Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
HUMAN AND MESSY
Sept. 30, 2018 Pentecost 19-B Esther 7:1-10, 9:20-22
I was at Fred’s this week, looking for a new scale for the bathroom, as my old one had begun spouting strange numbers. A couple of well-dressed women had come in about the same time, and they were in front of me checking out, with a cart full of school supplies - like over 30 composition books, 10 or more pencil holders, and such. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been turning into my mom, who talked to anybody and everybody, so I gave in to my curiosity and said something like, “Wow! A lot of school supplies!” That started the conversation, and I learned they were from the local business (House of Raybern), collecting supplies for Hemingway Elementary as a project. They’d bought out all the nearby WalMarts and such, and now were wiping out the school supplies from everyone else they could think of. I first thought it might be a church project, as I’ve known some churches to do this in their communities. Nope - just good, caring, community-minded people in a local business.
I’m glad for these needed projects to be done, even if they don’t come from our church or any other church. I’m glad the Red Cross works at emergency shelters and arranges to pick up those who can’t get to the shelter on their own. I’m glad for some other denominational church to do weekend bookbags of foods, or Shoes for Santa, or any other project to benefit the community, and especially the needy in the community. I wish someone had thought to do voter registration in time for the Oct 7 deadline. I’m glad the local Bahai group works with troubled teens, and Muslim communities send tons of bottled water to Flint, MI. I’m glad environmental groups and even pagan groups advocate for preserving wetlands and forests, reducing carbon footprints and global warming gasses. I’m glad for the Nature Conservancy and how it is saving needed wetlands and habitat.
God uses all sorts of people for good. The common thread I heard in the lectionary readings for today were the unexpected human persons that God was using to advocate and agitate for God’s will to be done. Jesus, in the reading from Mark, kinda scolds his disciples when they get territorial with the casting out of demons. “Those people over there aren’t part of our group, so tell them to stop!” “No,” says Jesus. “They are doing good in my name.”
Back in late high school, when I was beginning to see the cracks in the fundamentalism of my home church, I was confused about how there could be so many other Christian denominations who not only did things differently from us, but also believed different things about the Bible we all used. How could we all be Christians? How could we each be right? It was important to me to find and follow the one right way to believe in God, as if it were a math problem where the answers were always clear and definite. I wanted life and belief defined once and for all. The pastor I talked to, in my distress, quoted me these verses from Mark, “He who is not against us is for us,” and I was shocked. How can Jesus say this? I was stymied.
I’ve had to mellow a lot since that time, and realize that most Christ-followers who are sincere and seeking, are doing the best we can to hear the voice of God’s Spirit,... and none of us, me included, hear it perfectly. None of us, me included, are so perfect that the Word of God comes to us in a vacuum - we all have early wounds, inadequate ways we’ve coped in the past, prejudices, biases, cultural habits, etc etc….we hear God through who we are,...the Spirit, yes, is always nudging us towards greater wholeness, but we aren’t there yet.
The book of Esther has been a problem for me, as the story works within a stereotype of women I have resisted my whole life. Actually, some early believers debated the book because it does not contain the name of God anywhere; yet the story of Esther saving the Jewish people is the root of the Holy Day Purim in Jewish history and celebration. The text we read comes towards the end of the story. The book opens with King Ahasuerus getting rid of his Queen Vashti because she doesn’t obey him one time when he wants to show her off to other important folks. So he makes her not the queen. Then he holds a national beauty contest to find a new gorgeous queen, and Esther pleases him the most. Actually, he narrows it down to a few, and they each get a night with him first. Yuck. So much emphasis on physical beauty and pleasing the man. So much emphasis on obedience. King Ahasuerus states that a man should rule in his own home. How patriarchal. I take offence with that whole context.
Anyway, Esther becomes Queen, and gains even more favor when her uncle gets word of a coup attempt and warns the king through her. Then this other important person, Haman, gets angry at the uncle, extends it to all Jews, and suckers the King into making a pronouncement that his chiefs in all the corners of the realm can kill ALL their Jews on a certain day. Esther’s uncle gets the word to her that perhaps she has gained her position as Queen for such a day as this, and she needs to act. Esther first calls for her community to fast and pray with her for 3 days, and buoyed with that support, she dares the King’s presence to invite him and this Haman guy to a banquet. They are all pleased and everything, and she invites them a second time. And when the happy King says, “Ask what you want, even to half my kingdom,” she asks for her life and the life of her people. No one has known she was a Jew, evidently. The King is angered that someone would dare threaten his lovely Queen, and Haman begs for his life, even throwing himself on Esther on her couch, where the King walks in and finds him assaulting her. Haman and family are all killed, the Jews are given the right to fight back on that certain day, and everything turn out okay.
I admit that I am uncomfortable with the whole story, with its emphasis on beauty and seduction to win the day. So Esther is an odd figure of female heroism to me...but that was her culture. And she saved her people. To me she is an unlikely person, using stereotypical female means I don’t really approve of, yet she does it for God’s chosen people. There are just so many inappropriate sexual things in the story - that the King can throw out Queen Vashti for not being obedient to him - its not so much disobeying the King per se, as it is disobeying what any husband should expect. And Esther becomes Queen through winning a beauty contest and pleasing the King. And she uses that attraction to get the king to do what she wants. And Haman sexually assaults her in his anger. Its all just messy!
Yes. Its all human and messy, and somehow God works in the midst of it all, or in spite of it all. Power, sexuality, influence, scheming - those are all facets of being human - as we’ve seen all this week on the news - - and actually just about any week -- and both in our national centers of power like DC, and in our local centers of power. Those kinds of influences play out every day in human interactions, yet somehow God works in and through even unexpected people to raise awareness, to deepen compassion, to seek for justice, to find people to speak up for justice, to bring basic human decency for those who are powerless,...in other words, to do good.
I don’t like messy - I like straight-forwardness, transparency, honesty, clear guidelines to be followed; I like the most deserving to win, the one who follows the rules to do well, the person wronged to be compensated. Unfortunately for me, the longer I’ve lived, the more messiness I’ve had to deal with and live with.
I had a boss I really liked when I worked for the Presbytery of Eastern VA. I clicked with him, and did some good work there, because he saw my abilities and encouraged me. One day we were getting ready to go to a meeting, and he opens the cover on his truck bed to put something in there, and that truck bed is immaculately clean, with containers holding various implements - so clean and neat, so organized. I said something about, “Who has such an organized truck, Harry? Its almost too neat.” He answered, “Well, everything else in life is so chaotic, I have to have neatness where I can.” Good answer - I had to laugh. I SO got it.
God knows who we humans are and what we humans are like when God loves us and calls us. God called imperfect and messy people all through the Scripture stories, from way back with Noah, with Abraham and Sarah, with the conniver Jacob whose name was changed to Israel, with Peter who denied Jesus three times and Thomas who doubted, with Paul who had been killing Christians, and so on and so on. We have this gift of forgiveness and love in clay pots, Paul wrote. The containers aren’t necessarily great, although we are called and used for the good news to continue going out. I guarantee that any great believer that we look up to has clay feet. Good and evil are mixed up in us even as we intend our best; God sorts it out, and accomplishes what God wants to accomplish.
This week in the news has shown that in spades, in what has been revealed in suffering and goodness mixed. I’ve seen so much anger in my friends, who defend one person and vilify the other. Judgement has been poured out hot and angry. Its been a mess. I kinda got into it with one friend who was ranting some very ugly stuff on Facebook, and tried to speak gently - as you can imagine, I then got the rants and ugliness directed at me. People on various “sides” want their truth verified, and it sometimes comes down to who can yell the loudest and be the nastiest - which, my friends, is not the behavior of believers. I hear that, for some of my friends, their world, which is closer to the world of Esther, is threatened - their assumptions and beliefs about how things work is challenged by the refusal of others to play out their part. That is painful, and I get it. At the same time, people who have been wounded by the world of Esther are calling to be heard and for change. Its not an easy time, and nobody seems to want to listen to each other.
Friday, I posted a call for fasting and prayer on my social media outlets. Actually, my inspiration was this text from Esther, where she called her community to fast and pray before she acts. To my surprise and actually my delight, this messy story spoke to me. I feel the need to pray - not for my side to win, but rather for all who are hurting: for wisdom, for peace and listening between people - especially for those of us who follow Christ, who act in the name of Jesus even though we come out in different places. I am praying for guidance, and for the words of the healing and comforting Spirit to be heard. I am praying for good to be done and not evil. This is a departure for me, as usually I am angry when women are not heard - this time, somehow, I am moved by the hurt on all sides. I think it happened when I read that this man’s daughter wanted to pray for the woman….. her tender heart could lead us adults, too. I wish there could be a way for this tense situation to become a win/win, a reconciling, a growing for our country. I can pray for that, even as we sit in the mess. Thanks be to God who loves us and works with us through it all. AMEN.
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