September 28, 2003 - Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Esther 7:1-6,9-10,9:20-22
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Psalm 124
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Mark 9:38-50
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“Together for Good”

There’s always worthwhile reading in The Smithsonian. The September issue has an article entitled, ‘Eureka.’ It’s all about inventions and inventors and how things we take for granted came to be, sometimes seemingly by accident. For example, I was fascinated to learn that the internet had begun as a means for a professor at MIT to organize his files. The ‘post-it’ note had a similar genesis when a scientist who sang in his church choir remembered his colleague’s discovery of glue that didn’t stick permanently. The inventor said that it came to him during a boring sermon – I pray that no one here will have a similar inspiration! What struck me most, though, was that the inventors were willing to take a risk on what they had discovered. What was it Edison said, “Genius is one part inspiration and ninety-nine parts perspiration”? Risk is in that.

I’m not sure if it’s still a part of school life, but when I was a child – and I swore I’d never say that! – I had to learn several poems “off by heart.” One of the poems I had to learn was by Rudyard Kipling. I’m sure you remember it.: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. . .” The title of the poem is, “If” and while it may have that colonial, ‘muscular Christianity’ feel about it, I still like it. One stanza reads:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

Risk is not an exercise in chance. As those of you in business well know, there are people who make a living doing ‘risk management’ and analyzing the ‘opportunity cost’ of one action or another. We understand that there is such a thing as a ‘calculated risk’ and that even those things that appear to be the result of chance, or fate, or luck, can most times be traced to a set of causes and effects. Christians, then, don’t — or at least shouldn’t — believe in the concept of fate or chance or luck. Those concepts imply a randomness to the universe which Christians do not hold. Rather, we believe that there is a supreme order which under girds and orders all reality: God. In fact, we even have a name for God’s gracious activity on our behalf: providence.  Providence is defined as, “the divine plan of the order of things to the end according to which God governs the world.” While it is not a specifically identified concept in the Bible, you won’t find the word ‘providence’ (foresight) there at all; it is woven through it from Genesis to Revelation. The idea of a wise, loving and powerful God who is everywhere at work in the world is part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian understanding of God and is at the core of why we come together for good – and in more ways than one.

The Book of Esther never mentions God by name. The whole book, however, is a demonstration of the providence of God. It seeks to show the difference between the concept of chance and providence. The story of Esther is what the Jews commemorate during the feast of Purim; it is a celebration of God’s deliverance and care for God’s people. The Psalmist echoes the theme of Purim, “if the Lord had not been on our side.” The triumphant response is that the Lord IS on our side and we are able to live confidently because of it . . . and there’s the side of ‘If’ that I’m not sure Mr. Kipling saw.

Esther places herself at great risk on behalf of her people. When she is called upon to do this and raises questions about her own personal safety, her cousin Mordechai tells her that perhaps she has been raised to this royal dignity for just such an occasion. In other words, she has come to the place where she could take risks on behalf of others because God’s goodness is at work. There’s no angel or prophet to tell her this, just her old cousin.

There’s a message here for us. God doesn’t whisper in our ears “do this” or “do that,” but God works among us in the daily things. We are to learn to read the signs of God’s presence, to discern his message for us in the ordinary events of life. As the philosopher Jacques Maritain said, “There is no place in the world but contains some trace of God; He has left His secret marks everywhere and they only need to be found.” Esther found them in the words of her cousin, in her position as queen and, thus, became the savior of her people.

Christians are called upon to discern God’s presence not only in our everyday lives, but also in the gathered community. It is as part of the church that we experience the true wonder of God’s providence – it is the reason that we are together for good. What this involves on our part is the willingness to enter into the risk of relationship. First, we have to open ourselves to God and then we have to open ourselves to one another. The story of Esther is, indeed, a powerful reminder of what happens when one takes that calculated risk of relationship that seeks the ultimate good of others.  To this day the people of Israel remember Hadassah – Esther – and what she did. The early church saw in Esther a powerful type, or example, of what Jesus did for us. Here was one who was willing to risk everything and to go plead the case of others in need and this is how Jesus is depicted, “at the right hand of the Father,” serving as our advocate.

To take the risk of relationship, to be together for good, involved an openness that was truly detached from self-centeredness. There’s a lesson here for us, and for our society. The philosopher Simone Weil once said that, “Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.” Esther and Jesus both model what that detachment should look like and demonstrate how we’re to be in touch with God’s reality. I came across an author, Robert Wicks, who likened the problem of inordinate attachment and the inability to risk openness to the proper way to catch monkeys.

Since monkeys are very bright and frenetic, they are difficult to catch without causing them harm. So some people have devised a simple technique to capture them. They empty out gourds, fill them with peanuts, and then patch up the gourds so only a small opening remains in each one. They then attach the gourds to trees and leave the area.

After a while, when the monkeys feel safe and all is quiet, they come down from the trees, stick their hands in the gourds and grab a handful of peanuts. However, once they do this they can not get their hands out of the gourds.

To escape, all they need do let go of the peanuts. But they hold on, screaming with fear and frustration. Finally the trappers come back and catch them. [Touching the Holy, p. 111]

What are the things, the ideas, the agendas, the whatever that we hold on to so desperately that cannot be let go? As Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel, “Wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be too.” (Mt. 6:21). Wicks explains it nicely, “What preoccupies and troubles us most of the time (what we think about the first thing in the morning, what concerns us as we drive or walk around during the day, and what we think about shortly before going to bed)? Most often, these are our ‘peanuts,’ our ‘gods.’”  Jesus goes so far as to say that even our very bodies ought not to get into the way of the openness we should have to being the people God intends for us to be or doing the things that we’re to do as children of God. Nothing, not even our physical beings, should get in the way with the relationship we have with God and the attitudes and behaviors that relationship should produce in us. Nothing.

So, are we going to be trapped by our inability to let go of unhealthy relationships, or unhealthy desires, or unhealthy attitudes or are we going to let them go, take the risk of relationship and know the reality of God’s presence? It’s a fairly basic question, and a demanding one, but I don’t think Jesus ever said that making a decision to follow him was going to be the easy way out. How many of us have heard the expression, “Whatever is worth having is worth working for”? Don’t you think that ought to also apply to spiritual life? The work that we have to do is being willing to risk relationship with God and with one another. We will demonstrate whether or not we’re taking that risk by our actions, by the way we live and by the way we show what we value – “where your treasure is, there is your heart.”

How do we make sure that our treasure and our hearts are in the right place; that nothing is between us and the providence of God at work in us for good? Prayer. The Scripture reminds us that a vital relationship to God allows us to care for each other in a positive, compassionate manner. That is why we’re reminded to again and again to pray. A life of piety and devotion, then, expresses itself in praying for each other. It expresses itself in caring for the sick and less fortunate and in helping those who have strayed from the faith to find their way back.

I think we have to understand that prayer is not magic. It’s not a way we manipulate God into doing what we want. Some folks seem to believe that if they pray hard enough and have enough faith, God will do what they want. If God doesn’t, then they are angry or blame themselves for being deficient in their faith or their prayer. It reminds of the story of the little Roman Catholic boy that really wanted a new bicycle. His mother told him to pray for it and he did — mightily. However, the bike was not appearing! So, one evening he crept down the stairs, grabbed the family’s statue of the Virgin Mary. He returned to his room and tucked the statue in his dresser, then knelt to pray. His prayer? “O Lord, if you EVER want to see your mother again. . .” How many of us do the same, only in a different way? Prayer becomes a blackmail message to insure God does what WE want. 

We need to realize that God works with our prayer and our wills, and that there are times that his plans are different than ours. As one writer said, “Prayers and faith are not tools to manipulate God into doing what I would like. They are something I offer to God so they can be used as God likes. Perhaps they give God a picture of how much or little can be done with me!” I think it was Soren Kierkegaard who said, “Prayer doesn’t change God. It changes the one who prays.”

Jesus, I think, shows us this in Mark’s Gospel today. The disciples had prayed and had faith, but they weren’t casting out demons. Now some outsider was and they weren’t happy about it. What’s defective here? Jesus lets them know that God’s providence, God’s work for good, is broader than our own narrow conception of it. We are to see the good work done and not get concerned that it doesn’t have the right “brand name” on it.

The right time, the right place to overcome the stumbling blocks, the things that keep us from loving God and each other, is right now. We mustn’t let things of our own devising become the stumbling blocks, the scandals, that trip us up and keep us from growing as God wants us to and from doing God’s work. When our lives are bound up with God they transcend earthly standards and radiate peace. We are drawn together by the love and the providence of God for good and that good must radiate out from this place of meeting into the daily life of our communities.

Jesus said that we are to be salt, in other words we serve as a preservative and a flavor enhancer for the world. Perhaps we should update that imagery? Given our communications and internet culture, perhaps we’re called upon to be the clear digital cell phone through which God communicates his love and care to the people with whom we live and work? Perhaps we’re the fastest modem and the best LAN-line connecting people with God? However we look at it, we need to understand that God’s providence is alive and at work in the world through us and nothing should get in the way of it, especially not ourselves. Together for good means that the salt has not lost its saltiness or that we’re not constantly asking, “Can you hear me now?” That we have come together for good will be evident in what our goals and priorities are, not just as individual followers, but as the covenant community of God’s gathered people.