Parliamentary Madness: When a Burden becomes an Obsession

In this column, the Preacher writes about the topic, Parliamentary Madness: When a Burden becomes an Obsession1 When Mordecai learned of all that had been done, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the city, wailing loudly and bitterly. 2 But he went only as far as the king’s gate…

Esther 4:1-2, New International Version (NIV).

Mordecai was a very prominent government officer in the Kingdom of Persia.  He was one of the first persons anyone saw before they entered the palace to see the king or attend to official functions.  When this respectable man heard of the wicked plot of Haman the Prime Minister, to have all Jews killed on a date a year away, he was troubled to the point of a kind of social ‘indecency’ that might have been considered insanity. First thing, he tore his clothes, publicly.Those could not have been mean wears; not some second-hand stuff passed down from unknown ancestors in distant lands.  In futile attempt to undo the ‘public embarrassment’ without addressing the holy obsession behind it, the queen his niece sent him fresh replacements from the palace.  That further tells the quality of clothes that Mordecai must have torn mindlessly in lamentation for his threatened race: palace-grade wears, worn by prestigious palace staff.Unfortunately for the queen, that mourner would not accept her cosy replacement of his burdens with her insulating garments of privilege (Esther 4:4). Does that still happen today?Mordecai did not only tear his clothes in public, but he also replaced them with sackcloth, a kind of rough clothing indicating mourning; then he topped it up with the cosmetics of ashes, a very base kind of religious powdering. That done, he began his fashion parade on the high streets of the capital city of the kingdom in which he worked.I wonder how many tourists turned around to look at that ‘newly mad man.’  I wonder what his very respectable government colleagues made of him.  Maybe they said, “This thing has finally driven this guy mad, such madness as has come out in the open at last.  What crazy fanatical costumes of rags and ashes in the public place! Doesn’t he even have people to have restrained him at home?” Mainstream media would have gone wild. They couldn’t understand what was driving him.In his crazy ‘fashion parade’ of intercession against a fresh crazy decree from government, Mordecai walked down the highway to the palace, not some back street hidden from public view. He kept his slow pace until he got as far as his holy protest could carry him: the king’s gate, his very duty post. Wow, now his colleagues have finally got it. “This man is mad!”Mordecai was already loud enough with his unconventional wears, but he also chose to add his voice in very inarticulate emotional noises that caught no less attention. He “went out into the city, wailing loudly and bitterly.”  According to the King James Version, Mordecai “cried with a loud and a bitter cry.”Nobody could miss that popular man in his unconventional wears making very disturbing unconventional public noises all along the street until the very palace gates. He was making a sound for the threatened poor voiceless multitudes in the cities who did not have his kind of privileged access as far as the king’s gate. He dared to raise a voice in an apparently wired way that didn’t fail to catch heavenly and earthly attention.Some burdens press people in ways that compel their voice even if they wanted to be ‘politically correctly’ quiet.  Sometimes a burden drives crazy in ways that don’t make sense to ‘normal’ folks.Many years ago as an undergraduate, we had a campus outreach to which we were inviting everyone. A great preacher was coming to speak. I had a general faculty class one of those afternoons and chose to wear the large flier in front and behind like odd billboards.  Somehow, that day I got late into the lecture hall, sneaked in from the back door, and quickly took my seat, but the lecturer had sighted me.He called out, “Hey you there!”  Everyone turned back, wondering what or whom he was addressing. I knew it was me, but I also turned back, like everybody.“You there, stand up!” he screamed.I did.Then the class roared in spontaneous laughter as they saw my mad billboards garment.“Leave my class,” he ordered.I did, but in those few seconds, he helped me to advertise the outreach more than I could ever have done to that class of over two hundred students.  They read the front notice as I stood up, and read the other off my back as I walked out.My madness became a talk on campus, strangely further ‘advertising’ the outreach, thanks to my free ‘promoter.’ I made up my mind to ‘punish’ that teacher by ensuring that I had the highest mark in his exam. I did, an ‘A.’  Some burdens could be obsessive, and they could drive crazy in ways that make little sense to ‘normal’ manicured palace folks.Mordecai took to the streets with his burdens for the future of his people, a nobleman driven by a ‘spirit’ that not everyone would call noble. A road leading to the palace would not be a lonely murky dark street. It would be a kind of boulevard, some busy international avenue with tourists and diplomats and curious stragglers. That was where this intercessor chose to carry his one-man madness.It caught attention that promptly made news in the palace (Esther 4:4). That was how the revival started that birthed Esther’s prayer meeting in the palace that ignited the people’s three-day national fast in the cities that reversed the already-passed law of the ‘national assembly’ of Haman and killed the plotter at last in his own gallows. Sometimes it takes just one man to start the change.Sometimes we wait for too many people to start the good thing. It might take too long too late. Sometimes a burden doesn’t make sense to the comfortable and the complacent who have their endless arrays of alternative garments to replace the radical ashes and unthinkable sackcloth of the burdened intercessor.If he minds his class and status more than he minds the destiny of God, the same connections to the palace that could have been used to the advantage of radical intercession could become a very carnal distraction and death. In the apocalypses, what will have been the benefit of the sabotaging ‘more presentable’ outlooks? What use the insulating palace garments in the face of a coming death? Not every burden makes sense to everybody, until…Sometimes we wait for too many people to start a good thing. That it is good does not mean that every good person will support it. Our streets might be waiting for the next mad parliamentarian in sackcloth and ashes… in holy protestations against Hamans in high places and their evil decrees with a murderous reach far into the future.  It may be time now to choose between palace protocols and uncanny high-street intercessions.When Esther’s maids and eunuchs came and told her about Mordecai, she was in great distress. She sent clothes for him to put on instead of his sackcloth, but he would not accept them (Esther 4:4, NIV).Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (Esther 4:13-14). 

From The Preacher’s diary

July 12, 2020