CPCBA Sermon - Where Do You Stand?

In “Where Do You Stand?”, Rev. Heather Schoenewolf continues CPCBA’s journey through the book of Esther, exploring the ways influence can be used to protect power, spread harm, speak truth, and seek justice.

The sermon reflects on Esther 2:19–3:15 and Esther 4:1–17, focusing especially on Haman, Mordecai, and Esther and the very different kinds of influence each one holds.

As you read, consider:

• Who or what has the greatest influence on the way you see the world?

• How do fear, hope, experience, and bias shape the way you respond to others?

• Where do you have influence in your family, workplace, church, or community?

• Does the way you use your voice help cultivate justice, peace, and love?

• How might God be calling you to pay closer attention to those whose voices are harder to hear?

The Sermon

I have to say, when I started working on these sermons, I thought, “Why didn’t we do 10 weeks for this series?” Because there is so much going on. So, let us approach this word first through prayer.

Let us pray.

God of love, you assure us that your word points us to your living Word that took on flesh and dwelt among us in Christ Jesus. And so we beseech you that your Holy Spirit will open our eyes and ears and hearts and minds to your word for us, that we might recognize and heed your redemptive power at work in this text, at work in our lives, and at work in this world.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation on all of our hearts be acceptable to you, Almighty God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

So, the word “influencer,” it turns out, showed up in an English dictionary first in the mid-1600s. I think it was 1648 or something thereabouts. But it will come as no surprise to those of us sitting here that a new definition was added in 2019.

With the rapid rise of social media, the term “influencer” expanded to serve as a title for those who would generate their own social media content about anything from product reviews to political analysis and anything in between. And frankly, I’ve noticed that a shocking amount of influencers are either influencing us from the driver’s seat of a car—I don’t know what that means—or as they’re putting on cosmetics, even if they’re talking about global politics.

Now, this role has permeated our society, so much so that just last week ABC News reported that Arizona State University is launching a new major offering a bachelor’s degree in content creation through its Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

We can’t help but speculate what Walter Cronkite would think of news being delivered through the channels through which news comes in this day. But we cannot help but be filled with awe, and perhaps an equal part of trepidation, when we consider the pace and mechanism through which influence is disseminated throughout our world.

But as we take a look at the book of Esther, we see that strategic content creation by self-appointed influencers is really nothing new. Without the ease of smartphones or social media, individuals of varied social stations have shaped societies and determined the futures of many by wielding whatever influence they have through whatever channels are available to them.

And so today in our verses, we get a tale of two men, Mordecai and Haman, positioned in our narrative as polar opposites. But in fact, they are also situated as rivals who are shaped by the lives of their ancestors, who unseated kings and destroyed bloodlines well before they were born.

The text doesn’t tell us this outright, but we are reminded that Haman was an Agagite, and it was his bloodline that unseated Benjamin and destroyed the authority of Mordecai’s ancestors.

Now, we do not know the extent to which this inherited bias of their upbringing is influencing the interactions between these two men. But we see that Haman continues to extend an influence that reflects the excesses of the king. And we see that these biases that have shaped generations of ancestors are informing and setting the social stage with which the drama that unfolds before us plays out.

Haman receives a promotion from the king for no apparent reason, while Mordecai, who finds out about a plot to assassinate the king, ends up with a death sentence.

Mordecai refuses to bow down under Haman’s authority by royal decree. And Haman then convinces the king to permit him to punish not only Mordecai, but all of his people for Mordecai’s refusal to bend to his authority.

The king hands Haman his own signet ring, allowing him to literally be the voice of the king, as Haman goes forth and plans a genocide with the roll of a die.

Did you catch all of that in these words this morning?

Now, we see that each of these men wield influence in different ways. And these verses encapsulate for us the power of their influence.

Haman wields influence by bending the king’s ear. He has the power of his station that comes not only through his promotion, but by his proximity to a fickle king who is happy to let other people do his thinking.

Haman plans the future that he desires, one that is focused solely on emphasizing his own authority, securing his own power, and celebrating his own wealth that he uses to strategically influence the king who can make his authority.

So, did you get that part where he pays into the treasury for the opportunity to begin the genocide of a whole people?

Now, we also hear the story of Mordecai as the lens shifts to what is playing out beyond the king’s gates.

Mordecai does not have proximity to the king, and he does not have the wealth or the authority of his station. He, in fact, is the one at the bullseye, at the center of the target that Haman is painting with his decrees. And so he, to wield any influence over the king’s ear, must use a more roundabout approach in order to make sure that his voice is heard.

Now see, even in the earlier verses, when Mordecai learns that two of the king’s eunuchs are plotting to kill the king, he must send a message through Esther, his cousin, who continues to follow his instructions as she had since her childhood.

But as Haman’s plot thickens so that it threatens the lives of those who do not occupy the throne, Mordecai’s approach must be still more direct and strategic.

And so he takes to the street with sackcloth and ashes, along with Jews from across the provinces across the kingdom. They assume a posture of lament and distress. They demonstrate. They disrupt. They lay outside the king’s gate, wailing bitterly.

They make a scene. They get attention.

And we learn that Mordecai and others like him are crying out to be heard.

Now, word gets to Esther, who sits secure within the king’s gate. And his communications are played out through a very long game of telephone with one of Esther’s attendants.

Mordecai tells Esther, through her advisor, the backstory of what has transpired. He conveys Haman’s promised financial contribution to the royal treasury. He brings documentation of the edict. He makes his case before her.

And when Esther voices her worries that her own appeal to the king won’t work, naming that she will be killed if she approaches the king in his inner court without being extended the golden scepter, Mordecai reminds her that the fate of death will befall her too, as it will for all of her people.

Our text ends with a cliffhanger of sorts, kind of the ones that sort of end a chapter in one of those old serials that would lead into a movie each week.

And the cliffhanger raises the question of whether or not Esther will be able to exert influence over the king to save not just herself, but her people.

How will she do it? Will she find a way forward that appeals to the king and maintains her own safety? Is her influence alone enough to stop the slaughter of a people and Haman’s continued rise to power?

Like last week’s text, we encounter God in this story by daring to ask questions.

The questions we ask at the end of last week’s story are germane for us here today, as power and social location remain central characters unto themselves in the story as it plays out.

But today we add another character, and that is the character of influence.

In the verses today, we see how the mechanism of influence can destroy or save, can shore up personal pleasure and power and bias and wealth. Or influence can shape the welfare of vulnerable people.

Influence can convey a harmful bias. It can perpetuate dangerous lies. Or influence can relay truth.

It can right wrongs.

It can transform cultures from a landscape of injustice to justice.

Now see, these forces of influence that shaped Esther’s world do not sound dissimilar to the forces that shape our own.

Now, in some congregational settings, I might say, “Can I get an amen?” But Mary Jo provided the amen before our story, as she shared what it means to be the church of Christ in the world today.

We can easily draw corollaries to contemporary news stories, to interpersonal biases, to personal systems of belief and attitude that shape our interactions culturally, economically, and politically today.

We can see and can name how misappropriated influence can have catastrophic results. And we can name how we are called to be mindful of this—that in our day and time, with so many channels and sources of influence, the risk for harm is multiplied exponentially.

And we all know this.

You cannot solve a conflict through a social media comment.

We have access to more information now than ever before, cultivated through algorithms that feed us what we like.

We know that AI can alter an image to make fiction look like fact. And frankly, we also know that we are mere mortals whose Darwinian impulses strive for our own social success according to the measure that we know will ensure our survival.

We are sinners in need of salvation. Our own actions are influenced by our fears, our hopes, our perspectives, whether they are flawed or not.

The verses of our story issue a caution to people of faith in our world today. They remind us that our faith calls us to be discerning, to be humble, so that we submit to the influence of God alone.

And so we must continually ask, with humility and hope, both what is it that influences us and how is it that we influence others?

We must proceed with caution and also conviction so that we allow our call to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves to inform and form us as we discern, as we decide, and as we use our own voices.

So again this week, I offer few answers and a lot more questions.

Our role in this drama is to pay attention—to pay attention to the influences in our world that shape us today.

Who is it that has our ear? Who is it that we follow? How do we follow them?

Who do we believe and why?

And then we must ask, how do we extend our voice to influence others?

Do we engage our world in a manner that is faithful to God’s will, that furthers justice and cultivates peace and magnifies love, especially for those who are vulnerable?

Or do we move forward into this world in a way that cultivates our own gain?

And so, let us step back into this world with hearts and minds and a perspective that remains curious—curious to the forces that influence us in this culture and curious about how the Holy Spirit is at work upon us and through us.

For one thing of which we are assured throughout this text is that even when the influences of this world seem to foster disorder, decay, and destruction, God continues to influence the world for good, for love, for justice, for life, for possibility, for all.

And so may we be attentive to the power of God in our midst as we continue to engage this story and as we see how God continues to influence our story today.