rich’s blog

For Such a Time as This

 

Preface:

So last week we were introduced to the major problem of the book of Esther.  Haman, “the enemy of the jews,” got really upset at Mordecai, Esther’s father/cousin, and decided to kill every jew in the Persian Empire.  He was able to get King Xerxes’ go-ahead–not that difficult, because he misled him and bought him off–and sends out a decree about when this genocide is scheduled. 

 

And we saw responses to this: Haman and the King have a drink, the Persian capital–the first place to get the news–is thrown into an uproar, Jews everywhere are just like you’d expect them to be–weeping and panicked, and Mordecai himself puts on sackcloth & ashes, and grieves publicly. 

 

Today:

Today, we’ll talk about Esther’s response to this news, and Mordecai’s advice to her in the midst of it. I hope that we’ll be forced to question our places in the world and what we’ll do with them, ask ourselves what sort of things could happen as a result of how we choose to live the lives we have with purposeful intention. 

 

But first let’s pray. (clap clap clap-clap-clap)

 

Prayer: 

Jesus, wake us up.  Wake us up to your presence and your power, to what it might mean to be the people of God.  Wake us up to our deepest wants, and all the things about us that you cherish.  Don’t let us sleep walk through this life, or this hour, or this day.  Take away my voice if I mislead us, but give me yours before I do, and interrupt us with your affection and care.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen. 

 

Introduction:

Now, as we move through today’s passage together try if you can to notice how normal and typical Esther and Mordecai act toward one another, even though they are in such unusual circumstances. Try that if you can. But let’s talk about what happens in what was read to us today. 

 

vv4-5:

We start by learning that Esther is in charge of a small cadre of attendants, who seem to keep her up-to-date on Mordecai.  

 

And we don’t know what her attendants tell her about Mordecai, but they do tell her at least that he’s dressed in burlap.  And that’s no good, right?  I mean this is, basically her dad, and he’s dressed in burlap, apparently grieving.  

 

So Esther does a typical human thing.  She does what most of us do when someone we love is sad, which is try to take care of the problem that we see, right?  

 

Mordecai is wearing burlap, and Esther sends him some clothes.  We do this sort of thing all the time, attend to what is sometimes called “the presenting problem,” instead of the “real problem.”  In the worse case, we just tell somebody to cheer up, you know; in the best case, we give someone food when they really need steady employment: but we do what we can to meet the need that we see. 

 

We often try to fix the problem that is right ahead of our eyes–which is usually a symptom of some deeper problem, instead of dealing with the deeper problem. 

 

And have you ever, oh, been really upset about a big problem, and people notice, right? And they want to help, so they suggest that you try and get more sleep, or share with you some way that their Uncle Boaz was cured by such-and-such a thing.  And if we’re doing well, we know that the person is trying to care for us, but simply doesn’t understand the depth and breadth of the problem we face.  Or we get annoyed. 

 

Something like all this happens here, right?  Mordecai, don’t be upset, here; take some clothes. 

 

Well, Mordecai isn’t doing so hot–which is reasonable, since his people are facing genocide, and he won’t take the clothes. 

 

And Esther, we realize, hasn’t heard about the decree Haman sent out.  Apparently the Harem doesn’t get the daily paper. And she sends one of her attendants to find out what’s really wrong with Mordecai. 

 

vv6-8

And Hathak, a eunuch she has charge of, goes to find out what’s up with Mordecai.  He bounces back and forth between the two of them the rest of this passage.  If we could really insert ourselves in this story, be immersed in it the way we are at immerse ourselves the way we do with movies, we’d notice the contrast and the action of Hathack hurrying out the gate, past people chatting about this decree, Mordecai’s old official friends, up to Mordecai all dirty and ashy and loud, and talking.  Then racing back through the gate and past the people around in the palace into the luxurious Harem, talking to Esther, catching his breath, then turning around and hurrying back.  I wants us to be able to see this in our heads, you know.  Anyway… 

 

Hathack talks to Mordecai, and is told everything that has happened, handed a copy of the edict, covered in ashy fingerprints, and Mordecai tells Hathack to tell Esther that she has to go to the king and beg for mercy–he has no idea, of course, that Xerxes doesn’t really know it’s the jews he let Haman wipe out.  Haman abandons his earlier advice to Esther to keep her heritage secret. The time for secrets is over, right?

 

vv9-11:

And Hathack runs to Esther, and hands her all this stuff and tells her what Mordecai said, and Esther gives him a message and he hurries back with it.  She replies by saying “Look, everybody knows that if you go to the king without being summoned, you’re going to die…unless, of course, the King happens to let you live.”  The implication being that the whole “letting you live” thing is way less likely than being killed. 

 

And we get insight into Esther, who is no longer a one-dimensional person, right?  She’s not simply a really beautiful girl who does what people tell her to do.  Now she tells other people to do things–Hathack, her maids–and she doesn’t simply do what Mordecai asks, but responds to him; like an adult, really, with a very reasonable explanation about how what Mordecai suggests will threaten her life.  

 

She has matured, somehow; grown up in some way in the past five years since we first met her.

 

vv12-14:

And Hathack arrives to Mordecai, who is still sitting there, maybe not wailing with grief so much now as looking for Hathack, waiting to discover what Esther said: and Hathack tells Mordecai Esther’s response.  And Mordecai responds: 

 

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the jews will escape.  For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the jews willa rise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish.  And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (tniv) 

 

“Dont think that because you’re a part of the king’s household you’ll be the only jew that survives.  Somehow, somewhere, relief and deliverance–relief and deliverance–will rise up for the jews: even if you die, and I die.  And who knows?  Maybe you’re where you are for this reason. 

 

I think that Mordecai knows Esther, still: she’s his daughter, right?  He knows what’s going through her mind, knows her well, and he does a very typical thing.  He responds, as we often do to those we love–and those we don’t, really–not based on what she says, but based on what a person says or does, but based on what we think is “really going on.”  What we assume is really the motivation for a person’s behavior. 

 

And it’s a little ironic that when it comes to helping people, we will often typically just deal with the thing on the surface, forgetting that there might be a bigger problem of some sort. But when someone disappoints us, or responds in a way we don’t like, we’ll typically assume they’re acting with some sort of reason that’s not on the surface, and will attack that reason, we’ll go deep really fast.  And meanwhile, we all run around back and forth between people.  So honestly everything about today’s passage reminds me of real life, human relationship dynamics. 

 

But Mordecai’s response is this: Could it be that you where you are for a reason.  

 

vv15-17:

And Hathack hurries away with this message, looking forward to his cigarette break–I’m kidding–and tells Esther what Mordecai said, and Esther responds in a way none of us would expect, except that we’ve read the story before.  She sends Hathack to Mordecai with this message: “Go. Gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me.  Don’t eat or drink for three days; we’ll fast, too.  And I’ll go to the King.  If I die, I die.”  

 

How can I comment on this without cheapening it.  Esther heard Mordecai.  She heard him.  And she asks him to do a very jewish thing; to fast.  Fasting was a religious jewish thing, right?  It was a sign of humility, it was sort of a lived out prayer: “What do I have need of more than food and water, God?  Only you.”  

 

And, look: this isn’t meant to make anyone upset, but if you’re trying to obey Torah, live out God’s law, you’re probably not going to want to live like Esther lived, right?  She slept with and married a non-jew, she’s done some questionable things: this is just the picture we get of Esther.  

 

But, she realizes just how serious a place she’s in, how serious a situation her people are in, and she does what people do when life gets serious: she prays, she goes to church, she fumbles with the rosary, or reads something in a Bible she finds in a hotel room or a thrift store.

 

This again, is a typical–a human–thing to do.  When we are desperate, we turn to God in the ways we know how to turn to God, we do the things that “religious” people do.  In our society, which has been culturally influenced by the church, people do a lot of Christian things, right? Esther is a diaspora jew in the middle of the persian empire, in the middle of the persian court, and fasting is a reasonable thing for her to do, right, when you want God to notice your need. 

 

But there is also this: She acts with courage.  If I die, I die.  

 

vv5:5-7

Now, she doesn’t die.  She follows the plan; she goes to the King, he accepts her, and promises her whatever she wants: and what she wants, it seems, is a little more time to figure out what she wants.  She asks for a banquet with Haman and the King, and he grants her one.  And we’ll learn more about that soon. 

 

Noticing: 

 

But it’s worth taking a second to notice some things: 

 

Noticing: Reversals

It’s worth noticing that by the end of today’s passage we see Mordecai & Esther’s roles totally reversed from those of chapter 2: It’s Esther who tells Mordecai what to do; and she’s the one with responsibility over Mordecai’s well-being: and not only his well-being, but the entire jewish races’ well being, right?  All the one-dimensionalism of chapter 2 is erased: Esther is more than just a beauty queen who takes the advice of others.  She responds with courage, with action, and tells Mordecai what he needs to do.  This is an Esther we would have never expected to see early in the book.  Something has changed in her. 

 

Noticing: Typical

And notice the typical, normal things of being human that we’ve seen here.  The way we turn to God in great need.  The way we tend to address symptoms instead of real problems.  The way we can assume that a person is motivated by all sorts of things they never give voice to, and act with those assumptions.  And there are other things that we could note in this passage.  I point this out because I really want us to somehow get into these stories, these scenes that are given us, and realize that people lived them, you know?  People who are not all heroic good guys or nefarious bad guys, but people.  Somehow, I believe that if we could really enter into these stories, this story, that we’d take from it a richness we’d each be surprised by.  That’s important to me, for some reason or other. 

 

Noticing: Atypical

But there are things in this that are more than typical, right?  Things that are unusual for people to do, or think, or say, aren’t there?  For all the things that seem so naturally human in today’s passage: there are things that seem unnatural, atypical. 

 

Mordecai, in an argument intended to persuade, tosses out the idea that maybe all of history has led up to this moment in Esther’s life so that she can act the way he would like her to act.  I guess this isn’t all that atypical given the situation; when we’re trying to get people to understand something important the way we understand something to be important, we’ll toss out almost anything. But it’s not a typical notion, that maybe there is a reason for us being where we find ourselves, it’s not too normal to think that you are because only you can do the thing that needs done in your situation. People don’t talk like that except when they’ve stayed up too late with their closest friends, by fires or in mostly empty rooms. 

 

And–this does seem a bit more unusual–Esther looks at death and decides that it’s just not the end of the world.  She’s able to say, “If I die, I die.”  She acts with a deliberateness and a courage that isn’t typical or natural.  

 

And, too, Mordecai decides to trust and listen to his daughter, his child, which I think the world could use a little more of, but you know, still can be fairly unusual in some families. 

 

And I wonder about these things that strike me, at least, as unusual.  

 

Wonder:

I wonder–you may not–Is there a connection between owning the hope that maybe all of history has happened in such-and-such a way that you find yourself here, right now, is there a connection between this belief that you have something to offer that no one else does, and the ability to say, resolutely, “If I die, then I die.” 

 

Is there a connection between believing that maybe you have an important, critical role to play in the world, and the ability to hold loosely to self-preservation. 

  

What do you think?  Do you think that if you believed you alone–with your unique mix of weakness & strength, of faithfulness & faithlessness, comfort & poverty, influence and lack thereof, who you know and don’t know: Who you are.  Do you think that if you believed that there are things that need done in the place you are in, which only you and you alone can do: if you believed this, would you find yourself ready to pay any price to do them. 

Would you find yourself ready to die, because you know that you alone can achieve some thing for God & God’s people that no one else can achieve.  And death becomes simply not as important as fulfilling this grand unique purpose, unlocking a lock that you alone, right now, can be the key for.

 

Mordecai trusts that deliverance will come from the jews if Esther doesn’t act.  He knows the old promises, the faithfulness of God that will outlast all of Israel’s unfaithfulness, and he apparently has a certainty that God will indeed prove faithful; though he never mentions God.  But he also plants in the mind of Esther the idea that just maybe it is her, who has fantastically ended up in this place, who may very well be the one God wants to use as the agent of his faithfulness, as his deliverer.  

 

What I want for us: 

Listen to me: I want to rally us, I want to wake us up, you know: I want to be our Mordecai: I want to plant the seed among us, as a church, and in each of us, that we may be where we are because it is exactly us and no else who can do the thing we can do. 

 

No one else is you, right?  No one else is where you are, involved in the things you’re involved in, able to achieve the things you alone could achieve: and each one of us finds ourselves caught in a web of events that seems, if we step back, bigger than we are.  All we know is that life has happened in such-and-such a way that here we are, right?  Did any of you plan ten years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, to be sitting here this morning? To be working where you work, or living where you live, or shopping where you shop, believing the things you now believe?  

 

If any one of us said, “Well, actually Rich, I figured that this is exactly where I’d be when I was an adolescent.”  I’d have to respectfully, lovingly, ask if you’re lying to me on purpose or if you’re just self-decieved. 

 

Life is a string of choices we make; but those choices are under the loving attention of a loving God, who invites us who have his Spirit–and everyone, really–to turn to Him and ask how should I make this choice.  

 

The biggest shame: 

Let me tell share with you the biggest shame that can happen in the world: the belief that you do not matter.  That if you die, your absence will have no impact on the world.  

 

This is not the idea that your life is meaningless, this is well beyond that: it is the subtle idea that life itself has no meaning, is simply a string of random things, events that have happened arbitrarily.  And if you were absent from life, the arbitrariness of one thing following another wouldn’t really change.

 

Could it be that there is something history is headed towards, that when those people who have the Spirit of God act with purpose and intentionality, they can in fact change the course of history.  

 

Knowing some things about God:

We know some things about God, right?  We know that God is all loving, that God is all wisdom, and that God wants to use us to expand his reign throughout all creation.  

 

Now–and this is not only for you in your place in life: Jayne, Jeanne, John, and everyone with or without a J name–but for us, as a church.  Could it be that who we are right now, where we are right now–that God might want to use that to prove his faithfulness in some way, to some one?  

 

That’s a dummy question, right?  We’d all say, sitting in our padded veneer chairs, yeah.  Of course God wants to use Smoky Row–and me–to prove his faithfulness. We know the right Christian answers; and when we’re at our best, we’ll even intellectually assent to this.

 

Well, then: Who around us needs that proof, needs delivered in some way that is like the jews needed delivered, and what are we going to do about it?  It might not be a bad idea to take the route Esther does–do some religious thing. Say, pray?  Fast?  Open the Bible, or talk with a Christian about where you are and who you are and what God might want of you this moment. 

 

And frankly, I pray that we are a little more Christian than Esther seems to be Jewish.  I pray that we are in prayer, that we are reading our bibles, that we are gathered together, and discerning and discussing the daily little disasters and stresses that every one of us faces. I pray we can more than do a religious thing, but turn desperately to the God that we are actually very close to, because he lives in us, and moves in us, and has drawn our very being into his own. 

 

Toward Conclusion:

I have said stuff like this before, right? You know, at the end of the day, I only sing a few notes, I only know a couple of chords. And I will keep singing and strumming away at them. 

 

It is not an accident you are here, and it is a lie from Satan, the enemy of God’s people, that you have no purpose, nothing important to add to this grand history of salvation:  You are part of salvation history, part of the history of the people around you, and you may very well be, if you could rise to the truth of it, part of the salvation history of every single person you brush by in the street.  

 

I am not talking about evangelism and missions: I am talking about realizing that a wise and loving God would really love for us to live wisely.  

 

And a wisely life–I know it’s not proper english, but doesn’t that sound nice?  A wisely-life would be one where as walk down the streets we walk down, drive down the streets we drive down, meander through the cubicles we meander through, and let each step be a reminder that only you are you, and only you can do the things that you can do. 

 

You are special.  Smoky Row is special.  When Mordecai asks, “Who knows, perhaps you’ve come to royal dignity for such a time as this?” He is wondering aloud, tossing out what he hopes is a fairly persuasive meaning-of-life question.  We don’t have to wonder; we’ve given over our souls to purposes greater than us.  Do we get that even the littlest bit?  We can be agents of change for the whole world, can expand ourselves out into the most real things about those around us, in such a way that when we are forced to contract because of a crises, because a great need is shared with us, because someone simply needs loved, we can say: let me tell you why I am alive.  Our eyes can see things that no one else can see–Jeff, you talked about this–because we realize that all of history is headed toward a resurrection, one we carry inside ourselves by the great investment and trust of the greatest love of the universe: and each one things we do with ourselves between our Christian cradle and our Christian graves is bigger than it seems, because we act with an eye toward a bigger drama than the drama of our daily lives. 

 

Do you see where I’m getting at here?  I’m no good at being explicit, I can only freaking use metaphors:

 

“Longish” Conclusion:

Look: “Who knows?” Isn’t a question without an answer: God knows.  God knows if you where you are for a reason, and God knows the things you could do with your lives right now, and why you must do them.  Gather all the junk and all the treasure of your life in your first–the place you work, the people you love, the things you do that no one else does–and hold it there, and toss to God, who will open it, and tell you what you must do, the ways we must act, the situations that require us to show up and be present and accounted for, those things that someday we will give an account for.  

 

The other thing of all this is that death is no issue for us who have the Holy Spirit.  It’s been dealt with.  If we die, we die: this is the Christian starting place, right?  Death will not hold us for long.  If we can believe that, we can move out in a radical attention to, and engagement with, the possibilities that surround each of our lives.  Or we can start the way Esther seems to start, by realizing, “It is only me who can do the things I can do.  What, Lord, should I do right now?”  And when we realize that–that we each of us and all of us are facing a “time such as this” right now–death will become secondary to living up to the unique opportunities we each have. 

 

Look.  Resolve is not easy.  Engaging our lives with a critical eye, asking, Why now?  Why am I alive now? And what, God, should I be doing with myself, and how?”  Is not easy.  But there will never be another you living your life; and only you have access to the things God wants to do with you.  

 

To become open to death, it helps to be open to dying for something.  What is the thing God would have you do?  How do you know?  Esther found her thing.   Mordecai opened her up to the possibilities of her moment, her unique capacity to fulfill the hopes of God in the world.  And she went for it.  We’ve got to find that.  

 

Let’s become Mordecai to one another, so that we can be Esther for God and God’s people.  Please take this seriously. 

 

Prayer:

Jesus: Oh Jesus.  You wept over Jerusalem, you set your eyes to the cross, you lived each moment in a way that only you could ever live it.  Help us to do the same.  Help us to hold loosely to life because we realize that it is secondary to fulfilling your hopes for us.  Awake us to the opportunities we have to fulfill your purposes in the world that only we can do.  Make us a church resolute.  Make us a people united.  Reveal to us that which is unique, and special, and which only we alone can do and be for the world: and give us the power and one another to do it.  

 

We cry Mercy.  We desperately need your hand in our lives, and we ask, for those of us who can ask it, to take us over: guide us and live through us.  For those of us who can’t, open our hearts to your care, and reveal to us your love, because it’s knowing in our souls that you love us that enables us to do anything you would have us do.  Thank you that death shall not triumph over us, nor shall evil have its way with us.  In Jesus’ name.