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Esther C 14.1, 3-5, 12-15a, 19
Then Queen Esther, seized with deadly anxiety, fled to the Lord. She prayed to the Lord God of Israel, and said: “O my Lord, you only are our king; help me, who am alone and have no helper but you, for my danger is in my hand. Ever since I was born I have heard in the tribe of my family that you, O Lord, took Israel out of all the nations, and our ancestors from among all their forebears, for an everlasting inheritance, and that you did for them all that you promised.
Remember, O Lord; make yourself known in this time of our affliction, and give me courage, O King of the gods and Master of all dominion! Put eloquent speech in my mouth before the lion, and turn his heart to hate the man who is fighting against us, so that there may be an end of him and those who agree with him. But save us by your hand, and help me, who am alone and have no helper but you, O Lord. You have knowledge of all things. O God, whose might is over all, hear the voice of the despairing, and save us from the hands of evildoers. And save me from my fear!”
The story of Queen Esther is the story of exile and of naming names. At the time of Esther, the vast majority of Hebrew people were living in exile in Babylon, Judea having been conquered by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, who’d destroyed Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. The lamentations of the Hebrew people were expressed in songs and psalms, perhaps none so eloquent as Psalm 137, which begins:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
And now we find Esther, a daughter of exile, pleading with God to “put eloquent speech in my mouth” so that she, in turn, might plead with King Ahasuerus to save her people from Haman and the pack of haters who want to deny Jews their fundamental civil and human rights. A familiar story, yes?
If I recall the story correctly, King Ahasuerus doesn’t know that his queen is Jewish. He loves her and has raised her above all women in his kingdom, yet he doesn’t know this fundamental truth. But when Esther and her cousin Mordechai tell him the truth and point out the evildoer in their midst, Ahasuerus sides with the righteous and Esther saves her people from death.
It doesn’t always work this way. Often, in the bible as in life, those who speak truth to power are killed. But the need to speak out against persecution and injustice? Regardless of the dangers, that need persists. “I can’t breathe,” many of us cried—and continue to cry—after the murder of George Floyd and far too many others.
Contrary to the kinds of children often portrayed in television shows and movies, most children have difficulty speaking out when they’re in pain or when someone has said or done something hurtful. After all, grown-ups hold all the power; if children express their anger or pain, a grown-up might punish them. As the only child in a family of harried adults who frequently didn’t realize just how hurtful they could be, I turned to writing as a way to voice my pain. I found a notepad and a pen, locked myself in the bathroom, and wrote. The first thing I wrote was a list of people who were kind and a list of people who weren’t. I named names! Somehow, when I began to write things down, I began to learn who I was.
I am a Jew. I am Black and I am proud. I am gay. I am trans. Jesus says, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Light.” When asked, God tells us, “I Am That I Am.”
I am a Jew, actually! My grandparents came here before World War II, as exiles from the Pale of Settlement, where Jews were victimized—robbed, murdered—during the pogroms. In addition to their “daily” names, most Jews are given Hebrew names at birth. My Hebrew name is Judith Esther. I was named for two women, a great-grandmother and a great-aunt, murdered in the Holocaust. The biblical Queen Esther, my original namesake, was an exile; by the time of her birth, many Jews had become so assimilated within Babylonian society that they gave their children Babylonian names. The name Esther derives from the Babylonian Ishtar, goddess of fertility. (The word Easter, by the way, also derives from Ishtar and the ancient pagan fertility festival involving rabbits and looking to the east in the early morning!) Moses was an exile. And Jesus—Yeshua—, a Jew from Nazareth, was an outsider, a noncitizen of the Roman Empire, a rabbi (teacher) apart from the Temple and its Roman-corrupted set of priests in Jerusalem.
It seems to me that outsiders, even if assimilated, are especially blessed—and cursed—with an ability to see injustices and imbalances of power within the societies they inhabit. Until we recognize ourselves as children of God, all of us are outsiders looking to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; but our savior Jesus Christ tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven is here. Inside. With one another. We may have forgotten. We may have forgotten our names. We may have suffered through the sins of the world and lost our way. It might take a tragedy like exile—like murder, slavery, or genocide—to begin the lamentations and the calls for justice, but let’s. Despite our fears, let’s remember who we truly are. Let’s write it!