“HEAR”

 

 

A post-homiletical discourse delivered by the Rev. Dr. James R. Beebe

Rector, St. Patrick’s Church, Incline Village, Nevada, September 27, 2009

 

 

     I know when a parishioner is on a roll.  Checking my e-mail not long ago, I counted no fewer that five from the same person.  Some of them I could actually repeat publicly.  The one I have in mind is from actual label instructions which can be found on consumer goods.  Here are some of the instructions:

 

• On a bag of Fritos:  “You could be a winner!  No purchase necessary.  Details inside.”  Hmmm…sounds like a shoplifter special to me….

 

• On a Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding box:  “Product will be hot after heating.”  And you thought…?

 

• On an over-the-counter sleep aid:  “Warning:  may cause drowsiness.”  OK, and I’m taking this because…?

 

• On a package of Sainsbury’s peanuts:  “Warning:  contains nuts.”  I should say….

 

     Wow.  Is it just me, or are these labels a bit…obvious?  Even so, I often wonder about things that are obvious to me, but maybe not to others.  Let me tell you a story to illustrate what I mean.

 

     Once upon a time there lives a king who has decided to hold a great feast.  He invites everyone-who-is-someone to come, but, much to his chagrin, his own wife, the queen, refuses his invitation.  Afraid that the queen has set a bad precedent for the wives of the other court officials, the king’s advisors convince the king that he must banish his wife from the land.

 

     This leaves the king in a bind, of course, for kings have to have queens.  So he decides to hold an audition.  Competition is strenuous and the female candidates have to undergo an extensive six-month beauty regimen – a complete cosmetic makeover.  In the end, the king makes an interesting selection.  She is a beautiful young woman, but, unbeknownst to the king, she is a foreigner.  Nevertheless, the king can’t take his eyes off her and soon they marry and she becomes the queen.

 

 

     This is where the story starts heading south.  The king appoints a particularly ruthless man to be his prime minister.   Jealous of his prerogatives as a VIP, this prime minister one day flies into a rage when one man, in particular, refuses to bow and scrape in his presence.  Unfortunately, this is the queen’s uncle.  But, knowing that he was a foreigner, the prime minister sets upon a plan to exterminate this whole batch of foreigners and, along with them, the queen’s uncle.  He builds incentives into this plot by offering land to anyone who would kill the foreigners.

 

     In the meantime, the queen hears about the plot to kill her uncle and her fellow foreigners.  She decides to ingratiate herself with the king, convincing the king in the process that his prime minister was bad news.  Later, the prime minister, realizing that the queen’s influence was probably a good deal more weighty than his own, goes to the queen to beg for his life.

 

     Now, timing is everything, right?  Just at the moment when the prime minister throws himself onto the queen’s couch, begging for mercy…the king walks in.  So there is the prime minister, already a suspect in the king’s mind, in his wife’s bedroom.  Ooops.  Needless to say, the king has his prime minister executed.  Then he empowers the foreigners and they “strike down all their enemies with the sword, slaughtering and destroying them, and do as they pleased to those who hated them.”

 

     By the way, that last part was a quote…from the Bible.  From the book of Esther, actually.  Esther was that queen and her uncle, Mordecai, was a Diaspora Jew, a foreigner.  The book of Esther is a recounting of how a nation was delivered from a holocaust through the actions of a woman.  But the really interesting thing about the book of Esther is that it’s the only book in the Bible that never mentions God.  Nope, not once.

 

     It’s a story about duplicity.  It’s a story about making power plays.  It’s a story about revenge.  It’s a story about political expediency.  It’s a story about how the survival of one people comes at a cost – the elimination of their enemies.  How did this book end up in the Hebrew Canon? 

 

     Now, don’t get me wrong.  I didn’t say that it was a bad story.  In fact, it’s sort of an archetype for soap operas of all kinds.  In that sense, it’s based on reality.  It’s based on what people actually do to each other.  Therefore – and because it is – what does this have to do with the Kingdom of God?

 

     Most people revere the book of Esther because they haven’t read it.  They revere it because of the accident of its birth – that is, it’s in the Bible.  And everything in the Bible is of equal worth…right?

 

     It’s the conundrum of all sacred writings.  Some claim that the Koran, for example, preaches peace.  Some claim that the Koran preaches the sword.  Actually, both are true.  On the one hand, Sura 2:216 says, “Fighting is prescribed upon you, and you dislike it.  But it may happen that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you.  And Allah knows and you know not.”

     On the other hand, it is equally clear that there are peaceful verses as well.  Take this one from Sura 16:125:  : “Invite (all) to the way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious.” (16:125)

     It’s a fool’s errand, actually.  Trying to determine the fabric of a religion by reading its scriptures is risky business because the results are so uneven.  Much of the content depends upon its historical context.  Much of the content depends upon developing views over time within that religion.  So you get lots of different views. 

     One of the things I hear every now and then in Episcopal circles is a reader, upon completion of the lesson, instead of saying, “The Word of the Lord,” saying, “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.”  I like that better, actually, because it implies that you have to take some responsibility as the hearer to choose which parts of the readings are speaking to you.  Well, here are a couple of options from the Jewish quarter:

 [Esther]  “…The man Mordecai grew more and more powerful.  So the Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, slaughtering and destroying them, and did as they pleased to those who hated them.”

[Matthew]  “But Jesus taught them:  ‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven….”

“Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.”