What is Your Request?

"What Is Your Request?"

Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Proverbs 1:20–33 (JPS)

September 29, 2024

Burnt Hills United Methodist Church

Video from Livestream (starts at 31:25)

What is your wish, Queen Esther? And what is your request?

Last week, I was dealing with a health insurance issue.

I swear, I try to not start most of my sermons with stories about my struggles with cold, unfeeling bureaucratic institutions—I’m looking at you IRS. Just stay with me.

It was a prior authorization for a prescription I’ve been taking for two years. And, as I’m sure you know, these things are often more complicated than they need to be, especially when changing providers across state lines.

After several back-and-forth conversations, the insurance rep asked me, “What is it that you want here?”

And I thought, isn’t it obvious? I want my medication covered.

As far as pitches go, that one was a pretty easy one.

But that question, what is it that you want here, stuck with me.

When the moment comes, there really is something to knowing what it is that you want. There really is something to having the clarity of mind and purity of heart to knowing what that one thing is that you want and having the strength of will to make it known and act on it when the time comes.

I’ve been reading through Soren Kierkegaard’s The Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, this week and, in it, he implores his reader to live their lives in such a way that their whole selves—the entirety of their existence—is animated by one thing and one thing only: the Good. Not because it’s what you’re supposed to do. Not because of the rewards you’ll get for doing it. Not because of the punishments you’ll get for not doing it. Just, the Good for the sake of the Good because, in the face of the eternal, nothing else matters.

When the time comes, what is it that you want?

What is your wish, Queen Esther? And what is your request?

In our shared lives of worship, the story of Esther, admittedly, doesn’t get much play. Throughout the entire three-year liturgical cycle that makes up our Revised Common Lectionary, Megilot Esther—that is, the Scroll of Esther—Megilot Esther only shows up once. One hundred and fifty six Sundays in all, and Esther only gets one. Today.

And even then, you might have noticed that the lectionary prescribes a sort of franken-text version of the story—here are six verses, then we’ll jump ahead three verses, and then we’ll jump ahead a whole entire chapter and end things with these two random verses about the institution of a feast day.

That is to say, the lectionary doesn’t quite give us the whole picture here. And, since Megilot Esther itself only shows up one Sunday every three years, we’d all be forgiven if we might need a refresher on what exactly this scroll contains and what exactly this scroll is all about. It’s actually a pretty quick and read—ten pretty short chapters, all in narrative prose. I’d definitely recommend that you go home this week and try to find the 15–20 minutes, tops, it’ll take to read through it all to get the feel for it yourself. But for today’s purposes, here’s a quick summary.

And, by “quick summary”, I want you to know that I actually mean “I’m going to spend the bulk of this sermon re-telling the Esther story because it’s a really great story and we all should hear it in its entirety”. That work for everyone? Great! Glad you think so!

First thing’s first, it helps to think about Esther as an early work of historical fiction rather than a historical account of events that took place during the Persian period. Recall that a couple of weeks ago, back when I preached on Joshua, I shared that the defining moment—the moment that helps make sense of the entire Hebrew Bible—was the destruction of Jerusalem and the first temple and the elite’s subsequent seventy-year captivity in Babylon. How the history contained within the Hebrew Bible can be divided into Before Babylon and After Babylon.

Well, the Persian period is in that After Babylon time. As in, right after Babylon. It’s the Persian King and founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Cyrus I, who defeats Babylon’s armies and sends the captives back home to Judah and Jerusalem. But, and this is important for this story, not all the captives would return back to Judah. A number of Jewish communities had put down roots in their diaspora—they established lives and found work and were living well with their neighbors in a foreign land.

Megilot Esther, the Scroll of Esther, is a story for these diasporic Jewish communities, as the primary question with which it is wrestling is, “What does it mean to be a Jew apart from Jerusalem? What does it mean to be a be a part of this community of faith while living in a foreign land?”

So a couple kings come and a couple kings go, and Esther’s story begins during the reign of King Ahasuerus—a character that, according to tradition anyways, is modeled after the Persian King Xerxes I, who ruled from 486–465 BCE.

Right away, we’re shown just how wealthy and powerful Ahasuerus is. Riches? He’s got them. Servants? Oh yeah. Advisors? The smartest and most wise in all the land. Parties? Like you could never imagine. But what he doesn’t have is a strong will-to-act.

All the wealth and power in the world, as we’ll see, amounts to a hill of beans without a strong will-to-act. It means nothing if the only thing that occupies your attention is holding onto and preserving it.

So, the King is having one of his famous banquets, and, a couple of days into the festivities, when everyone had their fill of strong wine, Ahasuerus calls for his wife, Vashti, to come before him and his court to, as the text says, display her beauty to the peoples and the officials. But Vashti, probably because being ogled at by a bunch of drunk dude bros was not high on her list of ways to have a good time, refused the King’s command.

So, being greatly incensed and with a great fury burning within him, what does Ahasuerus do?

Well, he consults all the sages and satraps and advisors at his disposal over what his next course of action should be.

And they, worried that their wives will catch wind of what Vashti did and treat them the same way, advise the King to completely cut off Vashti, banish her from his presence forever, and bestow her royal state to another woman who is, as the text says, “more worthy”.

I’ll let you all decide for yourselves what “more worthy” actually means.

To do this, they suggest that the King hold a little beauty pageant to find his next wife. You know. A Ms. Achaemenid Persian Empire kind of thing.

Meanwhile we’re introduced to a Jewish man named Mordecai living in the royal city. He’s the great grandson of one of the folks who was taken away into Babylon, and, for one reason or another—the text doesn’t tell us—his family stayed in diaspora when Persia came to power. Mordecai, as it turns out, is the foster father and cousin of, finally—only took us a full chapter and a half—Esther.

Ok, so here is where things start to pick up. Esther enters Ahasuerus’ beauty contest and she, surprise surprise, wins. But, and this is going to be important down the line, she hides the fact that she’s of Jewish descent during the contest. And, even better, Mordecai uncovers a conspiracy to kill the King and foils it before it comes to pass!

So, yay! The king is safe. Esther wins the pageant. Ahasuerus has his bride. All is good, right?

Wrong.

Enter, Haman.

(He’s the bad guy here)

Haman, it turns out, is the descendent of one of the Amalekite kings—one of Israel’s ancient enemies.

Haman works his way up in the Persian court and gets promoted to basically being Ahasuerus’ right hand man. He’s kind of a big deal. The kind of big deal that calls for all who he walks by to bow or knell.

And all the courtiers at the city gate bow and kneel when in Haman’s presence. All except our friend Mordecai.

Turns out that it’s not exactly kosher for a Jew to kneel before the descendent of an Amalekite king.

But Haman, of course, doesn’t care. He’s greatly incensed and a great fury fills him with rage. So, what does he do?

Well, he throws some dice.

Rather than just dealing with Mordecai on his own and on his own terms, he has his henchmen cast lots to determine which month of which day would be best to have all the Jews throughout the whole empire slaughtered by royal decree.

Because if Mordecai wasn’t going to kneel, then surely none of the other Jews throughout the whole empire would kneel, and that kind of disrespect just wasn’t going to cut it for Haman.

So Haman buys off Ahasuerus and convinces him to let him send this royal decree throughout the land. In eleven and a half months, every person in every town of every province of the empire was to slaughter every Jewish person living among them.

Not great.

The news goes out and, as expected, the Jews don’t take too kindly to it. Mordecai puts on sackcloth and ashes and went throughout the royal city weeping and crying for the fate of his people across the empire.

And then Esther, remember her? The one this book is named after? Esther catches wind of this news, she sends for Mordecai, and they have little back and forth via messengers.

Mordecai asks her to go before the king to plead for her people.

Esther responds that if she goes before the king, uninvited, the king will have her head—protocol and all that.

Mordecai, of course, has none of that and offers the single verse that this whole book is probably best known for. A verse that, mind you, is not included in this morning’s reading and therefore is not included in the lectionary at all. He basically tells her to suck it up and that, “who knows, perhaps you have come to this royal position for such a time as this.”

For such a time as this.

It’s one of the sad truths in life that we can never know what a day is going to bring. Crises, it seems, are lurking around every corner. And maybe some of us are there this morning—I don’t think that I need to list off the litany of every crisis, of everything that’s falling apart in our individual and collective lives.

And yet, it is during moments of crisis that clarity of mind, purity of heart, and strength of will-to-act is most needed.

Moments of crisis, Kierkegaard says, are precisely the moments when circumstance dictates that we do not remain silent. That, if the Good is the one thing that is animating and fueling our existence, we will know that crisis invites, no, crisis demands that we summon the will to meet the moment in stride.

And that’s exactly what Esther does. She musters up the will to bring herself before Ahasuerus and he presents her with just that moment. The very time for which she had come into royal position had come. The chance to save her people was smack dab in front of her, right between her and the face of the eternal.

What is your wish, Queen Esther? And what is your request?

What is it that you want here?

And what do you think Esther said?

Can…I throw you a party?

Listen, I didn’t write the story, I’m just telling it.

Because, here’s the thing, Ahasuerus asks that very question of Esther three different times before she finally gives that answer we all want to hear her say:

Please don’t allow my people to be slaughtered.

And, look, I’m sure we could all come up with our own answers to the question of why it takes Esther three times to seize this moment, but, for today’s purposes, I want us to think about this.

Our lives are not going to be judged by what we did or didn’t do at THE moment. Life can’t be measured by one, singular moment but rather, it’s the sum of a series of moments.

Sometimes, we’re going to watch the pitch go by, and that’s ok. There’s always going to be another pitch. What matters is that we keep coming back to the plate.

That, I believe, is precisely what both Esther and Kierkegaard are telling us. It’s simultaneously comforting and convicting, especially when you’re a stranger living in a strange land. Especially when you’re butting up against powers and systems alien and indifferent to the Good—the ultimate Good, that is, the Holy—that fuels and animates your entire existence, your whole being.

And look, in the life of our church, it is stewardship season. You’ve heard from April today, and you will hear from others over the next couple of weeks about how this church and its ministries have made a difference in their lives. About why they give of their time and their talent and their treasure to support the ministries of this church. And, on October 27, everyone will be invited to offer their pledge of giving—their commitment—to this church for the coming year.

Over these next few weeks, we’ll asking each and every person sitting in these pews and watching on the livestream what kind of church they want Burnt Hills United Methodist Church to be.

We’ll be asking, what is it that you want here?

And maybe the answer is as self-evident as it was for Esther—please don’t let my people be slaughtered—or myself with MVP—I want to be able to take my medication. But maybe it’s not—and that’s ok! We’re going to have four more weeks to think about that, intentionally, together. There are going to be plenty of pitches for us to swing at.

But, actually, every Sunday we come and gather for worship presents us with the question: what kind of church do we want Burnt Hills UMC to be?

Every time we gather for Seekers or Explorers or Early Birds presents us with the question: what kind of church do we want Burnt Hills UMC to be?

Every time we meet late into the night for this meeting or that presents us with the question: what kind of church do we want Burnt Hills UMC to be?

Every child who walks through the doors of our preschool and hallows the halls of our Sunday school presents us with the question: what kind of church do we want Burnt Hills UMC to be?

Every note sung by our choir and every hole patched by our fix its presents us with the question: what kind of church do we want Burnt Hills UMC to be?

And, once we know the answer to that question, we have to show up and be that church.

We have to serve that church.

We have to administer that church.

And yes, we have to fund that church.

So, Burnt Hills United Methodist Church, what is it that you want here?

May it be so.

Amen.