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In today’s story, a royal order has gone out to kill all of the
Jewish people living in Persia—a genocide.
King Xerxes, who issued the order, is flighty and superficial and he was
persuaded by evil Hammon to kill all of the Jews in the region. Little does the King know that his own wife, the
Queen Esther who he adores (because
she’s apparently very beautiful) is secretly a Jew. In the piece of the story that we’re about to
hear, Queen Esther meets with her Jewish cousin, Mordecai, who tries to
persuade her to use her power as queen to act and save her Jewish people: Esther 4:1-17
The
book of Esther was one of the final books to be added to the Hebrew Bible. A fun fact about the book of Esther: There is
no mention of God or prayer throughout the entire book. Martin Luther detested the book, said it was
worthless and full of “pagan naughtiness.” In all fairness, the ancient Rabbis were
also bothered by the fact that there was no mention of God in the book of
Esther. There is that one point in the
story we just read where cousin Mordecai tells Queen Esther that if she doesn’t
do something to save her people who are at risk of genocide, “relief and
deliverance for the Jews will arise from some other place.” In trying to
rationalize why there was a book of the Hebrew Bible with no mention of God, the
Rabbis said that “some other place” is a subtle reference to God. So, you see!? They said, God is
mentioned in the story of Esther! Could be. But wow, that is a pretty subtle reference to the
Almighty.
This morning we heard two stories: One of Jesus transfigured into
his most Godliest and awesome of selves where he levitated above the mountain and
another story of queen Esther where there is nary a mention or a peep about God.
Truth be told, I think my life probably looks more like Esther’s than
the disciples. I don’t know about you, I would love for an experience of God like
the one that the disciples had with Jesus up there on the mountain. Or I could
use a lightening bolt, or something super obvious, like if God would just part the
traffic on the Kennedy like the red sea, and I would just sail through… In all seriousness, who cares about the
traffic. I could mention a whole lot of
other things in our world and lives where it seems like we could use a couple
of lightening bolts. Or just a voice, or a response, or an assurance that God
is indeed there and active.
It’s sort of ironic because we are surrounded by so many words
these days. Our phones are a constant
stream of updates, email notifications, headlines, social media updates, and
texts. There are podcasts and morning
edition and new songs to listen to. There’s the nightly news, opinion columns, work
emails announcements from school, announcements from church. The snail mail is
more information to process, bills to pay, solicitations for money. Even when I ride the El or drive, it’s a
constant stream of adds and billboards and so many photos of Brian
Urlachers head, and I read each one of those billboards—tackle balding,
breaking bald—why?! Why do I read them?!
All of these words compete for our attention. And yet, the voice of God can seem so oddly
silent. The Episcopalian priest, Barbara Brown Taylor writes that “Very few
people come to see me because they want to discuss something God said to them
last night. The large majority come because
they cannot get God to say anything at all.”
I get that. Maybe a lot of
us do. I have had times of urgency and
anguish where I long to hear the voice of God. Times when I’ve whispered repetitive
and desperate prayers to God. And
instead in response there’s this sort of void. And… I’ve also had moments of business
and distraction where the voice of God is muted by all the noise of my life and
suddenly I realize that I am out of touch and disconnected with Holiness.
I think that longing for a word from God is a pretty common
experience. More than half of the psalms
are the people crying out to God— Hey! Where are you, God! Answer me! I’m
upset about something! Mother Theresa famously wrote letters where she
wrote of her doubt and longing for certainty from God. There’s writer and activist, Elie Wiesel, who
told heart-wrenchingly of the moms and dads and grandparents trying to figure
out where God was during the agony Holocaust in the concentration camps. There’s Kate Bowler who wrote a book in 2018 trying
to figure out where God is in the midst of a cancer diagnosis. Where is God in grief, unemployment, or the
daily grind of life when you find yourself mindlessly staring at pictures of
Brian Urlacher’s head…? I think it’s
part of what it means to be human to long for connection and conversation with
God—if not a lightening bolt, then one or two little words would do.
One of history’s anguished stories of the silence of God is the
story of Ida B. Wells. Ida grew up and came of age during the period of
Reconstruction of the South after our Civil War. When Ida was 30 years old (in 1892), one
of her dearest friends, Tom Moss, was lynched with two other men. Ida had stumbled into her calling as a journalist,
first who wrote about Black life, and eventually she became a very prominent
investigative reporter. After her friend Tom, was murdered, Ida began to
connect the dots and see that there was a deeper motivation behind the
lynchings which was designed to terrorize Black people and preserve racist
social structures. When she spoke truth
about lynching later that year in a blistering editorial, she was run out of
the South and didn’t return for another 30 years.
During that time, she moved to Chicago, married and her
husband, a prominent lawyer who cared for their 4 children, while she traveled
all over the place speaking about the evils of mob violence, sexual violence
against black women, and the lynching of both men and women. When Eliza Woods was lynched, Ida later wrote
in her diary, “Oh, my God! Can such things be and no justice for it?”
Our Bible echos stories of people in situations where it seems like
God is silent or even absent. Like the story of Esther’s. The different stories across scripture have
different responses to God’s silence.
In today’s story, where God seems absent, Esther’s cousin Mordecai
has some words for her. Yes, Esther, he tells her. I know you are terrified about
asking the King for this favor to stop this genocide against the Jewish people,
but you must work for life. He implores her to have courage, to persist and
to answer God’s call. It’s a call which is also placed upon on our lives. It’s a
call to show up in the world as a disciple and work for life.
Cousin Mordecai’s advice to Esther is part of a
pattern that we have inherited as people of faith. Think, again, of Ida B. Wells. She
lived during a violent and desperate time in our nation’s history wrought with
injustice and evil. Four years after she
was run out of the south, the US supreme court decided that people classified
as black and people classified as white were separate but equal. (Although in practice,
that meant, separate but unequal because this meant legal segregation and
we know the truth of that evil in our history.
That supreme court decision would be upheld for the next 69 years until
after Ida’s lifetime.
Although Ida’s voice was fiery, and she called out for God
to answer, she didn’t win many victories.
She was scorned by prominent papers. She was threatened. She was very
radical and edgy and subsequently written off. She didn’t see much change during
her lifetime. But, by God, she worked
for life.
When God is silent or absent or when we just aren’t sure where in
the world God is calling us, we work for life. To “work for life” means to
answer God’s call to discipleship, even when we’re not sure what the outcome
will be. To work for life is to serve which is just good old fashioned loving
one another. To work for life is to do our best to embody compassion, to advocate
for justice for all of creation, to humble ourselves and speak truth to power when
we are called. To work for life, is to get out of bed on a Sunday morning and
offer our lives and our very selves here in thanksgiving to God. To work for
life is to have faith that, though God’s activity might be hidden, we are a
part of it. And even when we don’t have
faith, we trust that the practice of living as disciples of Jesus will keep us
close to God. For there is nothing that can separate
us from God’s love—not
silence, neither height, nor depth, nor evil, nor angels nor demons, nothing
can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord; and it
is bathed in that love that we are reminded that we are part of a project that
is larger than we can comprehend. And we
show up in the world as disciples of Jesus and we work for life.
Queen Esther courageously asked the King to spare her people, and
he did. Ida B. Wells was a prophet and
paved the way for a new chapter in the struggle for equal rights--a new chapter
which we now remember as the Civil Rights Movement. God worked though both of these women, just
as God works through us even when we don’t sense it.
Now, I don’t know if any of us here can compare ourselves to Ida
Barnes Wells or Esther, Queen of Persia, but—by the grace of God—we can stand
on their shoulders.
Blessed be the journey.
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