Esther IV: Chapters 8-10

THE POINT: Stories matter as they are part of ours and not part of ours.

This morning I was reminding of a parable from the Talmud (Rabbi Lau-Lavie from On Being in 2017).

There’s a ship that sailing, and it has many cabins. And one of the people in the cabins on the lower floor decides to dig a hole in the floor of his cabin, and he does so, and sure enough, the ship begins to sink. And the other passengers suddenly discover whats’ going on and see this guy with a hole in the floor. And they say ‘what are you doing?’ And he says ‘well, it’s my cabin. I paid for it.’ And down goes the ship.
This story opens us up to think about our last few chapters today, and a way to consider Esther in total.

When we read stories like this, we read Esther, we can see ourselves in it. We’re members of that ship. And in some ways, we are responsible for what happens.
We have identities that shape who we are, and they are complex and layered. They change. But they’re part of us.
And there are places where these stories connect with us because, at least a little, we share in the indenity of these folks. We are believers in the God of Abraham. We are human.
So we can’t ignore the last few chapters, but we can’t make a 1:1 connection either. The thing we can do is see how this appends to our story today. How does the trauma inflicted by being removed from your land cause you to react? How do you deal with people more powerful than you?

In Esther, we shouldn’t just dismiss the violence here as if there isn’t something to be said about who we are, or who they were. We’re not as enlightened as to just discount the story. That a particular arrogance that has no place in Christian practice.
The other side of this is to take the dismissal so far that we argue that this has nothing to do with us at all. So we sequester ourselves up into nowhere. Esther’s just a nice story from some foreign time. That violence, that trauma, nothing but stories. We’re better than that.
And that’s not who we need to be either. Otherwise we’re just turning the auger slowly down into the base of the boat because we perceive we own it wholly for ourselves.

Abraham Heschel: "...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible."

We are part of this world, we are part of these stories. We carry some responsibility to what’s happening, but we need not carry the guilt for them.
When we hear cries of people who are hurting, who have dealt with the pain and trauma of the world, we seek to find their hearts, not dismiss their story. When folks are trying to put holes in our shared ship, we should help them find a better way. The ship doesn’t need to go down.
The question for us needs to be how we’ll respond to the stories as people sharing in them, responsible in part to them.

What do we do about this week? Fall asleep to tragedy in El Paso and wake up to tragedy in Dayton.
We can fight, complain, bicker, demean, but all of those are ways to not take the responsibility to being in a share ship with a shared story, not ignoring what’s happening and looking to heal.

Weeks like this God seems all too silent. But here’s why Esther as a book matters so much. We can:

Be strategic, knowing God is where we are.
Work towards saving life around us, including our own.
And through it all, persevere. When heavy moments and heavy times surround us, God is still with us even if it feels silent.
God is with us in broken spaces at broken times.