If the book of Esther were created today, it would probably be a made-for-TV-movie - a low budget historical drama of an obscure incident.
As a book of the Bible, we don’t spend much time with it in church. It appears only once in the three year cycle of assigned readings, and there’s not really enough here to understand what the story is about.
It’s like we’re flipping channels, stumble into the middle of a climatic scene in the TV movie — and then it cuts to commercial before we’ve quite had a chance to figure out who any of the players are.
That can be annoying in church as well as on TV, so let me give you a little backstory.
Our drama is set in Persia, and it starts with a six month long party meant to show off the king’s wealth and power. And when the queen refuses to dress up and show off at the climax of this party, it ends with a sudden divorce.
That clears the way for the first recorded episode of “The Bachelor,” a nation-wide beauty pageant to find that one right woman to marry the king. And here we meet our heroine, Esther, a beautiful orphan girl being raised by her Uncle Mordecai.
When the king meets Esther, he falls deeply in love with her beauty and she’s crowned queen, with a national holiday in her honor. About the same time, Uncle Mordecai overhears two palace officials plotting to assassinate the king, and passes the word through Esther, saving the king’s life.
It’s a fairy tale plot, but we’re far from happily ever after. A new prime minister is appointed, called Haman, and Uncle Mordecai draws unwelcome attention since - as a Jew among Gentiles - he doesn’t bow down to the new big shot. So Haman, bruised in the ego, promptly plans to get rid of all the uppity Jews who won’t bow to him. He spins the king a scare story about ethnic minorities and religious laws, donates heavily to the king’s treasury, and gets authorization for ethnic cleansing.
Uncle Mordecai hears the decree, and comes to Esther, asking her to get the king to change his mind. Esther objects - she quite literally risks her life to approach the king uninvited.
She feels powerless to help, caught in the horror of having to watch genocide unfold and can’t imagine she could stop it.
Then the story turns on Mordecai’s response:
"Do not think that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For 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."
"Do not think that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For 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."
Who knows? Perhaps this is what you were always meant to do.
And with those words Esther becomes a heroine indeed. She asks for support from her people, a three-day fast; she gathers her courage and approaches the king, inviting him and Haman to a private party.
(There’s a lovely little diversion of mistaken assumptions in which Haman’s plot to destroy Mordecai actually gets Mordecai rewarded, but eventually we get to the party)
and that’s where we tuned in this morning.
Esther outs herself as an ethnic minority under threat, the king springs to the defense of his beautiful wife, and it all winds up with Haman hanged on the gallows he’d meant to use to kill Mordecai.
There’s a messy epilogue in which the king’s justice creates a national revenge day to kill everyone who has threatened the Jews, but ultimately Esther and Mordecai are celebrated as heroes for taking advantage of chance and opportunity, gathering their courage and risking themselves to stop the unstoppable.
It’s an odd story to find in the Bible. It never mentions God, slips sideways around prayer, and seems to have little to do with faith at all, but it’s a story that may be more like our stories than anything else in the Bible.
Esther and Mordecai live a normal life, assimilated into the culture around them, where their religious identity is generally no big deal.
They don't talk about God because they don’t need to, the way you and I don’t need to unless we’re running for president. They keep some religious practices, but they don’t let them get in the way of getting on with life. They’d be mainline protestants or Roman Catholics - turning up for mass when they can, trusting God’s moral compass, or maybe more spiritual than religious - but not fanatic about it, not trying to convert anyone, better known for what else they are and do.
And yet God uses them to keep God’s promises, whether they recognize it or not.
God uses who and where they are - assimilated and ordinary - to save God’s people, to preserve the exiled people of Israel: a genuine miracle of salvation.
They are Itzhak Stern and Oskar Schindler, made famous by the Spielberg movie, but originally just a Jew and a German who can’t stop the war, can’t stop the Holocaust, but because of who and where they are they have a chance, at the risk of their own lives, to save some,
and they do.
God uses them to keep God’s promises, whether they meant it that way or not.
It turns out that you don’t have to hear God’s voice to be a prophet,
don’t have to be very religious to be a saint,
don’t have to want to to be a hero.
You just have to accept that maybe you can make a difference,
gather your courage, and give it a try.
Schindler and Esther faced impossible odds: looming, overwhelming problems that no one person could prevent or control, and there’s no shortage of those problems in our world, is there?
Climate change, cancer, war and terror and a refugee crisis, whatever the heck has happened to the American political system to kill compromise and actual government… you could probably name more.
And there are less public, maybe more intractable, things: broken family relationships that don’t seem fixable, miserable workplace culture, anything it might cost you more to confront than to endure.
But who knows?
Perhaps you are what and who you are for just such a time as this.
Perhaps you are what and who you are for just such a time as this.
Whether you know it or not, you might be the person in the right place at the right time - if you reach out to your community for support, and gather your courage in your hand - you might just be one that God is using to keep God’s promises.
Promises of care for creation, of abundant life, of healing and wholeness - those overwhelming tides do turn on you and me and our simple actions so much more often than we know or imagine.
This weekend we celebrated the silver anniversary of our church building. A new building isn’t war or cancer, but this, too, takes the right people in the right place gathering courage and taking action.
At the party last night, the Vestry and I asked you to dream for the future of Calvary. Today, in honor of Esther, I invite you to offer to God one big overwhelming thing that frightens you, one you know that you alone can’t fix or control, and commit in your heart to one small action, or one way you can invite others to change.
Write to your representatives to encourage the US to suspend our heart-cramping fear of strangers from the Middle East, and speedily welcome, accept, and include more refugees from Syria.
Struggle visibly with racism, classism, and other -isms.
If it’s the environment that overwhelms you, start a locavore food group or a community garden.
Confront the emotional powers in your family, even if it risks a fight.
Advocate for unpopular but life-giving industrial change in healthcare, energy, finance.
Confront what frightens you, what overwhelms you -
because it might be for this that you are where and what you are.
Reach out to your community for support;
Gather your courage in both hands.
Because God may indeed be using you to keep God’s promises to God’s people and to the world,whether you ever know it or not.
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