wfn.org | Esther is held up as model for overcoming fear, repression

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #6795 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

16-August-2001
01278

Esther is held up as model for overcoming fear, repression

Oft-ignored book is source of strength, Montreat Women's Conference told

by Alexa Smith
 
MONTREAT, N.C. - Walking through the crowded tables of women gathered here
for the annual Montreat Women's Conference, Hebrew Bible professor Kathleen
O'Connor identified the ridiculing tone that the writer of the Book of
Esther uses to depict King Ahasuerus, the ruler of Persia and the world's
most powerful man, and his advisors. They are, the writer clearly believes,
fabulously wealthy but oblivious to the evil they do.

	Why ridicule?  It is a survival tactic.

	"This is more than just comic entertainment.  The humor of Esther is of the
highest seriousness.  It is a survival tactic and an act of hope as a
community faces genocide ... and they work together to overcome fear, those
who face destruction in an alien land," said O'Connor. And when the
persecuted can laugh, she continued, an odd thing happens: the powerful lose
power because the powerless overcome their own fear and resist.

	Drawing on the text's repetitive use of the word "royal," as in "the royal
scepter," "the royal throne" and down to "the royal eunuch" and "the royal
steed," O'Connor said Jews who've lived perilously in minority communities
took solace in how the text blatantly mocks the powers that wish to destroy
them.

	"Laughter shifts the consequences.  It may not immediately change reality. 
But it changes our relationship to reality because it overcomes fear," she
said, referring to the series of plot twists and reversals in the story that
ultimately overthrow the powerful and exalt the weak.

	"The victims are victorious.  The villains receive the fate intended for
the victims.  [And the joke]  lifts the lid of despair," said O'Connor,
adding that the story reminds its listeners of life on the other side of
pain.

	She told of the trickery of Esther, who started out in the story as a
passive, obedient queen, hiding her identity as a Jew from her husband. 
Esther, however, chose to risk her life to save not only herself, but the
empire's Jewish community from massacres that the king inadvertently ordered
when he was duped by a vain and power-hungry courtier named Haman. Esther's
bold resolve stopped the genocide.

	Referring to the timeliness of Esther's intervention - what the scripture
calls "such a time as this" - O'Connor asked: "What is our time?  Who are
our people?"

	About 250 women gathered to hear O'Connor and an array of other scholars,
preachers and teachers interpret the book during "Come to the Festival: 
Esther's Message for Such a Time as This," Aug. 12-16. Coordinated by
Presbyterian Women (PW), the event focused on how to preach and teach
"Esther's Feast," the 2001-2002 Horizons Bible Study that was written by
Patricia K. Tull, an Old Testament professor at Louisville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary.

	It is apparently a popular subject. Only 53,000 copies of the study are
still in stock from the 175,000 that were printed in mid-March, according to
Susan Jackson Dowd, PW's  communications director.

 	 Tull believes Esther's appeal lies in the timelessness of its themes -
integrating complex psychological, theological and political realities in
only 10 chapters.

	"There's the dynamics of racism in the way Haman targets Mordecai (the
Jewish man who persuades Esther to save the people and who enrages the
courtier by refusing to bow to him) and generalizes from Mordecai to all the
Jews.  It illustrates how racial prejudice is fomented and
institutionalized," said Tull. Institutional racism spawned by sweeping
generalizations haven't changed much since then, she added. "They're all
that way."

	The complicated power dynamics between men and women are there too.

	"In the beginning of the book men and women are separated from each other,"
Tull explained. "Vashti (the king's first wife) is there as a possession of
the king.  But Esther breaks with that.  In the end, she ends up becoming a
person the king trusts," she said, adding that Esther does so by maturing
and stepping up to the challenge that is before her.

	"Maturity does not happen automatically," said Tull, noting that Esther,
like many women, isn't an obvious hero.  "It is built out of decisions. 
There are times to say 'yes' to what needs to be done ... and we each have
to step up with courage and hope."

	The Book of Esther is a much neglected book of the Bible. Even PW in its
40-plus years of producing bible studies, has never tackled it before.  Nor
is it preached much, since it doesn't appear in the lectionary.

	Part of the reason,Tull said, is because Esther has been on the fringe of
both the Jewish and Christian canons.  Notoriously anti-semitic, Martin
Luther thought the book was too Jewish to be of use to Christians.

	Jews weren't sure what to do with it either, Tull said, since the story is
empty of religious practice.  "Esther's not a good Jewish girl. She's
sleeping with a Gentile.  She's not keeping kosher ...

	"But anti-Judaism is alive and active and the book just seems too Jewish. 
In some Christian circles, the whole Old Testament is on the edge of the
canon ... and people just get out of the habit of reading it," said Tull,
adding that the book was also marginalized because the heroine is a woman.

	The Rev. Nora Tubbs Tisdale, formerly of Princeton Theological Seminary -
who led a pre-conference workshop on preaching Esther - says queens Vashti
and Esther are both heroes of the story: Vashti, by bucking the system and
being deposed and banished for her impudence when she refused to appear at
the king's drunken brawl, prompting the king and his advisors issue an edict
legally making men the master's of their homes; and Esther, who replaces
Vashti and, improbably, changes the system from the inside.

	"For the longest time I couldn't see any good news in this Vashti story,"
said Tisdale. Reading the Women's Bible Commentary, published by the
Westminster/John Knox Press, forced her to re-think it.

	"Vashti lost everything," Tisdale explained, "but she gained her freedom. 
She shook her head and said, 'no.'  And she paid dearly.  We can't dismiss
that ... There are too many people like her who've paid a price. But even
though she lost everything, she gained something too."

	Probably the most durable critique of Esther is that God is not mentioned
once in the entire story.  Scholars have often designated it as a secular
work written to explain the Jewish feast of Purim, although the Greek
version of the book - found in the Septuagint - includes prayers by both
Mordecai and Esther.

	Tisdale rejected that criticism, saying that God is working behind the
scenes in the mysterious coincidences and mishaps that cause the villains to
be vanquished and the righteous saved.  Citing Jewish scholar Jon Levenson's
work, Tisdale said that just because God isn't mentioned does not mean that
God is uninvolved.  According to Levenson, she said, the books of Esther
tells its readers how God is experienced in "the happenstances" of life. 
"God is there," she said, quoting Levenson.  "God is just anonymous."

	The Rev. Kenneth Craig, professor of religious studies at Lees-McRae
College in Banner Elk, N.C., said that the Book of Esther has retained
anonymity in church circles because its comic "carnivalesque" genre is
misunderstood - not so much as an historic document, but as a story of an
haywire official culture overturned by a previously powerless people.

	Hyperbole and exaggeration are key elements in the storytelling in Esther,
according to Craig. Hints of the comic genre of the book are readily
apparent:

* The character of the fool is seen in the king who consistently behaves
like a buffoon; Haman, too, is a conniving fool, who falls in the trap set
for his enemies; Esther and Mordecai are classic foils to the fools,
embodying an unexpected wisdom;

* Rife with twists and turns, the plot shifts 180 degrees, such as when the
murderous Haman is hung on the gallows he constructed for another, or when
the quiet, reluctant Queen Esther suddenly opts to mobilize a nation of
persecuted people.

* Exaggerated statistics claiming that the Jews destroyed exactly 75,810 of
their persecutors without a single casualty of their own - there is no such
kind of 'clean' victory in any war - a cause for the celebration of Purim.

	Craig said he suspects, too, that the Esther text is overlooked because of
its violence.  The stories of the killings, he said, don't lend themselves
to simplistic sermon ideas anymore than the texts depicting violence against
women do.  "People don't want to deal with these difficult issues," he said,
adding that even Esther - once she has power - orders the death the now dead
Haman's 10 sons.

	But now as then, conference speakers insisted, difficult issues are
unavoidable.

	Referring to Esther's choice to not "pass" as Persian, the Rev. Rose Niles
McCrary, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y., told her
story of coming to terms with her biracial identity rather than simply
"passing" in a white society.  To do so means opting out of  "the lying
values that ... teach self-hatred of our true self.  We shed our real
identity," she said, "in order to survive, to not experience some pain
associated with that identity."

	The Rev. Gloria Tate, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Teaneck, N.J.,
reminded her audience that Esther did not go before the king alone; she
asked the Jewish people to fast for three days before she risked approaching
the king.  "An act of connection was formed," she said, reminding the women
of "the ties that bind" them.

	Jennifer Butler, associate for global issues at the Presbyterian United
Nations Office, said that just as Esther had to face political intrigue in
the king's court, so are women called to tackle problems like racism,
pollution and the AIDS pandemic.  "Remember," she said, "you have power as
women of faith.  Don't underestimate it."

	Reflecting on the complexity and enormity of the world's troubles, O'Connor
told the Presbyterian News Service that women need to use the tactics of
both Vashti and Esther.  "Vashti just says, 'I refuse.  And I am going to
undermine what you do by saying 'no.'  And we don't know what happens to her
... whether she is dead or banished.  She is gone from the story.  Esther
works within the system, using the weapons of Haman and the king to benefit
her people.

	"But," she said, describing the response of women, "you need to find out
who you are  We're still in the struggle.  For people who want no change in
the world, what are we to do?  For [those for whom] the world is already
okay, any change is a threat.  Must churches have complete unanimity before
we go any further?"

	A Roman Catholic who teaches at Colombia Theological Seminary, O'Connor
paused.  "I think the basis for change in society and in the church is a
bunch of people open to the power of the Spirit.  By that, I mean leading
contemplative lives.  If we do that, the Spirit leads us and our egos can
subside.  We can persevere through the conflict.  We won't be doing action
for action's sake.  We won 't be burning out.

	"We'll be," she said, "living in a different way."
------------------------------------------
Send your response to this article to pcusa.news@pcusa.org

------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send an 'unsubscribe' request to

pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org