The Rev. Dr. Judy Fentress-Williams recently provided insight on how the Book of Esther can be used as a modern-day survival guide. Fentress-Williams, professor of Biblical Interpretation at Virginia Theological Seminary, spoke as part of the McClendon Scholar-in-Residence Program at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Her presentation, “For Such a Time as This,” is here.
Fentress-Williams invited those attending her talk to think of Esther as a survival story. David M. Carr’s book, “Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins” makes the case that “the reason we actually have the Bible today is because the people of the religions that are represented in the Bible suffered trauma and felt completed to preserve their traditions,” she noted. “The reason they were written down and preserved was so that they could survive.”
If we’re in a space where “we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, if you’ve had the exilic experience of waking up and feeling like you’re in a foreign land, and the place that you knew as familiar and home is away from you, then you might know what motivated the children of Israel,” she said.
“I believe the stories that we have were preserved to be told,” Fentress-Williams said. Such biblical stories were told not just to instruct and warn and help people form an identity, “but they were told to delight us,” she said.
Esther is dated between 400 and 300 BCE, “a couple of generations into the exile,” Fentress-Williams said. We can think of it as a story in three acts: how Esther becomes queen, the crisis that evolves and the resolution.
Fentress-Williams read chunks from Esther and interspersed the readings with her insights. Esther is a court tale, she explained, where the king “is always mercurial … making rules that can’t be changed and being subject to his advisors, who have their own ambitions going on.” It’s a similar dynamic in the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, “where the king makes a rash decision he can’t undo,” she said.
Esther “is a story about a people who find themselves where the world they used to know no longer exists,” she said. “If they want to survive, they have to figure out how to assimilate.”
Another thing we struggle with in these court tales is “the concept of exceptionalism,” she said. “What happens when you have access or opportunity and others don’t? How do you sit with that?”
Esther is now in a place of privilege, “but the world hasn’t changed,” she said. “While she’s being introduced to the duties and privileges of being queen, she has a people who are still exiles in a foreign land who are subject to whatever the king might do next.”
The crisis comes, of course, when Haman is introduced in the second act. He’s “depicted as a character whose hatred for Mordecai is almost insatiable,” she said. “The other thing we have in the narrative is that Mordecai doesn’t bow down to Haman.” That could be because Haman is descended “from people who have historically shown a lack of hospitality toward Israel.”
Other Jews may have bowed down to Haman, “but Haman cannot help but focus on this one person, as though one person’s defiance somehow threatens his entire being.” In response, Haman “is willing to eliminate an entire people over one offense.”
One of Fentress-Williams’ favorite Bible scholars, Dr. Regina Schwartz, says that the first act of violation is “the creation of other.” Haman tells the king the Jews are “a people who are not like anybody else. They don’t obey your laws [which Fentress-Williams noted ‘is a lie’). He forms a narrative and uses these words: ‘It is not in your majesty’s interest to tolerate them.’”
“Other human beings are not here as commodities to serve our purposes,” she pointed out. “Remember the genre of the story. It is the role of the king to be duped into doing whatever Haman wants, which means that in these stories we have this figurehead, the king, but power is really in the advisors, the people who surround him, OK?” When her audience laughed, Fentress-Williams smiled and assured them, “it’s all in the Bible. It is.”
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Teresa Bidart, Mission Specialist, Self-Development of People, Interim Unified Agency
Ricky Blade, Customer Service Representative, Constituent Ministry, Interim Unified Agency
Let us pray:
God of courage and wisdom, you are present with your people even when your name is not spoken, guiding us through uncertainty and fear. When we feel displaced, vulnerable or unsure how to respond to the challenges around us, grant us discernment like Esther, resilience in hardship and courage to act for the good of others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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