A Reflection for XVIII Pentecost All Saints’
Church, Southern Shores, NC September 27, 2015 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Going
Down A Hard Road
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Today is the only time in the three year cycle of
the readings that any portion of the Book of Esther is used in the Revised
Common Eucharistic Lectionary. The Hebrew Bible is divided into three parts -
the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. The Law (Torah), the first five books
of the Bible, were brought together around the 5th Century BC as the
Hebrew people wanted to remember what it meant to be a Jew when they were in
danger of losing their identity. The Books of the Prophets were gathered
together in about the 2nd Century AD as the people needed to
remember the warnings about the rich and powerful abusing the poor and
subverting justice, as well as the admonitions to trust only God to get through
the tough times. The Writings, which contained songs, Psalms, Proverbs, poetic
books, historical novels and other books, were gathered together in the 2nd
Century in the Christian era in response to the Jewish Christian groups
attending synagogues and wanting to add all sorts of writings about Jesus to
the readings.
The Book of Esther was one of those historical novels
included in the Writings, and its scroll was usually read during the Feast of
Purim celebrated on the 14th Day of the Jewish Month of Adar, which
next year is on March 27-28. One of the real drawbacks of the Outer Banks is
that there is not a synagogue or organized Jewish community to host a “Purim
Festival Blowout”, a festival during which a spiel (or play) has fun with the
Esther story. In other places I have lived, there have always been temples and
synagogues around – I remember one which did the spiel in Star Wars theme, with
Haman looking like Darth Vader and Esther with a Princess Leah hairdo. In the spiel,
every time Haman shows up or his name is mentioned, the people drown out his
name with boo’s, catcalls, and noise makers, and huge applause and cheers break
out when he is taken out to be hanged.
It is fun-filled story-telling, but the story needs
to be told to understand how the Jews look at the world and God. Think of the
three major festivals celebrated every year. There is Passover, when the Jews
remember the exodus in the 12th Century BC, the time when they were
exploited as slaves and the Egyptians wanted to kill them. The Hebrew people survived and they held the
feast to celebrate. Then there is the feast of Purim, the festival held to
celebrate the survival of the Jews following the attempts by the Persians in
the 4th century BC to kill them. Then there is Chanukah, when the
Jews remember the time of the Maccabean struggle against the Seleucid Empire in
the 2nd Century BC when the Seleucids wanted to kill them. But again
the Jews survived, and now Jewish people hold a feast to celebrate. Do you notice
a theme? There is a life that is full of troubles, and yet, we give thanks to
God for giving us the strength to make it through.
How easy it is to hate the Jews. Remember the old
line from William Norman Ewer, a British journalist, who wrote: “How odd of God
to choose the Jews”, to which Ogden Nash, an American poet, replied, “It wasn't
odd; the Jews chose God.” Over and over again, the Romans tried to kill the
Jews at the destruction of the Temple in 69 AD, Masada at 73 AD, and in 135 AD,
they destroyed Jerusalem and the names of Judea and Jerusalem were wiped from
the map for centuries. During the Crusades, the Christians gathered together to
march to the Holy Land and, on the way, they would slaughter Jews as belated
revenge for Jesus’s death. Jews were expelled from England in 1290 AD, France
in 1395, Austria in 1421, Spain in 1492, and persecuted under the Inquisition
throughout Spain and Italy. They suffered under series of Pogroms in Tsarist
Russia and Poland in the 19th Century AD. In the 20th Century
they were persecuted under Stalinist Russia during the purges, and Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Norway, Albania, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria,
Greece, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, France, and Italy all willingly joined in
Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate the Jews. Even today in the 21st
Century it goes on, and yet, each year the Jewish people gather together and
celebrate these three events which represent all the centuries of persecution,
and they celebrate and give thanks to God for giving them the strength to
survive by giving a toast to life, “L’Chaim!”
At its deeper core, the Esther story is about a
young woman needing to make a decision about whether to risk being involved. In
this story, when the King chooses her to be his wife, Mordechai tells his
orphaned cousin Esther not to tell the King that she is Jewish because of the
widespread antisemitism. However, months later on when that simmering hatred is
being formed and shaped into concrete plans orchestrated by the King’s Grand
Vizier, Haman, Mordechai goes to Esther to intercede with the King. She pleads
that she has so much to lose; after all, the King had gotten rid of his
previous wife because she had displeased him. She has gotten used to having all
the stuff that comes with being a queen. She comes to realize she has a choice either
to cower alone in comfortable, fearful safety or to claim that God is with her
as she stands with the God who can give her strength to claim her connection
with the outsiders and endure the danger as she faces the evil.
It is that being aware of how we are counting on
God’s strength to make it through that we see in the other lessons for today.
The last verse of Psalm 19 is the formal coda to the Psalm which was later
adopted as the conclusion to the silent prayer said three times daily in Jewish
worship, and I prefer Robert Alter’s translation “Let my mouth’s utterances be
pleasing, and my heart’s stirring before You, LORD, my rock and redeemer.”
James in the Epistle lesson for today reminds us that
we need to be aware of being in the presence of God in all circumstances of our
lives as we give thanks to God for living fully into the good times and making
it through the tough times. Jesus in the Gospel points out to the jealous
disciples who see someone else casting out demons in Jesus name that the
presence of God is not a rare possession given to the fortunate, favored few to
hoard, but a free gift given to all sorts and conditions of people to have the
strength to make it through the day if we can only stop business as usual and
make it a priority.
I remember a simple thing that happened almost 37
years ago, long before I went to seminary, and when I was full of the stupid
bravado of a 30 + year old male who believes that nothing bad could ever happen
to him. I got hired to teach in a college beginning in the winter semester
three hours away from home. I rented an apartment there for the school week and
would drive home for the weekend on Friday afternoon after my last class and
appointments. It was 155 miles from door to door, and I had a car that was on
its last legs. One weekend, halfway into the trip, past the interstate portion
and now into the two lane road going up into the mountains, it started snowing.
The car was making all sorts of death rattles, it was getting dark, the heater
was not working, and I kept using my credit card to scrape the icy frost off
the inside of the windshield and side window. Each mile I was anxious about
making it home, along with the anxious fear of a father and husband worried
about what might happen to his family without him. If I could make it, my three
hour trip would now take over four. I made a decision that I could not know if
I would make it or not, but I would give thanks for each mile I was closer to
home. So, as the odometer changed each mile, I would say something like “Thank
you Lord.” Something in me changed as I did that; I don’t think the car got any
better or the weather improved, but I changed. I had driven that road before
many times, but all had changed. As Heraclites noted, we cannot step into the
same stream twice. I slowed down my
breathing and fear left me as I placed my family into the hands of a loving God,
and I gave thanks for every moment that was given to me in the life I had
left. God had been present with me long
before I left the college, but it took a situation over with I had no control
to let me see that God had always been with me - but I just didn’t get around
to noticing.
Going
Down A Hard Road (poem)
Click;
the odometer changes to a new mile,
car
creeping down the snowy asphalt aisle.
Almost
there; but filled with fearing lonely.
forty,
thirty, twenty or more to go but only
if
a road’s distance now might be plundered,
one
at a time, of five thousand, two hundred,
eighty
feet: forty inches of old tire’s new turn
inching
homeward bound as wheels do churn
as
driver murmurs more dew-frosted prayers
of
thanks given when a sacred presence shares
strength
to make it through all. “Don’t be afraid”
spirits
before Her womb or out His tomb prayed,
for
Divine messages have come in many disguises,
when control is lost; angels bring in new horizons.
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