Sermon: Ad d’Lo Yada

Note: The following sermon was delivered (more or less like it is here) on Sunday, February 27th. It is taken from Matthew 6:24-34 but also heavily inspired by I Corinthians 4:1 and the 4th chapter of the Book of Esther.

In the Book of Esther, good and bad are laid out a plain as day. There is good, his name is Mordechai, a blessed man who seeks to protect his native Jews. Then there is bad, his name is Haman, a cursed commander of the military who plots to wipe the Jews away. Plain and simple, Mordechai is good & Haman is bad, and our book’s namesake Queen Esther, ascends to royal dignity precisely so she can refute Haman, stand up to the King, and save the Jews, her people; “for just such a time as this.” No grey area. No ambiguity. The right & only decision that honors God and saves God’s children is Mordechai. It’s an easy call.

For centuries observant Jews celebrate the Festival of Purim with costumes, gifts of charity, sharing huge feasts, and truly having a great time. Purim is often the favorite of all Jewish holidays. In a way, with a world filled with shades of grey and ambiguity, who wouldn’t love to celebrate a day when the right and wrong thing to do were so clear? Purim highlights Esther’s courage and strength to speak potentially lethal words to her captor, her husband, and king, and in so doing, emphasizes Esther’s courage. Esther is able, fully able, to step into the throne room and speak to her king words that result in her native Jewish population receiving warning of an eminent attack at the hands of Haman. Given the attention on Esther as the able, right-minded, courageous, and strong savior of the Jews, it is peculiar the way the Jewish tradition prescribes a certain celebration in her honor: getting stupid drunk.

The tradition is called Ad d’Lo Yada, and it is found in the collected wisdom of the Rabbis called the Talmud. In a festival filled with fun, food, and charity, getting hammered is a controversial way to honor God. Men are instructed to drink wine to the point of intoxication, to the point when they are no longer able to distinguish the different between “cursed in Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai.” So blitzed, their faculties fail them, and they can no longer tell the difference between Haman, the would-be butcher of the Jews, and Mordechai, Esther’s counsel and the man who shows her a call in this foreign court. So drunk, if Haman and Mordechai walked into the room right now, you would be useless to tell the difference.

Rabbis seeking to figure out the wisdom found in this practice, especially considering drunkenness is despised in much of Judaism, are not of one mind. Some believe it should be avoided, pointing out that the Rabbi who gave such a prescription owned a vineyard. Other Rabbis look for loop-holes, and others still try to offer advice on how to navigate the prescribed drinking. Yet, I am intrigued by the traditions that claim the practice. Not being much a drinker myself, and generally favoring Diet Coke to fine Red Wine, as purely an object lesson, I am taken by the idea of getting smashed to the point when you no longer depend on your ability, your knowledge, your experiences or plans to steer you away from certain death, and trust that God will point you in the right direction. Whatever happens, Haman or Mordechai, you did not rely on anything under your command and placed the matter in God’s hands. It is the ancient Jewish version of that country song, Jesus, Take the Wheel.

Please brothers and sisters, don’t get drunk. Let me say that again: please don’t get drunk. Drinking to excess is bad for Jew and Gentile alike. Drinking to forget, to no longer worry about the rigors of the day is a common cause to take up a bottle but not a good one. I don’t believe I have ever heard a sober rendition of “Don’t Worry Be Happy!” or have been counseled to “just forget about it” by anyone not drunk. The worry-free life seems impossible for those not plied by too much to drink. We have bills to pay, promises to keep, hard decisions regarding life’s realities; we avoid variables like long lines at Giant Eagle lest we get caught waiting, dependent on forces far outside our control. The non-stop news of downsizing, unemployment, increased costs for health care, vanishing Social Security, and the like, don’t lend themselves well to a “biblical approach”, do they? Now is the time for proper vigilance; keeping awake, alert and ready to seize a fleeting opportunity while others slumber. “Today is what we have to prepare for tomorrow”, an economics professor told my whole freshman class in college. He was telling us how we might turn $8,000 now into one-million by the time we retire.

As a nation we have made ignoring Jesus on this specific point of not worrying a matter of civic pride. Our history as a nation has been forged by those who struck out across of western expanse and wrestled for everything they had. Telling the cattle rancher “do not worry” as storm clouds rumble in will pack about as much punch as telling virtually any of you to not worry about filing your taxes or planning for life’s eventualities. The children of God, all the world around, face worry, anxiety, paranoia, and when we hear Jesus tell the comfortable not to pine and worry over being on par with the Jones’ and tell the hungry and poor not to worry as they wonder where the next meal will come from, we might begin to think “Oh, that is just Jesus. He must mean spiritually/symbolically.” We have been saying that a lot as of late. “Love your enemies,” “Be perfect”, and now today “do not worry”; not exactly greatest hits for the human experience.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he instructs the church to think of him and his ilk as “servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.” I heard this passage a lot in Seminary. It was the President’s favorite verse and one he used to charge many an incoming class. Like Paul, we should strive to serve Christ and be stewards, be caretakers of God’s mysteries. Perhaps it was Dean’s way of speaking about it, or maybe it was Paul’s simple way of spelling it out, but I saw something about what we do as a church and certainly as individuals as indeed being stewards of God’s mysteries. The holy, the odd, the other, the peculiar way God loves us and creates for us is pretty well summed up in the word mystery. There really isn’t anything that is not mysterious about God. Mysterious is the way in which God loves us, mysterious is the way God operates, mysterious is the way in which God interacts with God’s people, mysterious is the way that God orders the world, mysterious is the way God calls us, and certainly, mysterious is the way God shows God-self in Christ. While the world scratches its head, we claim the mysteries of God and struggle to be their caretakers. We as a church embrace the mystery, sometimes uncomfortably, and in times of true baffling, when an infant dies or tragedy strikes, when nothing makes sense – where do we go? We journey deeper into the arms of God and , and speak out our prayers and pain. Mysteries require a deeper look. Mysteries require a commitment. Mysteries require you make a choice whether to embrace only what you know, only what you can taste and touch, or embrace something bigger than simply knowing all the answers.

When I hear Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount, I hear a call to be participants in the mysteries of God. When an economics professor tells you that $8,000 today could be one-million tomorrow, we hear Jesus point to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. We are invited to join them. When hundreds of books and seminars hit the shelves each year promising to fulfill whatever you lack, we hear Jesus say you cannot serve two masters. We are invited to seek only righteousness. When the rat-race has got you convinced that what you drive and what you wear are more important that you who are, we hear Jesus say indeed God knows you. We are invited to strive for the Kingdom of God. The true call in these verses is to be people of trust and faith in a God who feed & clothes, who sustains & who is indeed mysterious. As our brothers celebrating Esther’s courage drink to symbolically illustrate God’s care, we too participate in the illogical, mysterious, other-worldly truth that by NOT sowing or reaping we are fed abundantly & by NOT worrying about tomorrow we are clothed perfectly for it. This is the Kingdom of God, not a coming Kingdom, but a call to be citizens today and follow a new King who does not want to fruits of anxious worry but only right relationship. Day by day our call is to focus not on money in the bank, clothes on your back, the car in the driveway, or who the world says you are, but to be in relationship with the mysterious God who frees us to people pursuing righteousness & living into the Kingdom of God with the same freedom as the birds fly through the air, the lilies reach towards the sun, and the grass sprouts in the spring.