B241 Pentecost 19

[00:00:04] Speaker A: You're listening to by the well, a lectionary based podcast for preachers recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people. Hello, everyone. I'm Fran Barber. [00:00:18] Speaker B: And I'm Howard Wallace. [00:00:19] Speaker A: And this week Howard and I are talking about readings from the 19th week after Pentecost. We'll focus particularly on Esther, chapter seven, verses one to six, verses nine to ten, and then chapter nine, verses 20 to 22. We'll look at psalm 124 and the Gospel, which is mark, chapter nine, verses 38 to 50. So beginning with Esther. Now, Esther only appears once in the whole three year lectionary cycle, and we have a fairly, I'm sure it isn't an arbitrary selection of verses, but a few verses that really don't capture the drama, the farcicalness of the story. So I'd be advocating at least two, well, another week on Esther myself. But, Howard, do you want to give us just a bit of background to how we've got to chapter seven, where we begin here? [00:01:17] Speaker B: Yes, I think it's actually necessary, and I think I'd recommend to anybody who's going to preach on this or even just have it read in church that there'd be some sort of comment made at the beginning about a background to the readings that are coming, especially the Esther, because you're thrown into the story more or less at the climax or near the climax, and you need to know what's happened beforehand to understand it fully, I think. [00:01:43] Speaker A: Yes. I want to make a brief note about a resource online which others might know about. But the Bible Project has a whole series of videos about books and various books in the Bible and the one on, they're all quite good, but if you've got the resources in your community and you have electronic communication with your people, it would be really good to tell them on next week, we're going to be focusing on Esther. Have a look at this seven or eight minute video about the book and the whole story to prepare people. So I'll put a link in our show notes. But, yes, carry on in the meanwhile. In the meanwhile, Howard. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Yes, I mean, in a way, it's a nice little follow on to the Old Testament reading last week, which was proverbs 31, about the wise woman or wife, because that's precisely what we're going to get here, a woman who may not appear wise on the surface to us, any rate, but is actually very strong and very clever. And I think those are part of the points that need to come through the story, her wisdom, her strength, her courage and how she uses them in this particular context. The book was probably written maybe the fourth century BCE, while the Jews were subject to Persians, or maybe the Greeks a little after that. You also ought to have a look at the book of Judith, I think, which is in the deuterocanonical works, the apocryphal works, which tells another story about another wise, strong, courageous and smart woman, although a little bit different in many ways to Esther. [00:03:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:20] Speaker B: We're set in the persian kingdom under the reign of the emperor Xerxes I, who reigned in the 480s BCE, although he's called in the book Ahasuerus, at least that's how I pronounce it. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Yes, I felt I said Ahasuerus, but I don't know either. [00:03:38] Speaker B: This is the greek version of his name. And where the setting is at the palace in Susa, the capital. Ahasuerus, early on in the book divorced his main wife, Vashti, because she wouldn't. [00:03:52] Speaker A: Come to his bidding. Yes, there's a few themes in here, people that are. [00:03:57] Speaker B: And he seeks a new bride, has a sort of an empire wide beauty contest sort of thing, and draws all these younger women into the capital. And Esther is chosen as presumably one of the many he chooses. But she soon becomes his favourite. The only thing he doesn't know about her is that she is a jew. And this becomes, of course, important at this part of the story where the reading comes from. [00:04:27] Speaker A: I do think it's important to know. In chapter one, we hear the whole story begins with the most incredibly lavish banquet in a context where there's gilted tables, gilted goblets. The party goes for six months. I mean, there's a level of hyperbole. [00:04:45] Speaker B: And of irony, too, because the story finishes right at the point where the reading is for today at another banquet, a much smaller one, but a deadly one. [00:04:56] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. [00:04:58] Speaker B: Anyway, excuse me. She had been orphaned. Esther had been orphaned and raised by a cousin of hers, Mordecai. And when she comes to Tesusa, the persian capital, he comes too. And as well as he can, he intends to look after her, even though she's within the palace structure and he's outside of it. So we come to this point in the story where, for earlier, things had happened. Mordecai had displeased Haman, who's the sort of the emperor's vizier. He's his chief sort of administrator, to the point where he didn't honour haman properly. And so Haman has this thing about Mordecai and wants to get rid of him. And this progresses to become a pogrom against all of the jewish population of the well of the persian capital. And so he plots to kill Mordecai. Mordecai gets message to Esther and she intends to try and help as best she can save her people, and develops this really quite sophisticated and clever plot to invite the king and Haman into a banquet that she gives, at which point she will expose Haman's plot to kill Mordecai, which will keep piggyback on the back of another aspect of relations, this time between Ahasuerus and Mordecai. Because Mordecai, at one stage, early in the story, had helped Ahasuerus with something, and Ahasuerus sort of. He forgot, yes, but he has this positive sort of attitude towards Mordecai. So these two things are coming together in this banquet, and we're at the point where Esther has managed to arrange the banquet and there's just the king, her and Haman present, and she exposes Ammon's plot at the banquet after ahasuerus, of course, being thoroughly besotted with Esther, has promised her anything that she wishes. The old thing that sort of comes up often with these kings who just sort of let their emotions run away with them. [00:07:22] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I was reading Samuel Wells's commentary on Esther. It's in the Bracos series, and I'll put that in the show notes. But he talks very epically about this. Well, this is a story that has farce and exaggeration. It's got a king who is a parody of anybody responsible. He just is excessive. He can't seem to focus on commitments and needs to be reminded and so on. But there's this just series of reverses that go on all the way through. [00:08:02] Speaker B: With a lot of irony, too. And there's irony at this point because in verses nine to ten of chapter seven, the very gallows that Haman had built to execute Mordecai on become the ones on which Haman is executed by Ahasuerus. [00:08:25] Speaker A: So, very clever story. [00:08:26] Speaker B: Yes, it's amazing. Very storytelling, which I think we need to recognise that we're not hearing history here. This is a story that is created with its own points to make in that sort of context. [00:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, also the fact that God is not explicitly mentioned here at all. [00:08:46] Speaker B: Not at all. [00:08:47] Speaker A: Not at all. Is interesting. I was thinking about that point particularly when you were talking about the qualities of Esther as courageous and cunning, resourceful. There's something about the dominance of her character comes to the fore because there is no God mentioned. [00:09:05] Speaker B: And yet I think, I mean, that caused a lot of problems historically because there is a big debate within jewish circles about whether Esther should be in their canon or not, because there's no reference to goddess at all. And yet I think if you go through the story, there are various things like the act of fasting, Mordecai's confidence that Israel will survive, and also how Esther and Mordecai remained faithful to their faith even within the foreign context. So I think those are things that sort of sit on the periphery of religion for faithful exercise of faith or life. So I think there are hints. [00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:09:48] Speaker B: That we're not moving outside into some sort of secular sort of context thoroughly, but we're examining, if you like, human activity within a faithful community, but without sort of necessarily displaying the faith overtly. [00:10:06] Speaker A: Well, and indeed engaging in a lot of morally dubious behaviour. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Yes, well, yes, there's trickery involved in all of this by the hero heroine. [00:10:16] Speaker A: But behind it all is an absolutely urgent matter, which is the obliteration of the jewish people. That sort of existential, looming threat is behind the sort of exaggeration and the parody and the cunning and even the. [00:10:33] Speaker B: Threat to, although we don't read about it in this week's reading, the threat to Esther herself, even plotting this little banquet she's having where she's going to upstage Haman Aman. To do that, she really put her life on the line and she could have been killed by Ahasuerus even for going into the throne room and talking to him. [00:10:59] Speaker A: Yes, Sam Wells has a christological reading of her, which I would. Some would perhaps balk at, but I have some time for as a preacher. But that she, she does become sacrificial. But then the advocate figure in sort of chapter eight, she wears robes like Christ. Does she? There's. Anyway, you have a look at what he's got to say about the power. [00:11:21] Speaker B: Of the narrative, and I wouldn't push it that far. [00:11:24] Speaker A: No, I thought you mightn't. But as a non Old Testament scholar, uh, preacher, I like the playfulness that. [00:11:33] Speaker B: That, that I think there's one point I would take up with you. I mean, I think the essence of the story is about the use and employment of our human skills and abilities, um, to achieve the sort of things that, that we believe in and are right in that sort of sense. And I think if you go back to christological sort of terms, I mean, Jesus is both wholly human and divine, we would say, in our context. And I think there's a subtle invitation here to use our humanity, all of it, in what is what we see as faithful exercise of our faith, even if our faith is, to some extent in the background. [00:12:19] Speaker A: Well, I would say he was using all of his humanity. But what Esther is doing, like, she, she uses her cunning, as we say. But there's collective action here where the Jews are actually present in Susa, when, you know, they do fasting. She makes use of her personal status as it grows, and she does things with the king that are very suggestive to keep, you know, in his good books. She knows about her enemy. She understands her own capacities, and she understands trickery and so on. So, yeah, it's quite a potent, potent mix. [00:12:56] Speaker B: Same mix in Judith, too, by the way, although she's a very, very faithful jew, outwardly, too. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So to get to the text itself, is there anything in the verse? So we see the vast power that Esther now has, really, basically the king saying, whatever you want, I'll give it to you, even to half my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled. [00:13:20] Speaker B: Yes. He's being an idiot. [00:13:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:24] Speaker B: As kings tend to be in these. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Stories, foe and an enemy. So Haman's revealed, and then he's killed on the, on the pole that Mordecai, that he wanted to kill Mordecai on. That is 50 cubits high again, like as tall as a skyscraper. Now, Mordecai recorded these things. It's interesting to think, to sort of step back about the place of Esther in the canon. Like, it doesn't, you know, God isn't mentioned, but this is part of our scripture. And now, you know, I'm just thinking about the importance of recording and remembering and retelling of story. And all of that is going on. It's going on in the context of banquet. It's what happens in Purim, which is the festival that emerges out of this book. There's also allusions to the eucharist. We can make about our own practice around meals. I mean, there's huge. There's a lot to play with there. [00:14:31] Speaker B: I think there is. I mean, one of the other issues that comes up, particularly in this story, is how does a community who is a minority maintain its identity when those who are in power be they. Well, you don't know. Sometimes they are malicious towards the minority. Other times it's just sort of benign neglect or misadventure. How do you maintain that identity in that sort of context? I think that's what's going on, especially within this sort of context. So I think that's one area that that is about preaching. And I think even if we push ourselves beyond that, if we think in christian terms, I mean, Christianity in the western world, in eastern, our society is becoming a minority. How do we maintain our identity in that sort of context, even if the larger context is not particularly malicious towards? So I think it does sort of raise those sort of questions for us. The other thing that comes in the bit that's missing between the start of chapter eight through to the part, the way through chapter nine is the fact that the jewish community are now allowed. Well, the pogrom, the issue of the pogrom by Haman is overthrown, but then the jewish community are allowed to arm themselves and take some sort of vengeance on things. Now, I think there's a serious issue for us in terms of what in scripture is there to emulate and what is not. [00:16:10] Speaker A: Well, it's an interesting move, isn't it? Because the king's decree to annihilate the jewish people is not obliterated by the king saying, I recant my previous instructions, but has to make a whole other decree which then says, just face, just face your enemies and kill them. [00:16:34] Speaker B: Yes, it's not actually what we would sort of term. So I think it does actually raise the other question about just how far we take scripture and what do we take from it in that sort of context. [00:16:46] Speaker A: Well, indeed, and that's what I was. So those are the themes of recording and remembering and retelling and thinking about how the book of Esther instructs us and guides us in that. But also how it has, it itself has led to festivals in Judaism and what that might say about banquets of reversal. I mean, it's about this whole thing is a series of reversals where there was fasting and then there's this lavish meal, and it's at the end of our reading, you know, so their sorrow has gone from gladness morning into a holiday. They should make them days of feasting and gladness for sending gifts of food to one another. It's sort of lavish and completely opposite. And there's a question about the reversal, the political reversal in the context of Eucharist, like, what are we doing when we are actually naming the Lord God as our Lord, not other things in the world? And that has political implications. So, yeah, those things are quite rustle in that, too. [00:17:55] Speaker B: I mean, you mentioned the banquet at beginning and that, and the lavishness of Ahasuerus banquet. Now it's the jewish community. Who? The subjected people. So there is an element of the Eucharist in that it's sort of celebrating something that's beyond even. I mean, they're still in captivity. [00:18:14] Speaker A: Yes. [00:18:15] Speaker B: But, you know, there's a sense in which there is a hope and a future. Yeah. [00:18:21] Speaker A: Shall we move on to psalm 124? Have you got last? [00:18:25] Speaker B: It'll be good to actually keep psalm 124 and the Esther reading together in terms of preaching, if people want to. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Okay, so psalm 124 is an ascent. [00:18:41] Speaker B: Psalm, which we're not quite sure what that means. [00:18:47] Speaker A: Submission to God, presumably. [00:18:49] Speaker B: Well, yeah, but the ascents business. There are 15 psalms there in the round here, this area that are so called psalms of ascendant. A lot of scholars sort of play with areas where this is part of a ritual of ascending the stairs of the temple and praying at each sort of stage or maybe pilgrimage type of thing. We could talk about that for ages. But I think the thing that it sort of says here, it sort of starts off with, if it had not been for the Lord who was on our side, let it Israel saved, not been to the Lord on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive. And it uses a couple of mythological and poetic illusions to describe that thing. But it's all about the issue of faith now and survival in a dangerous sort of context. And if you put that over against Esther, I mean, here you've got a book in Esther where there's no obvious sort of expression of faith or allegiance to God, and here you have one where it's totally an allegiance to God. So I think that the two sort of wage up together in that, again, that sort of the human effort and human sort of activity and initiative over against oppression and injustice and the relation of faith to that. Now, I think, you know, there is a danger of sort of slipping either way. You know, too much reliance on human activity, too much reliance on faith. I mean, where's the balance come, I think. [00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So that is a good pairing, then. I think so liturgically. And then, I mean, parts of this psalm seem to me to lend themselves really well to different parts of the liturgy. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers. I don't know, maybe that's a it. We've escaped. That's a metaphor of forgiveness. Our help is in the name of the Lord is a good call to worship. So, yeah. [00:20:50] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, even six and seven, you know, especially six blessing at the end of the service, too. Yeah, I think it's a nice little song. [00:21:00] Speaker A: I mean, then there's also the whole that thorny thing of if the Lord had nothing, talk about God being on one side or another is really important preaching point. I'm not saying. Yeah. To preach against that, perhaps, or to problematise it deeply, and yet it is part of our traditions to speak that way. [00:21:22] Speaker B: I mean, I think we all need to keep in mind that area. Sometimes we have to preach against scripture. [00:21:29] Speaker A: As well as with problematise it. Yeah. Yeah. Or, yes, I was about to start doing that with that line, but I won't right now. Shall we move to the gospel, which is Mark, chapter nine, verses 38 to 50. Now, this has got some fairly dramatic imagery or language in it, hasn't it? [00:21:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Sounds rather, Howard, disturbing imagery. [00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Of amputations and drownings and removals of eyes and refining in fire and salt and so on. It seems to me that the passage steals broadly with who gets to speak on behalf of the community or the church, perhaps. We've got the disciples. We begin with John dobbing on someone to Jesus. We saw someone casting out demons in your name. We tried to stop him because he wasn't following us. So not. We tried to stop him because casting out demons is not what he should be doing, but actually he's not following us, and we want to be the ones in charge. So it's that sort of arrogance of the disciples, basically. They want to be followed, not follow. [00:23:00] Speaker B: But I think it also goes back to the little passage just before this, you know, 33 through to 37, when they come to Capernaum. And the disciples have been arguing who's the greatest amongst them. [00:23:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the same thing. [00:23:13] Speaker B: Same thing. [00:23:13] Speaker A: Same thing. [00:23:14] Speaker B: Except now it's broadening it out to other relationships. [00:23:18] Speaker A: So here it looks like the boundaries are quite porous because Jesus says, don't stop him, for no one who does the deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. And it reminds me of numbers, chapter eleven. My lord. Moses stopped them about the unregistered prophets. And Moses responds, are you jealous? Yeah. So, yeah, this is sort of who's in and who's out, who gets to speak, where is the spirit of God? Who is not against us is for us, which I think. Isn't that a contradiction elsewhere, that Jesus says something the opposite of that? However, I can't remember. [00:24:05] Speaker B: But no. [00:24:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Whoever welcomes such a child in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me. Oh, that's in line with that quote, actually. [00:24:17] Speaker B: Yes. And we've had a child referred to in those early years. [00:24:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, the little ones. [00:24:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, and Jesus taking the little one into his arms back in 36, et cetera. [00:24:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:28] Speaker B: I mean, the interesting question that comes up to me is what happens if a person is doing good, presuming the exorcism is good help, but not necessarily doing it in the name of Jesus. [00:24:42] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think that's, this is, this is where this passage does challenge those who've got very strict ideas of boundaries. And I think. Wasn't there a word for that? Or a phrase called anonymous Christianity? [00:24:55] Speaker B: Well, maybe. [00:24:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that was, I think, or is. [00:24:58] Speaker B: Yeah, we're assuming it's Christianity, but. [00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah, well, so this is a phrase that arose in a time when we weren't problematizing those things. So it was, you know, what it was called. That doesn't really matter what name in which you were doing it. It was a thing on behalf of that person and brought life. [00:25:14] Speaker B: So do we see it as the work of God in the community? [00:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm also reminded in this passage around, oh, the epistles, where Paul, for example, I think it's the Corinthians, or people saying, oh, I'm with so and so. I'm with Apollos or I'm with Cephas. This is my groupie, and that's where I belong. And that's been happening since we ever began as a community, and it's happening now. And our denominations, you know, who gets to speak who. So this is not a new thing or a problem at all. [00:25:56] Speaker B: No. [00:26:02] Speaker A: Now I was reading. It's a bit dated now, but I don't think that matters. The Bible's pretty dated. Ched Meyer's commentary on Mark. So that this whole notion of amputation, it looks so extreme that actually, in a context where capital punishment was the norm for quite minor indistress, discretions or thieving or whatever, that actually, in comparison, losing. And in some cultures that still happens. You know, you steal and you lose your life, but actually, in comparison, losing a limb about continuing to live. I'm not saying anyway, I'm just saying that's what his historical judgment makes. The other thing is that the salt and fire is interesting because to stop a wound from festering or to helping it to heal, you would use salt, and fire was also used to burn off the end. We still don't. They opera surgeons still use a sort of a burning technique to stop bleeding. So there's cauterizing. So cauterized. Yeah, that's the word. So there's a sentence which built in this text too, is the healing. Yes, healing and the purp, the still belonging, the healing. The recognition of the wrong and the grace and healing and the continuation. [00:27:32] Speaker B: Yes. I think even with the list of sort of things it says to do if part of you sins. And I think not wanting to sort of go along that line, I mean, it's a pretty abusive and self abusive sort of activity. But isn't it sort of saying that we need to redress the issue in ourselves rather than hurt one of the little ones within the community? So again, it's for the sake of the community, which is a bit about your healing and it's about healing the whole thing. And where does a healing start? By recognising what is wrong within ourselves. [00:28:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And not pointing outside all the time and looking for the voice of God in the outsider actually as much. And, you know, the blessing of peace at the end, sharing insult with another, is to have fellowship, be at peace with one another. So I suppose the point, you know, that safeguards are needed and there's a costliness to faith. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Yes. [00:28:42] Speaker A: And maybe amputations to some degree, like you say, are part of the metaphorical reality. [00:28:51] Speaker B: Definitely. I mean, I think there's a danger there of people sort of. [00:28:54] Speaker A: Yes. [00:28:55] Speaker B: Just assuming that this. Because it just turned God into the greatest abuser of the lot within the church. We've had enough of that. [00:29:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, that before we go, the gehenna is a place mentioned here, thrown into hell. So my research suggested that was some sort of ravine in Jerusalem, a place where. Or a rubbish heap that was burning all the time. [00:29:24] Speaker B: I think I've heard that too. [00:29:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Or a place of where the pagans used to commit of infanticide so becomes a symbol for. A symbol for. Well, I think that brings us probably to the close of this conversation, unless you've got final words of good news to give you. [00:29:42] Speaker B: Actually, I think all of these sort of, in little tangential ways, the gospel sort of floats back to Esther and that about, you know, what is God's sort of activity within the world? Human cleverness is part of all that, faithfulness from the psalm is part of all that. And then there's the outcome of that. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Within the community too, and insiders and outsiders. And where the spirit of God is speaking. [00:30:16] Speaker C: By the well is brought to you by pilgrim Theological College and the Uniting church in Australia. It's produced by Adrian Jackson. Thanks for listening.