It’s Not My Problem

Selections from Esther

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

October 1, 2006

Haman, a senior government official got angry because Mordecai, a lesser government official, would not bow down to him. Why didn’t Mordecai bow? Perhaps as a Jew he bowed to no one, bowing only to God on high? Perhaps it had to do with a dispute that happened generations before between Haman’s ancestors, the Agagites, and Mordecai’s ancestors, the Benjaminites (read all about it in I Samuel), and as we know all too clearly today, memories of ancient feuds get carried until they erupt again; we see it today in Iraq, in Israel and Palestine, we saw it in Croatia and Bosnia and too many other places to name.

Whatever the reason, Haman got mad at Mordecai. And then, perhaps because he was too cowardly to take on Mordecai mano a mano, he decided to take his anger out not just on Mordecai, but on Mordecai’s entire ethnic group, an early example of what we have come to euphemistically call “ethnic cleansing.” The king’s decree, engineered by Mordecai, was much less polite. “Destroy, kill and annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, and plunder their goods.” That sounds familiar to us, too, from the Jews again in the Holocaust to the poor children of Darfur or the killing fields of Cambodia.

Yeah, it’s the same old story, and we’ve heard it a hundred times, so why do we read this scripture, an entire book in which the name of God is never once seen and God seems to be totally uninvolved in the story? What does it have to do with us?

That’s kind of what Esther thought, too. A beautiful young woman, living in the king’s harem, getting, as chapter two tells us, her regular six month spa treatment of oil and myrrh and then another six months with perfumes and cosmetics, her only job to be ready at a moment’s notice to come to give the king pleasure, her ethnic identity unknown by anyone in the palace, what did all these things have to do with her? When Mordecai explained the problem, she replied first,

“It’s not my problem!” and then,

“There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s too dangerous. I have no power. You’ve got the wrong person.”

It’s not my problem.

A high school student in New Haven was shot and killed this week outside the school; a high school student in Colorado was shot and killed this week inside her school.

It’s not my problem. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s too dangerous.

A high school student in Kiryat Shamona, Israel was killed last month when a missile from Hezbollah hit her house; a high school student in Gaza was killed last week when a missile from Israel hit his house.

It’s not my problem. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s too dangerous.

A girl who would be in high school if she had a high school to go to mourns the death of her baby from dysentery in a refugee camp in the Sudan; a high school student in Colombia is pressured to become a drug runner instead of hitting the books.

It’s not my problem. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s too dangerous.

A high school student in Baghdad went to worship to receive the bread and wine at God’s table a couple of weeks ago at his church, only to find that it had been blown up in the night; a high school student in North Korea is taught to hate his southern Korean kin, Americans, Christians and Jews, and to grow up ready to kill any of them.

It’s not my problem. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s too dangerous.

“Mordecai,” Esther said, “What do you want me to do? The rules are clear. I am helpless.”

“Esther,” Mordecai said, “Do you think none of this will affect you? Do you think you can hide behind your thick walls, behind your fine clothes and cosmetics, behind what you think is your separation from the rest of the world? This will come back to you as well. It is your problem. It is dangerous. There is something you can do about it. Who knows? Perhaps you are where you are for just such a time as this.”

Something happened then to Esther. Perhaps she remembered her own pain as a child at the death of her parents. Perhaps she remembered how Mordecai had adopted and raised her and couldn’t bear to see him suffer. Perhaps she took off her perfumed blinders and saw that the world was closer to her than she had imagined. Perhaps she overcame her “compassion fatigue.” Whatever the reason, she decided that perhaps Mordecai was right, and she would do something. So she called those who loved her to a fast. And even though the book of Esther doesn’t use the word, in Jewish tradition fasting was always accompanied by prayer, by seeking the guidance, the strength, the power of God.

After that fasting (and prayer), Esther did indeed draw on her courage and acted and eventually most of her people were saved, though at great cost. The history of these sorts of events is never storybook neat, for this is the workings of politicians and the deep hatreds of generations coming together here. And we need to acknowledge that.

But today I want to remember Esther overcoming her sense that this was not her problem, that there was nothing she could do about it and that she should avoid danger, and that the way she ultimately overcame those understandable inclinations was to start in an act of worship: fasting and prayer.

Like Esther’s world, our world is a place of unbelievable pain, and we become exhausted just hearing about it, and the more we hear the more helpless it all seems. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind on World Communion Sunday around the things I hear like the letter I read this week from a Lutheran colleague in Bethlehem, the one in the Palestinian territories who celebrated this sacrament today only after inspecting his church for damage from gunfire and bombs. It all seems so far away.

Then I remember the words of another Mordecai, the great Salvadoran bishop Oscar Romero, himself killed for his fight for justice while he raised his hands to consecrate the bread and wine in worship. Romero’s response to those who felt helpless was, “everyone can do something.”

Everyone can do something. Today I invite us to do the something that Esther started out with: stopping our everyday lives a moment to be in prayer together for all these problems which are too big for us to conquer alone, for all those places in the world which seem so far away, either geographically or economically or socially, but really are very close to us and do have something to do with our lives. To say it is a small world after all is a great cliché, but think for a few moments of all the places in the world to which you are connected either because of your ethnic heritage or because you know or work with someone or because you have visited there or because the label on your clothing today connects you with someone working right now on the other side of the earth. You see this map of the world? After worship today I invite you to come and put a push-pin in any part of the world to which you feel a connection because of any of those reasons or others. Then take an index card and write down the names of the places where you put your pins. When you pray this week, take your card and include those places and the people who live there in your prayers. As we take the time to call on God to connect us to the world down Whitney Ave or across the sea, perhaps we will come to see that God has put us wherever we may be for just such a time as this in the world, and then, like Esther, we may see a way out of helplessness or apathy or ignorance, and who knows what God can do with and through us then?

Let us begin now. Look at the map; think of what you read in the paper or saw on the news this week. Let us be in silence together this World Communion Sunday, feeling our connections around the earth in bread and cup. For the world is our problem. Let us pray.

Amen.