Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50
The Reverend Paul DeLain Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, September 27, 2009

There is a phrase in our confession that always stings me: things done and things left undone. I usually have a list of these running in my head especially the things left undone. I worry about doing the right thing; reaching out to others in the right way. At the heart of doing the right thing is loving God with my whole heart and loving my neighbor as myself. Loving God with my whole heart will lead me to love my neighbor in the right way. If I am giving my whole heart to God then I will know his will.

We hear all the time that we should be following God’s will and not our own. But how is that we know God’s will? How do we know what is the right thing to do? Does God speak to us in a booming voice from the sky and give it to us plainly? Not so with me. Sure I feel at times that I am getting direction from God but it is always an unraveling mystery. It is a step by step process.

From the Hebrew Scriptures we read from the curious book of Esther. It is curious book because God is not mentioned once. There are no thunderbolts or booming voices of direction for Esther. She relies solely on her own judgment to determine what to do next. She is a Jewish woman living in exile in Persia in the 5th century B.C. She becomes Queen to a gentile King by winning a beauty contest. Much drama and many plot twists ensue. At the heart of the story is that Esther must find a way to save her people. Leaders among the Persians are set to annihilate the Jewish people. Esther and Mordecai must find a way to save them.

Unlike other Bible heroes, Daniel, Paul, or Moses, Esther as far as we know never hears from God. As one commentator puts it, “It is possible that Esther became queen just to fulfill God’s purpose, but humans cannot know that. They must act, with profound hope that they are thereby participating in the divine scheme.” (Crawford, Interpreter’s Bible, p.867)

We can relate to Esther. We find ourselves in the most difficult

situations and we search for direction from God. Life throws us all
kinds of suffering and trials. We suffer in our families. We find many trials in our parish communities. We feel that there is no way out and we aren’t hearing from God. Therein lies the struggle.

Jesus tells the disciples today, “Everyone will be salted with fire.” We make the mistake in thinking that Christ came among us to put out all of the fires. No, he came to teach us how to put God first so that we could walk through all of the fires. He tells us, whatever it is about you that is getting in the way of following God completely, cut it off or pluck it out. In other words, as we sit in our fires we need to look within ourselves. What is it that we are contributing to the fire? How can we transform ourselves to help put out that fire?

We must do as Esther did. She went forward with a never ending hope that she was participating in the divine will. As long as we do that we are going to save ourselves a lot of grief. We won’t need thunderbolts and booming voices from heaven if we keep humbling ourselves and turning back to God in prayer.

St. James writes in his Epistle: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” That is faith: at all times we turn back to God. We don’t resent God for not fixing things they way we want them to be fixed, we just keep turning to him with a profound hope.

I can almost guarantee you that doing this will resolve a multitude of sickness, suffering, and emotional fires.

Each week we gather here we are turning back to God. We don’t come here as nice little church girls and boys with perfect little lives and all the answers. We come here as from a battle. We come here with wounds in our bodies, minds and souls. And that is the faith, we come here despite all of that. We come here in the spirit of Blessed Esther who saw her trials turn into a religious holiday that is still

celebrated among the Jewish people: Purim. We read that this was, “the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness
and from mourning into a holiday.”

Jesus says that to persevere the fires of life we have to be like salt; we have to have a fire burning in us. Salt is good but without the saltiness it is worthless.

We make ourselves salty as we come to this altar. The Church and her sacraments will season us and makes us strong. Today we will witness three sacraments: Reconciliation, Holy Unction, and Holy Eucharist.

We will confess our sins, seeing in ourselves all the things done and left undone, and, yet, we will stand again in the mercy of God and move on. We won’t dwell on our failures.

We will become present to the sacrifice of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. We will become one with our salty savior; we will rise with him from death and live again.

Some of us will go to the healing station and receive anointing and laying on of hands. We will hope again that the wounds in our bodies, minds and souls can indeed be healed. They will be healed especially if we participate in the healing.

And the salt is available throughout the week. We can come for instruction and reflection on the Gospel. We can go for coffee with another Christian, tell our stories and pray.

We don’t necessarily need thunderbolts and booming voices from heaven. We have the Church. She is offering us healing of all kinds. She is offering us a place in the communion of saints in heaven and on earth. She is offering us a way to see our sorrow turn into gladness. She is showing us how to walk through the fire.

Reference: The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 3
(Article on the Book of Esther by Sidnie White Crawford)
Abingdon Press Nashville 1999