August 2, 2026 Esther 4:1-17 A Hidden God

The book of Esther begins with an absence.

We have finished reading Ruth, and we might expect another story overflowing with God's covenant love. Ruth sings with ḥesed (חֶסֶד), that steadfast, life-giving love that binds Ruth to Naomi, Boaz to Ruth, and ultimately reveals God's own heart. Every act of kindness builds up God's, and the community's, language of love.

Instead, we turn to Esther, a book of the Bible that never mentions God. Like Ruth, there are no prophets. No divine speech. No miracles. No covenant repeated. If someone removed God's name from every other book of the Bible, we would notice. In Esther, God's presence is unacknowledged.

It becomes a great Biblical invitation. Can God be recognized when God is hidden? Chapter 1 hardly seems like a promising place to begin. The Persian emperor Ahasuerus throws a lavish banquet that lasts for months. Wealth is displayed. Power is flaunted. Women become ornaments for men's prestige. Queen Vashti is summoned not as a partner but as another possession to exhibit before drunken guests.

When she says no the empire trembles, not because of an invading army, but because one woman refuses to surrender her dignity. The king's advisors panic. If word spreads that women can say no, they fear, the entire social order might begin to crack. It sounds strangely familiar. Power often fears dignity more than rebellion. God is never mentioned in this scene, yet God's values quietly emerge through the courage of someone who refuses to be humiliated.

Perhaps this is how the hidden God works. Not always by speaking from heaven. Rather, sometimes by strengthening someone to simply speak from earth. The absence of God's name does not mean the absence of God's character.

After spending weeks with Ruth, we recognize the pattern. Ḥesed is still present, though disguised. In Ruth, God's steadfast love appears through gleaning fields, shared meals, and risky acts of generosity. In Esther, God's steadfast love begins by honoring the God-given worth of a woman who refuses to be treated as an object.

Before anyone rescues Israel, someone first protects human dignity. That is where ḥesed always begins. God speaking through ḥesed implies a belief that God is present, 

Here, Esther does not even express that faith. Rather than saying, "God will protect me," she says in Chapter 4, "If I perish, I perish." This is an important biblical distinction. Faith is not confidence that everything will turn out well. Biblical faith may sometimes be expressed as obedience and faithful action amid uncertainty.

Like many who watched or plan to watch the new Christopher Nolan film The Odyssey.  I wonder about our cultural assumptions about God's presence. The Greeks believed their gods might disguise themselves and act in the world 

In The Odyssey, Odysseus survives storms, monsters, temptations, and shipwrecks. The film, like the poem, suggests that gods frequently intervene, redirecting Odysseus' path with visible power. Athena appears, and it is suggested that Divine hands are everywhere and can assume any form. However, unlike today, Homer's Greeks would ask what Joan Osborne questions in her cover of the song, "What if God was one of us?' The Nolan film shies away from the ancients' true beliefs.

Unlike now, most people then commonly thought that their gods might disguise themselves as "one of us" and act in the world. In Esther, no deities ever appear. Instead, ordinary people must navigate political danger without certainty, without visions, and without miraculous rescue. God's guidance is hidden within ordinary choices, quiet courage, and unlikely coincidences.

Our present lives and beliefs probably resemble Esther more than Homer. Most of us do not receive unmistakable signs from gods or heaven. We simply awaken each day wondering how to live faithfully amid complicated circumstances. And perhaps that is enough.

Another journey that I am examining through Greek myth is the Broadway musical Hadestown. In this Orpheus descends into the underworld believing that love is stronger than despair. Around him, workers endlessly build walls for a king who promises security while exploiting their labor. Fear becomes the currency of empire. Hope becomes an act of resistance.

King Hades and King Ahasuerus are not so different. Both build worlds where power demands obedience. Both surround themselves with displays of wealth. Both confuse domination with greatness. Yet Hadestown insists that its story "is a sad song, but we sing it anyway." 

Why? Because telling stories of hope keeps hope alive. 

Esther begins the same way. The first chapter appears to belong entirely to its empire. God is silent. Justice seems absent. Power dominates the stage, but readers already know something the emperor does not. Empires never have the final word.

The hidden God is already writing another story beneath the story. This may be the deepest gift that Esther offers for our own time. We also live in an age of dazzling displays of power. Wealth is celebrated. Fear is marketed. Some voices are amplified while others are silenced. It can feel as though God has withdrawn from the public square.  Yet Esther invites us to read history with different eyes.

We seek the people who quietly refuse to cooperate with injustice, for the community that protects the vulnerable. We seek the strangers who choose compassion over comfort and for those speaking a courageous "no" that makes a thousand faithful "yeses" possible.

That is where the hidden God can often be found. Like Ruth, God still speaks the language of ḥesed. Like Odysseus, we continue our uncertain journey toward home. Like Orpheus, we keep singing against despair because hope itself becomes an act of resistance.

And like Esther, we discover that God's greatest work often begins long before anyone notices. The first chapter ends without mentioning God. Perhaps that is precisely the point. Faith is learning to recognize God's fingerprints even when God's name is missing.

Esther 4:1–17 and today's Gospel Lesson, Luke 9:23–24, speak to one another across centuries. Although Esther never mentions "taking up a cross," her response to Mordecai's challenge embodies the same pattern of discipleship that Jesus later describes. Both passages ask the same fundamental question: What is demanded when faithfulness requires risking our own security? 

For the hidden God is never absent. The hidden God is already preparing courage. Already awakening dignity. Already weaving ḥesed through ordinary lives. Already composing a song that no empire can silence. And if we listen carefully, even in the silence, we can discover that God's quiet melody has been accompanying us all along.

Ruth, Esther, The Odyssey, and the Hadestown musical are all part of a deep contemplation regarding essence, human dignity, empire, and hope. Many either provide metaphors or examples of ḥesed as God's language, or ask us for consideration of a hidden God who writes another story beneath what may be seen as an everyday story or coincidence. 

Esther and Ruth function as companion books. Ruth teaches us how God speaks, through ḥesed, steadfast love. Esther teaches us how God remains present, even when silent. Together they offer a profound theology for our own age: God is revealed not only in miracles, but in ordinary people who practice courageous love in the face of systems that deny human dignity.

 Sermon 

July 18, 2026 Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

This film has been critically acclaimed, opening new ways of experiencing ancient texts. I include reactions to the film here.

 

Nolan wants to create on the cutting edge of film technology, so this film navigates between its aim to be a blockbuster cultural event and a thoughtful arthouse project. 

 

What is causing controversy in the internet reactions that are flooding in, which are heaping high praise or trashing it disdainfully as not understanding the work at all. Nolan said the success of Oppenheimer led to the budget to make this film possible. This brought to mind Star Wars and Joseph Campbell.  

 
I don't approach Homer as sacred canon that every adaptation must obey. Nor do I think of The Odyssey as literal history that filmmakers have an obligation to reconstruct. I see Homer like Shakespeare or Arthurian legends; the poem has survived because each generation discovers it anew. The question isn't "Was this exactly in Homer?" but "Does this version make the story live again?"

Nolan's passion is evident everywhere. What is striking isn't simply the spectacle; it is Nolan's obvious affection for the source material. Every creative decision feels as if it were made by someone who genuinely loves the epic. Nolan's writing reminded me of the excitement surrounding Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein adaptation,  an artist deeply in conversation with a classic. That's the kind of adaptation I enjoy.

Rather than simply retelling the plot, Nolan delights in details that many audiences may not even recognize. For instance, there's Argos. Including Argos wasn't merely fan service. The reunion with Odysseus' faithful dog before he dies is one of the most moving moments in literature. Seeing it honored onscreen communicates that Nolan understands where Homer's emotional center lies. Including the depiction of Odysseus' hunting scar early in the narrative resonates. The dog and scar carry memory, identity, and recognition simultaneously. Bringing it into the film respects one of the poem's greatest storytelling inventions.

I appreciated the Circe and Calypso sequences. Rather than reducing them to fantasy figures, they felt emotionally and psychologically significant. Each represents a different temptation: forgetting (with Calypso intentionally feeding him the lotus flowers, and therefore keeping him outside ordinary human life, and contributing to the difficult work of returning home. was brilliant to me. Circe turning the men into hogs was uncomfortable because it was not depicted as "magical". Both Circe and Calypso become mirrors reflecting Odysseus's own temptations.

The way Athena's presence was another favorite moment. Odysseus sees Athena's face throughout the story. Her face turns out to be the face of a Trojan woman who is beheaded as Troy is sacked. The reveal of that face, which Athena has been presenting to Odysseus, was devastating; I think it also captured something Homer often does through language: the gods are present, disguised, intervening, revealing themselves at decisive moments, but it gives a nod to the psychological impact the war is having on him. 

 
Obviously, myths survive because artists reinterpret them. Homer himself inherited stories that were already centuries old. Every retelling, from Virgil to Joyce to Emily Wilson's translation to Nolan's film, is another conversation with the tradition. I told you how much I liked her translation of him being a complicated man rather than cunning. She just gave an interview where she jokingly defended the word by quoting Shaft: "He's a complicated man that no one understands but his woman." Which fits both Penelope and Odysseus

I could go on (it is a 3-hour film) but, for me, Nolan's The Odyssey succeeds because it feels like an act of love rather than an exercise in obligation. I never needed Homer treated as untouchable canon. I wanted to see a filmmaker engage imaginatively with one of humanity's great stories. The care shown to Argos, the scar, Circe, Calypso, and the inspired revelation of Athena all convinced me that Nolan wasn't simply adapting Homer; he was conversing with him and adjusting pieces of the story for a modern audience. That's exactly what living myths invite us to do.

July 5, 2026 Ruth 1:1-22: Finding Home by Following Ruth's and Odysseus' Stories

Bearden:  A Black Odyssey

In our first summer series reading, Ruth arrives in Bethlehem with nothing. She is a foreign widow carrying no promise except the one she makes to Naomi. Yet in giving herself away, she receives what she never sought: a family, a community, and a place in the lineage of David and ultimately in the genealogy of Jesus.

She begins her journey not by returning to her homeland but by leaving it. Every practical reason tells her to stay in Moab. Her future would be safer there. Her culture and family are there. Bethlehem holds only poverty and the possibility of rejection.

Unlike Oprah, Naomi's other daughter-in-law, Ruth follows Naomi and promises, "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God. Naomi responds by giving the following blessing:

"May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me."

The word translated "kindly" is ḥesed, which we've encountered before and is sometimes translated as lovingkindness. Naomi recognizes that Ruth and Orpah have already shown extraordinary covenant loyalty. Those words are often heard as her declaration of loyalty, but they are also a radical redefinition of home. Ruth understands that home is not first a geography. It is a relationship. Home is found wherever faithful love, hesed, is practiced.

Naomi's name means "Pleasant" or "Delightful,". When she returns to Bethlehem, she says, "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara." She believes pleasantness has become bitterness. Yet the narrative never adopts "Mara." It continues calling her Naomi, hinting that God is not finished restoring her joy. Ruth is to be part of that restoration.  

For several weeks now, I have been rereading The Odyssey to prepare to watch Christopher Nolan's upcoming film this month. Today I am imagining Odysseus' journey if he had shared Ruth's understanding of hesed throughout his travels in Homer's epic poem.

In The Odyssey, Odysseus measures every place against Ithaca. Even the paradise of Calypso cannot satisfy him because it is not home. The Lotus-Eaters threaten him because they erase the memory of home. Every adventure is judged by whether it delays or advances his return.

Ruth would ask a different question regarding her destination. Not "How do I get back to where I once belonged?" Instead, she would have redirected to: "With whom and where will I practice faithful love?"  Her compass is not nostalgia but covenant. This difference changes everything.

Odysseus spends years trying to recover the life he once had. Greek society sought ἀρετή (aretē) in life to build their reputations. In the end, he is like Ruth walking toward a life that cannot yet be imagined. At the beginning, Odysseus is pulled by memory. Ruth is primarily drawn by faith. Ironically, both stories end in restoration, but by different roads.

Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca only after he has been stripped of pride, certainty, and power. He arrives disguised as a beggar. He discovers that home cannot simply be reclaimed by force; it must be recognized and renewed through relationships with Telemachus, Penelope, and those who remained faithful.

Perhaps the deepest lesson both stories teach is that home is never exactly what we left behind. Time changes us, loss changes us, and the journey changes us. The home to which Odysseus returns must be rebuilt. The home Ruth enters must be created.

This is where Ruth's story speaks most powerfully. Many of us have spent years trying to get back, to a happier season, a healthier body, a thriving church, a beloved relationship, We might be yearning for a friendlier America and maybe a younger version of ourselves. Like Odysseus, we long for our own Ithacas of memory.

Ruth gently invites us to release that impossible task and recognize home is where we choose to love faithfully today.

It is found in keeping promises when the future is uncertain. It is discovered when you walk beside another person, rather than being intimidated or distrustful. It grows wherever strangers become neighbors, enemies become friends, and grief slowly gives way to hope.

The gospel deepens this vision still further. Jesus rarely speaks of home as a destination to be reclaimed. Instead, he creates homes wherever people gather in love, forgiveness, and welcome. He leaves heaven to dwell among strangers, making God's home with humanity. Through Christ, home becomes less about arriving at a place than participating in God's reconciling presence.

In that light, Ruth's journey becomes more than the story of one faithful woman. It becomes a parable for every disciple. Faith is not merely finding our way back. Instead, it is discovering that wherever God's steadfast love is lived, we already stand on holy ground. 

When we think of homecomings, let's not dwell on the life we once knew, but rather discover that God has been quietly building a home for us all along, not merely in a place, but in a people. Like Ruth, we may find that home is not behind us waiting to be recovered. It is before us, waiting to be created, one covenant of love at a time.

When we think of homecoming, our imaginations tend to turn to Odysseus. For twenty years, he longed for Ithaca. He survived storms, monsters, temptations, and wars, sustained by a single hope: to return to the place where he belongs. Home is  the fixed point by which he navigates every danger. Home is something lost and must be recovered.

Ruth offers us a profoundly different understanding of home, one that Odysseus ultimately learns through his adventures. We  can all urgently longing for a promised hesed, that northern star that guides each wanderer and then is found.