Esther, James or Mark?
Esther, James or Mark?
by Rochelle Stackhouse

As I thought more about the call in James to gather with the community in prayer in time of need, I also remembered the Esther reading set for this Sunday. The problem with reading just what the lectionary has set for Esther is that it makes absolutely no sense without the whole story, which we cannot assume everyone knows. So if I want to work with this passage, I need to at least do a quick summary of the story before the scripture reading.

So Esther has a considerable challenge ahead of her: save her people from genocide, the scheduled Persian holocaust. After having protested her inadequacy to address this, she finally asks Mordecai to gather the people for fasting. And though God's name does not appear in this book, I think it is safe to say that in Jewish tradition from forever, fasting and prayer are connected, and so God is assumed.

But what really stands out here is that Esther, though Queen of Persia, reaches out to her people and asks them to become one with her, albeit from a distance, in prayer and fasting, so that she might find the courage, the wisdom and the strength to do what needs to be done. She is a witness to the power of a community at prayer, even when that prayer is done at a distance from the one in need.

So now I've traveled a bit far from my original idea about this sermon, but maybe not so far. What the disciples were trying to do in the Mark story is limiting God's power to a small in group of people, maybe the "elders." Jesus urges them not to limit the community which is at work in God's name doing "deeds of power." Esther understood this long before Jesus, and James after Jesus' death. So how do we understand this, or deny the power?

(from www.goodpreacher.com/blog/)