AUGUST 12, 2012:

Courage For Such a Time as This

Text:  Esther 4:1-14

“Western literature praises courage, most readily associating it with warriors in battle.  The Hebrew Bible also loves courage, but it does not recognize it only in those who face enemy armies.  In many instances biblical women acted with a courage that was based not on weapons and brawn but on wisdom and faith in the divine purpose…Courage often expresses itself quietly, in small and almost unnoticed acts that can lead to unexpected but significant results.” [1]

2012 saw the convergence of two anniversaries that few would see as related to one another – the Jubilee Celebration of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II and the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe. On the one hand, we have the woman who seduced the world and on the other, the woman who once ruled most of it.  In Marilyn, we see a woman who mixed sex and fashion to shape the culture and the Queen, a woman who over her sixty year reign has mastered the delicate balance of diplomacy and decisiveness and influenced the world.  Each unique in their own right, and yet similar in their roles as iconic women who came of age in a man’s world, they chose very different ways to exercise power and gain influence.  The confronted challenges, overcame obstacles, did the best they could with what they had. Combine the two and you get Queen Esther.

One cannot read nor tell the story of Esther without first acknowledging the difficult realities and troubling implications of Esther’s rise from the ghetto to the palace.  It is a story with interpretive challenges, but a story rich with meaning, application and invitation. Despite its difficulties, the story of a young Jewish girl’s rise from her plight as a Jewish exile in a foreign land to Queen in the palace of the Persian king and her willingness to risk it all for the sake of her people can teach us better how to act and live trust and courage in our own time.

The story of Esther is a dramatic story with many twists and turns.  If it were a play, it could easily be divided into two acts.  We enter the story in the final scene of act one.  In order to help us understand what is happening, we must briefly revisit the previous scenes.

Scene I – “This is a man’s world, but it would be nothing without a woman or a girl.”[2]

Scene One begins with the king having a royal keg party.  In a drunken stupor, he demands that his wife, Vashti, the Queen and Esther’s predecessor, appear before him in her royal crown, possibly wearing only her royal crown, so that he can “display her beauty” to all the men gathered before him.  But Vashti refused.  We are not told why, but we are told that there are consequences for disobeying the king, even if you are the Queen.  The situation escalates when one of the men questions the King’s manhood – “If you can’t control your Queen, how will we be able to control our wives?”  A personal affront between Queen and King rapidly escalates into a national crisis.  If the queen is allowed to disobey the king then other wives might become emboldened by her actions and follow course.  Vashti’s reign as Queen quickly comes to an end and men throughout the kingdom were able to rest assured that they were indeed still able to be masters in their own domains, proverbial kings in their own castles.

Scene one ends with officials in the King’s court plotting to quickly find a new Queen.

Scene II – “I will survive…as long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive.”[3]

Scene Two opens with the search for a new queen.  Girls are summoned from throughout the kingdom.  Two characteristics were required: youth and beauty.  They are brought to the palace and placed in the king’s harem under the watch of the king’s men.  Each girl is required to undergo extensive “cosmetic treatments” in order that she might be made more presentable and appealing to the king.  And then each girl is given one night, one chance to please the king.  The one who pleases the king the most will become queen.  Mordecai, Esther’s adopted father and an official in the king’s court secretly places Esther into the harem and against the odds, this Jewish girl, orphaned and alone, adopted by her cousin, placed under the control of the king’s men and presented to the king, “pleased” the king the most.

Scene two ends with the crown that Vashti refused to wear now resting firmly on Esther’s head.

Scene III – “For all that I’m losing much more will I gain.”[4]

Scene Three fast forwards to our text for today.  Esther is now Queen, but her identity as a Jew is still secret.  She has come a long way from where she began.  The little orphaned Jewish girl now resides in the palace of the king. Her position has put great distance between her and her people. She has a new identity, a new way of life.  She is free from the burdens of the past.  But then the past catches up with her.  She learns through Mordecai that a man named Haman, another official in the king’s court, has conspired to have all of the Jews in the kingdom killed.  What is more troubling is that the king, her husband, has issued a decree that it be so.  Esther is asked to intervene, to go to the king and plead for her people.  She is afraid on at least two levels.  First, no one entered the king’s court without having been summoned, not even the Queen.  Second, to enter the court of the king meant having to tell the truth about herself. There was risk on both sides of the equation.  There were consequences no matter her choice.

Scene three ends with Esther facing a choice that will affect not only her life, but the lives of many others.

Scene IV – “I’m waiting…waiting on the world to change?”[5]

Scene Four opens where scene three ended – Esther must make a choice.  She is aware the she did not choose this moment.  In many ways it chose her.  She is conscious of the fact that the decision is hers and hers alone to make.  She is uncertain.  It is a place she would rather not be and a choice she does not want to make.  And then Mordecai’s speaks.  He speaks words that Esther needed to hear.  He speaks words we all need to hear. “In spite of the situation or the circumstance surrounding your plight, maybe this is just where you need to be right now.  Maybe you are the very person needed for such a time as this.”

So Esther acts.  She risks.  She reenters a story she has tried so hard to run away from. She enters the court of the King, makes her request known and, in doing so, becomes an agent of salvation and an example of one woman who showed courage for such a time as this.

We do not always get to choose our circumstances in life. Life is often, at best, ambiguous and uncertain. Rarely are our stories written as neat narratives. But there are those moments in all of our lives when a Mordecai comes to us and asks us to do something seemingly impossible.  There are those times when someone invites us to revisit the story we have tried hard to rewrite, the story that makes us unique, with its successes and its failures, with its triumphs and its tragedies, with its endings and its new beginnings. There are times when we are called to write another chapter – a chapter that tells our story of living courageously in uncertain times.

What are we to make of this story?  How can it speak to us in our time?

Like Esther, we all must take inventory of our lives and realize that what we have is far more important that what we lack.  As Sam Wells writes,

“Maybe you have the gift of great intelligence.  Maybe you don’t…and are free of the burden of feeling you have to be clever all the time.  Maybe you (like Esther) possess good looks.  Maybe you don’t and are free of the projections and expectations that good looks can bring.  Maybe you have had a calm and stable family life, and understand what trust and promise-keeping and security mean.  Maybe you have known none of these things, and yet have experience of hardship and anxiety and fear that may come to be of value to others who sense a little of the panic that Esther felt.  Maybe you have a prominent public role, as a professor or an administrator or some other job that puts you behind a big desk.  Or maybe you have the freedom of being out of the limelight, your actions not being perpetually judged and your words not being endlessly evaluated.”[6] 

Perhaps what you have is just what is needed most at this time.  Perhaps your setbacks have not disqualified you, but instead have propelled you to the front of the line.  Perhaps there is no one but you who has the experience, the skills, the personality or the fortitude to do what needs to be done at this very moment.  We all have been called in unique ways for such a time as this.

Perhaps we are all being called to a moment of decision – will we be willing to give ourselves to a cause that is greater than even our own safety, privilege or status?  Perhaps we are being asked to revisit our own stories to discover what makes us singularly prepared to make a difference in someone else’s life right now.  Perhaps we are all being called to examine our own stories to discover what makes us uniquely prepared to answer the call that only we can answer.

Perhaps we all, like Esther, are being asked to see the unique opportunities that our positions afford us to stand up or speak out  – to show courage for such a time as this.

Perhaps, the question is… How will we respond?

Amen.