“Brave and Exhausted: Esther”

Esther 4:10-17

Sunday, October 28, 2018
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

At the last UCC General Synod in Baltimore, I had the opportunity to hear Glennon Doyle speak. Doyle is a member of Naples UCC in Naples, Florida and, like many of us in the UCC, she’s a bit difficult to put into a box of any kind. She’s a writer, a speaker, a theologian, an activist, and runs a huge charity that meets people’s basic needs ANY advocates for changing systems. She’s been active in anti-racism work, immigration work, LGBTQ issues and more. She’s the mom of three kids and is married to soccer superstar Abby Wambach. She also speaks openly about her struggles with mental illness, addiction, and bulimia.

At General Synod, she opened her remarks by sharing reflections on the first story she learned from the Bible as a child. I’m paraphrasing here from the notes I took. Doyle said,

“The first story I learned as a child about God and women is this:
In the beginning, God created a boy. And everything was perfect. And then the boy gave birth to a girl and everything was perfect.

But then the woman wanted something. And she took it and all hell broke loose and she broke the world.

Women are told that if we want anything, we will break the world. I mean, all Eve wanted was an apple. What if she had wanted a slice of pizza?

We have been told to disappear. The greatest compliment a woman can receive is to be selfless. To literally make her self disappear.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Doyle’s observations these past couple of years as I’ve watched women’s pain and anger unleashed on a massive scale in our society. Women mourning the loss of the dream of finally having a President that looks like them. Women showing up in record numbers to run for public office. Women telling their stories of harassment and assault - putting themselves at great risk in doing so. Women crying and raging as they wonder what life will be like after Roe v Wade. Women with their hearts broken open at the idea of children being separated from their parents and housed in cages. Women pushing and never giving up as they struggle against gun violence. Women crying out that Black Lives Matter, water is life, and trans rights are human rights.

Women are taking up a lot of space these days. Joined by people of all genders they are not sitting down or keeping quiet. They are asking for a whole lot more than a little apple and they aren’t apologizing for it either.

I’ve been thinking about these fierce women leaders as I sit on the sidelines of my son’s soccer games this fall. This past Monday I hope that several of you had a chance to hear Tarana Burke, the founder of the #metoo movement, when she spoke at K-State. I had to miss it because I had a championship parks and rec soccer game to attend. Some of the toughest and most skilled players on my son’s soccer team are girls. I love to watch them take up space. They kick and push and run with serious skills. As I watch them I hope and pray that these early experiences of strength will inoculate them against all the messages they are also receiving from society - sit down, be quiet, don’t make a scene, don’t inconvenience other people, take up less space, disappear.

It’s so important that kids of every gender get to play together on one team. They learn to work together as a unit. They learn to depend on one another and see each other as allies in a common cause. You know, I didn’t realize this until I was a parent just how obsessed we are with dividing kids up into “boys” and “girls” in our culture. Not just in terms of who supposedly likes what or which clothes are for who...but even among preschoolers activities and teams are divided by gender. It’s hard to find spaces where kids of all genders can work together as a team. And I can imagine it’s even more problematic for kids who exist outside the bounds of the arbitrary gender binary we’ve created.

The world needs a lot more all-gender soccer teams. And a lot more Glennon Doyles unpacking the problems in how our sacred texts have been taught. The world needs a lot more Tarana Burkes working tirelessly to empower survivors of assault and harassment.

You know what else the world needs? A lot more Christians who know the sacred stories of people like Esther and Ruth and Miriam and Shiphra and Puah and Tamar and Sophia and Junia and Euodia and Synchyte.

The story of Esther is one of transformation. Born into a world where girls and women were considered to be the actual property of men, Esther was incredibly vulnerable from the beginning. We are told that she was an orphan, which means, right away, she had no protectors. Fortunately, a cousin named Mordecai took her into his household to care for her.

The Hebrew verb for “take” is prominently featured in the early part of Esther’s story. She is taken into Mordecai’s home. She is taken from Mordecai and delivered to the palace where she is taken to the king. Eventually, she is taken as the king’s wife. [1]

So many things happen TO Esther. She is, at first, a fairly one-dimensional character. A vulnerable but lucky orphan, beautiful and compliant. It seems that she is everything Queen Vashti was not - she knows how to play the palace games, she knows she must come to the king when called, she knows she’s not supposed to make waves.

But this is not a fairytale and I want us to imagine for a minute what we also know to be true about Esther. We know that she was a young woman who had gone through immense trauma. Orphaned….and then taken from the only family she had ever known to live with a bunch of complete strangers as a part of the king’s harem. And while a part of the king’s harem, she had a secret that she knew she had to keep: she wasn’t to tell anyone she was a Jew for fear of retaliation. We don’t know how young she was when all of this happened, but we know she was still just a girl. Esther had to navigate things no child should have to understand. Esther was a survivor.

If we look at Queen Esther through a trauma-informed lens, we know that she had likely developed lots of coping techniques to continue navigating her life. So it comes as no surprise to me that when Mordecai asks her to intervene on behalf of the Jewish people - to use her position of influence and act as a superhero - she wants no part of it. Mordecai asks her to intervene and she responds with a litany of the rules. She has learned how to keep herself safe. She know that the rule is you only go to the king when called. You do not initiate contact. To do so is to risk death.

Mordecai presses on, trying to convince her that she must act. He says, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 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 family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for such a time as this.”

You know, I’ve always heard this story through a kind of Wonder Woman lens. Esther, brave and strong, realizes that she is destined to be the savior of her people and courageously steps forward to lead the way.

But Esther’s bravery and strength is not borne of hubris or a savior-complex. Instead, her strength comes from a life of surviving a million little traumas and pain. She has learned to push forward even when things are difficult because life has often been difficult. And, if we read Mordecai’s words carefully, we also see that her decision to act is perhaps not so much about saving the day as it is a resigned understanding of what options are available to her.

As a Jewish woman living in the palace on the eve of a mass, state-sanctioned genocide, her options are incredibly limited. She can either do nothing, which means she will probably eventually be killed along with all the other Jews or she can take a huge risk and fight for her people….which might still get her killed….or might lead to a happier ending.

Esther, who has had a lifetime of practice at doing hard things, decides she’ll take the chance. Maybe she does it because she’s feeling like Wonder Woman. Or maybe she does it because if you’re likely to get killed you might as well die trying to do the right thing. Maybe she’s incredibly brave. Maybe she’s incredibly exhausted. Most likely she’s both.

At the end of chapter four, Esther is transformed from a woman whose life is governed by passive verbs into a leader who starts giving orders to the men who surround her. We are told, “Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.”

A few years ago I was talking with a therapist who said to me, “You know, I’ve discovered over the years that adults who grew up in trauma - children who had a high number of what we call Adverse Childhood Experiences - often become remarkably strong adults. I don’t quite know what the magical formula is, but I have observed that sometimes these kids who have had a really difficult childhood become adults who are amazingly strong, working tirelessly to advocate for other people, trying to save others from some of the pain their experienced in their own lives.”

I think we probably all know adults like that, don’t we? People who are strong not because they’ve always had it easy, but because they’ve mostly had it hard. People like Esther who are able to to extraordinarily brave things not because they are fearless, but because they have had lots of practice putting one foot in front of the other even when they are terrified.

These people are superheroes, for sure, but they don’t always wear capes. They walk among us each and every day and we often have no clue. Some of these superheroes even live within us and we don’t realize it. We don’t realize the strength we’ve built through overcoming adversity or surviving abuse and trauma. We may not realize how chronic mental or physical illness has shaped us in positive ways, in additions to the challenges it presents.

Like Esther, we may have lived lives that are no fairytale. And, like Esther, we each have unique gifts and strength because of the way our lives have unfolded. We are each made in God’s image - people of every gender, ethnicity, race, ability. We are beautiful and strong not in SPITE of who we are or what has happened to us but BECAUSE of it.

Glennon Doyle said at General Synod, “We try to protect our children from the one thing that will make them the people we want them to be. We want to protect them from pain. We become experts in avoiding the fire, but we ought to want to raise citizens who run to the fire. We want to raise the fire crew." [3]

When fires rage, when pain is unavoidable, when superheroes are needed, may we all find the strength and courage to dig deep and know that God goes with us...even into the scary places, even into the most difficult situations.

God called the world into being from nothing. And God is still calling forth a new world of justice and peace through prophets and preachers, healer and teachers. Who knows? Perhaps we were all born into God’s holy realm for such a time as this.

NOTES:

[1] With thanks to Wendy Amsellem for pointing out the use of “taken” again and again in Esther’s story. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/vashti-esther-a-feminist-perspective/

[3] http://www.ucc.org/news_gs_a_conversation_with_glennon_doyle_07012017