Texts: Esther 3:7-15; Matthew 15: 1-20

Most of us, I am sure, will remember that old children's game called Quaker ladies (or telephone, Chinese whispers, broken cord) that demonstrated two important things: First, how long does it take for any sentence, phrase, or word to go around in a circle of people; and, secondly, more importantly, how does that sentence, phrase, or word change from the first person to the last. Children giggle as they hear the changes. But that children's game indicates how a simple story about anything or any one can change, sometimes with devastating consequences.

We see it every day in the supermarket tabloids or on the internet: simple stories usually about those people we call celebrities that are, at the least, invasions of privacy, and at the most, nasty and vile attacks on character. In his book, The Cult of Celebrity: What Our Fascination with the Stars Tells Us About Ourselves, Cooper Lawrence traces the growth of and dissects the constant attention media has focused on celebrities. Unfortunately, most media focus more on whether some airhead starlet is drinking and driving underage rather than on the humanitarian work of other so-called “stars.” Quite frankly, there are times I think that if the Yahoo! server pops up one more story about Lindsay Lohan and her antics, I think I'll just scream, more because of what it does not, do for our approach towards the issues of disparate justice between rich and poor rather than for the gossip angle.

We see it in the political culture as well: the draw that certain entertainers, actors, and other public personalities have for certain candidates help to raise money, encourage support, and even get votes. There is a dark side to this as well, which we really see exemplified in our story from the book of Esther this morning. Some people, thinking that they are more important than others, resent it when others see them as mere mortals. The cult of celebrity and its political equivalent, the cult of personality are ultimately destructive of our understanding of our place in the world – and of our basic equality before God.

Some of you may remember the story of Esther from Sunday School days: The Persian King Ahasuerus, better known to us as Xerxes, holds a feast and orders Vashti his Queen to show “her beauty” to his drunken friends – the text says they were all “merry with wine” – and she refuses. Ahasuerus is, of course, enraged. He is the King, and obviously full of himself. That's the first part of thinking you are more important than you really are; and it hasn't changed much over the centuries. Just look at some of our political personalities running for the Republican nomination for President; they all exhibit a heightened sense of themselves. And, from Ahasuerus through Rick Perry, they all suffer from diarrhea of the mouth.

On with the story: the King's advisors are alarmed because if the word gets out that a mere woman, even if she is the Queen, refuses an order from her husband, what will other women do? They can also – and I love this phrase – “look with contempt” upon their own husbands. So Vashti needs to go and the King needs a new, more compliant wife. Our heroine Esther is chosen based on her beauty alone and she is made the King's new Queen. The book reads like a Spanish novella and one may ask whether there is any historical truth to the story.

Well, some scholars believe that certain characters may have been based on historical figures. Mordecai, the man who refuses to bow to Haman, may have been based on a certain Marduka, an accountant; the phrase “sitting at the King's gate” used in the story, is a reference to being a servant in the King's household. Haman is enraged and tells the King that “there is a certain people” who do not obey the King's laws, enraging the King, of course. This King, like many who are the center of attention and who think themselves the center of the world, is easily swayed by stories he hears. The Xerxes of history, by the way, was known for some empire building, instituted to puff up his own vanity. He relied on a Greek traitor to win the Battles of Thermoplyae, but was ultimately defeated in his attempt to conquer Greece. The grandson of Cyrus the Great who ended the Babylonian captivity in 538, and ruled the Persian Empire from 498 to 465 when he was assassinated by one of his own sons. The story ends with the triumph of Esther and Mordecai over Haman, who is hanged for all his fomenting against the Jews. There does not seem to be any historical figure for Esther herself.

I'd like to look at this story in the light of Jesus' comments about what defiles us: it's not what goes into our mouths, Jesus says in this morning's reading, but what comes out of our mouths. That's what defiles us, sullies us, and makes us less than we should be. Haman's response to Mordecai's refusal to bow down and do obeisance leads to the fabrication of a myth about not just Mordecai but the Jews. We hear myths about people all the time, buttressing our fears and deriving more from racism and resentment than from fact. But gossip and stories that have little basis in fact are just as deadly, especially to the creation of an inclusive community. Most of us, after all, considering ourselves educated, reject most myths about minorities as little more than just prejudice rearing its ugly head.

So, what should come out of our mouths? It's difficult not to give some voice to our negative feelings about people or events, to be sure. We should choose our words with care. For some of you my statement may sound like the pot calling the kettle black. I, for one, am not always careful about how I characterize people though I do think I do not use prejudicial categories. But the more central question is how we speak about each other, not just by category, but personally.

Unfounded rumor is deadly. We cannot ignore it. Look at what ignoring it did to John Kerry in 2004. Rumors feed into our fears. During Hurricane Katrina, there were stories floating that gangs of young – black, of course – men were raping and killing people inside the Superdome. None of it was true. Rumors, even unfounded ones, help people make sense of their world by creating social cohesion based on the rumor. Look at the Obama birth certificate flap. Rumors that fit into our existing biases are more easily believed even if only anecdotal. One example of this is that immigrants take American jobs; one person replaced makes for a rumor. Rumors that are repeated are also more easily believed. A prime example of this is the so-called evacuation of Jews from the World Trade Center before the 9-11 attacks. Rumors that are concrete and tied to a particular event are more easily believable but just as untrue. We hear a believable rumor and then we repeat it adding to its veracity. And rumors can be deadly to building community.

Rumors are particularly deadly in churches because we assume the best of our fellow church goers and members. We ask ourselves, now why would someone say something untrue? But many rumors are repeated not as lies but as believable truths because we heard something from someone we trust. It really is important to combat rumors at the point of contact. When we hear something, we really should ask about the origin of the rumor. Rather than simply repeating something like in a child's game, we need to stop and say to ourselves: Hey! Where did you hear that? We owe it to ourselves and to our community in Christ to check out what we hear.

In my prior life as a young mother – I really was one once – I agreed to teach a Sunday School class of teenagers. The pastor prevailed on me because no one else could put up with the kids and what seemed to be their unending questions. I was only ten to fifteen years older than most of them and although that made an enormous difference in our Weltanschauung, I found them delightfully challenging. They bristled at their project, which was to do a church service. Yeah, yeah, they said, let's play at church. I saw this as an opportunity to engage them and told them that this would be their service. They could pick the music, the readings, and the presentations. I would back them up. I'm not sure what part of the service set off some in the congregation, whether it was music from the Beatles or the Byrds or whether it was Harold Koh, now Legal Adviser to the Department of State, reading his poem on faith and doubt but by the following week the rumors had surfaced about “un-Christian” rituals I was sharing with the class. The pastor nipped it in the bud by calling a special meeting of the congregation taking on the rumors one by one. If there had been a stake, I would have been burned.

The story of Esther is a story about the destructiveness of rumor and the comment of Jesus in this morning's Gospel is a warning to us. As we approach the tenth year since the attacks of 9-11, we need to be especially careful about what we hear and what we repeat to each other. It will be an extremely emotional date for many. Let us not defile this date through acquiescing to hateful speech, because there will be a lot of it, but let us be open and welcoming to all who commemorate the terrible events of the day. Let us stop hate with love.

Let us pray: Loving God who embraces us all, help us to listen carefully and critically to what we hear; help us to have the courage to stand up to ugly rumors; and give us the grace to only speak in love of one another. Amen.