For Such a Time as This (9.6.20)

For Such a Time as This
Esther 4:1-17; 7:1-16
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church

Where we left off: Queen Esther has invited the King and Haman to a banquet.

So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. 2On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” 3Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. 4For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.” 5Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?” 6Esther said, “A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.

7The king rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that the king had determined to destroy him. 8When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman had thrown himself on the couch where Esther was reclining; and the king said, “Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?” As the words left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. 9Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that.” 10So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.

Ch. 8-9

Queen Esther asks King Ahasuerus to reverse the edict Haman had sent out and save her people. He agrees, Mordecai sends it out, and: “For the Jews there was light and gladness, joy and honor. 17In every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict came, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a festival and a holiday.” And this becomes the festival of Purim.

Sacred text is replete with dynamic, romantic stories of how the Divine moves in rhythm with humanity. In the Garden, while everything is still good and very good and just as it should be, the Lord walks with humans through the garden in the cool of the day. That sets a tone of expectation for us readers and students of sacred text—the ideal is a closeness and perceived realness in relationship that matches something of the east of a lover’s walk at sunset. (Talk about setting the bar high for the goals of a spiritual life!)

In hearing the story of Moses tending sheep in the middle of the day, we take our shoes off and imagine ourselves in the story with him. Oh, to be met by holy presence in the flames of a bush! We press into the earth with bare feet and feel the four corners connect into the ground beneath us. Is this how God will move for us? Through us? With us? In Moses’ story, we are challenged to a state of awareness that transforms noticing into an invitation of holy presence. And from that holy presence, we are then called to go and do in the name of God. It has both rhythm and sequence. The lover’s walk has instructions for when and where and how we should go.

In Elijah’s story, he is running for his life, seemingly unaccompanied by holy presence. Then angels appear to tend to his needs and protect him in his rest. He rests beneath a miraculously grown broom tree. And when he is tempted to let his rest turn into altogether giving up on his calling and just living out his days hiddenly instead, God comes to him directly to call Elijah out again—not in the earthquake or the fire but in the gentle whisper.

There’s the story of Saul’s conversion to Paul in the book of Acts. In some ways, Saul is something of a 1st Century Haman—a violent suppressor of the religiously different—but he is converted by holy presence instead of overcome by the system of hate and violence of which he is a key leader. Post-ascension Jesus appears to Saul on the road to Damascus and names the rage and destruction in Saul’s life. To live in such anger is to not live in the love of God. The two are incompatible! Faced with this experience and this truth-telling, Saul temporarily loses his sight and must make his way to Ananias to be healed. Touched by one he would have previously perceived to be beneath him, Saul is healed, becomes baptized, and is changed from a person of hate and violence to a teacher of peace and love.

These sacred stories are passed down, in part, because of how fanciful they are. Look at how God works! Listen to how God speaks! But very few of us have any experience remotely close to even hearing a whisper of a voice clearly calling us to something much less setting a bush on fire or shining like blistering light on a desert road and temporarily claiming our sight. If we read them as prescriptive of how God moves in the world, then these stories can become obstacles to believing we ordinary folks are called by God to act for good. 

What if we take our shoes off and press them into the earth and don’t feel anything. What if we step to the edge of the cave where we are hiding and listen for the voice of God and can’t tell the difference between the thunder and the silence? What if we have nothing to blast us out of our hate and rage and just keep sleepwalking through our lives unaware that the ache we feel is how far we’ve wandered from the love of God?

Perhaps we don’t hear them as spiritual goal-setting that can never be reached and yet still do not read ourselves into these ancient text. It is also risky that stories like these can also allow us to let ourselves off the hook. We justify our complacency by rationalizing: because we have never encountered God in a dynamic way, then we don’t have to do the radical work that Moses or Elijah or Paul did. Their work hurt. It has consequences. It was an inner journey as well as an outer one. It was risky and involved threats and injuries and imprisonment and even death. If God hasn’t show up before us as a flame in a bush or a blast of light in the road, then we can justify living in obscurity and not being called into a holy narrative. We can hear these stories about risking our comfort for the greater good and not hear an invitation to changed life needling its way into our own ease.

But in the story of Esther, it is only the human characters who speak. There is no flash. There are no magical beings or miraculous bushes and trees. There are only messy humans. There is plenty of ego and misogyny, there are the evergreen tales of  corruption, abuse of power, and dehumanization of people for free or cheap labor. There is the perennial sin of hoarding of resources and wealth. In Esther, we encounter problematic, flawed structures and problematic, flawed people living their lives as the unfolding narrative.

In the midst of messy story, it is the patriarch Mordecai who stands at the edge of the gate, not an insider but with access to one who is passing as one. And Mordecai is the interrupter who calls to Esther to be her better self and to believe in her own capacity to change the story around her.

There is no mention of God; the voice of God in this story is never named or acknowledged as such, but nevertheless, a Divine word comes through the voice of Mordecai. Though the words are being passed back and forth by servants of the palace, imagine Mordecai and Esther hearing one another in the transmission. Consider how the words bring them to an emotional and spiritual place of looking into each other’s eyes. Esther says to Mordecai’s face that she can’t break protocol to address the King without being summoned. “That’s not how things are done around here,” she tells him. “It’s too risky. It would cost me too much.” 

Feel the sharp response land in Esther’s body as Mordecai, the only family she has, calls her out for not understanding her unique power and privilege and thinking she can hide within this new life as Queen as he says to her, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”

Of Esther’s story, Kathryn Shifferdecker notes, “We may wish for God’s direct intervention, for a burning bush or an obvious miracle, but most days we (like Esther) don’t get such things. Indeed, most of the time, as a friend of mine says, God is subtle to a fault. And yet, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, we may be able to discern where God is acting in our lives.”

For if you keep silence at such a time as this. 

Mordecai doesn’t moralize her silence with the language of sin or honoring God. If Esther keeps silent, that will mean the death of her family. Mordecai will die and so will she. And yet, Mordecai holds a faith that help will still come from far away. Somehow, God will still intervene on behalf of their people. But in the immediate story, Esther is the one who is asked to act. Perhaps the wild and messy story of her rise to Queen uniquely places her in such a time as this.

In Esther’s story, the calls to us are far more subtle but perhaps all the more real. We must sit with Mordecai’s words and hear them for our time and our place. This is a story calling to us to examine our own lives and act for a greater good.

Friends, if you are still struggling with what to say and do or how to lean into this present moment in history, hear this story anew today. We are living in a time that is messy and complicated and asking for us to speak and act on a dozen issues at once. We can no longer dismiss public conflict as a difference in opinion or difference in perspectives when we are talking about the equal value and equal rights of black and brown lives to white ones. We cannot shrug off partnership and conversations as a mere voting difference when we are talking about human rights, climate change, safety and protection of the LGBTQ+ community. We can no longer support the way the white church for much of the 20th century taught “minding our own business” as being polite and proper as though that was the central message of Jesus’ gospel. Friends, we are in positions of power, privilege, and tremendous comfort right now. We must not remain silent to hold onto the illusion of safety. Sit with the questions of Esther’s story today and borrow courage from her bravery.

What palace of ease and comfort is enabling us to falsely believe we can avoid the moral and ethical imperatives of our time and remain silent?

How is it possible that we hide in our own lives and think the hard work of seeking justice is not ours to do? 

When are we oblivious to our own power and privilege and the real, direct impact we can make with a word? 

When do we deny our capacity to effect tremendous, radical change in the world because we want to stay hidden and comfortable instead?

What if we have come to a place of dignity in this very moment for such a time as this?

Sit with these hard questions today. Let them work their way through you in the week to come. The months before us will be even more challenging than the ones behind us. Now is not the time for hiding inside the safety of palace walls and remaining silent. For such a time as this, you have been shaped and called and sustained to this very moment. What will your next step be?