Worship
Service for October 20, 2024
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Sometimes we wonder how we have gotten
through some difficult situations.
P: God has been with us, lifting and
comforting our spirits.
L: We struggle and worry.
P: God’s loving presence sustains and
strengthens us.
L: Although God may be silent in so many
ways, God is there..
P: We will listen for God’s voice in the
people around us and in moments of clarity.
L: Lord, we are listening and seeking Your
guidance.
P: Let us worship God!
Opening Hymn – Lead On, O King Eternal #447/724
Prayer of Confession
Patient Lord, we know that You
call us to service, but we often feel inadequate and wonder if it is really
Your voice. We love to make excuses for
not doing something or for doing something only half-heartedly. Remind us again of Your loving and guiding
presence. In Jesus Christ, You show us
that You are on the side of all people, but never at the expense of the weakest
among us. Forgive us when we try to
hoard You for ourselves and try to control who has access to Your love. Forgive us when our greed, our control, and
our scandals keep others from knowing You.
Forgive us when we stumble and falter.
Redeem us and transform us, O God.
Open our hearts, our lives, and our ministries, serving You joyfully and
confidently. In Jesus’ name, we pray. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: People of God, you are the hands and feet
of our Lord. Your spirit of love and
confidence gives hope to others.
Remember that the Lord is always with you.
P: We
give thanks to God for God’s presence in our lives. AMEN.
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the virgin Mary; suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead: He ascended into heaven and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy
catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Lord, With your breath you call all things into being. It is at Your hand that we are here. It is at Your urging that we have come to
this place. It is Your Holy Spirit
speaking to our spirit that gathers us in this room. We have come to worship, to bow down, to
listen to Your Word spoken, sung, and prayed.
We do so, because You have called us out by name, after you made us as
companions for you and each other. As we
worship this day, help us also feel your presence among us. We are often locked into our own little
worlds and give too little thought to all that you have done, not only for us
individually, but for the good of the earth, your whole creation. The creation that you gave to us, not as an
end in itself, but rather for us to till and keep your sacred garden which we
call our home.
Make us mindful that the persons in this room today are as close to us
as our own families. Make us aware and
sensitive to their needs and hurts, their sufferings and pain, as you are aware
of ours. Remind us that we are indeed
our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers.
Because of that we lift up in prayer to you our most cherished loved
ones…
As we care for one another and have lifted up their concerns in
prayer, we also ask that in this time of silence you listen to the beatings of
our own heart and know what lies within.
Hear our prayers, O God.
Help us live unto you and to your most precious Son, who came to give
us life. And in his name, we pray his
prayer together…… Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy
name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. Give us this day our daily
bread. And forgive us our debts, as we
forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn – Rejoice
Ye Pure in Heart #145
Blue
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Esther 4:1-17
Second Scripture Reading – Ephesians
2:1-10
Sermon – The Hidden God
(based on the Book of Esther)
The
story of Esther begins when the king of Persia throws two elaborate banquet
feasts, all for the grandiose purpose of displaying his greatness and splendor.
On the last day of the feast, the king
is drunk and demands that his wife, Queen Vashti, appear at the party to show
off her beauty. She refuses, and, in a
drunken rage, the king deposes Vashti as Queen and holds a beauty pageant to
find a new queen.
Here
is where we are introduced to Esther and Mordecai. Esther hides her Jewish identity and poses as
a Persian, and she wins the pageant. The
king is so obsessed with Esther that he elevates her as the new queen of
Persia. After this, Mordecai, her uncle,
overhears two royal guards plotting to murder the king. He informs Esther, who then tells the king,
and Mordecai gets credit for saving the king’s life.
We’re
then introduced to Haman, who’s not a Persian but an Agagite, a descendant of
the ancient Canaanites. The king
elevates Haman to the highest position in the kingdom and demands that all
kneel before him. But when Mordecai sees
Haman, he refuses to kneel. Haman is
filled with rage. When Haman finds out
that Mordecai is Jewish, he successfully persuades the king to enact a decree
to destroy all the Jews. They decide the
date of this horrific day by having Haman roll dice, and the decree is set. Eleven months later, on the 13th of Adar, all
the Jews will be executed. Haman and the king throw a party to celebrate the
decree.
Mordecai
and Esther are now the only hope for the Jewish people. They plan for Esther to
reveal her Jewish identity to the king and ask that he reverse the decree. But there’s risk involved because approaching
the king without a royal request was an act worthy of death, according to
Persian law. At a crucial moment in the
story, Mordecai asserts that if Esther remains silent, “deliverance for the
Jews will arise from another place.” Then
he wonders aloud, “Who knows, maybe you’ve become queen for this very moment!” Esther responds with bravery, “If I perish, I
perish,” and she decides to approach the king.
Esther
hosts the king and Haman at a banquet, where she makes a special request that
they both come to an even more exclusive banquet the next day. Haman leaves the feast quite drunk and happy
with himself, and he sees Mordecai in the street. When Mordecai doesn’t bow, Haman fumes with
anger and orders that a tall stake be built, so that Mordecai can be impaled
upon it in the morning.
That
night, by chance or coincidence or another turn of divine providence we might
assume at this point in the story, the king can’t sleep, so he has the royal
chronicles read to him. He hears again the
story of how Mordecai saved the king’s life from the plot of the guards. The king had totally forgotten about it! So in the morning, just as Haman enters to
request Mordecai’s execution, the king orders Haman to honor Mordecai publicly
for saving his life. Haman then has to
lead Mordecai about the city on a royal horse. This reversal forms a turning point in the
story. The next day, Esther hosts the
second banquet. The king and Haman
arrive, and Esther informs the king of her Jewish identity. Then she reveals that Haman’s decree is a ploy
to murder her and Mordecai, the man who saved the king’s life! After taking in a lot of wine and Esther’s
news, the king goes into a drunken rage (notice how many of those you find in
this story). He orders that Haman be
impaled on the very stake he made for Mordecai.
But
Haman’s execution doesn’t solve the problem of the decree to kill all the Jews.
When Mordecai and Esther discover that
the king can’t revoke a decree he’s already made, Mordecai is commissioned to
issue a counter-decree. On the day when
all the Jewish people were to be killed, the people can now defend themselves
and destroy any who plotted to kill them. After this, Mordecai, Esther, and Jewish
people everywhere hold banquets and feasts to celebrate the new decree. Most surprising of all, Mordecai is elevated
to a seat beside the king.
Eventually,
the decreed day comes, and the Jews triumph over their enemies. First, they destroy Haman’s family along with
any other Persian officials who had joined Haman’s plot. The next day, the Jewish people are allowed to
destroy anyone who plotted against them. This is followed by great joy and celebration
because the Jewish people have been rescued from annihilation.
The
story then tells how Esther and Mordecai establish another decree. This great reversal and rescue will be
memorialized by an annual two-day feast called Purim, named after Haman’s
fateful dice. The book concludes with a
short epilogue. Mordecai is elevated to
second-in-command in the kingdom, and we’re told of his royal greatness and
splendor as the Jews thrive in exile.
Let
me reread the pivotal moment in the story when Mordecai turns to Esther and
says, “Do not think 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 family will perish.
Who knows? Perhaps you have come to
royal dignity for just such a time as this.”
And Esther’s response, “Go, gather all
the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor
drink for three days, night or day. I
and my maids will also fast as you do.
After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I
perish, I perish.”
I’ve been intrigued by the story of
Esther for a long time. It has always
held some fascination for me and years ago I found the lessons from the Book of
Esther to be fairly straightforward. In
the past I’ve preached that the Book of Esther teaches us that – God has a
special plan for your life. Look at
Esther, she was just an orphan who won a beauty contest to become Queen who
ends up saving her people from death. I
used to preach that the Book of Esther teaches us that sometimes it’s important
to take risks. The only way that Esther
was able to save her people was by risking the wrath of the King to gain his
trust and allow her to make her request.
I used to preach that this story teaches us that the time of action is
always now – “for such a time as this.”
And finally, Esther’s extraordinary tale in the scriptures teaches us that
trusting in God completely brings about great reward for those who follow God’s
will. It’s a great story, full of
intrigue and coincidences that turn out to be more than just a nice tale – they
spin the whole salvation of a people on one story.
Last year, I went with a friend of mine
to Prague. While we were there we
visited the Jewish Quarter and Ghetto.
At the main synagogue there was a museum. Part of the exhibit included the story of
Esther. As you know from the story, the
people of Israel were in exile in Persia.
This was an extension of their earlier Babylonian exile after King
Darius conquered Babylon. They had come
to assume that this was a permanent exile, that they’d never return home as
they had been gone for about 70 years.
Esther was an orphan whose birth name
was Hadassah, a fairly common Jewish name for girls. But in order to conceal her identity as a
Jew, she became known as Esther, a more common Babylonian and Persian name
meaning “love” in Babylonian after Ishtar the goddess of love and in Persian –
astara meaning “star”. But as I learned at
this museum, in Hebrew it means, “I am hidden.”
I had never hear that. In order
to hide her identity as a Jew, her very name became “I am hidden”.
But, as I reflected on that in the
museum and for quite some time afterward, I began seeing other connections and
other lessons to this story from the Book of Esther.
How many of you have actually read the
Book of Esther? Not a synopsis or a
condensed version like I told this morning and not the version of it done by
the Sight and Sound theater, but actually read it. If you have, you might find one thing very
surprising. It is the only book in the
Bible that doesn’t mention God. How
could a book of the Bible not mention God?
Well, here’s where some history is
important. And I don’t mean to burst
your bubble about our Holy Scriptures, BUT they didn’t come down to earth
directly from God written by God’s hand.
Each book or portions of books within the Bible were written by human
hands. Over time, councils of the church,
or other human beings, have gotten together and said, “This writing is
holy. This is the Word of God.” Beginning as early as the 5th
Century before Christ for books from the Old Testament and leading all the way
up to the 16th Century, councils have debated and struggled with
each book that we include as Holy Scripture or the Bible. They fought for and against various books and
various versions, keeping some, rejecting others. If you’ve ever heard of the Apocrypha, you’ll
know that our Protestant Bible is a bit different from the Catholic Bible as
they include certain books that we do not.
Because of this, the Presbyterian Church believes that the Bible is
God’s inspired word. The God had a guiding,
influential hand in it, in each of the stories, lessons, words, and its
entirety of writing, in each and every council that met to bring about the book
we call the Bible, but we do not go so far as to say that it is without error –
as seen from last week’s sermon on Mary and how scribes taking one manuscript
and re-writing or copying it, may have changed certain things that they didn’t
like or things that didn’t make sense to them or they found confusing or wanted
to make it seem less confusing. Human
hands were involved in each re-writing of the texts, so we must leave some room
for error. Thankfully, these kinds of
things are rare, isolated, and unique, can be tested against other copies, or
other writings of history, etc… It has
been a work undergone by hundreds if not thousands of people for centuries. And one that demands devotion to its study
and to its purpose as being divinely genuine.
Why do I mention this? It’s because the Book of Esther is one of the
books that has been debated more than others.
It wasn’t until the Council of Trent in 1546 that the Book of Esther was
officially and formally canonized as permanently part of Holy Scripture. That was less than 500 years ago. The Book of Esther is still under scrutiny as
to whether it should be included as Holy Scripture for the largest part because
it doesn’t mention God in it and second when they discovered the Dead Sea
Scrolls in Qumran in 1946, which included the oldest surviving manuscripts of every
book of the Old Testament, except for the Book of Esther.
The fact that God is not mentioned in
Esther and Esther’s own name means “I am hidden” made me do a whole lot more
thinking about this book. Don’t we all
do most of our living with God being hidden from us? Aren’t most of our stories devoid of
mentioning God in them? Don’t we spend a
majority of our prayer life and devotional time seeking after God, particularly
when God is silent or hidden? And yet,
in that very struggle of finding God, of hearing God speak, of being faithful
to God who is not always clear to us, does it make the struggle any less worthy? Does God’s silence make God non-existent? No, in fact, sometimes in hindsight, we see
the work of God’s hand even more clearly.
Sometimes, in hindsight, we see coincidences as divine, as God moving
the puzzle pieces together for us, when we couldn’t even see the picture.
So, this book of Esther has become, for
me, an even more inspiring book, an even more divine book, one that mirrors our
own life stories. So, now I have
different lessons that this book of Esther is teaching me.
Lesson One is that Esther’s hidden
identity is the human parallel to God when God’s purpose is hidden from us,
which is only revealed when the time is right, when the circumstance warrants
it, when all the pieces are in the right place.
Another lesson I’m learning from God’s
hidden presence in the Book of Esther, when the presence of Jews within the
kingdom of Persia were knowingly or unknowingly hidden from the King, from
Esther’s purposeful life to hold the King to his word of protection – I’m
learning that no one should be overlooked, that no one should be hidden from
sight, that all people demand respect.
And finally for me, the biggest lesson
is that the Book of Esther has taught me that everyone should be given the
opportunity to find that moment in life when you realize your calling to become
who you were meant to be. That the
hidden God, who plays in the shadows, who is just beyond the bend, or on the
other side of a situation, or the one who is silent in hearing our prayers,
silent when we think we need God the most, is indeed at work putting all the
pieces together for us for any number of reasons. But mainly for you to realize that you were
indeed born “for such a time as this” at all times of your life!
Thanks
be to God.
AMEN
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Giving God, make us into a people who
celebrate Your goodness, drawing others into the celebration of Your many
blessings. Receive our offerings today
as You transform them into the mystery of Your reign here and now on
earth. In the name of Jesus, Your
greatest gift. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us #688 Brown
Benediction –
Friends, when God is hidden God is still doing extraordinary
things. Watch and Listen! Go and proclaim the good news, go and be the
good news to others. AMEN.
Postlude
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