The In-Crowd

Sermon from October 1, 2006, First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 9:20-22
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Thanks to the Reverend Mark Lenneville for the title of this sermon. As for the rest of it…

There was never a truer statement than high school is a vision of hell. One of the best recent collections of the behavior that makes it seem this way is found in the 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman. Written as a help book, it is a guide for parents to help their daughters deal with the social rigors of high school in America. The chapters have titles like “Passport from Planet Parent to Girl World: Communication and Reconnaissance” and “The Beauty Pageant: Who Wants to Be Miss Congeniality?” For anyone who thinks this topic would make a cute little book with bullet points of tips and advice should read it, all 336 pages.

I don’t know if high school is any worse now than it was when we were young, but today everything happens quicker. We older folks may have faced the same sorts of people and things in school, but my school experience didn’t include security video surveillance, camera phones, or myspace.com. Also, those who were bullied back in the day never brought guns to school. Indeed hellish.

So, what is a young girl to do if she is the queen of Persia—the wife of Ahasuerus, the ruler of over one hundred twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia—and hiding a deep, deep secret? What is a young girl to do if her Uncle Mordechai comes to her and says the horrible Haman, the Prime Minister of the court of the King of Persia, is planning the murder of an entire race of people—their people?

This young woman is crushed. Her choices are few and risky.

She can go to the King and plead for the safety of her people. But this is very dangerous. Even as queen, she could not approach the King of Persia without fearing for her life. If she approached the king and did not find his favor, she would be executed immediately.

If she did approach the King and he did grant her the favor of an audience, she would have to convince him that the very important Haman was up to no good. If she could not, surely this would cost her life.

Her other choice was to keep quiet, deny her Uncle and her extended family, and hope she would not be discovered. If she had been discovered, she would have been killed along with Mordechai and the rest of their people.

Hiding successfully may have preserved her life, but at a great cost. She might have kept her life, but lost everything else.

What’s a girl to do? I looked in the index of Queen Bees and Wannabes; there isn’t a section that covers genocide.

By now you may have imagined that I am leading you into our Old Testament reading from the book of Esther. Esther may have been the most popular girl in the harem, but she had a deep, deep secret, she was a Jew. She was a queen bee with a past. And Haman, who was a very important man, wants to exterminate Mordechai and all of the rest of his people. Esther would not have been safe. Esther made her choice, she risked going to the King with her request.

By the time of our reading, Esther had prepared not one, but two banquets for her King and his Prime Minister. The King was so enamored with Esther and her fine banquets that he offered her anything she desired, up to half of his kingdom. So she told him what she wanted. Simply and wonderfully, she asks for the lives of her people.

“Let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.”

She doesn’t seek revenge. She does not ask for the life of Haman in return for her life. She does not stand with rage and anger. She even tells her husband, her king that if her people had been sold into slavery, she would not offer this petition. She risks her life to save the lives of her people.

Finally, in the next section we did not read, Haman fears for his life. It seems the King decides Haman’s life is forfeit even without Esther asking for it. So he begs Queen Esther that he be spared. But to make matters worse, Haman’s pleas look more like an assault on Esther. Haman is hung from a gallows he erected to hang Mordechai, a gallows 50 cubits—nearly 75 feet—high.

When the King sought a queen, Esther drew the attention of one of his eunuchs. This servant of the king gave Esther the best of cosmetic treatments, the best food from the king’s table, and a staff of young women to attend to her needs while she prepared to become the queen. When Ahasuerus selected her, she became queen.

Esther was not a part of the in-crowd. She was a Jew in the exile. She was a stranger in a strange land. She was an orphan, being raised by her Uncle Mordechai. She was a wannabe who drew the eye of one of the King’s servants and became the queen bee. Her status was cemented when she was able to use her position (and popularity if you will) and use it to prevent the extermination of her people.

But this is not the only example of queen bees and wannabes we find in our readings today. Last week we read an example of the disciples being pretty full of themselves. Jesus reminded them that to be great, they must be least and servants of all. Based on this reading, the lesson hasn’t sunk in yet.

The disciples find someone who is doing works of power in the name of Jesus—and they tell him to stop it! This new person, this person spreading the good news—this evangelist—is not a part of the in-crowd. This is some outsider doing the works of power that they’re doing, but he isn’t a part of the club. Anybody who knows anything about social circles knows this is taboo, and the disciples want Jesus—their queen bee—to make this pretender, this newbie, this wannabe stop.

Jesus, as always, is the voice of reason: “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”

Jesus implores us to do good works in his name. When we do, we will not be able to speak ill of him. He also says that people who give a cold drink to those who do good works in his name will not be lose their reward.

This is the joy of the glory of God, when we do good works for those who do good in his name, God’s reward will not be lost. But there is something just as important, the sentence which I left out of his statement from Mark’s gospel.

Whoever is not against us is for us.

The book Queen Bees and Wannabes was made into a movie in 2004. It would seem difficult to make an entertaining movie out of a help book. The writer of the script had to find a way to take a book without a story or narrative and create both—while maintaining the integrity of the original source. The screenwriter, then Saturday Night Live head writer Tina Fey, was able to do just that when she created the script for Mean Girls. The movie took many of the anecdotes shared by girls in the book and put them in the context of a suburban Chicago high school and experienced by the new girl. Many of the most horrible situations in the movie come directly from reports shared by the girls.

In the movie, a young girl named Cady begins her junior year of high school after years of being home schooled. Among her experiences was the drama of finding a place in the lunchroom. After some trial and error, Cady’s friend Janice Ian gives her a map of the lunch room. This illustrated map show the separation of the tables into their social spheres showing Cady where the "Plastic Girls", the "Varsity Jocks", the "Asian Nerds", the "Cool Asians", the "Art Freaks" and everyone else sits.

The worst part of the map is that by creating these lines, lines as hard and impenetrable as the skin on top of cafeteria pudding, a self fulfilling prophecy begins to develop. People are defined by where they eat lunch, with the queen bee sitting in the center of the hive. It is the queen bee who through devastating pressure refines and maintains social order. Her behavior is a cross between “I will oppress you all to maintain my standing,” and “whoever is not for us is against us” with devastating results.

In the eternal lunchroom of heavenly social status, Jesus casts aside the earthly paradigm. He reimagines the map. At the map drawn by our Lord there are no names of cliques on the tables. We are all members of the same group—The Children of God.

We are called to be salt in one another’s life. We are called to add flavor to life in the name of God. We are not called to rub ourselves in the wounds of others making matters worse. We are called to do the work of God in God’s peace through God’s grace. Anything less is just mean.

Today is World Communion Sunday. Today we celebrate the Lord’s Supper at the Lord’s Table with the children of God around the world. Today as we take the spiritual nourishment of the word and the body and blood of Christ we do so with millions of Christians around the globe.

Quite a lunchroom, isn’t it? So today, let us share the meal together. Let serve one another, doing wonderful things, wonderful works of power in his name. Let us be salt in one another’s life, nourished in, by, and through the person and work of Jesus Christ.