Daily Archives: September 29, 2009

Urban/Rural

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Even though I’ve never lived in Wisconsin before, I feel like I’m back home. I grew up in a small town in northwestern Ohio. When I was growing up, many people were no longer making their living in agriculture, and many farmers worked day jobs in factories. Still, life was dominated by agriculture. I would later joke that for fun, we had barbecues and watched the corn grow.

The area of South Carolina in which I lived was never dominated by agriculture. The economy and culture were very different.

We visited the Dane County Farmer’s Market on our first Saturday in Madison. Corrie has already gotten to know many of the farmers and we enjoy the products of their fields and pastures. As rector of a downtown church that is adjacent to the Farmer’s Market, I am intrigued by how we might minister in that context. What is our role? We are studying issues of food, sustainability, and hunger in our adult ed program this fall, but it seems to me there is much more that we could do.

I’m fascinated by a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that discusses the plight of rural communities in the Midwest. It’s available here. Much of what is described resonates with my experience. It wasn’t so much that people urged me to leave. I never felt comfortable there, even as a child, so I jumped at the opportunity to leave, even if it was only to a college town slightly larger, ninety miles away.

Still, after I had really left the Midwest for Boston, I tried to come back for a summer, to see if I might live, and work, in my hometown. I realized I couldn’t.

The question I’ve been asking myself since I’m back in the Midwest is what is our role as an urban church, and my role as a priest in an urban parish, in reaching out to our rural neighbors?

The Book of Esther

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On Sunday, we read from the Book of Esther, the only such reading in the three-year lectionary cycle. It is a story set in the Persian period, something of a folktale. The book exists in a number of versions–the Hebrew dates from the 4th century BCE, and there is contemporaneous Greek version that is considerably shorter than the Hebrew. Over the centuries, the book continued to change, so that a later Greek version, the one canonized by the Eastern Orthodox, is about a third longer than the original.

Apparently, The Book of Esther was wildly popular among Jews in the second temple period but the religious authorities were much more suspicious of it. It was canonized in the Hebrew Bible only in the first century CE. It became important in Judaism as the basis for the festival of Purim, which takes place in the month of Adar (February/March).

What puzzles me is why it is included in the lectionary here, and why the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary abridged the story in the way it appears. It is a tale of the cunning salvation of the Jewish people from an evil enemy. So far, so good. But the tale is also overflowing with violence, something our reading on Sunday passed over in silence. In many ways, the story of Esther and Mordechai, two faithful Jews who thrive at a foreign court, is parallel to the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50. I suspect that a significant part of the reason for the appearance of Esther in the lectionary has to do with the desire of the lectionary editors to include stories about women.

In the Bob Jones University Art Gallery, hangs a marvelous painting of Queen Vashti by Edward Long.