For Such a Time as This: Issue 1

We are starting a series of outreach letters to Alliance pastors and congregations to hear from you about what you are experiencing in your communities. For example, if you are pastoring in the D.C.-area, Chicago, L.A., etc, how are the ICE raids impacting you and your congregation? For congregations throughout the country, how are you responding to SNAP benefits being cut, to support your congregation and community? How about you – what is making your heart hurt? What is bringing you joy? Feel free to email Rev. Alexis Tardy a word, a sentence, or paragraph, that is speaking to your experience right now. If you are a current pastor in the Alliance, let us know possible ways that the Alliance can support you in this current political moment. You can also schedule a meeting with Rev. Alexis during office hours here.

Book recommendation: “For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional” by Hanna Reichel

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Esther 4: 6-16
So Hathak went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate. 7 Mordecai told him everything that had happened to him, including the exact amount of money Haman had promised to pay into the royal treasury for the destruction of the Jews. 8 He also gave him a copy of the text of the edict for their annihilation, which had been published in Susa, to show to Esther and explain it to her, and he told him to instruct her to go into the king’s presence to beg for mercy and plead with him for her people.
9 Hathak went back and reported to Esther what Mordecai had said. 10 Then she instructed him to say to Mordecai, 11 “All the king’s officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned the king has but one law: that they be put to death unless the king extends the gold scepter to them and spares their lives. But thirty days have passed since I was called to go to the king.”
12 When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, 13 he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
15 Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

It is the end of a week, and I find myself empty – poured out, with nothing left to give in the midst of a trying time in my personal life and consistent horrifying news from the federal to the local level.  

I wonder if that’s how Esther felt in this text – tired, overwhelmed, like she’s given all that she could give in an unfamiliar place in a tension-filled time. How was she supposed to maintain her sanity with the ever-changing waves of a temperamental king all while staying grounded and true to her identity and her people?

In this way, we may all be able to relate to Esther. The desire to disconnect from it all is tempting, some may even argue it’s necessary. I imagine that a part of her had become disconnected from her community of fellow Jews, dominated and marginalized by the king, while Esther herself was in the belly of the empire. It is exactly from this seat of unequivocal and seemingly omnipresent power that death-dealing policies flow – including at the whim of a maniacal second-in-command (Haman). In this Scripture, the edict to annihilate all of the Jews in the land was the latest promise of terrorism.
 
And yet, there is Mordecai. Mordecai is technically how we got here. As we read in previous verses, Mordecai refuses to bow and give homage to Haman (repeatedly). Consequently, Haman convinces the king to send an edict to kill the community of Jews, because he does not only want to destroy Mordecai, he wants to send a message to Mordecai’s people. There was great mourning among the Jews and Mordecai, who after putting himself in sackcloth and ashes, cried out with a loud and bitter cry in the midst of the city and as far as the king’s gate. 

Once Esther found out, she was “deeply distressed” by Mordecai’s actions and had to be told about the edict by her maids and eunuchs. Perhaps even more distressing, Mordecai urgently commanded Esther to go to the king on behalf of him and their people. 

I’ve been told that I’m impatient, and upon further self-reflection, I am – so I can relate to Mordecai here. Similar to Mordecai, I often have an expectation for action, am frustrated by injustice; perhaps too pushy, too demanding, too early. To be fair, you could make a strong argument that Mordecai had every reason to be pushy, demanding, and immovable under this oppressive, violent, and near impenetrable system.

Mordecai, Esther’s elder and uncle, reminds Esther of the life she still has yet to live at the risk of losing his own. Her selfhood, her community, her support, her dignity, her calling, her power. How grateful we are for people who call us back to ourselves when it feels like we’ve run out of options. Esther also had examples of resistance before her – including Queen Vashti, whose resounding “hell no!” (to quote Rev. Dr. Melva Sampson), still echoed in the palace after Queen Vashti kept her dignity in a moment that was meant to humiliate and degrade her. She said no. Sometimes we find ourselves in a moment, a time of decision, that brings us to a choice that brings us to hard, but necessary, exile. 

A main reason that I name Mordecai as an elder and not just an older person (there is a difference), is because of his care for the community and his own willingness to put his livelihood and reputation on the line for a cause beyond himself as an individual. In a sense, he earned being demanding. Still, Mordecai knew that discernment is key. And there are kairos moments we cannot ignore. I believe Mordecai cultivated this wisdom by posing a question to invite Esther into her own discernment – “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where a “hell no!” is called for, even when it means being cast outside of whatever the “palace” is. Other times we are like Mordecai and the community, resisting but completely outside of the king’s gates, lamenting and demanding that something, anything, be done. A lot of times, though, we find ourselves like Esther, straddling community and the palace halls. The opportunity is there to leverage our positions and negotiate our power, little though it may seem, to expose the wrongs and to work to make the wrong things right. We grow into being able to hold many things at once. And we are faced with the invitation to take up our cross in our own context, to respond to the call to address the injustices that we see and experience. Ultimately, we take into account all of the risks, the costs, the potential losses, the sacrifice – and we do what we are called to do anyway.

We are moving beyond our own sensibilities for self-preservation (doesn’t Mordecai know that if I go to the king, I might be killed?) to a responsibility and love with and for community. And in the words of Benedictine Joan Chittister, “Community is not a soft choice … community itself is a spiritual act, a spiritual discipline, a spiritual force in society”. (Oneing: Loving in a Time of Exile, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 2025)

This means that our response to injustice does not depend on some individual sense of courage – before Esther goes to the king on behalf of her people, with the audacity to say “if I perish, I perish,” she requests from her community three days of prayer and fasting that she engages in herself. As Willie James Jennings notes, “holy boldness does not come from within, it comes from without.” (Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible by Willie James Jennings) We need the Holy Ghost, we need prayer, we need fasting in our spiritual organizing movements to respond to the demonic principalities and powers that truly seek to steal, kill, and destroy.

Mordecai rightfully reminds Esther that her silence will protect neither her nor their family. It is immediately reminiscent of Audre Lorde’s lived wisdom that “your silence will not protect you” and Zora Neale Hurston’s warning that “if you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” We’re in a time when ICE military agents are walking city streets, literally looking to devour communities; we’re in a time when ICE agents will tear a child away from her mother, while her father – in extreme distress – has a seizure, and they seem to look on with pleasure. We’re in a time when churches who speak out and are engaged in justice in their local neighborhoods have to worry more than ever about safety. We’re in a time when pastors who speak about justice a little too much, might feel a rock being cast from the glass-enclosed sanctuary. And we’re in a time when SNAP benefits are cut and families have to figure out how to pay for bills while still buying food and formula for their families.
 
In the midst of this, Paul Swanson reminds us that “A heart pierced by love is not pious, but awakened and revolutionary.” For such a time as this, we are sensitive enough in our spirits to allow our hearts to be pierced by the pain of our neighbors. For such a time as this, we are blessed to be awakened and be revolutionary peacemakers. We have hope, we stay in the fight, we say “yes” to this individual and communal call each and every day because in the end… the gallows that are meant for Mordecai are the same ones that will cut down Haman. 

In faithful solidarity,

Alexis