Sermon: Two Versions
Text: Esther 7:1-10 (but really the whole story)
Date: September 27, 2009
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
To begin with, do you know what sets the Old Testament book of Esther apart from every other book of the Bible? It’s not the beautiful women, the political intrigue, the reversal of fortunes, the assassination plot, the malleable king, the people’s peril, the wine-drenched feasts, or any of that. Although it’s all very interesting, you can find similar dramas worthy of Hollywood and Bollywood elsewhere in the Bible. What is truly unique about Esther among other books of the Bible is that God is never mentioned. Not even once. God does not appear. God does not set anything on fire or put any fires out. God does not speak via dreams or angels or handwriting on the wall. God is not named. No one addresses the people with speech beginning “Thus saith the Lord.” What’s more, there is no reference to the Hebrew Law.
These omissions disturbed ancient writers so much that other writers later added 107 more verses to the story. In those additions to the Hebrew text, God is mentioned. A lot—more than 50 times. Mordecai and Esther pray long, pious prayers. Esther is revealed as a woman who hates being married to a Gentile and who strictly follows the kosher food laws. Haman is warned by people in the know not to cross Mordecai and his people because “the living God is with him.” God gets directly involved with the case, causing insomnia in the king and the next day, a change of heart as God turns his fierceness into gentleness.
The revisions, included in the Apocrypha (a set of books considered authoritative by some Christians and merely interesting by others) certainly change the tenor of the story. You end up with two versions of God, the Offstage- In-The-Wings-God and the In-Your-Face-God. You end up with two versions of the heroine, the Anonymous Jew, not at all certain of God’s guidance or assistance, vs. the Super Jew, who prays and, though nervous, demonstrates confidence that God will help because she believes strongly in Yahweh’s power and faithfulness.
It’s pointless to debate which version of the story is accurate since the whole thing, though anchored in historical figures, is literature, not history. But since good literature invites us to examine the universal human situation, we may look at both of these versions as true stories of what it is like to be human in relationship to God.
Some people seem to have the Lord on a direct line 24/7, or at least they talk as if they do. Others believe in God but don’t have a visceral feeling of contact or a clear sense of two-way communication. Some believe that God is so involved as an actor in human affairs that they expect that the prayers of the faithful for everything from healing cancer to finding a parking place will be heard and answered. Others infer from God’s concealment and ordinary silence that God is more of a director than an actor on the human stage. As a result of these differing experiences of God in the world, people of faith may behave very differently based on how they think God is guiding them. If you believe God has spoken to you directly regarding a particular course of action, and believe God is going to back up your action with Almighty power, you are much more likely to act decisively, with confidence. If you have not had a direct word from the Lord, your action is probably going to be more….tentative.
Suppose you got to choose a version in real life. In which version of the human-in-relationship-to-God story would you prefer to live out your days? Think about it.
I know I keep yammering about my summer and maybe you’re getting sick of it. But I have to bring it up at least one more time. I kept company this summer with a number of Christians who expressed themselves as if they were in the direct line to God camp. The Lord seemed to be speaking to a number of the preachers on a variety of topics; seems like they would ask and the Lord would answer in due time, and the preacher would report back to the church. They were very comfortable with this arrangement, and therefore their actions as leaders appeared very purposeful and resolute.
Part of me is quite green with envy. I confess that I do not, apparently, have God’s number. I don’t have this kind of experience. Is the fault mine? I have in my files a little excerpt from G.B. Shaw’s play “St. Joan.” In it the Dauphin discusses Joan of Arc’s voices with her and laments that he never hears voices when he prays. She responds: “They come to you but you do not listen. You have not sat in the field in the evening and considered their message. When the Angelus rings, you cross yourself and are done with it; but if you prayed from your heart and listened to the trilling of the bells in the air, after they stopped ringing you would hear the same voices as I do.” Maybe I am not hearing straightforward direction from God because I am not listening properly.
Another part of me, when hearing a claim from another person about what the Lord told him to do or say, thinks snidely “Well, isn’t that Convenient.” And it’s not just snideness—we all know that people are capable of doing insane and destructive things under the supposed direction of the Lord. A certain amount of skepticism is called for. I don’t think for a minute that everyone who claims to have heard from God is deluded, but we are flawed, sinful creatures whose minds and passions can play tricks on our perceptions, and that must be taken into consideration.
For good or ill, I think I am living more like in the first version of the Esther story, and as far as I can tell from my conversations with y’all over the years, so are the majority of you. That is, I believe that God is involved in history, but God’s will and action are not completely apparent. God’s will, God’s hopes and aspirations are revealed to us through a variety of means, but I don’t experience the God-In-Your-Face God very often, if at all. The God I experience is more the God-In-The-Wings God, whispering prompts through scripture, creation, art, community, and intuition. The unnamed God. The one whose intervention in human history will be through the actions of courageous, faithful people who, like Esther, find it in themselves to act in spite of their doubts and fears. That seems to be the version of the human-in-relationship-to-God story in which I am living. (How about you?)
Sometimes it’s discouraging to seek guidance from this veiled God-In-The-Wings. I resonate with this verse from poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “I have many brothers in the South/ who move, handsome in their vestments,/ through cloister gardens./ The Madonnas they make are so human,/ and I dream often of their Titians, / where God becomes an ardent flame./ But when I lean over the chasm of myself--/ it seems/ my God is dark/ and like a web: a hundred roots/ silently drinking. / That is the ferment I grow out of. / More I don’t know, because my branches/ rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind.” [1] There’s no doubt that we may wish for and seek that ardent flame that sheds light on all our questioning and conundrums.
I would never want to dissuade anyone from that search for clarity, light, connection; yet at the same time I want to affirm that if one’s experience of God is more subtle, more like Rilke’s dark web out of which we grow, it’s still God. As a note about Esther in the Oxford Annotated Bible puts it, “Although the Deity is not seen or even heard on [the] stage, God is standing in the wings, following the drama and arranging the props for a successful resolution of the play….Providence can be relied upon to reverse the ill-fortunes that beset individuals or the nation--provided that such leaders and their followers do their part, acting wisely and courageously."
How do we “act wisely and courageously” if our experience of God is not often in the direct and unmistakable communication category? One of the important sources of information is in reflecting on God’s character, what we have learned of it from our experience, and from scripture, reason, and the traditions of our communities of faith. One article about Esther on the topic of Esther’s call to “holy disobedience” (that is, disobeying the secular authorities) stresses the scripture and faith community’s understanding of God as, in the words of the Apocrypha book of Judith, “the God of the humble, the Ally of the insignificant, the Champion of the weak, the Protector of the despairing, the Savior of those without hope.” (Judith 9:11). Do we have questions about where God is leading? We ask ourselves, “What would the God of the humble, the ally of the insignificant, the champion of the weak, the protector of the despairing, the savior of those without hope DO?” You look at God’s track record, God’s trajectory. You remind yourself that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “The arc of the moral universe… bends toward justice.” That usually provides a giant hint as to which way to go. We also, then, pay attention to what our intuition tells us, and what our faith community says as we consult our companions on the faith journey for additional wisdom. And hopefully by so doing we attune ourselves to the subtle stirring of the Divine to direct our actions.
Since it is a current and, I think, important issue, I want to put a ballot issue on the table as a case study. Referendum 71, which will repeal the domestic partnership laws passed by the legislature the last several years, is on the ballot in large part because one segment of the religious community (mostly conservative Christians) want to challenge the legislature’s efforts to put same-sex couples and unmarried senior couples on the same legal footing as married couples. So there are a large number of our brothers and sisters who sincerely believe they have a word from the Lord on this, based on their prayers, traditions, and the seven scripture passages that seem to prohibit sexual relations between people of the same gender. They are energized and eager to prevent same-sex couples from enjoying the legal benefits and obligations of married couples. They are motivated. They are well-funded. They are organized. They are passionate.
I don’t doubt their convictions. I disagree with their conclusions. For better or worse, I can’t say I have had any angel visitations or unmistakable communiqués from God to hold up as opposing evidence. So what’s a differently-abled Christian to do? It is my conviction that if we ask what the God who is “the God of the humble, the ally of the insignificant, the champion of the weak, the protector of the despairing, the savior of those without hope” do, we take up the cause of the families who are denied the privilege of marriage and offer them the legal protections afforded to those who can legally marry. We do what we can to bend the arc of the universe a little more toward justice.
We can work the system, as Queen Esther did. She used the tools and skills she had available to her—beauty, feminine grace, flattery, plenteous food and wine, humility, decorum—to influence the one who had the power to save her people. We have other means of influence in our time and place (thank God because some of us wouldn’t get very far with our feminine wiles). We have the gift of gab, access to print and electronic media, volunteer time, yards for campaign signs, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, and the ability to vote (“Approve” on Referendum 71, which preserves the legislature’s action). All we need is the motivation.
In a way, Esther had it easier when she was challenged to stand up for the vulnerable people who were about to be slaughtered. They were her people who were about to be killed, her faith group, her tribe. Granted, she might have been able to keep her identity secret and survive the pogrom, but still it was clear that these were her people on the line. That may not be so clear among us as regards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. For a minority of our congregation, sexual minorities are “your people.” What about the rest of us? Most of us lack that strong sense of clan or family with this minority group.
That just means it takes that much more courage and motivation to act. It takes that much more valor to act as if these are my people. These are our people. We are united in the one human family, after all, even though we are easily distracted from that truth. We are all in the family of God’s beloved children.
You may completely disagree with me about whether this is an appropriate subject for Christian discussion and action. It is obviously political, and plenty of folks are reticent about mixing politics and religion. Perhaps you have a different sense of how God would call us to act on this particular issue. If so, I’d like to hear about it.
The reason I am taking the mildest of risks to talk about this in a sermon is that I think that those of us who have a less-directive, more subtle experience of God’s guidance can be excessively tentative in our speech and action. It’s true that healthy skepticism and careful reflection may raise lots of questions about what God is calling us to say and do. But tentativeness can also be the result of a good old- fashioned lack of courage. Do you hear what I’m saying? What if Esther’s apparent lack of a clear word from the Lord, combined with her fear of the power vested in the empire, had caused her to retire to her boudoir and wait for events to unfold without her intervention? What might have happened? Just another in a long line of human tragedies, which she may or may not have survived. What if we who may not be sure whether we have a clear word from the Lord on Referendum 71 stand by? Polling this week indicated that the electorate is pretty evenly divided, with a 51% majority in “approve” category. It could go either way. There will lots of faithful folk passionately arguing for the failure of the referendum. Will there be faithful folk working on the other side of the fence?
If you need guidance on this issue or other questions of moral decision, please do pray for it. Even when God is not right in our faces, even when God is in the wings She is working to persuade Her people through scripture, community, and the stirrings of the heart and mind. God is still speaking; are we still listening?
God, speak to me that I may speak
In living echoes of your tone…
O use me, God, use even me
Just as you will and when and where
Until your blessed face I see
Your rest, your joy, your glory share [2]
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[1] Rilke, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy New York: Riverhead, 1996, p. 49
[2] Havergal, Frances Ridley “God Speak to Me That I May Speak” hymn