CPCBA Sermon - Who Tells the Story
In “Who Tells the Story,” Rev. Heather Schoenewolf concludes CPCBA’s journey through the book of Esther by considering how the point of view from which a story is told can reveal its deeper meaning. Written by Jews for Jews in a time of displacement and oppression, Esther is a story of survival and deliverance—and a reminder that God may be at work even when God’s presence is hidden.
Reflecting on Esther 8–9:1–19 and Esther 9:20–10:3, the sermon connects Esther’s story with a world still marked by suffering, injustice, division, and struggles for power. Even though the book never explicitly names God, its story offers a reason for hope: God is a deliverer, working through surprising people and the ordinary stuff of life, and calling us to live with hope and purpose.
As you read, consider:
How does knowing who tells a story change the way you understand its meaning?
Where have you recognized God at work only after looking back on an experience?
Where do you see people fostering division or using power at the expense of others?
What does it mean to trust that God is at work when God's presence is difficult to see?
How might believing that we are part of God's story change the way we respond to suffering and injustice?
Key Quotes from the Sermon
“God is a deliverer.”
This simple refrain is at the heart of the sermon and Heather’s reading of Esther. The story joins a larger biblical witness to a God who brings people from captivity to freedom, darkness to light, vulnerability to protection, and death to life.
“God is at work through surprising characters in favor of those cast aside by the regimes of the world.”
Throughout Esther, power does not ultimately work in the ways its holders expect. Heather points to the story as a reminder of God’s alignment with those on the margins and God’s work through unexpected people.
“Point of view lets us see the message beneath the message.”
Understanding Esther means paying attention not only to what happens, but to who tells the story and to whom it was originally told. Heather emphasizes its origins as a story told by Jews for Jews amid displacement and oppression.
“For we learn that we are not only part of the story of the wounds of the world, but we, like Esther, are a part of God’s story too.”
Esther’s story speaks to a contemporary world of suffering, injustice, and division while giving us a reason for hope and a sense of purpose within that world.
“May we trust this good news so that we might live as a people of hope and purpose, boldly declaring that God is with us too.”
Heather closes by inviting us to recognize God at work not only in extraordinary events, but through the ordinary stuff of life—and through imperfect people seeking to live faithfully.
The Sermon
All right, there is a lot going on in the chapters we read for this morning, and this sermon will not do it all justice. So read through the book of Esther in its entirety. But let us pray that God will go before us as we encounter God’s word today. Let us pray.
God of love and life, we pray that you will draw near to us, that you will open our hearts and minds to your word—not only the word that we have read this morning, but your word to us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditation on all of our hearts be acceptable to you. For you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
All right. So, I’m going to start my sermon not with words that are my own, but words that came to me through the providence of a text message from Mark Shannon yesterday. So, here we go.
How did Esther let her people know that the edict against them had been lifted?
You’re supposed to say, “How?” Okay, let’s try this again. How did Esther let her people know that the edict against them had been lifted?
She used the Susa-phone. All right.
It seems particularly fitting that we begin our reflection on these final verses of the book of Esther with some frivolity. Our Jewish siblings across millennia read and remember the entire story of Esther with great celebration.
As the Purim festival is celebrated each year, the book of Esther, known as the Megillah, is read aloud with audience participation, where folks use noisemakers or boos to drown out the name of Haman. Friends and family gather together to eat a feast, and they dress in colorful, colorful costumes, eating food with hidden filling like the sweet triangular pastry known as hamantaschen.
And these costumes and these foods help symbolize the themes of the story, themes of concealment and revelation that are all throughout the book of Esther—not only of the secret plots of human will, but also the affirmation that God is at work in the world even when God’s ways are hidden from the human eye.
Now, today we heard the conclusion of the book of Esther, and we learned that although Haman had been executed at the end of our last chapter, the edict that had gone forth from the king at Haman’s request was still in effect.
And this was well before there were, you know, text messages and social media to get the word out far and wide that the edict was being changed. And so Esther appealed to the king again. And this time, without waiting for the king to extend his golden scepter, Esther seeks permission for the Jews throughout Persia to defend themselves against any who are coming to execute the decree of Haman.
And we hear that there are two days of bloodshed, and then the edict’s hold is nullified. There’s a lot to unpack there, but we hear that the Jews are delivered from a death sentence, and Esther and Mordecai are rewarded for their bravery and their truth-telling with wealth and power and status. A festival is decreed with orders to remember and celebrate these events of deliverance every single year.
Now, every week as we have looked at this book of Esther and discerned God’s word to us, we’ve seen woven throughout this novella threads that pull characters in the story, and each one of us, in many directions.
We have been continually reminded of the forces throughout our world, our world even today, that pull us in many directions—things like social location and influence. We’ve noticed how the world structures authority often in a particular manner, aligning power with wealth, maleness, political authority.
We’ve noticed that this story reminds us that God continually overturns these worldly seats of power and aligns with those, over and over again, who are on the margins. God is at work through surprising characters in favor of those cast aside by the regimes of the world.
Today we’re going to take a look at how the message of the story is formed by who tells the story. For the deepest meaning of this text can only be learned if we look at who is telling the story and to whom.
The point of view—or I am reminded continually that the cool way to say it is POV—is a character in the story, and point of view lets us see the message beneath the message.
Now, we’ve named before that we actually do not know who wrote this story, and we’re not exactly sure of when. Scholars consider about a 200- to 500-year span of authorship as possible for this text.
But even with the unknowns of this story, everyone seems to agree that this is a story that was written by Jews for Jews, and that it was written during an extended era of displacement and oppression, where the world of our Jewish siblings was shaken, where their identity, safety, and faith was rocked to the core.
And so, with this point of view in mind, we recall that, like the biblical stories that are told and retold every year by our Jewish siblings—especially those stories that are told with traditions and meals and prayer and practices that have been handed down for generations—there is a message at the heart of every message that is the same:
God is a deliverer.
God delivers God’s people from captivity and delivers them into freedom. God delivers God’s people from hunger to fulfillment. God delivers God’s people from confusion and disorder to covenant. God delivers God’s people from darkness to light. God delivers God’s people from vulnerability to protection. God delivers God’s people from judgment to reconciliation. God delivers God’s people from a death sentence to new and abundant life.
Sound familiar?
Like Esther, we live today in a complicated and messy and hurting world. There are those who tactically try to attain authority by fostering enmity among neighbors, just as Haman did all those years ago. They wield power by decrees that exact a human toll. They use their station to try to sell lies as truth. They silence individual and communal voices based on markers of difference—things like gender and age and race and ethnicity and marital status or class. And the list goes on. We could sit here for another hour and make a list together.
And the thing is, no matter where we find ourselves in the story, as we gather today, we feel the weight of this wound. We know quite palpably that we live in a world where there is war and suffering and injustice.
We long for a way forward. We long for a way out of injustice and suffering and enmity. And we want a reason to hope and an idea of what we are to do.
And in this very small biblical book that never mentions the name of God, we actually get a glimpse of both. For we learn that we are not only part of the story of the wounds of the world, but we, like Esther, are a part of God’s story too.
The God that was worshiped by Esther, the God that we gather to worship today, is a God of love. A God who, even in hidden and surprising ways, is at work in the biggest of messes that humanity makes.
God is a deliverer.
Delivering people even today from captivity to freedom and hunger to fulfillment, confusion to covenant, darkness to light, vulnerability to protection, judgment to reconciliation, hate to love, death to life.
God is a God of love, reigning over us, at work in our world and our lives today.
One rabbi, a contemporary rabbi, writes this:
“The story of Purim conveys a powerful theological statement that experiencing God’s miracles does not lie exclusively in the realm of the prophets, the priests, and supernatural miracles. The book of Esther portrays a hidden manifestation of God, inspiring us to have faith that God is ever present in the world even when that doesn’t seem obvious.”
May we who gather today and who will soon approach this table of grace give thanks for the truth that God is at work in the world today through us, through the meal we are about to receive, and through the ordinary stuff of life like bread and water and imperfect people trying to do our best.
May we trust this good news so that we might live as a people of hope and purpose, boldly declaring that God is with us too.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
