The Risk of the Open Door: The Practice That Makes It Visible

The Risk of the Open Door: The Practice That Makes It Visible Preview · Opening of the manuscript The hallway outside the inner office is already full. A member of this church has a key to that hallway.

Another has a title that still opens a door. A third has the phone number of the person who can still stop a quiet cruelty before Friday. None of that is hidden. What this room keeps hidden is the practice. We know how to print "such a time as this." We do not always know how to make the spending of a seat visible to the people who still cannot get through the door alone.

Someone will want this sermon to stay indoors: a private fast, a private prayer, a private feeling of courage that never leaves the chair. Esther will not let you keep the courage private. She names the law in a message other people can still carry. She asks the Jews in Susa to fast with her. Then she will go in, against the law, in a court other people can still see.

If you preach Esther 4 as a map of anyone's interior life, you will lie. If you preach it as a Jewish queen in a Persian palace, with a real decree, a real law about uninvited entry, and a cousin who will not let her treat the palace as a hiding place, you give this church a God who can deliver even if she stays silent, and a people who still have to decide whether privilege will be spent where it can be seen.

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