Her uncle Mordecai cautions her to hide her religious identity, and, doing the same himself, becomes one of the king’s trusted advisors. His colleague, the evil Haman, has an overweening ego and malice to spare. He tricks the king into passing a law that will result in the extermination of all Jews in the kingdom. Mordecai, griefstricken and hysterical, appeals to the girl Esther: if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the people from another quarter, but ou and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this. Though Esther risks her life if she comes uninvited into the king’s presence, she nevertheless devises a plan, relying heavily on intrigue, the king’s lust and drunkenness, and her own sexuality to expose Haman and save her people. When all is said and done, Esther’s cleverness and adaptability to circumstance and necessity have won the day, and the feast of Purim is instituted as a perpetual memorial to the power of the downtrodden when pushed to the wall: (that day) had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.

Purim is not your granny’s church holy day. It is, like the story that spawned it, a boisterous celebration, replete with eating, drinking, and playful, outrageous behavior. Many synagogues observe Purim with a carnival: children and adults alike dress up in costumes, and frequently the "megillah" of Esther is acted out as well as read, with enthusiastic audience participation-it is the Rocky Horror Picture Show of scripture, a place where the bible and vaudeville share the stage, and everybody gets involved.

Good thing someone likes to play at religion-if it had been left up to the majority voices of Christendom to choose, this book of Esther-rich in satire, filled with burlesque, robust with court intrigue and bursting with a cast of wild characters-would have been relegated to a position of utter obscurity in the canon, if not removed from the bible altogether. It was not until the latest revision of the common lectionary, in fact, that the book of Esther even showed up once on the three year cycle of readings-for like the Song of Solomon, the canonical value of Esther has oft been discussed in a somewhat prim tone of disapproval. Here’s a portion of the book’s introduction in my study bible: the book has frequently been faulted for its moral tone.

Not only are such basic Judaic values as kindness, mercy, and forgiveness lacking; but, as many Jews and Christians have lamented, the story evidences a vengeful, bloodthirsty, and chauvinistic spirit. Intrigue, deceit, and hatred abound, regardless of whether the spotlight is on Haman, Esther, Mordecai, or on their enemies. The Persian king is mentioned 190 times, but the God of Israel, not once.

If you prefer your dose of bible moralistic, straightforward, somber and =
sacred-Esther’s not your cup of tea. Neither, for that matter, is the =
teaching of Jesus recorded in this morning’s text from the 9th chapter =
of the gospel of Mark-a cutting, satiric partner to Esther’s playful, =
yet deadly serious admonition that folks who want to make a difference in the world can’t afford to be too picky about ways and means while advancing the cause’s of God’s forgotten peoples.

Esther is a story that comes to us from the time of the Jewish exile in Babylon. It was created by losers, for outsiders who had lost whatever prestige and economic power they had, who were abandoned by a theology of God’s preferential option for his chosen, and who had been shaken to the core by social circumstances that seemed certain to destroy their faith and the fabric of their identity as a people. Because it comes from this place, this culture of desperation, it has little tolerance for the niceties of an Establishment Faith shaped by rules and regulations and watched over by a God who never alters his stern adherence to the System. The people-and the God-of Esther (whether mentioned by name or not) has more pressing needs.

It reminds me of a story Gillian’s dad told me when he phoned me on the eve of 1992′s Hurricane Andrew. He had been on retreat at Ghost Ranch-a place so admirably remote that a television, telephone, or newspaper was hard to find. On the morning before Andrew struck, he was in a worship service at the retreat center, praying, along with others, for the needs and concerns of the world. Being a concerned citizen, and a new-ish pastor recently awakened to the social struggles of Miami’s diverse community, Rick’s prayer that morning was theologically, politically, and spiritually correct: he prayed for the racial strife in our city, for strength to do justice, for a new spirit of tolerance and so forth to come upon us. When the service was over, a stranger approached him and began to speak. You’re from Miami? You got more immediate concerns today than social harmony, buddy. Rick, somewhat offended, said, What do you mean? I think these problems are of utmost importance. The man replied, I guess you don’t know it, but there’s a category 5 hurricane heading straight for Miami.

When people’s lives are at stake, other concerns-however just, right, or proper-must take a back seat. And that is what Esther proves by her creative interpretation of laws meant to destroy her people; in her wily, economical use of the poor resources available to her as an outsider, a woman, and an insignificant orphan; and in her triumphant seduction of the Powers that Be, the King Ahasuerus, into seeing the world through her eyes. Esther proves that there is a time and place to stop following the rules and start thinking for yourself. For when people’s lives are in danger, unquestioning obedience is the wrong attitude. Indeed it is the sin of omission that opens the door to wholesale destruction: to neglect of the forgotten, to systematic extermination of the Other; to a careless disregard of any value, any community, anyone who isn’t part of Us.

The book of Esther is subversive: not only does it insist that the outcast and the outsider are worth saving-it makes the astonishing claim that salvation itself comes from the outsiders. It avers that slavishly adhering to "the unchangeable law"-whether that law is Persia’s the Torah, or the Christian scriptures-is a dangerous path to follow, one that leads to a soulless, heartless obedience to a set of rules and regulations at the expense of the safety, even the survival, of some of God’s children—outsiders, minorities, the powerless, the poor. It says that, rather than being preoccupied with our powerlessness and our scarcity, we might do better to assess our gifts and graces—however little they may be valued in the Grand Scheme of Things-and use them for good, however and whenever we can, for as long as we can. It promises that, if we will only try, the God who works unseen will not let our cries for justice, wholeness and peace go unanswered.

Jesus himself in the ninth chapter of Mark says much the same thing-and surely practiced what he preached in his own life and ministry. When the disciples, still stinging from their failure to heal a child stricken with epilepsy, discover a stranger healing in Christ’s name, they stop him. Proudly they tell the teacher: we saw some nobody healing in your name, and we stopped him, because he wasn’t one of us. Jesus, who only just had finished reminding the disciples that if they couldn’t love God and do God’s work with childlike trust and humility, they were goners just about loses it in his response to their self-righteous adherence to the rules. He tells them that if their correctness loses one soul for the kindom of God, they will surely pay with their own souls. He suggests that if their own correctness is standing in the way of loving and knowing God, they would do better to chew off their own leg than march, correctly dressed and impeccably credentialed, into the gates of orthodox hell. He reminds them that after all, everyone is going to suffer something, sometime-so why borrow trouble, or cause it for others? Use the trouble you have to season your compassion for another’s sorrow.and be at peace.

We who want to serve the poor, the dispossessed, the outsider.who walk prayerfully along the margins of our increasingly narrow Presbyterian practice and polity, trying to find a canny and crafty way to celebrate our Christ’s gospel of wild inclusivity-we would do well to listen to the voices in Esther, and celebrate the place-however small-organized religion has for scrappy, wily outsiders who don’t have too much power, but use what they have for God with impressive imagination and verve. We might take heart when we listen to that other outsider, Jesus, as he walks toward his own salting with fire with head held high and a heart full of trust that the least of these will be the ones who will get it right for all of us, at last.

It takes a lot to be an Esther kind of community, a Jesus kind of church-but here we are, I hope, trying to do it. Standing this morning on the side of Esther, striving to be players for good in those small insignificant stories involving the kinds of people most folks would rather forget exist. Knowing that somehow, our life, and our salvation, depend on theirs. We’re a small church in a big world, and it’s all good. We will, like uncle Mordecai, find partners who are willing to assist us toward those goals. We are willing, like Esther, to use whatever resources we can find to help the homeless, feed the hungry, comfort those who suffer, extend the warmth of God’s Light to people of all conditions and orientations, celebrate our unity with the communion of outsiders and outcasts. Like Esther and Jesus, we ‘re not too picky about the way the job gets done. We can work with anyone who wants to work with us. We will set aside our doctrinal differences, and our theological imperatives if they get in the way of serving justice and love as Jesus commanded. We enter creatively into dialogue with our tradition and our polity, our law that cannot be changed, because we know that anything that cannot change will die. We want to live, and we can learn from this plucky little book buried in the back seat of the bible that there is no skill, no idea, no quirk of personality, no circumstance so trivial or so undervalued that it cannot somehow be used for tikkun olam, for the healing of the world.

Let us pray: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference; living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you in the next.

Amen.