Esther 1: 7-12a, 4:10-17
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
November 17, 2024
Today’s contemporary reading is VERY contemporary - it’s only a week old. Last week, five days after the election. the Rev. Amelia Fulbright shared a list of 10 actions and inactions with the people of the Congregational UCC of Greensboro, North Carolina.
We will
Not shut down & go into hiding.
Not keep silent for the sake of keeping the peace.
Not suppress our anger, but we will use it as fuel for the work of justice.
Not minimize the fears of marginalized people.
Not succumb to flimsy false equivalences for both sides ism-s.
Not be deceived by the politics of 'us' & 'them.'
Use whatever power we have to protect and uplift the most vulnerable among us.
Be doggedly committed to telling the truth.
Cling to one another in community & not try to do this on our own.
Embrace joyful living as an act of faithful resistance. (habit, not feeling).
It’s quite the list, isn’t it? It made me think about what my own list might look like. And what our list might look like. What WILL we do - and what will we NOT do - at this moment in hsitory?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s no shortage of people in this world who are interested in telling you how to spend your time. People have lots of things THEY want to do, and they often want you join them. People have lots of OPINIONS about how you should be spending your time. When the heat gets cranked up (and, boy, has it been cranked up for, oh, the last decade or so) people get very impassioned about how they’re spending their time. And we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking everyone else should be doing what WE’RE doing. We look at how other people are Loving Loudly and wonder, “Is that what I should be doing?” We feel lonely in our work and invite (or, sometimes, let’s be real, SHAME) others into joining our work.
I’d like to invite us all to take a deep breath.
Okay - how about another one?
Oh, and let’s not forget our shoulders. Are they up here? Let’s bring those down.
And gather around for a story.
Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away from here in time and space, but perhaps not-so-very-far-away-from-here in spirit and sort, there were two queens. One said “no” and one said “yes.”
They ruled alongside a king named Ahasuerus. The Book of Esther tells he us was king of the 127 provinces of the Persian Empire, stretching all the way from India to Ethiopia.
The Rev. Kaji Douša describes him like this:
You may not know his name, but,
oh, you know him.
The kind of man so
filled with entitlement that he would
order [his wife] to interrupt her important work and
Enter a den of drunkards with their ogling eyes.
The kind of man so accustomed to
accessing a woman’s body that
when she refused,
he was so overcome with rage that he
punished her brutally. [1]
This kind of man doesn’t only exist in long ago, far away places, does he?
Well, in those days, as the king sat on his big, important throne in his winter palace in Susa, he was still a baby king in some ways—just three years into his reign. And the king was doing what those who rule Empire love to do….relax, throw a party, let the wine flow freely, invite all the important people, remind them of their place in the pecking order, show off.
And this...this was quite a party. It went on for, we are told, for six months. And when it ended, the king gave a second party for everyone in the citadel. And this was also a big party. “Drinks were served in golden goblets,” the text says. “and the royal wine was lavished according to the bounty of the king. Drinking was by the jug-full, without restraint.”
This party was a party just for men. We know this because we are told there was a second party next door, a party for women, hosted by Queen Vashti. That’s the important work that the king interrupted when he demanded her presence. She was doing her duty, welcoming guests into the royal palace.
So, on the seventh day of this party, when the king is good and drunk, he calls together his eunuchs and orders them to bring the queen to him. To the party with all the drunk men. To the party where there are, presumably, no women present. The king wants to show her off like the prize piece of property that she is. He even goes so far to tell her what she should wear for the show:
Her crown.
A brief word about how this is all supposed to work, because it’s not what most of us are accustomed to. The king had many women at his disposal. The queen, yes, but also a whole harem of other women to choose from. These women, including the queen, mainly lived in their own world, apart from the king and the minions of Empire.
The men they interacted with most often were the eunuchs - men uninterested in stealing the king’s property, i.e. the women. The eunuchs acted as the go-between for these two separate worlds. And when the king decided he wanted to see a certain woman, his wife or one of his many other options, he sent a eunuch to fetch her.
The woman’s job was clearly defined. She was to say yes. Every time. No exceptions. In fact, I’m pretty certain the yes wasn’t even expected. Saying no was such an impossibility that yes wasn’t even required. When the eunuch comes for you, you fix your face and go to the king. That’s the only option.
Until.
The drunk king called for Queen Vashti, his wife, to show her off to his buddies. Wearing her crown.
And, the text says this: “Queen Vashti refused.”
She said no.
And because of her “no” we meet the second queen in this story.
Born into a world where girls and women were considered to be men's property, Queen Esther was incredibly vulnerable from the beginning. We are told that she was an orphan, which means she had no protectors. Fortunately, a cousin named Mordecai took her into his household.
The Hebrew verb for “take” is prominently featured in 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 taken from the only family she had ever known to live with a bunch of 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 couldn’t 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 be a hero - she wants no part of it. She responds with a litany of the rules because rules can keep you safe. She knows 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.”
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 is not 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 her life has 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 the current state of affairs.
As a Jewish woman living in the palace on the eve of a state-sanctioned genocide, her options are limited. She can either do nothing, which means she will likely 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. She says “yes.” 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.
Queen Esther’s YES. And Queen Vashti’s NO.
You see, it’s not that saying yes is the right thing to do. And it’s not that saying no is the right thing, either. The answer lies in what Dorothy Bass calls the spiritual practice of “saying yes and saying no.” It’s about “renounc[ing] the things that choke off the fullness of life that God intended for us, and follow[ing] through on our commitments to pray, to be conscientious, and to be in mutually supportive relations with other faithful persons. These acts take self-discipline. We must learn the practice of saying ‘no’ to that which crowds God out and ‘yes’ to a way of life that makes space for God.” [1]
So, friends, in this frantic season of wondering WHAT’S NEXT, my prayer for all of us is that we can take a breath. Lower our shoulders. Seek the Spirit’s wisdom. Adjust our crowns and emember these two queens who said yes and no.
May your “yes” be yes, and your “no” be no. May you seek the work that is yours to do and invite (not coerce!) others to consider joining you.
Remember that bravery and love flow from both answers.
(And probably go ahead and lower your shoulders again, too.
For good measure.)
NOTES:
[1] https://practicingourfaith.org/practices/saying-yes-and-saying-no/
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