In order to consider the finally of our 4 Ds, Disenchantment, we’ll take a look at one of the two book of the Bible that doesn’t mention God, the book of Esther. Like the Judges Bible Study, we’ll be reading through a whole lot of the book, luckily it is a little smaller book than Judges.
Chapter 1: The King puts away his wife and sets up an
empire wide beauty pageant
The first
chapter of Esther sets up the situation, how would a Jewish woman become the Queen
of Persia?
Esther 2:15-18—Esther becomes the new queen of Persia
15-Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, has become her adopted Father.
16-Just to place the narrative in time, King Ahasuerus is a Hebraization
of King Xerxes.
Esther 2:19-23—A Plot!
20-Perhaps stating the obvious, but antisemitism, or at
least anti-Judaism, is alive in the ancient world. There is a reason Esther isn’t
advertising that she’s of the tribe.
21-As a rule, Eunuchs were trusted advisors because they
can’t create their own dynasty, so they ought to be more loyal and less likely
to plot and rebel.
23-Keep this archive in mind throughout the book, it is Chekhov’s
gun on the mantle in scene 1.
Chapter 3: Enter Haman
At base chapter 3 sets up the tension between Haman, Xerxes’
right-hand man, and Mordecai. Haman requires that he be worshipped, Mordecai
refuses. Haman finds out Mordecai won’t worship him because he’s a Jew. So
Haman seeks to kill all Jews.
As we think about the disenchanted nature of Esther it is
worth noting that humans like Haman are seeking god-like elevation, even in a book
that never mentions God or gods!
Esther 4:9-17—Esther agrees to save her people
9-Hathach is functioning as the in-between between Mordecai
and Esther at court.
11-As with Haman, note that there is a graven elevation of
the Emperor.
13-Even as Queen, Esther isn’t safe. We can think back to
chapter one, where Xerxes previous Queen was deposed rather quickly.
14-Mordecai has a faith that the Jewish people will be
delivered. He also holds out hope that Esther’s elevation wasn’t happenstance,
but instead happened for a reason!
16-Esther decides, she will risk it all!
Chapter 5: Esther butters up the Emperor, Haman prepares
to lynch Mordecai
Esther 6:1-9—A saving coincidence
1-The Emperor’s sleepless night leads him back to the
archives from chapter 2.
4-Haman’s is seeking Mordecai’s death.
6-Haman misunderstands as thinks that the Emperor is talking
about himself.
9-What Haman desires for Haman is instead given to Mordecai,
who Haman wishes to punish.
Chapter 7: Mordecai and Haman switch fortunes
Just as Mordecai receives the reward that Haman wishes for
himself in chapter 6, in chapter 7 Haman receives the punishment he wishes to do
to Mordecai.
Chapter 8: A grand reversal for all the Jews
Finally, just as Mordecai’s fortunes are reversed, so too
all the Jews in the Empire, they receive good despite Haman’s desire to destroy
them.
Esther 9:24-28—A summary, Purim explained
24-This is an etymological explanation of the name Purim; to
put it into today’s vernacular, we call our holiday Dice, because Haman threw
the die and failed.
28-Purim is celebrated in March.
Chapter 10: It was a Grand Triumph
My working definition of Disenchantment is to lose the
habit of paying attention to the Holy.
What’s Esther have to do with Disenchantment?
-God is unnamed, save Purim itself, there are no religious
rituals.
-There is, in the background, a sense of something fateful
going on, I think this can help us think about cracks in our secular framework.
-It is worth noting that without worship secular things, in
Esther especially secular authorities, become venerated. Haman’s conflict with Mordechai
begins with Haman’s desire to be worshipped, and Esther’s interaction with her
husband the Emperor is especially dangerous because the Emperor has been elevated
to the status of a god.
3 ways to think about Disenchantment:
-There is a famous experiment, the selective attention
test, where subjects are shown a video of people throwing a ball and are told
to keep track of the ball. At the end of the video, the watchers are asked when
the Gorilla walked through the room, and most people never saw the person in a
gorilla mask walking through the video. So too our religious habits. If we keep
our eyes on only secular things, we’ll miss God walking through the room. What
we seek is what we see.
-Richard Beck argues the Reformation and the Enlightenment
both focused our attention in a way that misses some of what God is up to in
the world. The Reformation focuses us on Morality to the exclusion of the
Mystical, and the Enlightenment focuses us on measurable things to the
exclusion of their meaning. As I’ve written elsewhere, Beck is painting with
the broadest of brushes.
-There was a time when people would regularly make
pilgrimage to a small town in Wales where there was a well filled with eels.
These eels were said to be the descendants of eels that interacted with a
particular saint and were thus seen as having magical properties. These days,
no one makes pilgrimage to see these magic eels. The enchantment of holy people
and places has left us, in this disenchanted world, a world bereft of pilgrimages
and saints. Because we don’t look for those things, we have lost them.
Examples of Enchantment:
-When we mark sacred time, we take sabbaths and celebrate festivals.
When space is sacred, we celebrate the sacraments and travel to places
important to the faith. When holy people are pointed out, we recognize those of
the faith who have gone before us, namely saints.
-Liturgical church moves us through sacred time with a lectionary
and liturgical calendar, the sacraments remind us that matter matters, and our
sanctuaries are more likely to exhibit some form of beauty than our
non-liturgical hyper-protestant siblings.
-The Contemplative tradition pushes us to notice the sacred
in the everyday. Praying before decisions and reflecting on the highs and lows
of a day before bed are both small practical examples of this deep tradition.
-Charismatic Christianity refuses to amputate the heart
during worship. Both preaching and the reception of preaching tries to notice
the romance of God’s story. Ideally the repeated cycle of faith in this
tradition begins with receptivity—waiting for God to act, gratitude—recognizing
when God acts and being thankful, and then finally testifying—telling people about
the good thing that has taken place.
-The Celtic tradition also offers a window into an enchanted
world. On one hand, there is the concept of Thin Places—locations that feel
sacred in the different way than most places (the two times I’ve been
particularly aware of thin places was at an 800 year old monastery turned youth
retreat centre I worked at one year, as well as at the ruins of a Mosque/Church/Synagogue/Temple
at Har Maggido). On the other hand there is sacred friendship—that there can be
friendships that deepen our faith lives for our whole lives, opening up
understandings of grace you might never experience otherwise.
Challenges:
-We do live in a modern/post-modern world. For every sacred
habit we’ve formed, we’re also informed by dozens of secular ones. I would
venture that the average Christian has their wills formed by advertisements
more than by scripture and prayer. By and large questions of morality ethics
and even beauty—once addressed within a religious context—have been offloaded
to partisan silos that were never intended hold their heft, and it warps both
faith and politics. Why ask our Sacred Loving Parent for assistance, when Amazon
Prime will get us something that will fill that desire within 48 hours?
To be clear, I’m not pushing us into little Christian
enclaves like Evangelicals did in the ‘90s, or encouraging us to put on
blinders—but it is worth noting that the way we live our lives is not neutral
for our ability to trust in God at all.
-If church is seen as solely about creating good people, and
Matthew 13, Romans 7, and the Lutheran tradition are right that we continue to
be Simul Justus et Peccator, Simultaneously Saint and Sinner, even as Christians,
then Churches will be seen as failures. If the measure of a successful church
is the number of angelic humans it produces, then people are right to leave the
church!
-For that matter, if measurable results are the only way to interpret
what is going on in a congregation—the cold hard facts of the Enlightenment—then
Church becomes just another numbers game. Church is nothing more than its
budget and its attendance figures. Once that secular frame envelopes a
congregation, denomination, or the big C Church, any of the actual vitality
that makes a church what it is, implodes.
Possibility:
-When we engage with the secular world—which in this day and
age simply means the world, because we’re all caught up in its frame—the best
witness we have is to name “The Ache.” That is, our task is an imaginative one,
a speculative one, a what-if adventure. “What if there is a God?” “Imagine how
the world would be different if abundance, not scarcity is God’s desire for the
world!” “I wonder how I would live my life differently if I manna in the
wilderness and a resurrected messiah were on offer.” The secular frame can feel
like a straitjacket, giving the imagination room to say, “I wish” or “That
would be nice” may be witness enough these days, even when just witnessing to
ourselves!
-Two other parts of life that are in the Church’s wheelhouse
are beauty and friendship. These are both things that don’t fit easily into the
Enlightenment’s frame of reference, because they in fact are not things
at all. They are gifts, gifts that are good unto themselves, and also point to
deeper spiritual realities.
-Finally, I think it is worth naming the places where I’ve
tried to re-enchant my congregation. We’ve shared inter-generational
wisdom in a way that made the Biblical Sages speak afresh to our realities.
We’ve went out of our way to have God Conversations with
our neighbors, and since then we’ve used that same way of doing things to notice
when we’re praying and when we’re inviting our neighbors. I think all of these
actions create holy habits that widen our ability to trust in God and notice
when God is at work in the world.
Perhaps we can hope for an Enchanting Church!
Conclusion:
These 4Ds
we’ve reflected on in these 5 sessions are all very real challenges to the
Church. Hiding our heads in the sand and pretending they aren’t shaping our
lives is an unfaithful posture in the world. Neither fighting against them or
capitulating to them are good options. Instead we ought to be in conversation
with them—as we ought to be with the zeitgeist of every age. We ought to
engage with the 4Ds in light of scripture, and in so doing find where the Holy
Spirit is pushing and pulling, transforming and tackling the spirit of this
age.
The faithful
actions of Daniel—off in Babylon no cultural supports for his faith on offer—helps
us re-imagine our Disestablished world, imagine afresh faithful ways to partner
with our neighbors.
The cyclical
tribal life of Judges—trying to uphold the glory of God while dispersed—points us
to our radically decentralized world, a world where a small nimble church can
have outsized impacts.
The book
of Acts tells the story of Pentecost—the early church chasing the Holy Spirit
as it is continually active among people and in places none of the Disciples would
have dared to imagine—that story helps us to navigate demographic shifts,
embracing an authentic diversity that looks like the neighborhoods in which congregations
reside.
The book
of Esther, silent about the most present character in all of scripture, God—showcases
how that absence is experienced, both by the faithful and those who seek to be
affirmed as godlike themselves—helps us to name the ache of our disenchanted
world, and by naming it allows us to turn around and become enchanted again.
In short,
the way forward is:
A Partnering, Nimble,
Authentically Diverse, and Enchanted Church.
We as
Church need to try on a few new roles: partnership crafter, wave rider, sacred
scientist, and soul shepherd.
