“Women hold up half the sky”

Karen Sloan 04/10/2020

Readings - Book Esther 4:5-17, Helen Reddy - “I am Women” (video)

Esther 4:5-17

5Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why. 6Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, 7and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews.8Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther, explain it to her, and charge her to go to the king to make supplication to him and entreat him for her people. 9Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said.10Then Esther spoke to Hathach and gave him a message for Mordecai, saying, 11“All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—all alike are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden scepter to someone, may that person live. I myself have not been called to come in to the king for thirty days.” 12When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, 13Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, 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.” 15Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, 16“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.”17Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

Helen Reddy – “I am Women”  (video)

Today I want to talk about women, you might have guessed that from what has gone before.  Women, who hold up half the sky, but for many centuries have lacked a voice in so many areas, including the church.

Women can model friendship and relationships, in ways that are different than men, and, in many cases, it is a model that is life giving, inclusive and healing.  I am sure we know particular women who support  and share with one another and with us, through the ups and downs of our messy, chaotic, sorrow and joy filled lives.  Who look after children, parents, neighbours in both good and bad times.  

I have always known this and seen it first hand on the golf course. Don’t laugh, I thought I might write a book about this.   I had played this sport with men ever since I was at Uni but only recently have I found some girls friends to play with.  When I play with men, it’s about the game, the stroke, the backswing, the putt. When I play with women it’s about life, their sons and daughters, husband and parents, it’s about the struggles of working and raising a family and the joys of being out in the sunshine. Ah the difference is striking! My golf game reflects a focus on relationships and interconnectedness that women can display naturally. I don’t want to enforce any stereotypes, just that we all have our differences, and they should be celebrated not condemned.

Yet historically women’s voices have not been heard.  Men were the gate keepers, the rule makers, the intellectuals and the power brokers. Even friendship was the highest calling of men. And as the God of love was replaced by the God of judgement and sin and Jesus became Lord during the Christian middle ages, the women’s voice was lost. The voice and outlook that somehow is different than men and brings something altogether different to the table.

It was interesting last week to hear Marion recount the interview Ahn Dodid with Father Bob, as that interview also had a profound effect on me.

The moment that spoke to me, luckily a different moment that Marion, was when Father Bob compared the father church to the mother church.  While he felt the father church was about rules and regulations, beliefs and doctrines, the mother church opened her arms and invited people in.  Come as you are mother church would say. It was a critical observation by him.  

The divine presence is neither male not female, but the voices of women reflect a presence that gives life and does not take it away. Is it closer to the spirit of God pervading all of creation, that transforms rather than judges? Maybe.  Just listen to some of the female mystics, we heard the music of one today, Hildegard of Bingen, who saw God as being closer than her own breath, a lover rather than a judge. “All living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance, emerging from God like the rays of the sun”, she cries out.

Now while I think Father Bob may have been too simplistic, or maybe he was speaking from bitter experience, it reflects how the voice of women in the church over the centuries has been squashed and hidden. And not just historically but today, even in our 21stcentury so called advanced society.  I so remember meeting a woman at a conference a few years ago who was an Anglican priest, but unable to lead the church in Dongara because of their views on women priests. Really!!!  Rules and regulations instead of inclusion and acceptance.  Father church instead of mother church.

But this is not quite the story we have in the bible, in both the Old and New Testaments.  While church history is awash with the disappearance of the role of women, the voice of women is quite central in the scriptures.  Look at the women in the Hebrew bible, look at the voice of wisdom or Sophia, a female presence found with God since before creation and reflected in the wisdom literature.  And what about the books about women, some in the main parts of the bible and some in the apocrypha.  And in the New Testament, while there have been ways to discredit the women, they remain strong voices, the Marys, Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of Jesus. Father church has depicted them as mild mannered or worse still in Mary Magdalene’s case a fallen woman without creditability. Yet we know both were close to Jesus and inspired him to act for God. You only have to hear the “Magnificat” to get that picture.  His mother was a trail blazer.

So, this series of 4 sermons are going to be unapologetically about women from our scriptures.  Stories that are there to inspire, comfort and lead us to be better than we are.  Lead us to examine our own ways of being in the world making change. And they shouldn’t just inspire women but men also.

So, the first one is from the Jewish scriptures and is about Esther.  We heard the 4thchapter today, but I encourage you to read the whole book. It was written maybe around 486-465 BCE, based on information about Persian kings and while much of the detail about the political and power games are true for the time we don’t really know the actual truth of the story.  Perhaps it’s what we today might say is historical fiction. But there is so much truth in the book regardless. Even if Martin Luther hated it, followers of the Jewish faith love it and Esther, celebrating her great deeds with a festival every year. the annual festival of Purim.  It celebrates the courage of Esther – also known by her Hebrew name, Hadassah – in saving her people.

The book of Esther deals largely with the secular world, and hardly mentions God.  God is not seen as doing much, rather Esther, as a person of faith, driven by her compassion for her people does the heavy lifting.. 

In this it reminds me of the wisdom literature, which focuses on how we are to live. Think of Job, and Ecclesiastics and James in the New Testament.

I have picked her, because as someone said, we are at a time and place when leadership is so very important. Leadership that stands up and calls forth the great attributes of our faith, love, commitment, compassion and courage, and does not seek to talk about things but to do things, to act for others.  

Esther leads, but not in a typical power over kind of way.  She couldn’t because she did not have the power or the desire to do it that way, being an ethnic and religious minority and a women, which at most times was seen as a chattel and not a real person. She give us a different example of leadership when we are without power. One we could do with today.

So let’s look at the story more closely….

Let me read the description in Joan Chittister's book, “The Friendship of Women” – p 33-35.

“Esther, a young Jewish woman, after having been chosen as queen by the gentile King Ahasuerus, found herself torn between assuring her own safety in a palace poised to destroy all the Jews in the kingdom, and using her position for the sake of the survival of her people.

Esther lived in an autocratic world where the king ruled by fiat, where his last queen had been deposed for not obeying his orders, and where the chief minister who had engineered the royal decree calling for the extinction of the Jewish community in the kingdom was rabidly anti-Semitic.

To be on the wrong side of a patriarchal, oppressive system such as this meant that to fight it, a person had to be prepared either to wage war or to face death. Esther could not wage war, and the death of errant women was already far too common….

When Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, appealed to her for help, she sent the start and simple message we heard in the reading….She couldn’t if she did not risk death.

When Mordecai heard her reply, he responded by challenging her, ”Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more that all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from anther quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish.  Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just a time as this”.

And so she did.  She decided to go the the king, and if she perishes then she perishes…

Then Esther did a man’s job a women’s way. She did not seek power over the opposition. Instead she set out to make the king her friend.  She sought the co-operation it takes to change oppression, rather than simply thwart it. She exposed the plot that planned to wipe out all Jews from the kingdom, she sought the king’s understanding, she gained his support.  She demonstrated the damage that would be done to the king himself if such an inhumane act were carried out under his seal of approval. Finally, she integrated Jews into the very court that was going to destroy them, and in this way, she changed the society without either destroying or dividing it.”

We have so many different views of leadership in our world at the moment.  Some focus on power and might, and authority, wage wars and exclude to weaken the opposition. Which lies and cheats and belittles. And bullies.

But there are others who attempt to take along everyone, so that all are included, particularly the poor. Leadership which focuses on the wellbeing of the other, at the expense sometimes of their own.  

And leadership that does not worry if they are the discriminated group, that they are in the group that is not listened to, that is actively ignored or that has no rights.  Sometimes the best leaders are the ones with no power, because they are the ones that really understand.  And find a voice for the many. As Joan Chittister says, in favour of those even more powerless than they.

Where do we get  examples of this type of leadership from? Perhaps we could look no further than Esther for our inspiration.  

Or to many others we have never heard of (thankyou Joan Chittister for many of these examples listed below)

To Queen Boudicca in 60 CE who led a revolt against the Romans that almost drove them out of Britain, Empress Theodora in the 6thcentury who closed the brothels of Byzantium and led the fight against the imprisonment of prostitutes while the men they served went free. Or a women like Hypatia, a women in 350 CE  who stood up to the men of her day, became an incredible mathematician, philosopher and astronomer and was killed for her troubles or Trotula a physician of the medical school of Salerno in 1000 CE who began one of the earliest studies of gynaecology. 

Teresa of Avila reformed religious life, as did Hildegard of Bingen in the 11thcentury. Emily Pankhurst brought the attention of the world to a women’s right to vote in our more recent history.  Mother Jones organised women workers and developed an entire labour movement.  Dorothy Day led the catholic worker movement.  Simone de Beauvoir brought the world to understand the nature of structural oppression, while Betty Friedan ignited the emergence of second wave feminism. And what about Fanny Mendelson in the 19thcentury who wrote beautiful music under the name of her brother Felix because no one thought that women were capable of being that creative . Fanny wrote over 460 pieces of music, including a piano trio and several books of solo piano works many of which have been found recently.

 But there are other women so much closer to our own time and place. 

We could look no further that the recently deceased Ruth Bader Ginsberg. A woman of immense faith who used it as a motivation to make positive change, not only for women but for other marginalised groups, even though she was subjected to much discrimination herself.  She spoke up for those discriminated against and to support those without a say in their own country using the law as her tool. 

And Susan Ryan here in Australia, one of the first female labour cabinet ministers and also a voice for change and the rights of women in particular.  What about the female leaders around the world, who stand up to be counted even at great cost to themselves and their families. In NZ, Germany and other places. Who stand up for those marginalised on a global scale.

Even in the music industry there have been trail blazers. Helen Reddy’s song – "I am women" which started a revolution, and which I couldn’t help but play. When she won her Grammy for the song, Reddy thanked God, and thought she would be very pleased. 

My two young female Muslim friends , studying for PhDs, who spoke to many of the progressive network people last week.  They were open, articulate and feisty. Talking about interfaith and peace and the future for us all, a future they will be active participants in.  Or the young women leading the climate crisis movement, part of the environmental movement or the movement to protect and empower other women. I think of my friend Lisa involved at the highest level in public health and in the understanding and prevention of homelessness, or Rose, a senior OT and a leader in burns treatment. Regardless of what you think of Julia Gillard, since she left politics she has been doing great things in the areas of education and empowering young women to better the world.  

What about our Ashley, starting a PhD on peace studies in NZ, or one of our extended family members up in Broome doing work for the conservation council.

I am sure you can think of women in your own lives, young and not so young, who are leaders in your family, in your community or wider afield.  

 Women lead, and have led since the dawn of time, the problem is that many of those leaders are unknown to us.  But not Esther. In our scriptures, there are many female leaders, we just have to look. And because the church has spent a long time hiding them, we need to celebrate and reclaim them. Women’s voices are to be heard, as they contribute to the voice of all of humanity not just one section of it.

The story of Esther spoke to people in her time and place and speaks to us today. This type of leadership spoke to people then and speaks to people today.  This type of leadership speaks to both women and men.

Leadership that empowers, encourages, sacrifices and includes.  

For times such as these!

 We have started with Esther, but there is more to come.

Amen

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