September 29, 2024

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Mark 9:38-50

Last Sunday, I was speaking with someone after the service. Having read the bulletin, they noted that this Sunday we were going to be singing the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers.” That was noted and it was not out of their anticipatory delight. It was out of concern that we would be singing this song. A song which has become known as a militaristic anthem and as an example of triumphalist Christianity.
I explained that I had chosen the hymn expressly for that reason but not because I seek to endorse such ideas. No, I wanted to point out what can happen over time as one thing is turned into another. A reinterpretation that changes the meaning in unexpected ways.
“Onward Christian Soldiers,” was written in the 19th century by Sabine Baring-Gould, an Anglican priest who at the time was serving in a poor parish in an English mining town. He was tending to his congregation and its children. One of the few joys for those children was to go on picnics and sometimes that meant travelling out of town to a more suitable location. And so Sabine Baring-Gould wrote the song “Onward Christian Solders” to be sung while they marched to their outing. It was originally entitled “Hymn for Procession with Cross and Banners.”
What is the first line? “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to was, with the cross of Jesus going on before.” If any of you have seen an Anglican procession, you might have noticed someone with a wooden cross walking at the front. This lyric describes a literal practice while the imagery of them being soldiers is the part that was metaphoric. The text is triumphant, but it is not the triumph of war, but arguably the triumph of the spirit.
But you might be thinking, it sounds aggressive, it sounds combative. That perception has been intentionally skewed. For example, during the Second World War, the United Kingdom was desperate to get help in the war effort from the United States, which was not originally keen on getting involved. When President Roosevelt traveled to England to discuss maters with Prime Minister Churchill, Churchill had the naval band at the dock playing “Onward Christian Soldiers” as Roosevelt disembarked from the ship.
The plan, one imagines, was to play up the righteousness of the English fight to a sympathetic religious audience across the Atlantic. How much this song factored into the Americans entry into the war is unclear. But the use of the hymn in military settings seems to have grown since that time.
Sometimes the way that we understand a song, or a story, changes over time. Even if something was written with one message in mind, it might take on a different meaning over time. For example, the famous poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Take,” is often celebrated as an ode to self-determination and forging your own way in the world. Which is great, but Robert Frost did not intend that at all. In fact, he was trying to say that no matter which path in life you take, you will miss out on something as a result. You cannot choose everything. I once tried to explain this ironic interpretation to someone who wanted the poem read at a memorial service, but to no avail. Sometimes we only hear what we wish to hear.
Our reading this morning comes from the Book of Esther. This book from the Bible is unusual. It does not contain certain common aspects of scripture. God is not mentioned or in anyway involved in the story. There is no discussion of Israel or the prophets or anything particularly religious. This is a story, a story that did not truly happen. It is a story meant mostly to entertain.
It takes place during the Babylonian Exile, after the fall of Babylon and the rise of the Persian Empire. The Persians were unusually tolerant of ethnic groups and other religions. And in this atypical story, the king rather unwisely and uncharacteristically agrees to allow his chief adviser Haman to wipe out the Jewish people who are in exile in Persia. The story relies upon a literary conceit that once the king has passed a law, that law may never be rescinded. Again, this makes no sense under any system of law, but it is necessary for the flow of this story.
What did we hear?
[T]he king again said to Esther, “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.”
Esther was the favorite queen, meaning she was the first among the many queens and concubines of the Persian king’s harem. The prior favorite, Ashanti, had fallen from grace and Esther was installed in her place. Esther, unbeknownst to the king or the wicked adviser Haman, is Jewish and her adoptive father Mordecai is the primary target of Haman’s murderous plans. At this point in the story, Esther has pleased the king and is to be rewarded.
Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me — that is my petition — and the lives of my people — that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.
Obviously, this was news to the king, who just offered up to half of his kingdom to Esther. That is how you know this is truly a story – no one offers half of their kingdom to anyone outside of such stories. We hear a similar example of this in the account of John the Baptist, when King Herod offers half of his kingdom to his stepdaughter because she danced so well. Historically not true, and factually ridiculous, but it fits into a narrative tradition.
The Persian king becomes angry at the threat to his queen, asking who would dare threaten her.
Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?”
Esther said, “A foe and an enemy, this wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
Haman is immediately put to death. Which we might take to be a happy ending. End of story.
But if you look at the reading for today as listed in the order of service, you might notice that it starts in the Book of Esther at the beginning of chapter 7 and then skips over to the end of chapter 9. What exactly happened in between?

A few things. Such as the explanation that the king could not rescind his order allowing for Haman’s men to kill all the Jewish exiles. But what the king does instead is send messengers to the exiles warning them and authorizing them to fight back.
Specifically, “By these letters the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to assemble and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, with their children and women, and to plunder their goods…”
This language about allowing the annihilation of children and women matches the king’s prior permission to Haman to kill Mordecai and his people. You might say this is a tidy bit of symmetry to the story. But if that is true, why was this part of the story left out of today’s reading? I did not choose to break up the story in this way – it was the editors of the Sunday morning lectionary who made that choice in 1994.
Our reading portrays Esther as a hero, which is arguably true, and the survival of the Jewish exiles as miraculous, which is arguably complicated. God does not make an appearance in this story and the annihilation of children, even in a story, is nothing like a miracle. But we come to understand stories differently over time because we tell those stories in certain ways and, occasionally, with certain omissions.
Now onto the movies. In the next installment of my sermon series on movies, we consider the dark comedy from 1964, Dr. Strangelove. The full title is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It is a story about a rogue American general who is trying to trigger a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. He sends a squadron of bombers into Russian airspace and blocks the ability of Washington to recall the planes. The general’s name is Jack D. Ripper – no subtlety there. He is a stereotype of military swagger with a heavy dose of conspiracy theories and mental imbalance.
Ripper wanted to force the US into wiping out Russian Communism. The perceived alternative would be a retaliatory strike by the Russians that would wipe out America. The clock is ticking as politicians and military officers scramble to avert disaster. Along the way, however, some of those involved suggest that maybe, just maybe, it would be a good idea to wipe out the Russians. Seeing that there was no easy way of avoiding the attack, and it would be a desirable outcome, with on a scant 30 million Americans estimated to die in the nuclear exchange, plus a few hundreds of millions of others.
Unbeknownst to Ripper and the US government, the Russians had implemented a doomsday device, one that would destroy all life on earth if Russia were attacked by nuclear weapons and make the Earth’s surface uninhabitable for a century. This is a literary conceit of course, much like the edict of the Persian king that even he could not rescind. It helps move the story along into the realm of high stakes and daring do.
Now some soldiers were trying to stop the bombers, but at the same time Air Force personnel on the bomber were doing their level best to achieve their mission of destroying a Russian missile base. These frantic efforts are shown in parallel. Those trying to stop the war are shown as inept and bumbling, even cowardly in the case of a British officer who somehow ends up in the middle of these events.
Conversely, the bomber crew is shown as technically capable and situationally heroic, even as they unknowingly work toward the destruction of all life on Earth. When the atomic bomb is stuck in the bomb bay, the commanding officer rewires everything and personally rides the bomb down to its destination, whooping like a cowboy on a steer at a rodeo. The actor, Slim Pickens, was a rodeo cowboy so this was entirely accurate even as it was entirely ludicrous.
Dr. Strangelove is a satire. It takes the mentality of the 1960s Cold War and plays it out to its illogical extremes. American generals chomp on cigars, invoke the name of God almost at random, and foam at the mouth about communism. The Russians are morally bankrupt drunkards who would rather destroy the world than lose out in their struggle against Western decadence and American capitalism. And the unspoken premise of the movie is that millions and millions of people will die, and the world will be destroyed, because this bumbling band of fools somehow ended up in charge. And, spoiler, that is exactly what happens. There is no happy ending, at least for this fictional world.
People write stories for many reasons. Stories are for entertainment. Stories are for education. Stories are for helping to define who we are as people. But that does not mean that the story as written will be interpreted as the story was intended. Sometimes it takes on a different meaning, like Robert Frost’s poem which somehow came to stand for the opposite of what he thought. Sometimes it is coopted for another purpose, like the children’s march of “Onward Christian Soldiers” being transformed into a military march and a military message.
And then there is the Book of Esther. Esther is considered a hero of the Jewish people, and the events of her story are commemorated each year at the Festival of Purim. It is when children and adults dress up in costumes, give gifts to one another, and feast in celebration for deliverance. There is even the custom of reading the Book of Esther out loud and when the name of Haman comes up in the text, the crowd blots out his name with noise makers. A rather literal example of editing something out of a story.
By the way, Haman is said to be an ancestor of Amalek, progenitor of the Amalekites, who were enemies of Ancient Israel. Enemies who were exterminated by the soldiers of King Saul – every single Amalekite man, woman, and child except their king, Agag. This is the reason King Saul is replaced by King David. Not because he killed the Amalekites, mind you, but because he neglected to kill King Agag and he refused to kill all their livestock. The failure to annihilate was said to be a grave sin, at least according to the prophet Samuel. First Book of Samuel chapter 15 in case you want to look it up.
We do not tell that story on Sundays, just like we leave out the unpleasant parts of the Book of Esther. Why? Because Esther is a hero. Mordecai is a hero. Heroes that stand for the deliverance of the Jewish people from their enemies. Deliverance no matter what. Deliverance because the people need to be safe, and their way of life must be protected.
No matter the cost and no matter the consequences.
About a week ago, there were waves of bombings across the nation of Lebanon. Someone had placed small explosive devices inside thousands of pagers and walkie-talkie radios. These devices were used by the Islamist militant group Hezbollah. After these were in place, someone sent signals to the devices causing explosions that injured thousands of people across southern Lebanon, many who were simply bystanders rather than members of Hezbollah. And the bombs killed 42 people, including at least 12 confirmed civilians, notably children and healthcare workers.
No one has taken responsibility for these explosions. There is of course speculation that this was an elaborate and long-term plan by the Israeli Defense forces that was put into place as a strategy to combat Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of the State of Israel. A plan to place weapons into the hands of those who might wish to cause harm to the people of Israel. That is at least one story, because no one has stepped forward.
And why not? Why not take credit for this series of attacks? Perhaps it is better to let the prospect of such random attacks hang over one’s enemies than to confirm the details. Perhaps fear is good in the atmosphere of violence that permeates the Middle East.
And, depending upon your perspective, it might be better not to take credit for these events. Why? Because it is not a good story. Because it is not a heroic story. This is a story about winning no matter the costs and no matter the consequences. And that is not a story that every person likes to hear, let alone claim.
There is a reason people do not often retell the story about the annihilation of the Amalekites or the order to destroy the children and women of Haman’s followers. There is a reason we do not hear glowing testimonials about massacres during the Vietnam War, such as at the village of My Lai. There is a reason we did not always hear about civilian deaths during war, like in Afghanistan and Iraq or, more currently, in Gaza and the West Bank. Because those stories undermine our understanding of ourselves, and our allies. They undermine the notion that these are civilized people concerned with the rules of law and the basics of human decency.
And yes, I understand that there were terrible acts of violence committed against the people of Israel on October 7, 2023, just as there were terrible acts of violence committed in the United States on September 11, 2001. And such terrible actions deserve, and deserved, appropriate responses.
The question then becomes, what is appropriate? What is proportionate? What is just?
It is appropriate to seek out and to punish those who commit acts of violence. That does not mean you are permitted to carpet bomb a city to kill one person. It does not mean you can wipe out the Amalekites because centuries before they had attacked Moses and his followers who were trying to reach the Promised Land – that was the origin story for the hatred between the Israelites and the Amalekites and the basis for the story about Haman and Esther.
It is perfectly reasonable to defend against violence and to punish those who cause harm. It is not reasonable to lash out at anyone who happens to be in the way, particularly when you know that there will be many, many innocent people in the way.
We tell ourselves stories about who we have been and call it history. We tell stories about who we think we are and call it culture. We tell stories about who we hope to be and call it religion.
But when we leave out dark parts of our history, when we gloss over unpleasant parts of our culture, and when we leave out uncomfortable parts of our religion, we risk making ourselves out to be heroes when we are actually far less noble in our past actions and in our present opinions.
I understand that war is not a story that we can predict or guide like words on a page. But I also know that sending thousands of bombs out among an unsuspecting civilian population is not the act of a hero. I know that dropping thousands of bombs on civilians, whether in Ukraine or Gaza, is not the act of a hero.
But I predict that in parts of the world and in conversations much closer to home, there are stories being told about the necessity of such actions. Necessary because the alternative is a fear of annihilation and other forms of existential dread.
I can understand being afraid. I cannot understand doing everything – and anything – to make that fear go away.
It may be much harder to stay our hand, to limit our reprisals against those who might do us harm. But for those who seek to follow Jesus, we are asked to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us. That is our foundational story. It is basic Sunday school teaching.
Which explains in part why we do not tell certain Bible stories on Sundays. We do not tell them because Jesus would not agree with them, let alone tell them.
So, if we are unwilling to tell stories like that in church, why on Earth would we be willing to allow our governments to live out those stories in our names? A question for the ride home. Amen.