What can we say September 29? 19th after Pentecost

  A flawed weakness of the lectionary is on exhibit with the snippets from Esther 7 and 9 prescribed for this week. We don’t see the most famous moments (Mordecai’s “for such a time as this,” and Esther’s courageous “if I perish, I perish” in chapter 4). The preacher will need to narrate, in condensed form yet with telling details, the whole story – which can profitably be done. The lectionary sliver, when Esther springs her trap on Haman, intrigues, as he winds up hung on his own gallows intended for the Jews – suggesting the way evil eventually impales itself on its own devices. And the paradox of Jewish readings of Esther is rich: the sorrow and mourning is turned into a festive holiday – Purim, a Halloween-like party with costumes and fun, celebrating sheer survival in a hostile world.

   And it's sobering and strangely timely as it's our first sustained story of anti-Semitism - which is rampant, one the rise, and hotly debated in America and around the world, especially over the past post-Gaza year...

   Most interestingly, the book of Esther does not mention God! (which seems like the sort of thing a biblical book ought to do).  Mind you, the reader is drawn into noticing an unlikely series of chance occurrences (Vashti disses her husband, the king cannot sleep, he chances upon the moment that matters out of the vast royal annals, etc.).  Is David Clines right in describing what he calls “deliverance by coincidence”? “The chance occurrences have a cumulative effect. Each incident, regarded by itself, might well appear the result of chance – but taken together, they all converge upon one point, the guiding hand of the Great Unnamed.”  “The holes in the story are God-shaped.”

    Church people love this sort of thing. I’m fond of this – and not.  We experience God, generally, as hidden, unseen, not obvious – and so learning to discern God where God isn’t explicitly named is the life of faith.  And yet it’s too fatalistic if taken to the extreme.  Clines offers a corrective: “Without Esther’s and Mordecai’s courage and craft the coincidences would have fallen to the ground; and without the coincidences, all the wit in the world would not have saved the Jewish people.”

   This reminds me of Sam Wells’s seemingly different reading. He points out that the story happens just a few weeks before Passover. “Here is the bitter irony. If the Jews were to wait for Passover for their deliverance, it would be too late. If they were to survive, the Jews had to make their own story.” Pluck, improvision, guts, planning: get busy – and maybe the luck falls into place and you survive.

   So a question I might even ask of my people (as I think it's a decent strategy to share with them dueling interpretations!) Which is it? Divine providence or human boldness? 

   Maybe it’s both – to echo Forrest Gump, standing at his bride’s grave: “Jenny, I don’t know if Momma was right, or if it’s Lieutenant Dan. I don’t know if we have a destiny, or if we’re all just floatin’ around accidental-like on a breeze – but I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happenin’ at the same time.”

   Our Epistle, James 5:13-20, reminds me of a marvelous moment when I was awoken to a more biblical ministry. One of my members asked me to lunch at McDonald’s. He read this text to me, and asked “Shouldn’t we be going to the sick and anointing them with oil?” After a few days, when I’d gotten my anointing oil organized, we went to a man in severe pain with bone cancer. We prayed, and anointed him. The church being the church.

   We've done anointing service - way out of the box in a stodgy place like this... but people usually respond enthusiastically. We set up four stations at the front and invite people to come (so not a compulsory line, as with Communion). We keep it pretty vague, what it's about... but imply there is some healing, some special presence of God in the mystery.

   How moving to envision Jesus’ brother, James, providing this very simple counsel to the fledgling churches!  His wording matters: while fully believing in the power of the prayer to heal, he speaks of the sick being “saved” and “raised up.” Had James witnessed Jesus raising up the little girl with his Aramaic talitha cum? Had he learned too well what we pastors know too well – that our prayers matter, but people still die of their maladies, like the gentleman with bone cancer I’d anointed?

   Notice James urges us to confess our sins – and to one another! not just silently and to God. I am sure I have oversimplified in my explanations, but I love to tell new Methodists about the way Wesley organized people into small groups, and they would entertain hard questions with one another, like Have you sinned since we were last together?  You could say No… but better to go with Yes… and then report on your struggle and feel the love, support, and accountability.

   I’m not sure I’ll preach on the Gospel, Mark 9:38-50, but it poses interesting questions about divergent groups doing the Jesus thing. If we “see someone casting out demons in Jesus’ name,” we don’t “try to stop” them; but we might ignore, or judge, or snicker at them?  Jesus is chill on it: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”  And yet we have acrimonious divisions in the church…

    Notice Jesus’ wording: “Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ…”  He doesn’t say “Give a cup of water!”  You’re the recipient of kindness here.  This “cup of water” is, of course, an image for mission.  I recall making a presentation at a church in another state and asking the crowd about how to be holy.  The answer a man gave, and everyone nodded, was “Give a cup of water.”  It’s like we know mission, doing something for somebody, but personal/private holiness is elusive. 

   The “cup of water,” such a simple act of compassion, reminds me of the bookend scenes in Ben Hur. Early on, Ben Hur is a captive, desperately thirsty, when a shadowy, unseen person (it’s Jesus, hint hint!) reaches down and gives him a drink of water (watch here!). At the end, it’s Jesus struggling with his cross along the road to Golgotha. Ben Hur is moved, thinks he recognizes him, breaks through the crowd and the soldiers and offers him water (watch here!). A little corny, but powerful. 

   A real “veil of Veronica” moment; the 6^th Station of the Cross marks her (as one of the women wailing, mentioned in the Gospels) as one who took her veil, and wiped the face of the fallen Jesus along that Via Dolorosa. Her veil was permanently imprinted with his face – as Jesus’ face is imprinted on every simple act of kindness. The peril, of course, is churchgoers pretty quick feel they’ve done what God asks of them if they engage in some “random act of kindness,” like paying for the person behind you in the Chic-Fil-A drive up.

   Jesus is fixated on personal holiness, and the way your body (which Paul calls a temple of the Holy Spirit – 1 Cor. 6!) can offend and lead you into unholiness.  Cut it off!  We shudder over ancient Christianity’s habit of castration (Origen and others!) – but we can see the deadly serious nature of the ongoing struggle with the body, which we want to love and affirm and yet vaunts itself as an implacable foe of holiness. 

    And I can never forget that riveting scene in “Little House on the Prairie” (episode 215, “A Matter of Faith”), when Caroline Ingalls is home alone, suffers a virulent infection from a scratch on her leg. Desperate, burning with fever, she turned to her Bible and read “If you leg offends you, cut it off.”  She picks up a big knife… and winds up saving her life by lancing the infection, impressing Doc Baker.

    It’s hard to miss the irony in Jesus admonition not to put a stumbling block (the Greek is skandalizo) in the way of the little ones – for we know from Paul that Jesus himself is a stumbling block! 

Different kinds, of course, but worth pairing these images, and even showing what a millstone from Bible times looked like (which you would not want hung around your neck!).

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   My new book is OUT!!! Everywhere Is Jerusalem is available - and there's a Study Guide and an accompanying DVD (unsure about this, as not many have DVD players!!), much of it shot on location in Israel. Check it out! Great for group study - and sermon preparation!