This Sunday promises to be an interesting sermon. We are now wading into some pretty troublesome waters with the Book of Esther. Yes, I know it is Palm Sunday but this church doesn't go for celebrating holidays much for some reason. It sure is a strange way to do church, that's for sure, coffee and donuts during the service, get up and help yourself, make yourself comfortable. Make yourself comfortable so you can turn your brain off?
In Chapter 3, Esther is now Queen of Persia and her kinsman and legal guardian Mordecai has just gotten himself into hot water with this dude named (everyone get their noisemakers out now!) Haman. He won't bow down to (make a lot of noise here) and this makes (more loud noise) pissed off. So pissed off that he wants to kill ALL the Jews, not just Mordecai. So he goes to the King and says, did you know that there is a people living inside the boundaries of your empire that has their own set of rules and customs and they won't play along with everyone else? No, says the King. Why that is awful! So they cook up a plan to get rid of all these troublesome people.
Now an interesting bit of history. The man whose name can't be heard because of the uproar is a descendant of a group of people that God, through the prophet Samuel, told King Saul of Israel to wipe out, men, women and children. And all their animals too. But Saul shows some of them mercy. Well, doesn't the Good Book say "Blessed are the merciful?" Whoops. Wrong Testament. Hadn't been written yet. So Samuel gets on his case about it, tells him he can't be king anymore, because he isn't a man after God's own heart like David who is waiting in the wings and oh, by the way "Obedience is better than sacrifice." Whenever you hear that phrase remember the context. And what order it was that was disobeyed. Too bad they didn't buy that line at Nuremberg--"we were just following orders."
So I guess the moral of the story is that if God commands you to do genocide, you'd better follow through and do exactly as He says and don't leave a single soul alive to tell the tale and pass it down the generations. Wipe them all out. As the Army officer said when asked why he killed Native American women and children at the massacre at Sand Creek, "Nits make lice." He knew what was at stake. And never forget that the American myth is that God gave this land to His people, that America is the new Israel, manifest destiny and all that. Back in the 19th century it was not only acceptable but fashionable to speak of exterminating the Natives who were here first. They just couldn't make up their minds how to do it--whether by direct means like shooting or indirect means like "forgetting" to ship food and other supplies to reservations. But they didn't wipe them all out--and now they are taking revenge by opening casinos all over the place.
The Bible talks of the nations who inhabited the Promised Land and who were supposed to be wiped out. Here in the United States they go by the names Shawnee, Nez Perce, Sioux, Cheyenne, Pottawatomi, Ottawa, Fox, Apache, Navajo, Seminole, Creek, Cherokee, Ojibwa, Mohican, Iroquois, and more, many more. The Trail of Tears. The Trail of Death. The Long Walk. We don't talk about these things on Sundays. But the road outside my church is the road the Pottawatomi walked to their new "homes" in Oklahoma. There is a fountain in the city park that has recently become the subject of controversy because of its design--a Native American in feathered headdress grappling a rifle held by a white settler. The settler is higher than the Native, showing that he is winning. The artist who designed it back in the 1930's said he did so because he wanted people to remember where this land came from. His was a subversive act. Both figures are somewhat stylized so if you aren't looking closely you won't recognize them but once you do, it stands out.
Hmm, maybe it's a good thing Pastor doesn't allow women to preach!
In Chapter 3, Esther is now Queen of Persia and her kinsman and legal guardian Mordecai has just gotten himself into hot water with this dude named (everyone get their noisemakers out now!) Haman. He won't bow down to (make a lot of noise here) and this makes (more loud noise) pissed off. So pissed off that he wants to kill ALL the Jews, not just Mordecai. So he goes to the King and says, did you know that there is a people living inside the boundaries of your empire that has their own set of rules and customs and they won't play along with everyone else? No, says the King. Why that is awful! So they cook up a plan to get rid of all these troublesome people.
Now an interesting bit of history. The man whose name can't be heard because of the uproar is a descendant of a group of people that God, through the prophet Samuel, told King Saul of Israel to wipe out, men, women and children. And all their animals too. But Saul shows some of them mercy. Well, doesn't the Good Book say "Blessed are the merciful?" Whoops. Wrong Testament. Hadn't been written yet. So Samuel gets on his case about it, tells him he can't be king anymore, because he isn't a man after God's own heart like David who is waiting in the wings and oh, by the way "Obedience is better than sacrifice." Whenever you hear that phrase remember the context. And what order it was that was disobeyed. Too bad they didn't buy that line at Nuremberg--"we were just following orders."
So I guess the moral of the story is that if God commands you to do genocide, you'd better follow through and do exactly as He says and don't leave a single soul alive to tell the tale and pass it down the generations. Wipe them all out. As the Army officer said when asked why he killed Native American women and children at the massacre at Sand Creek, "Nits make lice." He knew what was at stake. And never forget that the American myth is that God gave this land to His people, that America is the new Israel, manifest destiny and all that. Back in the 19th century it was not only acceptable but fashionable to speak of exterminating the Natives who were here first. They just couldn't make up their minds how to do it--whether by direct means like shooting or indirect means like "forgetting" to ship food and other supplies to reservations. But they didn't wipe them all out--and now they are taking revenge by opening casinos all over the place.
The Bible talks of the nations who inhabited the Promised Land and who were supposed to be wiped out. Here in the United States they go by the names Shawnee, Nez Perce, Sioux, Cheyenne, Pottawatomi, Ottawa, Fox, Apache, Navajo, Seminole, Creek, Cherokee, Ojibwa, Mohican, Iroquois, and more, many more. The Trail of Tears. The Trail of Death. The Long Walk. We don't talk about these things on Sundays. But the road outside my church is the road the Pottawatomi walked to their new "homes" in Oklahoma. There is a fountain in the city park that has recently become the subject of controversy because of its design--a Native American in feathered headdress grappling a rifle held by a white settler. The settler is higher than the Native, showing that he is winning. The artist who designed it back in the 1930's said he did so because he wanted people to remember where this land came from. His was a subversive act. Both figures are somewhat stylized so if you aren't looking closely you won't recognize them but once you do, it stands out.
Hmm, maybe it's a good thing Pastor doesn't allow women to preach!
