September 14, 2025
• Rev. Mindie Moore
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Heroes of Hope Week 2: Brave Hope
Selected verses from the book of Esther
Intro with Confirmation kicking off today
PRAY
Last week, we opened by talking about the introduction of the forward pass in football. And I felt very loved when, later that afternoon, we were watching the Colts game and Zack turned to me after a completed pass and said, “look at them acting in hope.” So I hope you carry your sermon illustrations into your afternoon football watching as well!
Now I’m not going to talk about football every week, BUT I AM going to do it one more time THIS week, because I saw something that is too good not to share. The Athletic published their annual “Hope-O-Meter", where they survey fans before things kick off in the new NFL season. And they rank the teams by the percentage of fans who feel optimistically about how the season is going to go and those who feel pessimism about it.
It was framed like this:
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“For a day—we all have hope. No one has lost a game yet. Anything can happen!”
And this year, the team with the MOST hope for the upcoming season was the Denver Broncos. Can you guess which team ranked 32nd (that’s last place) with only 6.8% optimism? Yes, that’s correct—the Indianapolis Colts.
And, if you’ve watched The Colts in recent years, this is a little bit of a bummer, but not all that shocking. They won their first game of the year last week, and the last time they did that...my 12 year old looked like this (SLIDE)
Hope can be hard to come by. Especially when there is an abundance of evidence against having it. That’s why we’re doing this series called Heroes of Hope, where we’re looking at different Biblical characters and the hope that they have acted in and we’re exploring how to have hope in our own world. Truthfully, we’re up against a lot to get there. I don’t think there’s been a single week in the last several months where I’ve stood up here and thought- yes, hope is going to come easily to us today. That’s just
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not our world right now. I pray that we’ll get there someday, but the reality we’re living in is really hard.
And that’s why a story like Esther’s matters. Because she had to not only HAVE hope, but she had to PRACTICE hope when it didn’t make a lot of sense and when acting in that hope required very real courage.
There’s a Jonathan Merritt quote that I love, that I think sets up this story really well. He says (SLIDE)
“Anticipatory Hope suggests that someday, somehow, things will get better. But it’s fragile as an eggshell.
Participatory hope is rooted in the present. It sees the broken things and says, ‘Here is where we begin.’” (Jonathan Merritt’s homily on the Road to Emmaus)
The story of Esther is a one of participatory hope. It’s a story of people who can look at the very real danger happening in their world and put themselves in the middle of creating change. Of saying—this moment that we find ourselves in, with all of its brokenness and in all the ways it is so far from what it should be—
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THIS is where God has put us, and THIS is where we begin.
The setting for Esther is a world where things are fragile at best and down right chaotic at worst. It’s a story of God’s people trying to survive in hostile times and to trust in God...even though God isn’t really directly mentioned or given credit for much that happens in this book. It’s a really interesting way to tell this story, and I think one of the reasons it’s told the way it is, is that it really emphasizes the point that so often (SLIDE) Hope happens through God’s people taking courageous action.
And the courageous action in this story actually starts with someone other than Esther. It starts with her uncle, Mordecai. He works for the palace, and he’s raised Esther like she was his own daughter. And Mordecai is in a bit of a tough position because he’s a faithful Jew but he’s living and working in a court where things are kind of wild. We get a glimpse of this in the way that the king wants to parade his first wife,
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Vashti, around for all the other men in the court to look at, and we see it in the kinds of people who surround the king. Being part of this court means power and excess and basically any kind of pleasure you could want whenever you want it. So you can imagine the kind of people who are in the mix and want to be close to that.
One of these people is named Haman. And it’s in an act of resistance towards Haman that we see the first glimpse of bravery happen in this story. Haman gets himself a nice promotion in the king’s administration and one of the orders from the king is that people would now bow to Haman. But Mordecai is having none of that. Again, he’s a devout Jew, and that means he doesn’t worship anyone but God. Bowing to Haman would have went against everything he stood for.
And Mordecai’s refusal to bow makes Haman beyond furious. He wants revenge immediately, but the text tells us that he thought it would be “beneath him” to kill only Mordecai...so he decides to escalate the whole thing and take out his anger about this one
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personal offense...on the entire Jewish population that’s living in their land.
This throws everything into chaos. People are afraid for their own safety, for their friends and neighbors’ lives. One person’s vendetta against a group of people has disrupted a community and there’s so much fear. And the people are right to feel helpless—after all, it’s signed edict from the king. There’s really no ordinary person who has the power to change that, not in their system.
But Mordecai has an idea about someone who MIGHT just have the power to create change. So he sends word to Esther about how she could potentially use her position as queen to save their people. What Mordecai is asking her to do isn’t easy or safe or probably anything that he would ever want her to have to be put in a position to do...but it’s a chance for hope in what seems to be a hopeless situation.
As Esther weighs her options and surveys the risk in front of her, I can’t help but think that seeing her uncle’s initial act of bravery, of resisting Haman’s demands to bow, might have paved the way for her
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own act of courage. Because sometimes that’s how it works. We see someone acting in a brave way, when the stakes are high, and that helps us believe that we could too.
We all know the famous “I have a dream speech” by Martin Luther King Jr. But what I recently learned as I read Jemar Tisby’s book The Spirit of Justice, is that those famous words originated from a young woman at a prayer vigil. Dr. King first heard those words as Prathia Hall (SLIDE) led prayer over four Black churches that had been burned by white supremacists. She was a pastor’s kid who had paused her college studies to organize for Civil Rights. She was active in protests and sit ins and she had a gift for preaching. And as she used her voice and courageously showed up to do the work God had called her to do, her brave hope that something could be different inspired the words of a man that would in turn inspire an entire movement of people. In an era where her own rights as a Black woman were being challenged, she was living out that participatory hope.
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As Esther steps into her own moment of participatory hope, she needs the inspiration of her uncle who has gone before here, because she's going to be walking into so much unknown. This is a life-or-death risk that she’s signing up for, going to the king like this. Because that wasn’t something that one could just do. If the king didn’t summon you, and you showed up when he was in a bad mood, or too tired, or just needed some me time...you might not just get thrown out...but you might not leave that encounter alive.
And even with that very real risk, Esther says yes. She shows up. She invites the king and Haman to multi-day feast. And that might seem odd, but Esther is being incredibly wise here. She’s working with the system that she’s in, she’s speaking their language, and she’s setting things up to save her people. And so over the course of several days, the drinks are flowing, the food is great, and as the king and Haman enjoy themselves, she finally lays it out there. She reveals her identity as a Jew, which is a huge risk in itself, and she puts the pieces together for the king that the person who wants her and her people dead is sitting at
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this very table! She has Haman punished for what he’s done and the edict is reversed. Her people are safe and Esther is held up as this courageous hero of hope.
This story ends with this very triumphant note, it ends with redemption and safety and hope—but we have to remember that this isn’t a fairy tale. The story only ends like this because a courageous person decided to DO something when it mattered the most. To step into the reality of their situation with no guarantee of safety, but because they’re where they need to be, when they need to be there.
I’ve been listening to the audio book of Colin Jost’s memoir, called A Very Punchable Face. And a lot of the stories he shares are entertaining (don't listen with little ears in the car), and an interesting look behind the scenes of Saturday Night Live. But there is this chapter in the book called “Why I Love My Mom” that I think is one of the best book chapters I have ever read.
In it, he tells the story of his mom, Dr. Kerry Kelly, who served as the Chief Medical Officer for the FDNY. She was the first woman to hold that title and was at
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Ground Zero on September 11. She had been visiting patients at a hospital that morning, and when she heard the news that the first tower had been hit, immediately drove into Manhattan. She tended to the first known firefighter to die that day, and two other firefighters helped save her life during the building collapses. After each collapse, she and the firefighters with her would go searching for anyone who needed help. She worked around the clock to care for the wounded in the immediate aftermath and made countless phone calls to connect with families of those who died. In the years following the attacks, she became an advocate for first responders' medical care and advised on treatment/care for those suffering long-term effects.
Dr. Kelly went to where she needed to be, when she needed to be there. It wasn’t easy and it had to be terrifying. But when faced with the choice of stepping in or backing away, she chose to step in. She chose to believe that it was no accident that she was there, at Ground Zero, and that whatever skills she had, whatever relationships she had built, it was all about
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to serve a purpose. In a moment of intense tragedy and chaos, she was living out participatory hope.
When we’re trying to live into our own moments of participatory hope, it can come with a lot of fear and doubt. And when that fear and doubt creep in, I think it’s helpful to go back to what is probably the most famous line from this entire book. It’s said by Mordecai, when Esther is having her own doubts. As she wrestles with what to do and if she’s even the one for the task at hand, Mordecai says to her, “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”
Esther has this unique position of influence and power. She has this rare opportunity to use her voice in a way that can actually make a difference, like probably no one else in her circle could. When it comes down to who is going to make a difference, who is going to do the right and brave thing...it comes down to Esther.
I think it is really easy for us to look around for who is going to fix things when the world descends into chaos. I joke sometimes that as I’ve gotten older I’ve
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had moments where I’ve thought, “who's the adult in the room?” and then had the terrible realization that, “right...it’s me.” But we have those moments, don't we? Where we wonder who will take the first step, who will act bravely to do the thing that might make for change?
As we reflect on Esther’s story, I think the question we have to hold is:
What if it’s us?
What if you and I are here, in the moment we find ourselves in, (SLIDE) for just such a time as this?
What if we are here for such a time as this...to step into deeply uncomfortable spaces and live and lead in a way that looks like Jesus? Where kindness, and openness, and love are part of our story?
What if we are here for such a time as this... when we're confronted with the violence in our world, to say, “this is not how it should be, and we have to choose another way?” What if we speak out against what gun violence is doing in our schools, in our neighborhoods, and in the public square? What if we call out the
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violence in the systems that run our world...what if we could be so bold to name what’s broken and then do the work to try and fix it?
What if we are here for such a time as this...to interrupt the racism that is woven into so much of our world? What if we make it a point to see and name the image of God in each other, and to create communities where people’s differences and identities are celebrated as a reflection of our God?
What if we are here for such a time as this...to work for peace? Peace through our prayers, for places we will never set foot in but that matter to our God; peace through our actions, to heal the very communities we call home?
What if we are here for such a time as this...to acknowledge, that yes, we are living in a time in history that feels overwhelming and impossible and absolutely heartbreaking. AND that it is exactly in the time when we find ourselves, that we have been called to live out this participatory hope.
What if we are here for such a time as this?
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The truth is, this might sound exhausting. Like, Pastor Mindie, you’re asking me to be brave, to participate, but it’s all so much. I know it is. I feel it too. But the opposite of participatory hope...is just to passively do nothing. And I don’t think that’s what Jesus calls us to do, I don’t think that’s who we’re called to be.
In Esther’s story, in our story, hope and healing don’t magically appear. BUT—they are things that are possible. Because this is our work, as the Church, as people who follow Jesus, to do everything we can to create God’s hope in this world.
Because our world is hurting. Things are broken. And, as Jonathan Merritt says, “This is where we begin.”
Let’s pray.