The following is a sermon I gave at Fellowship Congregational UCC – Tulsa, as part of our Youth Sunday.

When we first started discussing Youth Sunday plans way back in August, I presented to the kids all of the lectionary verses that were available for this Sunday. There was a passage from James, which they’ve been learning about for the last month; a story from the Gospel of Mark about Jesus and the disciples and who gets to act in Jesus’ name; a bit from the book of Numbers about the Israelites complaining to Moses about a variety of different things. But when I mentioned that one of the options was from Esther, that piqued their interest.

So we watched a video that told the story of Esther, and settled on not just reading one verse from the book, but instead telling the entire convoluted and kind of comical story, in our own way, which you just saw. I don’t have a ton to add to what the kids presented here, but I did want to kind of put a bow on Youth Sunday with a few thoughts about Esther, and what her story means for us.

One of the most interesting things about the Book of Esther, besides just the absolute soap opera drama of it all, is that it is the only book in the whole Bible that never once mentions God. Which is odd, right, considering this is the Bible, and this is a story about the Jewish people living in exile, and about their commitment to faith in the face of the oppression of Haman. The author of the book never once mentions God, and I don’t think that is an accident at all.

In our Call to Worship this morning, you asked the question over and over, “Where is God?” I hope the reason for that question makes a little more sense now. When I have been reading Esther over the last few weeks, and preparing for this Sunday, it is the question I have been trying to keep at the forefront of my own mind. Where is God in this story? What is God doing here in the lives of Esther and Mordecai? What does this story tell us about God, even in God’s seeming absence?

It’s actually a question I ask a lot, and one I imagine you do too, seeing as we are all at this church, and not some other one here in Tulsa. I know I ask this question because, despite almost a decade now of working in churches, despite a seminary degree and daily Bible reading and my work here at Fellowship, I don’t often feel God, if you know what I mean. Doubt has long been a part of my journey of faith; prayer is a struggle for me, because I don’t even always think God is real. Some days I do. Some days I certainly don’t

And I think that’s ok, and makes me a little bit better at my job. Because I remember being one of those kids, in the church I grew up in, going to youth groups and doing church things. I know that, even back then, maybe especially back then, I often wondered where God was. And I didn’t always get a very good answer to that pondering. Too often, the implication from youth leaders and pastors was that of course God is real, not in some abstract way, but like a real person in your life, and you should – YOU SHOULD – know that to be true. Of course, the flip side of such an attitude was that if you didn’t, then something was wrong with you. And, in those settings, that led to this whole slippery, circular logic of sin and condemnation and hell and fear and earnest but often fruitless attempts to DO faith a little better next time.

So, a story like that of Esther, where God doesn’t show up explicitly by name or action, is an important one for the work we are doing every Sunday morning in the youth wing. Because, God doesn’t always show up for us, not like we want. We are often left going, where is God? Why was God absent today, or this week, or in that place? What we see in the story of Esther is an important response to the universal question of, where is God? God may not show up in Esther to miraculously strike down Haman, or to speak to the King in a dream, or to command the actions of Mordecai and Esther. In this way, the Book of Esther is unique in the Hebrew Bible, considering its proximity to stories like that of Moses, or Job, or Noah. 

But, if we really think about it, God is at work here. If we think about what we know of God – that God is a God of love, that God desires justice and mercy, that God takes the small and broken and insignificant things and makes them great and wondrous and whole – then we can begin to perceive the presence of God in the story of Esther. In the hope of Mordecai, who had belief in the good that could come from Esther, we can see God at work. In the courage of Esther as she navigates the politics and machinations of court life, we can see God at work. In the steadfast faith of the Jewish people even as they are commanded by the Powers of the world to abandon God, to give themselves over fully to exile, we see God at work. God may not be acting directly. But God is certainly acting, through the hands and feet and faith of those who still are able to hold tight to the promise of God that a better world is possible, if we each do our part – no matter how small or insignificant – to help make it happen.

This is what we try to think about together each Sunday morning in the youth room: what are called to do today, this week, at school, with our friends, with our families, to help make the world a little bit of a better place, and in the process, to do the work of God in the world. How do we fit into the story of God? What is our place in this church? How can we recognize – and seize- our Esther moment?

In short, we ask. Where is God? 

I’ll end this sermon, and respond to – put not try to answer- that question, by quoting my favorite passage in the whole Bible, Genesis 28:16, where Jacob proclaims, 

“Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it!” 

That’s the message of Esther, as well. Surely God is in this place, in this story, with us, even if we don’t know it, if we don’t feel it, if we don’t believe it today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. What better news can we imagine than that? Amen.