Pentecost 17 September 27, 2009

Pentecost 17
September 27, 2009

When I was a girl, whenever my parents left me at my grandparents’ house, I’d take their big black bible off the shelf and settle down with the Book of Esther. Here it is in the Old Testament, only ten chapters wedged between Nehemiah and Job. It was my favorite Bible story.
For good reason: it’s got romance (sort of), humor, suspense, and best of all for a ten year old girl—a poor girl who not only becomes a queen, but also a hero.

During the whole church year we only read the little bit of the Book of Esther in today’s first lesson, so here’s a refresher on the plot:
We travel to Persia, where many Jews made their home after they were released from captivity in Babylon. In Persia, they lived mostly without persecution, easily Integrated with the rest of the population.
One day King Ahasuerus, reveling with his friends, orders his queen, the beautiful Vashti, to display her beauties before the court. She refuses. Irate and pressed by his courtiers who are worried that their wives might learn a lesson from Vashti, deposes her as queen.
In good fairy tale fashion, Ahasuerus orders all the young women of the kingdom to come to the palace so that he might—after they’ve undergone twelve months of spa treatment—choose a new queen.
Esther and her uncle Mordechai are Jews living in the capital. Esther enters the contest for queen and Ahasuerus chooses her. Meanwhile a lowly courtier named Haman is promoted by the King to be his Chief Officer. The honor goes to Haman’s head and he demands public honor by all the citizens, but Mordechai won’t bow down. Haman finds out he’s a Jew and decides to get rid of him by destroying the whole Jewish people.

Mordechai, terrified for their people, tells Esther to go into king and reveal that she’s a Jew. But to go in without an invitation means death. Even though she’s frightened, she takes on the responsibility. She orders Mordechai to ask all the Jews to fast on her behalf; she fasts as well. Meanwhile, Mordechai publicly protests the decree by lying in sackcloth and ashes at the court gate. Haman so infuriated that he builds a gallows 75 feet tall and goes into persuade the king to execute Mordechai on it. But by coincidence the king has a sleepless night and reads in the court annals that Mordechai earlier had foiled a plot to overthrow the king. King wants to reward Mordechai, and is shocked when Esther tells him that Haman is preparing to execute him as well as Esther and all the Jews in Persia. King Ahasuerus sentences Haman to death. After the King leaves Esther’s room, Haman throws himself on her couch to plead for his life. The king thinks he’s attacking her and orders Haman to be executed on the gallows he has built for Mordechai.

It’s a great story!
But over the 2500 years since it was written, it has been controversial.
Martin Luther hated it: “I am so hostile to this book that I wish that it did not exist for it .. . has too much heathen naughtiness.”
Ordinary Jewish people have always loved the Book of Esther, and read it aloud on the annual feast of Purim. But some scholars and authorities disliked it. For one thing, neither Esther nor Mordechai act much like Jews. Even by today’s standards they were not observant Jews.
That means that Esther and Mordechai were apparently living outwardly at least, completely assimilated (in that case, Persian) lives—no kosher, no ritual baths, no peculiarly Jewish dress.
And there was an even more important problem with the Book of Esther. In the entire book, there is no reference to “God.” Not one! A bit surprising for a book of the bible.

Those peculiarities are why now, as a grownup, I still love the Book of Esther.
Because it’s just for those reasons that the story of Esther can speak in a special way to us. We’re Christians trying to live good Christian lives while looking, talking, and acting a whole lot just like everyone else around us. We’re mostly not super-religious and we certainly wouldn’t describe ourselves as holy.
Like Esther and Mordechai, we live our lives in a society which worships many things other than God—wealth, power, beauty, possessions, status
In our lives, as in Esther’s, God does not appear as a burning bush nor does God knock people off a horse with any frquency There are no hugely extraordinary events, there are no stunning miracles.
There’s just—well—life. The situations we find ourselves in, the people and communities we care about.
And as faithful people in a world without God’s direct word and without miracles, how do we live? Like Esther and Mordechi, we make the best choices we can in the circumstances we have. Like Esther and Mordechi, we hope, quietly, that we and God are going in the same direction, and then do our best.

For most of us, as for Esther and Mordechai, the closest we’re going to get to a miracle are coincidences.
Mordechai’s hanging out in the marketplace in just the right place and time to overhear the plot against the king. Chance? God’s prompting? Who knows?
The king’s insomnia—Indigestion? God’s prompting? Who knows?
I suspect we’ve all had those experiences in which we’ve wondered—is this a coincidence? Or the brush of an angel’s hand?
I just had an experience like that. I’m the volunteer chaplain on duty at Speare Hospital this weekend. On Friday, I got to the hospital around quarter of two in the afternoon to begin my shift.
I’d signed in and was heading down the corridor to stash my purse when I heard a voice say, “You’re the lady who did the funeral for my grandmother, aren’t you?” It turned out that yes, I was that lady. I’d deeply loved the grandmother, and through her illness and death, I’d become acquainted with the whole family.
The woman went on: “You’ll never believe this, but my mother-in-law is in intensive care and people are coming from my church to do a healing service in ten minutes.” And at the same instant we spoke together. She said: “Wouldn’t you love to come?” and I said, “I’d love to be part of it, if it’s all right.”
So at 2:00 I was standing at the woman’s bed, in a circle with family members and others, praying for peace and healing for her. And all the time, I was shaky with awe. If I’d come into the hospital in the morning as I’d planned, or even a half an hour later in the afternoon, I would have missed this moment of grace..

The upshot of all this is this:
All we have is our ordinary lives and every once in a while an amazing coincidence. No burning bushes, no miraculous healings—but standing at that bedside that day, it was enough, it was enough