Turn Our Mourning Into Gladness And Our Sorrows Into Wholeness

Have you ever had the experience that once you see something, you can’t unsee it? The new information finds its way into our consciousness and now will not let us go back to the way we were.

Today’s readings do this for me.

Our first reading today comes from the book of Esther – probably not a well-known book for most readers. It was not well known for me until I started doing more writing about biblical texts.

The book of Esther is a very involved and disputed book that was not included in some of the Protestant versions of the bible (or is included in a section called “the Apocrypha” or “deuterocanonical” books). But essentially it is a story of a Jewish woman (Esther) who hides her identity and, ultimately as queen, stops the destruction of her people at the hands of a corrupt advisor. This book is at the center of the Jewish feast of Purim and is often told as a story of protection by God.

In preparation for writing about Esther a few years back, I Googled “The Book of Esther” to get some background information. At the official site of the U.S. Catholic Church, I read this – ”Esther’s character matures over the course of the narrative. As a girl she is recruited for the king’s harem because of her physical beauty.” I thought, “Wait…what?” And I did a bit more exploration that I want to share with you and reflect on together.

We read from chapter 4 of Esther today, but it is really important to go back to the first two chapters of this story to uncover some context. And I’ll admit, when I go back and read it, it seems like a lot of boring names and details that I would be inclined to skip over. But those names and details reveal some things that we should pause to notice.

In Chapter 1, King Xerxes is having a banquet and wants to show his wife (Queen Vashti) off to those who are gathered because she is beautiful. She refuses, and the king’s court gets nervous that “the queen’s conduct will become known to all the women, and so they will despise their husbands” and act similarly with “disrespect and discord” towards the commands of men. So the king removes her as queen (banishes her) and issues a decree whereby “every man should be ruler over his own household.”

The king then searches for a new queen and commissions his officers to “bring all these beautiful young women into the harem at the citadel of Susa.” They are removed from their homes (because the commissioners deem them to be beautiful) and are brought to live at the palace where the king chooses the most beautiful among them to be his queen. Esther is ultimately chosen from the harem to be the queen, and the rest of the story unfolds.

I just want to pause there for a moment. What do you notice going on in these texts?

While I know that biblical texts need to be read in context, I cannot help but think about this in light of our modern world and in the normalization of violence against women.

As I reflect on the first part of the story, I think about the male king wants to show off his wife in front of the guests and she refuses. She will not be objectified like that and her refusal costs her everything. The other men are afraid that their wives will follow suit and that men will lose their power and control, so they encourage the king to issue a decree that says men are to be in charge. And he does.

And then in the second part, we see teenage girls being forced to be part of the king’s harem because they are beautiful and Esther is chosen among them to be the new queen.

What does this bring up for you? And what modern parallels do you notice?

For me, I can’t stop connecting a passage like this to what is being revealed about patriarchy, male domination and collusion related to the life and legacy of Jeffery Epstein. Women being silenced and banished for speaking up. A doubling down on male power and privilege. Young women and girls being trafficked by rich and powerful men for pleasure. 

It’s not like we didn’t know it before, but now it is being shown in such a stark way.

One of my mentors and teachers is Rebecca Solnit. She has been writing for years on women’s rights, feminism, patriarchy and the violence that women endure. In a recent FB post taken from an article that she wrote (which could easily have been written about our passage from Esther today), she asks, “Do women deserve rights and a voice in society? That’s the conflict between the two systems that shape our society; in one of them we do, and in the other do not…One way to describe Epstein’s vast network of rape and trafficking adjacent to the exploitative modeling and beauty-contest industries that he and [others] also dabbled in was as a system of treating women and girls as trophies, commodities, objects to be exchanged on the (somewhat) open market, rewards, bribes, service-providers, domestic livestock, anything but fellow human beings endowed with inalienable rights.”

She continues that, “the crimes at the center of all this were [an] enactment of the idea that Epstein and his fellow captains of industry had unlimited rights and privileges and power and that their victims had none at all.” 

Solnit concludes that, “Feminism could be described as a long campaign to reclaim rights, freedoms, and dignity lost under patriarchy.”

Just pause and take a breath.

The story in Esther is indeed a story of the deliverance of the Jewish people and is a story where Esther transforms her position as queen from one of “personal privilege to one of power and public responsibility.” It could be tempting to just stop there and not look any further.

But this story of “faith” is also a story of one woman’s refusal to be objectified and paraded in front of people. It is a story on men’s fear of women and the need to control and dominate women and it is also a story of “treating women and girls as trophies, commodities…[and] anything but fellow human beings endowed with inalienable rights.”

The final words we hear from Esther today are “turn our mourning into gladness and our sorrows into wholeness.” And while she may be praying to God through these words, I cannot help but hear them as a call to all who listen to the survivors of harm.

We – collectively – have the power to turn mourning into gladness and sorrow into wholeness.

In our gospel today from Matthew 7, we hear Jesus tell his followers, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

At first glance this passage may raise more questions than it answers: What about all the women who have asked for harm to stop? What about all the women who sought justice and never got it? What about all the women who knocked on doors for help and no one helped?

Yet the God who is portrayed today cares deeply about those who ask, knock and seek. In a world where sexual violence is frequently about power misuse, this passage reframes power as protective and life-giving – the way Esther actually used her power.

As we are discovering in the Epstein files, so many people colluded with him and looked the other way. People ignored or silenced the survivors showing us that the infrastructure that protects perpetrators is extensive. Women who speak about their experiences often stand alone and face severe consequences (like Queen Vashti in the story of Esther) and the patriarchal systems double down on their power (just like King Xerxes did).

From my vantage point on today’s readings, we are invited to take seriously the ask of women (as well as nonbinary, queer and trans people) for the violence and silence to end. We can do this by creating space to hear the stories and take the testimonies seriously. We need to collectively challenge the reflex to normalize the violence and let it remain invisible. 

We also need to hold our institutions and officials accountable – especially in an era where our highest elected officials have extensive histories of being accused by women of sexual misconduct and routinely denigrating women.

We must continue to address everyday sexism as a form of this violence that makes larger forms of violence easier to justify or ignore.

And we must keep naming that sexual violence is political, not merely personal.  Patriarchy is about power, and gender equity will only come about by addressing the economic, legal and social inequalities that remain so persistent in our world.

As part of our Lenten reflections, may we pay attention to how patriarchy works in our world (and in our lives) and listen to those who ask, knock and seek a change!