Sixteenth Pentecost
Esther, Mark 9:38-50
Nobody would claim our gospel lesson for today as his or her
favorite scripture passage. What with visions of hell bathed in fire toasting
worms and dismembered body parts, this passage does not make my list of inspiration.
Indeed most commentators agree that trying to make these verses into a cogent
whole is futile. Rather they would suggest that like a lot of beginning writers
Mark had a lot of good material that he didn’t want to waste so he just
grouped it all together in one episode of Jesus teaching. I guess we’ll
never know. So the prospect of preaching this lesson had not set my week on
fire. I had just decided to work with the first four verses of the gospel, which
held the most significant message for me when I ran across a book in the seminary
bookstore on Friday that intrigued me. Perhaps it was the twenty percent off
sign that made me pick it up but I took it as an omen that one fifth of the
book dealt with the book of Esther, our old Testament lesson for today. I bought
it and it was good. I give thanks to Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones
for Pastoral Work for many of the insights and thoughts in today’s sermon.
We don’t very often deal with the book of
Esther. Indeed in our three-year lectionary, the cycle of our readings, this
is its only appearance. The councils that met to decide on sacred scripture
had a lot of trouble deciding to include this book because it does not in all
its pages mention God. Many believe that it was included only in order to be
able to justify the festival of PURIM, a kind of Jewish festival of Mardi Gras.
On Purim, the book of Esther is read or enacted. The audience is encouraged
to boo the villain Haman, cheer the sage one Mordicai and swoon over the luscious
heroine Esther or known by her Jewish name, Haddasah. It is a good read, a delightful
story packed with the elements of good story telling.
Briefly, though neither I nor the eleven verse
expurgated selection presented as our lesson this morning can do it justice,
I encourage you to go home and read it, here is the story.
The story begins with a seven-day banquet in a posh third century BC country
club—the palace of the king of Persia. But all is not well in paradise.
There is a rebellious queen, Vashti, who refuses to come when the king sends
for her. Some rabbinic traditions say this is because the king asked her to
come wearing the royal crown and nothing else! King Ahasuerus is infuriated,
and Vashti isn't seen or heard from again.
Well, it's no good having a queenless king. So
King Ahasuerus arranges for a beauty contest. He calls in all the virgins in
the kingdom. And the plot thickens. Nobody in the palace knows that one girl
is a foreigner, one of the many Jewish people now living in Persia after they
had been carried there by the Babylonians. A young woman whose name is not really
Esther, but a Hebrew name, Hadassah, an orphan raised by her cousin, Mordecai.
Esther is taken with the other virgins, and for a year they are taught how to
put on their makeup and how to wear fragrances so that they will win the king's
favor. The unthinkable takes place, for when King Ahasuerus summons her; Esther
wins the beauty pageant hands down. She becomes the reigning Miss Persia, and
her prize is not a college scholarship, but the king himself.
Just think of the intrigue! Think what a movie
producer could do with this: a Jewish woman in the court of the king of Persia.
Queen Esther!
And if you are now so deeply engrossed and fascinated by these happenings, and
should dare to read the rest of the story, you will see why Esther needs to
be queen, if this tale is to have a happy ending.
Two of the king's eunuchs plot to assassinate
him. Mordicai overhears the plot and tells Esther to tell the king. The king
is saved, and Mordecai's heroism is written up in the records of the king.
Soon afterward, the real villain shows up. Haman
has so impressed the king that he is made a prince and put over all the affairs
of the King. Because Haman is a proud and arrogant man, he asks the king to
write an edict that others must bow before him. But Mordecai, who worships only
God, refuses to bow to a human being. Haman is enraged. Learning that Mordecai
is a Jew, Haman plots his revenge, Haman gets the king's stamp of approval and
the edict goes out on the king's stationary that on the 13th day of the month
Adar, all Jews are to be slaughtered, just because they are different. Mordecai
pleads with Esther to save her people. Somewhat reluctantly Esther plots a plan
to discredit Haman in the eyes of the king. And while there are a series of
twists and turns, in the end, Haman is hanged on the very gallows he planned
for Mordecai, and there is great celebrations and feasting.
Now what is this story about? Why it is here in
the Bible? Quite simply it is the celebration of survival. The future of the
people of God hung by a thread but through God’s mercy they survived. This
story encapsulated the whole history of the survival of the people of God. The
environments that surrounded them changed. The cultures and historical situations
in which they were forced to exist changed but through it all they survived.
Despite their massive acts of disobedience and their marvelous returns in repentance
and renewal, they survived. Imagine what they had been through. They were slaves
in Egypt, refugees in Sinai, loosely knit tribes in Canaan, a flourishing and
prosperous monarchy and survivors of a civil war. Always though they were God’s
people.
Then they were a captive people again, conquered
and exiled by the Babylonians who were succeeded by the Persians. They were
uprooted from the land they had come to know as their own, far from Jerusalem
and the temple, the center of their worship life. And they survived.
Why? How was it that empires rose and fell and they survived? Could it be that
their existence was not dependent on them but on God. God called them into being
as God still calls us to be the people of God. God calls us into being.
Every so often a magazine article appears reporting
the results of a survey taken among persons who go to church. The pollster asks,
“Why do you go to this church?” and gets a variety of trivial answers:
“I want my children to learn Bible stories; “I like the preacher—she
preaches love not hellfire and brimstone”; There is an early service and
so we can still have most of the day; “It’s the closest church,”
rarely if ever does anyone respond, “Because God called me,” and yet
that is the real reason.
Our culture is filled with many and various voluntary
organizations; there’s the Elks, the Lions club, the sports boosters, the
garden club, the friends of the forest, the junior league, the seniors society.
The church is not just one among many of these. The church is something unique—we
don’t join, we are called. In the past few months I’ve been struggling
with this. I’ve wanted to write an article for the newsletter on why people
should become members of the church. Obviously you don’t have to be a member
to receive communion, to come to worship, to participate in any of our activities.
So why I ask myself should someone want to become a member; there are no special
privileges. This text gives me the answer. This church is not our organization
it is God’s and God does the calling.
The Bible, Hans Kung writes, does not begin by
“laying down a doctrine of the church which has to be worked out in practice,
it starts with the church as a reality, and reflection upon it comes later.
The Bible addresses what is there, already by God’s act—dealing with
what God has created by grace not what we must become by our own sweaty exertion?
So we don’t have to be preservationist or
protectionist. We don’t have to get all wound up in saving the church because
it is not our church to begin with.
The disciples are concerned because someone’s been using Jesus name to
heal people. This healer wasn’t accredited, he wasn’t certified, he
wasn’t licensed, and he wasn’t doing it their way. They expect that
Jesus will be angry and head out to challenge this renegade believer. But no,
the disciples are surprised to find that Jesus thinks it’s okay. “Whoever
is not against us is for us.”
How often we want to hold the message of Jesus
in our own personal pocket. Perhaps we have criticized the way they do worship
at Willow Creek, those TV evangelists who pound people on the heads to heal
them, or the storefront churches that grow like mushrooms in poor communities.
We may want to say, Jesus make them stop they’re using your name!!! They’ll
be the death of the church.
The worst blots on the history of the Christian
church have occurred when we have been preservationist and protectionist; the
inquisition, the witch trials, the holocaust.
The most important single thing about the people of God is that we are there.
We exist. We are, not because of favorable conditions in the empire, not because
of certain perceived needs for which the church can provide a market, but because
God called us out of nothing and made us a people. We will continue for the
same reason.
Thomas Merton is serene in his witness: “The last thing in the world that
should concern a Christian or the Church is survival in a temporal and worldly
sense; to be concerned with this is an implicit denial of the victory of Christ
and of the Resurrection.”
God’s people are constituted and preserved
by grace, not by culture. It makes little difference why people think they come
to church—whether to hear good music, to find a quiet place away from their
kids, to get moral training for their children, to hear a good sermon. The actual
reason that they assemble is that God calls them.
Amen.