The Rev. Noah Van Niel
September 30th, 2018
St. John the Evangelist
Proper 21 (B): Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 20-22; Psalm 124, James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50
Once upon a time there was a king of a vast empire. He was very rich and loved to 
show off his opulent wealth. He threw parties with copious food, and the drinking was done “by the flagon and without restraint.” {Esther 1:8} He was married to a beautiful queen. She was so beautiful he liked to show her off to his friends so they could see how beautiful she was. One night however, when the king was “merry with wine” (Es 1:10) he called for the queen to come be paraded about, but she refused. And for this act of insubordination (or independence, depending on how you look at it) she was unceremoniously deposed and black listed across the entire kingdom. The King made an executive order outlining her banishment so that “all women will give honor to their husbands, high and low alike,” because “every man should be the master in his own house.” {Es 1:20, 22}.
After a little while, when the King had calmed down he decided to find a replacement wife to serve as his queen. There was a commission appointed to gather all the beautiful young virgins to a harem in the city and give them a year of “cosmetic treatments.” When the time came for each of the women to be presented to the king, they were sent to his chambers, to spend the night, and in the morning they would be sent back. If the King was pleased with his experience he would call for that woman again. This went on for some time. But in this bevy of beautiful maidens there was one woman who was more beautiful than all the rest. And when she, the fairest of them all, went in to the king he was so enraptured he made her his queen. Her name, as you may have guessed at this point, was Esther.
The twist in this story was that Esther was a Jew. But no one knew this because living in the Persian Empire as a Jew was not a good thing so she kept it a secret. The rest of the plot unfolds as follows: the king had a wicked adviser, named Haman, who used his wiles to get the king to sign an edict allowing for the annihilation of all the Jews in the empire. With some prompting from her adopted father Mordecai, Esther decides to risk her life by revealing her ethnicity and using her position as queen to stop this edict from being carried out. So she gets all dolled up, and the King is again, so enraptured by her beauty, that he promises to give her whatever she wants. She asks him to a banquet, and then another banquet the next night, prolonging the tease, to the point where the King, mad with lust, merry with wine, is ready to promise her half of his kingdom. And it is then, at the dramatic climax of the story that she reveals her petition to him: “save me and my people.” This is our Old Testament portion for this morning. The king agrees, the Jews are saved, Haman is hanged, and Esther is a heroine.
This is meant to be a triumphant story. But I have to admit it was not a pleasant experience reading back through it this week because, while the ending is a happy one for the Jews, I couldn’t help but be sickened by the way in which the plot centers on the unabashed objectification and exploitation of women in this ancient Persian court. Even though she is courageous, Esther is only granted this position of power because she is beautiful. And while she uses that power to good effect, her value and the value of all the many nameless women in this story is tied to how they look, and how much pleasure they bring to the King and the other men of the court who hold all the power.
I’d like to think we’ve come a long way from the courts of Persian emperors and their harems. But I’m not so sure. We’re not so blatant in the parading of women in front of men for their pleasure as King Ahasuerus was. And women certainly have far more rights and freedoms and powers than they did back then. But if we have learned anything from the past year in our country, and most visibly and viscerally from this past week, it is that the objectification and violation of women is still very much with us; tragically. From the most highly respected positions in our government, to the world of news and entertainment, to business and sports and even in the church women (and men) but mostly women, have been stepping forward to say, “me too, I too have been treated like this.” Across the world, women and their allies have taken to the streets by the millions to say, “ENOUGH!”
The prevalence of these confessions may have come as a surprise to some because we like to think we are living in a much more egalitarian society than we are. But as this #metoo era has rolled out, and more and more women have been emboldened to come forward with their stories of harassment and abuse, it has drawn back the curtain on the reality of belittlement and danger the women in our lives have to navigate every day. If you’re like me, the most gut wrenching aspect of this movement has been hearing women you know and love—perhaps your wives, your sisters, your mothers, your daughters—tell stories of violation heretofore kept secret. When I was in high school I was a member of a program that tried to eradicate sexual and domestic violence through education. And I learned there that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Harassment numbers were even higher and harder to track. And these numbers were probably woefully low because these crimes are often unreported. These statistics have stayed pretty much the same and in some cases gotten worse in the 20 years since I first learned them. And given those numbers, I imagine that some of you or someone you love has lived through that awful experience. I imagine that made this an especially hard week for you. I’m sorry.
The way in which this High School group went about doing its work was by going in to Middle Schools and teaching those kids about the kind of language they used, the jokes they told and the ways they could, as bystanders, stop these kinds of things from happening. We introduced them to some of the toxic forms of masculinity (be tough, be in control, take what’s yours) and femininity (don’t speak up, be pleasant and pleasing to everyone) so they could at least get some level of awareness. Because such words and ideas are the poisonous seeds that produce the rotten fruit we’ve been hearing about these past months. A society that allows the objectification of women through jokes or belittling comments and insults, a culture that highlights their physical attributes above all else, a world that inculcates in our boys that they deserve to be “masters of their own house,” as King Ahasuerus decreed, is a society that is structuring itself on a profound imbalance of power between the genders. And one of the most important things you learn in this kind of work is that sexual assault, harassment, rape, are rarely about sex. They’re about power. And having such a dramatic power imbalance ingrained in our society makes things ripe for exploitation.
Jesus had a lot to say about power, and for just this reason, I think. Some of his strongest language and actions were reserved for those people who had power and used it exploitatively. To the Pharisees who used their sacred authority as a means to get seats of honor or offerings while neglecting matters of justice and fairness, it was “Woe unto you!” The same for the lawyers who used their expertise to load people up with burdens and did nothing to ease them. And for the money changers in the temple who sought to squeeze a few extra coins out of poor people on their way into worship, he flipped their tables and sent them scurrying away. And then of course, there is our Gospel passage for today which includes some of Jesus’ strongest language of all. He picks up on his discourse that we heard last week about ‘letting the little children come to me.” And says, “If any of you {adults} put a stumbling block before one of these little ones, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” And he goes on to triple down on the point with his examples of how if it is your hand or foot or eye that cause you to stumble, cut it off, or you’ll end up in hell. Strong words from the Prince of Peace. But as Fr. Tim mentioned last week, to be a child in ancient Palestine was a precarious and powerless position to be in. The extremity of Jesus’ language in this passage is reserved for those adults who would use their power to trip up or exploit “these little ones.” Over and over again, those who would exploit the powerless, use their power to violate or inhibit them, are condemned in no uncertain terms.
But if the abuse of power was condemned by Jesus’ teaching, the proper use of power was on display in the way in which he lived and died. The message he embodied as he walked this earth was that true power, real power, comes from an embrace of powerlessness both in the sense of embracing and empowering those who the world had rendered powerless, and in giving up our own power to do so. That’s what God did in becoming flesh and walking among us: gave up his power so he could show us what real power looked like. “O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity…” our collect opens this morning. Not control or force, but mercy and pity, that’s where God’s almighty power is declared most truthfully.
If, as a society, we are going to make any progress on the issue of sexual assault and harassment, we’re going to need to make progress on how we deal with power, specifically how we share it, and give it up. As parents, as citizens, as individuals we need to commit to being a part of the solution to this problem through the way we treat women, through the way we teach people to treat women, and through the people we elect to make and enforce laws and about how women can be treated. We’re going to need to be more than just passive bystanders who shake our heads at the misbehavior of “those creeps.” And for this to happen, men in particular, upon whom society still bestows an inordinate amount of power, are going to have to become better acquainted with powerlessness, a willful giving up of control, because it will mean giving up our seat of privilege at the proverbial table so other voices, in this case women’s voices, can be heard more regularly and more clearly. We are going to have to help women dismantle patriarchal societal structures from the inside out. And where better to practice powerlessness, the willful giving up of control; where better to confess the sins of ourselves and our society than here at the altar of the one whose power is exhibited in giving it all up on the cross; the one who suffered acts of violence rather than commit them; the one whose most fervent prayer was, “not my will but yours be done.” The salvation of our society can be found in Jesus Christ who would not stand for any misuse or abuse of power, and who incarnated a way to real, lasting power that was generous, merciful and yet still indestructible.
The events and revelations of this past year have been painful, but necessary. They have shown us that the problem of sexual assault and harassment crosses all races, classes, parties or creeds, and I hope by this point we can all recognize that the status quo is unacceptable. We need to do better. We need to be better. It starts now. And it starts right here.