Esther 4:9-17
It's not every day that you see old leather work boots placed carefully next to a headstone. But there they were. I had just finished the benediction for the burial service, and was making my way back to the car, passing gingerly between the grave markers, when I saw them, a pair of well-worn men's leather work boots. Each boot, I realized, had been lovingly glued to a wooden template, which in turn had been permanently affixed to the base of this particular headstone. The boots were filled with soil, and small blossoms poked their heads out from the top. My eyes traveled to the inscription. To my surprise, I saw there the name of the deceased husband of one of my parishioners! I broke out in a smile. Just Ginney's style, I thought to myself: no flowers or flags or any of the usual cemetery fare here. No sir, something truly personal, original to memorialize a special life and a special relationship. I'd never known Fred, but I'd heard many stories about him, and standing there, looking at his blooming boots, I felt a whole new awareness wash over me. For the first time, I was no longer hearing about Fred in the past tense. I was standing in the immediate presence of Fred's own work boots. Somehow, in that brief moment, he had become real.
Over the centuries, many have argued that the book of Esther is to the Bible what a pair of work boots is to your typical headstone: a little out of place! After all, the book of Esther never once makes mention of God! Nor have scholars been able to corroborate the historical existence of any of the characters other than the King. And yet the story is here in our pew bibles, in all of its unexpected-ness.
Perhaps you know the story. King Ahasuerus of Persia holds a beauty contest to find a replacement for the not-so-obedient Queen Vashti. The self-effacing, beautiful Esther, a Jewish orphan raised lovingly by her cousin Mordecai, wins the contest hands-down. Following Mordecai's counsel, Esther dutifully hides her Jewish identity. Things go well at first, but problems develop when Mordecai refuses to bow down before Haman, a powerful member of the King's court. Haman is so incensed that he bribes the King into having all Jews put to death as punishment. Lots are cast, and a decree immediately issued that the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, people throughout the kingdom will be permitted to massacre Jews. Jews across the country weep and tear their garments upon learning the news. Mordecai entreats Esther to beg for the lives of the Jews, but Esther reminds him that it is a capital offense to approach the King unbidden. Mordecai reminds her of the costly alternative.
After fasting for three days, Esther musters her courage and approaches the King, who accepts her presence without issue. She requests that the King invite Haman to a banquet with her. Meanwhile, still troubled by Mordecai's insolence, Haman has a gallows prepared on which to hang Esther's surrogate father. That night, the King is unable to sleep, and gives orders to have the official records brought. In hearing the record read, the King learns that Mordecai had at one time, unbeknownst to him, uncovered a lethal plot on the king thereby saving his life.
The next day, at the banquet he has prepared, the King asks Haman how he should honor a certain man he wishes to thank. Assuming that the King is referring to him, Haman requests that robes be given to the man and a procession through town held in his honor. Only to his dismay, the King orders a parade and new garments for none other than Mordecai. On the second day of their private feast, the King offers to grant Esther any wish she might have. At long last, Esther reveals her identity and the evil plot which Haman has concocted, and in a twist of irony, Haman is hung on the gallows he had built for Mordecai. Mordecai is then put in charge of Haman's duties, and the edict of death is annulled.
There are many explanations as to why the story of Esther took its place alongside the likes of Exodus, Psalms and Isaiah. But perhaps the most likely is that try as they might, folks could not keep themselves from telling Esther's story. Her story spoke to something real in people's own lives. It goes to the heart of what it means to be a person of faith.
Mordecai puts it bluntly: "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 house will perish." Stuck between a rock and a hard place, she calls a fast, and resolves to tell the truth to the king, even if it means her death. Her appeal to the king is simple: "If it pleases the King, let my life be given me -- and the lives of my people --that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed." No parting seas are needed here, no burning bushes, no locusts, no angel of death. Deliverance comes simply through the courageous telling of the truth.
Yet this is nothing new in the Judeo-Christian experience. Scripture is itself a living legacy of stories told by faithful people who dared to break their silence. Their stories became part of God's activity in history. The stories of Moses and Miriam, Jonah and Jeremiah, the Canaanite woman, and countless others all affirm that God often speaks through human beings, and that no matter how much we might resist speaking up, the stories of human experience need to be told. For our sake, and for God's.
Today we gather to worship in over 260 UCC churches and at Annual Meeting of the Connecticut Conference on the seventeenth day of the tenth month of the final year of the twentieth century. How does Mordecai's challenge address us "at such a time as this?" A time when our access to information is exceeded only by our sense of powerlessness in the face of life's hectic pace and bewildering complexity? A time when our ability to "connect" electronically has, paradoxically, left many people, particularly youth, feeling disconnected from themselves and from society.
Back on May 3, 1992, author Bill McKibben conducted a novel experiment. He and several colleagues collected two thousand hours of videotape -- nearly every minute of television that came across Fairfax, Virginia cable television in one 24-hour period - and then spent months watching it all: car commercials, infomercials, self-help shows, talk shows, shopping shows, movies. He concluded that we have mistaken information for wisdom, and that as a result, we actually live in an age of "unenlightenment" and missing information. 1
The evidence lies in the video footage from Littleton, Conyers and Granada Hills. Too busy to get off the treadmill, we have fashioned a time in which we no longer have time: time for being, for reflecting, for sharing, for growing, for tea and walks and meals with family and friends. We live in a world addicted to celebrities and trends, where the stories we hear about and read about are increasingly less relevant to our own lives, and ultimately, to reality. We have forgotten that stories are the very building blocks of meaning, faith, and ultimately, redemption.
To be fully human, we need to exchange with each other, reflect with each other about what it means to love, to struggle, to journey, to believe. The act of telling a story creates a crucible in which self, hope, and meaning are forged. Stories shape our reality and our identity They affirm life. They give life. Stories tell us not only who we are, but whose we are.
Author Reynolds Price found that telling the story of his agonizing battle with spinal cancer was not only something he wanted to do, it was a necessary part of finding his way into a new life. At the conclusion of his grueling account, he pauses to reflect on what he has learned from it all. He discovers some very simple, affirming truths about who he really is, and how blessed he has been: "I'm the son of brave magnanimous parents who'd have offered both legs in hostage for mine. I'm the brother of a laughing openhearted man with whom I've never exchanged an angry adult word, nor wanted to. I'm the cousin of a woman who, with her husband, offered to see me through to the grave. I'm the neighbor of a couple who offered to share my life, however long I lasted. I'm the ward of a line of responsible assistants who've moved into my home and life. I'm the friend of many more spacious and lively souls than I've earned. I've had, and still have, more love than I dreamed of in my lone boyhood." 2
Price's story is entitled A Whole New Life, and I have a suspicion that that's the real reason why we cannot afford to let our stories go untold: they are means by which the power of grace and resurrection are made manifest. When we know who we are, and whose we are, death has no power over us. We are, all of us, people who belong. Belong not only to brothers and parents and sisters and children, but to local communities of faith from Thompson to Greenwich. Our stories are merely the later chapters of stories which include the struggles of Cinque and the Amistad captives, the struggles of the families who set sail from Holland for the New World with a dream and a prayer, the struggles of the Protestant reformers, and ultimately back to the struggles of the early disciples to profess their faith in the risen Christ. We are people of God. We belong to each other, we belong to God, and we belong precisely because they had the courage not to remain silent. Their stories, like Esther's story, remind us what miraculous, holy things can happen when our deepest, most authentic human stories are told.
I submit to you that our most essential, crucial task as the church in the time before us is to be intentional in listening for, and listening to, the untold stories: in scripture, in ourselves, and in the world around us. Now I realize that's a tall order for many of us! We're most of us New England-ish in our ways, and not necessarily "wired" for such intimacy as telling personal stories! We'd much rather hash over a budget or last month's meeting minutes or talk about other people's stories. But in such a time as this, we are challenged to understand the cost of keeping silent about our own experience of God's work in our lives.
Barbara Lemmel put it this way: "Christianity was never meant to be a solitary exercise... the power of God's presence breaking into our everyday experiences is not to be kept to ourselves... the most essential work of the Christian community is to be company to one another in our epiphanies." 3
So I leave you with a question. What are your stories? What are your struggles, your experiences of God, your journey with the Church, your experience of the Holy Spirit? Where have you experienced the redemptive power of the living Christ in your life? Is there someone to whom you can dare to tell your story? Go ahead. Risk it! Surprise yourself! God will surely be present in the telling, and the hearing of it.
Because you see, in telling our stories of faith, we bring the Author of our faith himself closer to others. When we tell others what it feels like to belong to a community of faith which treasures love and justice and peace and diversity, a community on a journey into the future with the hope of Christ in its heart, we expand our shared horizons of faith and learn to experience his divine activity in a variety of new ways. Our stories may seem a bit unusual to us, but they make the redeeming work of Christ's love real to others. In real time. And that's what it's all about.
-A sermon by Jared A. Rardin, Pastor,
South Britain Congregational Church
This sermon is made available for the free use of Connecticut Conference churches in preparing worship for October 17, 1999.
