– Rev. Joyce Day – Pastor of Congregational Care – St. James UMC
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life (John 3:16).
When I was a kid, I was my dad’s helper whenever he did handyman work around the house. My job was to bring him the right tool for the job. He would tell me what he wanted and even describe it. I would head to the workbench and try to find what he was asking for. Unfortunately, I was wrong more often than I was right. That workbench seemed a long ways away for short legs, and I believe he would have accomplished the work much faster if he had gone to get the tool himself. However, I came to learn the importance of using the right tool for the job.
That image came to me recently after my morning ritual of journaling a passage of Scripture. The particular passage was Esther 8, and the phrase that especially struck me was verse 17b: “Many people in the land became Jews themselves, out of fear of the Jews.”
If you’re not familiar with the story of Esther, here’s a brief synopsis. Esther becomes queen to King Ahasuerus after he summarily dismissed Vashti for having the nerve to stand up to his adolescent attempt to humiliate her (but that’s another story). Esther is a Jew as is her guardian cousin Mordecai. The other main character is Haman, the powerful aide to the king and the villain of the story. Because Mordecai refuses to pay homage to Haman, Haman devises a plan to kill all the Jews. He manipulates the king and others to fear and therefore hate the Jews so that a law is passed that will lead to the destruction of the Jews. Haman’s plot is discovered by Mordecai who encourages Esther to go before the king to plead for the protection of her people.
Haman ends up being executed for his evil plot. However, the law is now law and is irreversible so the king allows Mordecai (who has now replaced Haman in power) to write a new law that will allow the Jews to protect themselves and their property. That might seem like a fair thing to do, but verse 17 made me wonder: “Many people in the land became Jews themselves, out of fear of the Jews.”
The king and Mordecai believed that the only way to reverse Haman’s law was to reverse the source of fear. Now it was the Jews who were to be feared so much so that some people decided to become Jews in order to avoid the violent retaliation of the Jews. How sad that they chose to become Jews not out of love for God but out of fear of the Jews! Indeed, they were Jews in name only if fear of their neighbors was their only reason for converting.
Christians also have a sad history of using fear to manipulate people into conversion. Our history is stained by the blood of those who refused to convert. Our present situation continues to suffer from the damage this history has created. The good news is that this parody of evangelism no longer works among most people. Nowadays, people are so turned off from the use of fear tactics from religion that they are more apt to run away from the Church and even from God when they encounter them. On the other hand, the use of fear within the Church to a) keep church members sufficiently cowed and controlled and b) harness political power in an effort to establish an authoritarian and supposedly “God-centered” form of government, has led to great harm.
What we need to remember is that our God is decidedly NOT an authoritarian. In Christ, we come to know God as one who uses compassion, mercy, and forgiveness to create relationship with God’s people. God then uses those relationships of love to create justice and shalom in the world. That is grace, indeed!
While fear is a tool of manipulation, love is a tool of empowerment. What a huge difference! Fear cannot lead people to God in any sort of authentic, Christ-centered manner. Only love can do that. We are to be God’s instruments of love in this world, and it is God’s love for us that empowers us to be just that.
We must choose: will we use the tool of fear or the tool of love? But the question is deeper than that. Will we work in alignment with God’s way or with the way of evil? We cannot have it both ways. Grace is found only in God’s way.