Sermon: The Silence and Absence of God in Esther 7

Our passage today is from the middle of the book of Esther. We have to talk a little bit about what makes this book unique before we go on to examine the particular passage we find ourselves in this morning. Esther is set in the period of the Exile—after the conquest of Jerusalem by foreign powers, and it is set among the people of the Exile—a people who have been banished from the land promised to their forefathers and to their decedents. It is set in a time between times—between judgment and punishment by God and the deliverance promised. Right now Esther and Mordecai are a part of a people vanquished and banished, one conquered people among many conquered peoples, scraping along by wit and guile for survival. It is a book that resounds with the silence and the absence of God, or so it appears, and it is filled with people that do not necessarily seem to have personal faith and devotion to Yahweh, the God of Israel, or the Law of Moses, or even Jewish identity. We don’t hear the name of God in this passage, we don’t hear any mention of the Law of Moses, and you won’t find either in the rest of the book either.

There’s something else odd about the way the characters act in this book. In other books of the Bible, the Biblical heroes are normally remarkable because of the ways in which God interacts with them. We remember Abraham because God first spoke the words of promise to him. We remember Moses because God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. We even remember a sneaky trickster like Jacob because God sent him dreams and answered his prayers and eventually transformed Jacob into someone you might actually like to meet. We even have other stories in the Bible that are set in the Exile in which the characters and heroes do all of the normal things (Daniel is one conspicuous example): other characters pray, they keep the Law of Moses, they hear from God, they do great deeds in the name and power of God. But not in Esther. In Esther, the characters fast, but they don’t pray, it is not certain whether Esther or Mordecai are interested in keeping the Law, and they certainly aren’t getting about the task of evangelizing Haman or King Xerxes or anyone else. Esther seems to have hidden her Jewish identity for most of the story, and would have gone on hiding it had not she been forced to reveal it for the sake of saving her people. The characters in this story don’t seem to do what they do for the glory and fame of God. The most religious thing a character does besides fast is cast lots, and that’s what Haman does in order to discover when he ought to begin exterminating the Jews. In the rest of the story, religious observance is inconspicuous if it is present at all. But this story is still about redemption, and our passage today is about the defeat of the enemy who is seeking to destroy all of the Jewish Exiles. Let’s get caught up on the action.

Esther 7 walks us into the climax of the action of the story. Esther 1 sets the scene for our story with the downfall of the previous queen, Queen Vashti, which paves the way for Esther to rise in the Persian Court. Esther 2 paints a pretty distressing picture of how Esther is chosen by the licentious Xerxes as queen and shows us just how little power Esther has had over her own life and her own fate. Esther 2 also tells us how Mordecai warns the King about an assassination plot against his life, and establishes Mordecai as an important figure at least temporarily in good graces with the king. Chapter 3 tells us about the rise of Haman the Egomaniac and how Mordecai slights him and Haman the Egomaniac decides a fitting punishment for Mordecai should be the destruction of all of Mordecai’s people. (By the way, the portrayals of Xerxes and Haman are preposterous and exaggerated on purpose—their evil is so evil, it’s absurd. Both of them are insanely greedy egomaniacs who have incredible amounts of power and seemingly very little discretion. Your reaction is supposed to be something like, “These are the people in power? Who put them in charge?) Chapter 3 also chronicles Haman tricking Xerxes into killing off the Jews—Haman doesn’t actually tell Xerxes it’s the Jews he’s killing and Xerxes seems perfectly willing and content to commit genocide just on the word of one trusted official. And Haman gets the king to pay him to do it. Chapter 4 is about Mordecai freaking out and rightly so, and his appeal to Queen Esther to intercede for the Jews. Esther initially refuses, saying she risks her own life in such an appeal and Mordecai responds with some of the most important words in the entire book: "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther's response is also pretty awesome: “Hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”

The rest of the book until our passage chronicles Esther’s response to Mordecai’s words, and foreshadows Haman’s demise. She gathers her people together to fast, and then approaches the King. She spends what we might consider a really ridiculous amount of time buttering up King Xerxes to accept her petition—apparently she has no reason to expect benevolence from him, or to be able to appeal to his better nature. Xerxes doesn’t appear to have a hard time ordering the death of an entire group of people and Esther has to use wit, guile, and charm in order to maneuver Xerxes into favoring her over Haman.

Which brings us to our present passage. This is the second banquet that Esther has hosted for Xerxes and for Haman, and our scene finds Haman and Xerxes relaxing and drinking wine after the feast. Xerxes says to Esther for the second time, “What is your wish?” Xerxes said this to Esther at the feast on the day before, but Esther deferred her request, asking for a second banquet. Even now, she must wait until the end of the feast, until Xerxes turns to her and asks her what her wish and her request is. It is clear that Xerxes is the one with absolute power here. Esther knew she was taking her life into her own hands by going against the law to approach the king without being summoned. Now she does it again, knowing that Xerxes could banish or depose or even kill her for opposing Haman. She doesn’t bother to try approaching Haman at all, to try to wheedle a compromise of some sort from him. In Persia, she doesn’t have that kind of independent power.

The words that Esther uses to beg the king for her life and the life of her people are interesting. She speaks in terms of finding favor with the king, and she finally identifies herself with her people (though she doesn’t mention she’s a Jew, yet, that’s the next chapter), and identifies herself with her people when it means getting killed along with her people. She asks for her life and for her people and doesn’t allow herself to be parted from them, and doesn’t allow Xerxes the chance to only save Esther—she demands that he save her people as well. She also casts her presently unnamed enemy’s motives in economic terms—in terms of greed: “we have been sold to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.” Haman’s a greedy would-be mass-murderer.

These three words are a constant refrain in Esther: the Jews are “to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.” It is said this way and repeated so often I think for a couple of reasons: On one level, it’s a part of the exaggeration we see throughout the book. The villains are crazy villainous and the dramatic tension is epic—so why not turn up the hype? On another level, you can tease out distinctions between destruction, killing, and annihilation. “Destruction” in this context suggests something being violently ripped apart. If the decree of Haman goes forward, the Jews as a people—as a corporate body with corporate unity—will be destroyed. Probably not every single Jew will be killed—no doubt some will escape. But the Jewish identity will be destroyed and erased from the face of the earth. “Killing” is the most literal—Haman destroys the Jews by killing them all, not just destroying their capital city or their local places of worship, or enslaving them all or forbidding worship of the True God. Horrifically, he actually wants to kill them all. Finally, Haman’s purpose is annihilation. He doesn’t just want to kill a few Jewish troublemakers like he perceives Mordecai to be, he wants to completely and utterly destroy them and wipe them off the planet. Annihilation is an appropriately dramatic word for genocide, especially for a coolly calculated genocide such as this, which is motivated solely by Haman’s egomania. A normal person would have found a way to punish Mordecai alone—who resorts to genocide because of personal insult?

Almost surprisingly, Xerxes is moved by Esther’s plea. Partially this is true because he doesn’t really know that he is ultimately the one responsible for the decree. Esther has set it up such that the plight of the Jews is identified with her and has managed to get Xerxes enraged on her behalf. It is only then that Esther identifies Haman as the villain. It’s all over for Haman now. The rest of our reading and the rest of the book of Esther is about poetic justice. The plan that Haman devises for Mordecai falls on his own head, and the people who set out to destroy the Jews on the day that Haman appoints are actually destroyed by the Jews because Xerxes allows the Jews to arm and defend themselves. Genocide is averted and Purim is inaugurated to celebrate this kind of second Passover.

And what is it that we are supposed to learn from this peculiar story of deliverance, in which we see vividly evil and powerful characters at work and so much absence from God? First, God wants us to know that he works through history and he works for our good—for salvation and for redemption and for peace—whether or not we are aware of it. So God seems silent in Esther. Well. Take a look at the world. Take a look at secular history. Take a look at your own life. I am sure that there are gaps and moments or maybe even decades in your own life and in the life of the world in general when God seems conspicuously absent. It doesn’t seem like he’s speaking. It doesn’t seem like he’s around. It certainly doesn’t seem like he’s delivering. It seems as though the powers that be who are in control of the world are evil and clueless and who really knows what God is up to. I think there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time in God’s silence or apparent absence—and they don’t know why. Now, we happen to know that there is a reason for silence in the book of Esther because Esther and her people are in Exile—they have been thrown out of the Promised Land because of the sin and rebellion of the people just as Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Part of the reason that God is silent is because the people don’t listen and that lack of ability to hear and obey creates distance between us and God. In Esther we find ourselves with a heroine who may have some strength of character, but may not necessarily have any faith. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. Probably she doesn’t—books in the Bible like to mention faith if people have it.

Another reason why this story is good for us is because it tells a story of God’s faithfulness and God’s redemption of people who have been Exiled, who are religiously clueless and probably disobedient, and who don’t seem to deserve or warrant God’s use of them . . . even as, to a certain extent, they still remain in Exile. So often in Scripture we find heroes—like Abraham, for example-- that seem to “deserve” being used by God. That’s probably not a very good way of reading those stories, but biblical heroes are often remarkable and we oftentimes wish that at the very least, we had their connection to God. I don’t how you feel, but I don’t feel that way about Esther. Esther is basically a slave who is valued because Xerxes thinks she’s beautiful and thinks that he is in love with her. She’s stuck with a powerful man in the most powerful country on the planet, and that man is not a good man. She hides her identity and who knows what kind of freedom she has. Esther doesn’t seem to really know what’s she doing insofar as God is concerned. And at the end of the day, she delivers her people and is herself delivered, but she still doesn’t meet with God. Yuck. I don’t want anything to do with any of that. In many respects, she isn’t your typical role model, and her life is not enviable. But God still redeems her life. He takes someone who could have done absolutely nothing remarkable and made her a deliverer of the entire Jewish people. In that way, she is on par with the earlier Judges of Israel. She’s like Gideon or Sampson or Debrah. And that is completely characteristic of God. He takes our lives, and the lives of others less fortunate than ourselves, and turns what is simply unenviable and tragic into his vehicle for redemption. That is what God does—and you know what, he is always doing it for people who don’t deserve it and for people who don’t recognize that he is the one acting in their lives. And the weakness of Esther reminds us that we, too, are unable to save ourselves and must appeal to someone else with power—to Xerxes. We may think it unfortunate that Xerxes has the power he does, but it does serve to remind us that we don’t have enough power in ourselves to defeat the evil and brokenness in our own hearts and minds.

In many ways, I wonder if the story of Esther is for people who don’t recognize that the good that comes into their lives, the gifts they receive, whatever kind of redemption they receive, is really from God. God doesn’t sign every good thing he does, “Love, from Jesus.” But he does sign it, “Love.” Or “Grace.” or “Mercy.” Or, “Salvation.” As Christians, we know that God is the author of Love and Grace and Mercy and Salvation. Jewish theologians and later Christian theologians knew that God was the only redeemer, the only one who saved. If there was salvation, it was from God. That’s part of the reason we know Esther is a theological book—because it’s a story of redemption, and only God redeems, though he often uses human instruments, willing or unwilling, knowing or unknowing, to do so.

There’s one more element of the story that is important. And it is this element of the story that makes remembering why “believing that only God saves” crucially important. This last element of the story is the character Haman. Haman is the enemy, and in so many ways he is The Enemy, and yes, I mean, Haman is really a Satanic figure. Haman and Satan have a lot of things in common insofar as the Bible characterizes both people. Satan is always someone who is out to get human beings out of pride and malice. He is always accusing people or tempting people or deceiving people who have certainly done him no wrong—and he is always a force working for destruction, for killing, and for annihilation. For whatever the enemy’s reasons are, he wants to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate the people of God. He tricked Adam and Eve into something that actually got them killed and doomed the entire human race to the daily struggle with evil and brokenness and sin. While Haman’s powers are a little more constricted, he is little less malevolent. He only goes after the Jewish people (though the Jews are often representative of humanity in general in Scripture), but does so for senseless and malicious reasons. He wants to destroy all Jews because of a small slight to his pride, and he is only satisfied with their complete destruction. I think this serves as a warning to us on more than one level. After all, Haman’s evil notions aren’t unique—genocide is an old evil that people with too much power seem to employ all too readily. Esther does a good job of showing how absurd and truly insane Haman’s malice is. But why does Haman choose such disproportionately evil actions?

It’s because there is an enemy behind Haman and Hitler and all the other power-crazed psychopaths that keeps creeping back into the scene from every nook and cranny possible, and keeps coming back, time and again. If Haman were unique, Esther’s story would be a little happier than it is. But Haman’s story isn’t unique, and because his story isn’t unique, we know there’s something more going on. That something more is the spiritual kingdom of darkness that wars against God, against human beings, and especially targets the people of God to take them out—to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate.

And this is why Queen Esther is only a temporary deliverer, who is upheld by the Great Deliverer. This is why Mordecai can say to Esther, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place.” The Jews and human beings will always have a deliverer because God is present even when he appears to be absent. Esther just had the privilege of her life being redeemed to serve God’s purposes. There will always be salvation for the undeserving and for the weak, and we always have a defender.

And we know how this story plays out better than Queen Esther does. We can see the universal themes in Esther because we already know what Jesus did. We know from the New Testament that the real fight for the life of the world doesn’t ultimately concern things like murder and genocide and hatred—unfortunately, those horrible things are only symptoms of a condition that would have been utterly tragic had not God intervened at the source. We need someone who can intercede for us, who can fight that battle for us. Jesus, when he fights for us, wins the battle at the very root of the problem. He’s takes on all the powers of the world and all the spiritual powers behind those powers and shows them how he takes on humanity’s sin in the cross and defeats their punishment and defeats death in the Easter Resurrection. By mercy and grace and redemption and destroying death for us, Jesus humiliates the evil powers. Jesus destroys the real power that sin has, so he can start to loose the chains that enslave us to brokenness, to sin, to defeat, and to evil. But it’s only when you take on the real problem that you have real results. We can’t pretend that symptoms are causes. Esther is a small story that tells the same story as the big story, and reminds us not to fool ourselves about what’s really going on in human life. What’s going on with both the problem and power of evil and the deliverance and salvation of God is far more than immediately meets the eye.

Let’s take a moment to remember who we are and where we are. Father, we live in the midst of a broken world that you sent your Son Jesus to save. Jesus has completely his work and sent his Spirit to create a new people with whom you are very present and very active. But we still live in a time of Exile even though we know that time is coming to an end. Help us to remember who the real enemy is and who the real Deliverer is, and that because of what you have done for us in Jesus Christ, life triumphs over death.



Sources: I found two books of particular use and interest in crafting this sermon. The first is The Gospel in Esther by Michael Beckett . . . and I can’t quite find the second book, so I will update it when I do.

Dreamform

In my second year of seminary, I went to a conference at the Falls Church on dreams and healing prayer.  It was led by one Russ Parker, who is something of an Anglican guru on dreams and healing prayer.  Healing prayer has always been an interest of mine, as emotional healing and contemplative prayer has always been a   substantive way in which God has shown himself to be Lord to me.  I had always been curious about dreams, as is probably anyone with half a mole of imagination, but I had not had any particular reason to take them seriously or believe that dream interpretation was anything more than a gift sometimes but not frequently given by God to help his people.  At that conference, I was persuaded otherwise and have come to believe that dreams are a valuable source of spiritual insight and that they are more often "written" (as Russ Parker says) by our own minds than by the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit speaks to us in special visions, but more often God speaks to us through our own imagination and the normal processing of dream work.

Since then, I have had an unusually rich dream life.  Partly that comes out of concerted effort to remember my dreams--I've spent a few weeks here or there writing down every bit of every dream I can remember, mostly as an exercise to develop my skill at remembering dreams.  (I'm told one only remembers dreams if one wakes up during a dream.)  I've also spent a fair chunk of time praying through dreams and have found that it is one of the most reliable ways I hear God speaking to me.  If I am having trouble hearing God's voice because of my own anxiety or distress or doubt, I oftentimes ask him to tell me something in a dream.  I find--not surprisingly--that the medium of narrative is a medium I understand well.  It is easy for me (and I imagine, for lots of people) to understand the point or morale or even the nuances of a story I read.

I find there are two or three kinds of dreams I have that are valuable.  There are "normal" dreams in which I normally pray about how the emotional resonances of a dream match up with strong emotion in my life, and discover what that has to tell me.  Sometimes this is as simple as, "Gee, I didn't know I was anxious about that!"  Or, "I had no idea I was feeling resentment toward this."  There are also dreams that are heavily "plot-driven" in which I generally do pray about the emotional resonance, but the plot of the dream itself mirrors something that has happened in my life, but not in a way that is immediately obvious to me.  (Partly, that's because I dream mostly in science-fiction as a language of metaphor--space ships, other planets, apocalypse, unidentified bizarre objects I assume are alien . . . so far none of these things have shown up in my waking life.)  Sometimes when I pray about those dreams, it isn't long before an "Aha" moment occurs.  I often have plot-oriented dreams after I have prayed for discernment for something specifically, and also prayed to have my answer come in dream form.   A third type of dream--or perhaps it is a subset of plot-oriented dreams--are dreams that are plot-oriented with strong enough emotional resonance that they bother me or continue to bother me as I have prayed through them.  At that point, I have either been prompted or decided to take Russ Parker's advice and invite Jesus into the dream and imagine him there.  His actions are always surprising!

I will be writing a few synopsis or descriptions of some dreams I have had.  Partly I do this because some dreams I have had are so vivid and creative they might as well be stories, and partly because I think this is an overlooked part of our humanity that God has always intended to integrate into our life with him.  Enjoy!

See also Russ Parker's website for more information.  I do believe he is leading a conference in Eastern PA this October on healing prayer.

Enneagram and Identity: What makes Enneagram Distinct from Myers-Briggs and All the Rest

I am not claiming to be an expert on the Enneagram or on Myers-Briggs (or the thousand other personality tests and inventories), but from my amateur study of the two, I have reached a couple of preliminary conclusions.  As I said in my previous post, I think Myers-Briggs is interested in providing a description of how cognitive processes work in human beings, but makes no claims about what human identity is or ought to be.  The Enneagram is different.  It has a "narrative" so to speak, about the origin of human personality and the neuroses thereof, and the story of redemption is about a return to the primeval harmony.  In most accounts, although some tend to Christianize the Enneagram, the story is what I would call secularized pantheism.  The problem is mostly one of being reconnected to the One, but the One is not necessarily Other, nor is the One a discreet Person, as far as I can tell.  (Actually, the way the folks on the Enneagram Institute's website tend to talk about the relation between the individual and the One reminds me more of Spinoza's Ethics than anything else, but that may be coincidence.  They point to medieval mystic traditions of all sorts, and back to Plato or Pythagoras, if I'm not mistaken.)
 
Though I am by no means a pantheistic and am not quite sure what I think about "secularized mysticism" of the kind proposed by the folks at the Enneagram Institute*, I do find the Enneagram's understanding of the connection between personality and identity to be one of the most helpful in contemporary psychology.  In this, the Enneagram seems to be in tune with what much of Christian mysticism (especially medieval mysticism) has said about personality, and I find this true, helpful, and mostly unsaid in modern settings.

   What the Enneagram writers and the Christian mystics (and possibly other mystics) agree on is this: personality--the sum of habit, inclination, predisposition, orientation, and desire in a human being is not necessarily helpful, and it is not necessarily essential to our identity.  In fact, personality (our inclinations, habits, predispositions, orientations, likes, dislikes, loves, hatreds) oftentimes gets in the way of true identity formation.  Personality is either unshaped or it is misshaped or it needs to be reshaped or finished--and some parts of personality have to be abolished altogether in order for the person to be made whole.  The Enneagram folks will say that every person is a sum of all the Enneagram points as represented by numbers 1-9, and the number you identify as is the way that your personality has become fixated on a certain thing.  In other words, personality--the fact that I am a "5"--is much more about how my soul has wrapped itself around my own brokenness than it is about anything else.  And what self-work in the Enneagram is is a way of getting "unfurled"--a way of relaxing into who you really are, a way of easing yourself out of being wrapped up in yourself out of some anxiety or knowledge of some deficiency in yourself or in the world.

If you're even a passing admirer of the work of Martin Luther, perhaps my description of the Enneagram makes it sound like Luther's description of original sin--that human beings are all incurvatus in se--all curved in on themselves.  Inflamed with the love of self and cold toward God and neighbor.  The way the Spanish mystics such as Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Ignatius of Loyola used to describe it, human beings are attached to the wrong things.  Part of our cure is being detached from wrong things (mostly creatures, created things) in wrong ways (i.e., idolatrous ways), re-attached to God in the proper way, so that we can also be present but non-attached to creatures.  John of the Cross' famous Dark Night of the Soul is all about this journey of proper attachment and non-attachment.  And for him there are two dark nights--the first is "sensible" (about stuff: feelings, experiences, etc) and the second is "intellectual" (about the work of reason, the intellect, knowing, the possession of the good).  But both nights are about deprivation--God deprives first the sensible part of human beings, and then the whole intellect of knowledge, sensation, use, in order to correct their disordered attachments to wrong things.  (This is why the theological virtues--faith, hope, and love must lead.  God must lead where we cannot even see, especially where we cannot we have gone wrong.)  In other words, this correction in the form of deprivation occurs in order to reform identities properly.  But what ends up happening is that the mature person, having died to self as one might also call it, has become less involved with their own inclinations.  Those inclinations are purified, reformed, remade, brought back into submission to reason and to faith and ultimately to God.  That is the work of the dark night and that is the work of sanctification.

The idea that we can love the wrong things in the wrong way is by no means unique to the medieval period.  It's essential to the whole scheme of virtue ethics and can be found in different forms in both Aristotle and Augustine.  For Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics of course moral virtue is about the proper response (the mean between extremes) to emotion or desire.  For Augustine, having the right loves is essential to living well, but we need the Spirit of God to give us love and to reshape our loves.  The Enneagram is helpful because it is friendly to the idea that we need to change and be reshaped, and that our identity does not .  depend on our behavior or even on what we see in ourselves at this very moment.  Myers-Briggs can sometimes be used superficially--"See, look, the MBTI says I'm like this, so don't ask me to change."  The Enneagram calls us to deeper observation and to the continual work of transformation.

I'm not knocking Myers-Briggs.  I think cognitive process theory is helpful, especially when what we struggle with is the fact that someone gets at the world differently than I do.  For that, it's a nice idea to do a nice jaunt through the pages of a good MB book or website.  It can be a great aide for self-knowledge or even for just helping one think more clearly about how to play well with others or with the world.  It can be helpful for self-acceptance or acceptance of fundamental non-moral ways in which human beings are different.   But I don't think it addresses the problem of transformation or discerning the difference between personality and identity.  For that, the Enneagram is an unexpected ally to the Christian agenda, even if the Christian response to questions about identity and transformation go deeper and are not, I hope, a sophisticated form of pantheistic monism!



*I am much too much a supernaturalist to be happy with any sort of system that doesn't take mysticism seriously.  Either someone is communing with God in a mystical experience, or being distracted by demons.  It is nothing to play with and vague notions about "the One" do leave me concerned about who exactly people are talking with.  The enemy does take every advantage, whether we want him to or not.)

Judges 9--The Word of Prophecy, Part 1

Examination and Reflection on Judges 9:1-21. You'll want to read the passage first or at least have it open with you as you read this two part reflection. (My reflection is based on the ESV translation.)

Verses 1-7

Abimelech is the son of a concubine, so he is really the least fit man to rule. He is the one, of Jerubbaal’s sons, who has least “right” to be in charge, and is not even closely connected with the family. But he appeals to the people of Shechem, who, as the previous chapter informs us, are not really appreciate of Gideons’ house at all and basically says to them, because I am your relative—closer to you and not as foreign as the rest of Gideon’s sons—you should let me have the power and be king instead of them ruling in whatever fashion they rule. So, basically he wants to use their own desire for power to manipulate them into accepting them as king. It is pure self-interest and they conveniently forget everything that Gideon’s house has done for them. They should have been loyal to all the sons of Gideon, but instead because “he is our brother” (v. 3) they want to empower Abimelech and so empower themselves. Pure power mongering, no justice here. The slaughter of the children of Gideon (Jerubbaal) is simply treacherous.

Consider the prophetic voice as shown in verses 7-20, but showcased in v. 7. What he says is interesting: listen to me that God may listen to you. This suggests that unless we listen to God, he will not listen to us . . . which makes sense of course, because unless our speech toward him is informed by what he wants to reveal and share with us. How else will it be anything other than babbling and vain conversations because on our own, we don't actually know how to talk to God?

Here is the parable of kingship (verses 8-15). There are trees—which are the leaders of Shechem. The place where Jotham is standing is significant—Mt. Gerizim is only mentioned four times in the Bible (unless it has another name, too). And it is first mentioned as the place where the Deuteronomic blessings are given—Mt. Ebal is where the Deuteronomic curses are given. The only times in the Scripture where Mt Gerizim is even mentioned is Deut 11:29; 27: 12; Josh 8:33, and here in Judges 9:7. In each time subsequent to the first (other than this time in Judges) it is mentioned that Mt. Gerizim is the place where blessing is proclaimed to the people—if they follow and obey everything that is in the covenant. But the people of Shechem have already broken the covenant by being Baal-worshippers. They have also just broken a covenant with the sons of Gideon by killing them all. Now they are about to implicitly break the covenant with God by rejecting him as king and anointing someone else over him. But still, God is so merciful that he sends his prophet of sorts and he is standing on the mountain of blessing, not the mountain of cursing. I think one should be surprised that Jotham isn’t standing on Mt. Ebal!

Back to the rest of the parable—so they go to the olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine—all of which are symbols of Israel throughout the old testament, probably in this case symbols of legitimacy. All the legitimate rulers of Israel who were appointed by God—including Gideon and his sons refused the kingship and it was a good thing for them to do. There are two reasons generally why the olive tree, the fig, and the vine refuse—because it would mean leaving the good things they have in order to have power over men, which they think is a raw deal. There is this term "hold sway" which I should like to research in the original language. and there is a contrast of abundance, sweetness, good fruit, a thing that cheers--basically the picture is abandoning all the good blessings that pleases both God and men to do something that pleases nobody, but increases somebody in power and prestige.

Finally, there is the character of the bramble who is illegitimate. A bramble is useless for doing much of anything except for being kindling in a fire: in other words, brambles are a nuisance and all they do is cause trouble, which at the end of the day, when the story is said and done, is all that Abimelech has managed to accomplish. The bramble is worthless enough—and has no joy, inheritance, etc, has nothing to lose, so of course it accepts what would otherwise be a raw deal for any other self-respecting person . . . or plant . . . .

Here is the chango-presto –it doesn’t seem like Abimelech actually says the last third of verse 15. Here's the diagologue of the bramble in the last part of Jotham's parable: "If in good faith you are anointing me kin gover you, then come and take refuge in my shade, but if not let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon." Jotham puts this in the mouth of the bramble so the word of rebuke may be uttered to the people of Shechem. That word is not a word of judgment until the people disobey (just as the law and covenant is not a word of judgment until the people abandon and betray it). “Let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.” This is all the bramble is actually good for, although Jotham does leave it open as a possibility that the people may truly want to take refuge in its shade. So, it is just possible that the leaders of Shechem have perfectly good motives for making Abimelech king . . . but Jotham doesn't think so.

It is interesting that Jotham calls the leaders of Shechem the cedars of Lebanon. At first, this may seem like an unqualified, good description . . . except for the fact that tall things in the Bible are often metaphors for proud things, which is probably what is going on here. The cedars of Lebanon are majestic and beautiful, and powerful, but also proud. I wonder if this image also suggests that they too, unlike the bramble, have a lot to lose--but they are so proud that they are apt to be stupid, like the bramble, and regardless of their majesty can be destroyed in the same fire as the bramble. It also seems like it is a shame that the cedars of Lebanon would submit to the brambles. It is probably also significant that there is a shift in nomenclature only in v. 15--elsewhere these cedars are simply called trees. Trees are no doubt better than a bramble, but here there is a name shift--perhaps these are simply trees who are only "the cedars of Lebanon" in their own eyes. The change in nomenclature alone accentuates the pride motif at the climax of the parable, and perhaps also reveals that this name is chosen for dramatic or ironic (sarcastic) purposes.

This is known as the prophetic “whammy”. The technique is, "Let me tell you all the ways I think you suck, but if I am wrong, go ahead on." The irony is at least trebled by Jotham giving the “if” that seems pretty darn sarcastic to me. They know well and good what they’ve done, but Jotham is giving them room to recognize it in themselves, confess, repent, and change, or just go ahead on in their path to destruction.

It is sad and ironic that Jotham talks about the people rejoicing in Abimelech (v. 19) —that is what one could have done in a legit ruler—especially one with the heroic background of Gideon’s family. But now they can’t, and their families and all the people of Shechem will only have ruinous sorrow to inherit for generations to come. Joy is exactly what they forfeited.

This is the word of prophecy turned to judgment that God honors, because it sets the stage for the rest of the ninth chapter. The fire of greed and ambition and envy engulfs all three parties. The following story of Abimelech’s downfall gives rise to the verse of Scripture, "'Vengeance is mine,' says the Lord, 'I alone will repay.'" God always honors his word, and in this case, perfect retribution arises from the prophetic word.

Gamechangers: IDIC—Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

IDIC: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, the motto of the Vulcan Science Academy, and one of the tenets of the Vulcan philosopher Surak (who’s something between Buddha and Jesus to the Vulcans, but heavy on the Buddha side of the equation).  IDIC to me is brilliant because it isn’t so much about cultural or ethical pluralism or relatively, but more about the sheer, massive diversity in the universe.  It is the universe, the physical, the biological, the astronomical, the chemical that is infinitely diverse.  (Or, perhaps, that we hope is infinitely diverse—though one could say of the Star Trek universe with all of its forays into multiple universes, etc., that the IDIC has in fact been demonstrated to be an accurate statement about reality.)  It is this ontological reality and diversity—all of the physics, the biology, the astronomy, the chemistry--that gives rise to all different races and beings that populate the universe.  And there are certainly different ways of existing—carbon-based life isn’t the only way to go.  But the ontological reality grounds the claims of the IDIC and keeps it from being superficial.

I remember going to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History not too long ago and looking at all the dinosaurs, some of the stuff they have from before the time of dinosaurs, and the more contemporary (relatively speaking) ice age exhibit.  My feelings were of intense relief and gratitude and eventually joy.   I was really happy and quite thrilled to death that the earth had once, both in the distant past and in the not-so-distant past, been entirely different than it is today.  One of the most important tenets of Christian theology is the contingency of the world.  The world does not have to exist.  The world does not have to exist the way it currently exists.  We don't know what really does exist in all the vast-flung regions of interstellar space, and we don't know what has existed in the past, and we don't know what has existed in the future, and this is good.  Belief in contingency creates the spirit of exploration.  God created the universe out of his own fullness and infinite creativity, and we can't guess what will be in the universe anymore we can guess the life and character of God aside from his revelation of it to us.  If there’s infinite diversity in infinite combinations, it exists as created mirror of God’s own plentitude.  (It’s all in Aquinas, folks.)  

That's why I love the IDIC.  I think it's hopeful and I think it's true, and I think keeping a firm grip on the contingency of all things is one of the ways (and one of the best ways for me personally) to keep a firm on wonder, and thence, gratitude.  In a different way, I also love the kind of pluralism I see in Trek, and especially in DS9 because it seeks to be true to that diversity, and if Christianity isn't the answer, that's not a terrible way to go.

DS9 showcases this more than the other series because that series--more than any other one--is genuinely interested in religion and faith and not giving pat answers and explanations to the mysteries thereof.  But in that series, we see the Bajoran faith depicted more than any other.  They believe in the Prophets, their own celestial guardians, who occasionally send them messengers and help in various forms through the Orbs.  In other words, DS9 takes for granted that the Prophets exist and there is some part of Bajoran religion that is genuinely true.  In the first few episodes its fairly obvious that there's some scorn from the mostly secular Federation about the notion that these "wormhole aliens" might actually be of genuine religious significance.  Throughout the series, it seems somewhat unlikely that the Prophets desire to be worshiped, but genuinely true that they are beings not quite limited by the temporal order who are genuinely interested in helping and intervening in Bajoran life.  Not too bad.  They aren't all-powerful, but they are certainly beneficent.

But the Bajoran way isn't the only way.  The Ferengi "Divine Treasury" (Ferengi heaven) is an object of real concern and apparently a real object, as is the Klingon Sto-vo-kor.  Worf, a Klingon, is unable to grieve the death of his wife Jadzia (even though she's Trill, not Klingon) because she was murdered and thus unable to enter Sto-vo-kor.  In a 7th season story arc Worf is assisted by three non-Klingons to help complete a quest to get Jadzia into Sto-vo-kor.  And the characters all risk their lives to do it, either out of their own personal faith (as in Worf's case), or out of loyalty and love for Worf or Jadzia.

Many of the human characters spend their time puzzling at or shaking their heads at the faiths of their non-human companions, but the series itself takes that faith seriously.  Faith requires real effort and sacrifice and has real demands on people's lives.  The differences in cultures often causes problems wherein characters have to decide whether to be true to their own tradition, or their personal code of honor, or do what seems "sensible" to other characters.  Oftentimes there are clashes between civilizations, and oftentimes friendships, but the civilizations do not surrender either their diversity or their integrity to form that friendship (though it is sometimes a question whether cross-species friendship implies a loss of cultural or personal identity).  There are many hard decisions and sometimes characters (especially Worf or other Klingon characters) do things that human beings would find repellent.  One could say of the pluralism is Star Trek--"There is more than one right way, but any good way is difficult to find, and many people choose bad paths regardless of their culture's philosophy."  In other words, there may be cultural pluralism and some degree of cultural relativism, but there's not moral relativism and "anything goes" is not a feasible answer to any problem.

I need to wrap this up.  But I suppose what I would like to say is that I wish politicians and teenagers alike would think about this kind of pluralism as they try to juggle multiculturalism in the public life.  Everyone needs a tradition to help guide them to discover how to be a person of integrity, even if we decide that there are multiple ways to reach that integrity or that there are things that good people can decide to disagree on.  But to have no tradition, to have no guide, to have no reference point, to have no real deep abiding notion of integrity, humanity, or honor is just disastrous for everyone and creates a polis which is incapable of doing what is difficult in order to do what is right.  If I were going to fight any idea in the public sphere right now, I would put all my energies into fighting the notion that it is easy to do what is right, to create something good, and to solve any problems that concern whole communities.

Gamechangers, a Series

 You can think of this post as a preview.  Or perhaps a "teaser" in the sense that television writers use the word.  Or maybe even "spoilers" in the Whovian sense.  I want to write a series of posts on people, thinkers, creative artists, games, books, tv shows, movies, etc., who have functioned as "Gamechangers" for me.  Someone or something who has convinced me that the game of life (I don't mean it in a cynical way) ought to be played in a way other than I had expected.  Someone, or a thing or an idea that walked into my life and taught me something both substantial and surprising.  I do not pretend to objectivity here: I have no desire to write about the "best" or the brightest, though I imagine some of the objects of my scrutiny will be objects with universal appeal.  I am interested in writing the subjective story, though: why so and so changed my perspective--not how so and so has changed the world's perspective.

 A partial list of Gamechangers
C. S. Lewis: Master of the Mind
Walker Percy: On the Moviegoer and Lost in the Cosmos
Fantasy Writers and Religion: Mercedes Lackey and Sharon Shinn
L. E. Modsett: the Male Feminist Fantasy Author
The Nicomachean Ethics: A Good Question is Hard to Find
Thomas Aquinas and Moral Psychology
The Legend of Zelda, or "I don't play video games, I play Zelda"
Orson Scott Card and the Militaristic Universe
Star Trek and the Utopian Future
IDIC: an Attractive Vision of Pluralism (or, True Pluralism)

 As you can see, some of these things are more or less serious, and much of my concern or reason for a given choice is about how the thing or person formed my imagination as much as other aspects of my person.
 

Enneagram Side Quest Continued: Type Misidentification, 5s and 8s

    For a rather longish period of my life--from discovering the Enneagram in 11th grade until my senior year of high school I misidentified as an 8.  If you go to one popular Enneagram website (specifically, here) they have an entire section of their website devoted to type misidentification.  There are particular types that tend to confuse themselves with one another or have trouble discerning which types they are.  9s and 4s, I think, are types that have a tendency to misidentify, and women in general have a tendency to misidentify as 2s.
  I don't think it is very common for a 5 to misidentify as a 8.  Part of my trouble was that most descriptions of 5s assume introversion (although it is normally acknowledged that it is not essential for 5s to be introverted or extroverted), and I am not introverted.  The other part of the trouble was that high school was a particularly good time for me and I found myself over-identifying with my "arrow of integration".  (If you are an Enneagram newbie, "arrows of integration" is a descriptive term Enneagram theorists use to describe the pattern of natural direction of growth that "personalities" take.  If an 8 is a 5's arrow of integration, that means a healthy 5 who is learning and growing an "integrating", that is moving in the right direction in terms of identity-formation, will begin to acquire and take on the characteristics of a healthy 8.  There are also "arrows of disintegration"--meaning the habits and patterns of personality that people take on under stress or failing to deal well with stress.  5s take on the negative patterns or behaviors of 7s).
   There are worse things than over-identifying with one's "arrow of integration"--over-identifying with the good qualities one takes on when moving in a healthy direction.  Certainly there are worse things.  However, it was still unhelpful and proved to be a barrier to self-understanding.  This worked itself out in two ways primarily.  Firstly, I had a hard time coming to terms with the contemplative part of my personality.  It is only so possible for someone who is under the age of 18 to be contemplative.  Harder still for an extrovert to discover that one has inner depths or life at all, especially when I was certainly not prone to be caught up by feelings (NT all the way).  It took me until my first year of college to discover I had anything like a soul--a real inner life with thoughts and feelings that were more than just a response to my external environment.  It took me three or four years after that to discover that the contemplative life was something of a calling for me.  I have always been someone entranced by the complexities and beauties of the external world.  It was difficult to allow myself to be called away to invest in the internal world, a mirror image of God himself.
  Conceiving of myself primarily as a "doer" (as 8s are) rather than a "thinker" (as 5s most certainly are) meant pressuring myself to activity to the point of exhaustion in the name of self-development and self-actualization. I still remember the moment it occurred to me that I might be a 5 and not an 8.  It came at a moment when I knew I was doing something wrong in terms of self-actualization, but it took quite some time to move from "maybe not an 8" to "definitely a 5".
   There is something incredibly important that motivates both 5s and 8s: the desire to have power.  The way they go about the acquisition of power is very different.  One Enneagram book I read (I think it was The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective) adroitly put it: "5s believe that knowledge is power.  8s believe that power is power."  One of the chief struggles I have had is giving up the desire to know exhaustively and therefore be in control.  God was also merciful to me very early in my life in showing me that I had a choice: I could use my knowledge and insight and discernment into human personality into manipulating people into believing me and trusting me so that I could have power over them or lead in the way I wanted to.  Or, I could refuse the path of power and manipulation and choose one of service and life in the Spirit of God instead.  One was a path of dead works in which I could build a little kingdom that corresponded to my desires and visions of the way I thought things should be in the church or the world . . . it would only have been a little kingdom that would have crumbled eventually . . . but I could have tried to invest in that path.  Instead I chose the path of self-denial and trying to find out what it meant to obey the Spirit and actualize his will rather than my own.  A tricky business fraught with risk and failure . . . but ultimately it is one built with the precious metals of love and joy and peace rather that anxiety, self-will and egotistical self-determination.  But I digress.
  The other thing that really convinced me I was a 5 was a cursory read through the section on 5s in The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective .  I remember going to a bookstore (Borders, alas) on some afternoon, and reading through the chapter on 5s and saying, "This has nothing to do with me!  I must not be a 5."  I was very annoyed and walked away from it disappointed for its lack of insight.  Then I went back the next week and read the same chapter and said, "Oh, darn, this is me exactly."  I suppose sometimes it takes a while for the scales to fall from one's eyes.
    The central conviction for me at that time concerned avarice or greed.  5s always want more.  Not more money, usually--which can be confusing since that is the kind of greed that we speak of (superficially perhaps) most often.  But 5s rarely have "enough" in terms of time and knowledge and silence and space to themselves--and they think if they have more they will be able to get it right or that things will be better.  That is a part of my personality that grips me less these days, but it used to be central and driving and sometimes paralyzing.
  There is probably one other reason why I misidentified as a 5: generally speaking, our culture is hypersensitive to any sort of assertiveness or inner strength possessed by women.  If you are a "strong" woman, you must also be a "domineering" one, and if you are a natural leader, you must also be one who struggles with be controlling, manipulative, etc.  Or so much of our society is inclined to think.  I believe I was inclined to think of myself as much more aggressive and assertive than I was naturally simply because I had some natural aggression and assertiveness.  I also have a fair bit of natural courage (in the Aristotelian sense of "natural"), which I come by honestly: both of my parents, but especially my mother, have unusual amounts of courage and ability to resist what other people are doing to do what they believe to be right or just.  There were probably also some natural obstacles in my childhood that exaggerated the 8ish traits in myself.  8s are inclined to overcome challenges, but some of us get good at overcoming challenges simply because we have to and it "masquerades" so to speak as 8ish qualities.  In my case, "masquerade" is probably too harsh of a word because of how 5 characteristics and 8 characteristics are interconnected.
  I would welcome any type misidentification stories you might have.  Recently, a friend of mine realized or reasserted that he better identified with 9 than 1.  (Those INTP 9s boggle my mind!)  I can't wait to see what kind of insights he will have due to that shift.  I had hard time understanding one of my ISTJ friends until I realized she was a 1 and not a 6.