If you read the Bible mostly on Sunday
here in church, then you probably do not know much about the Book of
Esther. After all, the lectionary offers
up this “bits and pieces” excerpt that we just read only once every three
years. If you had missed this Sunday, then
you would have been out of luck for a while!
The Book of Esther is in the Old
Testament part of our Bible, and it is set some 475 years before Jesus was even
born. It is unusual in the Biblical
canon for several reasons, not the least of which is because, as Seminary
professor Amy Oden reminds us, this book
“has no mention of Jerusalem, the law, prophets, the Promised Land or
exile, or even God. It includes no formal prayers or miracles, though (it) does
depict fasting as a pious practice. Its only internal tie to the rest of the
Hebrew Bible is that it involves the survival of the Jewish people.” In short, there is no overt theology in
Esther.
It is unique for another reason too,
and that is because it was named for a woman.
Face it – our Bible is full of male prophets and priests and all manner
of male military leaders and kings. Each
one of you could list off the big guns - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joshua,
Solomon, and David, to name just a few.
However, it takes only a cursory glance
to realize that the Bible is a little light on raising up females as role
models or key players. Lots of Biblical
heroes, to be sure, but you do not often find a heroine – a woman of great
courage in the face of greater odds.
However, Esther is one such person.
Her story is like a good novel because scholars
believe that it is not historically accurate.
However, that being said, like many stories in the Bible its fundamental
truth is embedded in its meaning rather than in its literal facts. United Church of Christ pastor summarizes the
story of Esther like this: It “is full
of all sorts of things we find in the most entertaining movies: irony and
intrigue, a thickening plot, clever wits and evil villains, royal splendor and
a weak ruler, and, of course, the hero(ine) who rises to the challenge and
saves the day.”
The story of Esther is chockablock full
of action and adventure. It is a tale
where the underdog wins, but it is not explicitly religious or preachy. All in
all, it is like a Biblical soap opera – or a Hispanic tela-novella. However, it is still worth learning about
because woven in and around and throughout the story, the voice of God is there
– albeit off center stage, in the wings.
The story takes place in Persia where
Esther lived. She was an orphan, and her
uncle, Mordecai, raised her. Now you
might remember that at one time the Babylonian army conquered Israel, and many
Jewish people were exiled to the outer reaches of that empire. That was also when the temple in Jerusalem was
completely destroyed, left as a smoldering pile of rubble.
Fifty or so years later, the Persians
conquered Babylon, and the exiled Jews were allowed to return home, which many
did. However, a number of them had carved
out a new life there in Babylon and so chose to stay rather than return home to
their native land. Mordecai and Esther were
among that group of Jews who stayed behind. However, being Jewish in a pagan world was
always a risky business, and so Mordecai and Ester kept their Hebrew heritage a
secret.
Now the drama of Esther really all
begins when the king of Persia, whose name was Xerxes, banished his queen for standing
up to him and mouthing off one time too many.
Now in need of a replacement consort, Xerxes gathered all of the
beautiful women in the kingdom together, thereby greatly expanding his
harem.
And in the
confines of the palace, these women prepared for a year for their one-night
stand with the king.
Esther apparently was a real knock out when
her turn came because it did not take long for King Xerxes to declare Esther
his queen – not that being queen gave her many special privileges. You see (and this will be important later),
she could still only be in the King’s presence when he commanded her.
Now Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, accompanied
Esther to the king’s court. After all, would
not life be better if at the very least the king knew who you were?
However, it is with Mordecai that the
real trouble begins. You see, he had a
run in with the king’s prime minister whose name was Haman. Haman is the bad guy in this story.
Haman was an uppity sort who must have
thought very highly of himself because he expected most everyone to kneel down
and pay honor to him. That proclamation
put Mordecai in a real pickle because a good Jew only pays honor to God. He has a fundamental choice to make. Does he out himself as a Jew – or hide his
religious heritage away?
Well, this incident is where Mordecai
drew the line. He openly refused to bow
down to Haman on religious grounds. As
you might expect, Haman was furious and convinced the king to issue an
irrevocable decree to not only execute Mordecai but also to kill every other Jew
as well – old and young, including women and children. Extremely pleased with himself, Haman even went
so far as to oversee the construction of Mordecai’s gallows.
Now what is Mordecai to do? Well, that is where Esther comes in. He does his best to persuade her to intervene
- no easy task, by the way. Mordecai is
brutally honest as he tells Esther, “Don’t think
you’ll survive this. (But) if you keep
silence at such a time as this, your people shall die….And besides, who knows,
maybe you have come to be Queen for just such a time as this.”
I say it was no easy task for Esther
because, even though she was queen, remember that technically she had no power
whatsoever – and so would be putting herself personally at great risk. Because
she could only be in the king’s presence when summoned, to petition the king –
uninvited – meant the very real possibility of offending Xerxes and being, at
best, banished like her predecessor or, at worst, put to death.
When
you think about it, Esther had a good life going in the palace. She had a lot to lose and not all that much
to gain personally by getting involved in this particular situation.
However, Esther was Jewish and in the
end that meant something to her. And so
she worked the system and a couple of banquets, a few bottles of wine, and who
knows what else later, the king reversed his decision. Haman the bad guy was hoisted up on the
gallows he constructed for Mordecai, and once again the Jewish populace was
saved from destruction.
As a disempowered woman with her Jewish
identity hidden, Esther could have just followed the path of being passive,
waiting for someone else to solve the problem. But instead she chose to stand
up courageously for her beliefs, her values, and her people.
So surely one truth we can tease from Esther’s
story is what can happen when one chooses to stand by one’s faith, when one senses
the presence of God if only in the wings, and when one knows deep down inside
that if your heart is pure and your cause is just, your strength is as the
strength of ten.
The simple truth of this story is that,
with courage, the weak become strong. Not only that, but those who are
oppressed make a difference and change the destiny of many. The message is a
powerful one and is why Jews around the world still remember Esther’s story
each year at the feast of Purim. Her
story is one of astounding courage in the face of great odds.
Courage is not an easy thing to come
by, particularly when things are not going well in our own lives or in the
lives of others. It is hard to muster up
the courage to stand up for what is right.
I read this week about a research study
once conducted where ten students were placed in a room. Three lines of varying
length were drawn on a card. The students were told to raise their hands when
the instructor pointed to the longest line.
However nine of the students had been instructed beforehand to raise
their hands when the instructor pointed to the second longest line. One student
was the stooge.
The usual reaction of the stooge was to
put his hand up, look around, and, realizing he was alone in doing so, pull it
back down. This happened 75% of the time, with students from grade school
through high school. It is hard to
maintain the courage of our convictions when doing so means standing out publicly,
being seen as different, odd, even countercultural.
However, doesn’t such courage lie at
the heart of truly being a Christian?
Doesn’t a Christian stand up for the ones nobody notices, for the ones
whom the system has marginalized, for the victims, and for those who are
down-and-out?
Aren’t we as Christians called to have
that kind of courage even when we feel like the one student, the stooge –
wanting more than anything to follow the crowd?
Aren’t we as Christians called to have that kind of courage because, in
the end, the problems of the least are somehow our problems as well?
One day a mouse looked through a crack
in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. The little guy was terrified to discover that
inside was a mousetrap!
Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse first
ran to the henhouse: "There is a mouse trap in the house; there is a mouse
trap in the house."
The chicken clucked and scratched,
raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell you this is a grave
concern for you, but it is of no consequence to me."
The mouse then turned to the pig and
told him, "There is a mouse trap in the house."
"I am so very sorry, Mr.
Mouse," sympathized the pig, "but there is nothing I can do about it
but pray."
The mouse finally turned to the cow,
who replied, "Like wow, Mr. Mouse, a mouse trap; am I in grave danger,
Duh?"
So the mouse returned to the house,
head down and dejected to face the farmer's mousetrap alone. That very night he
heard a sound, suspiciously like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.
It woke the farmer’s wife who rushed to
see what was caught. However, in the darkness, she failed to see that it was a
venomous snake whose tail had been caught in the trap. The snake bit the
farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, where she caught one of
those hospital infections and returned home with a fever.
Now everyone knows you treat a fever
with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the
soup's main ingredient. However, his wife's sickness continued so that friends
and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer
butchered the pig.
Unfortunately, the farmer's wife eventually
died, and so many people came to her funeral that the farmer slaughtered the
cow to provide meat for all of them to eat. So the next time you hear that
someone is facing a problem, and you think that it does not concern you,
remember that when the least of us is threatened, we are all affected.
Jesus understood that fundamental connection
we have with one another – that concept of a sacred web that binds me to you
and you to me - and all of us to the very least. Jesus also understood that it takes courage
to affirm that fundamental connection among us – that sacred web – and even
more courage to openly live our lives believing in and acting upon that
fundamental truth.
Jesus’ own ministry reflected that kind
of courage. As he faced the injustices
of his day, he stood firm in God’s all-inclusive love. Nothing
swayed him from standing up for the poor and oppressed, even when he knew he
would face rejection, suffering, and even death.
Standing up for justice at the risk of
our own security takes a lot of courage, courage that only comes from the
inside, from the place where God dwells in our hearts. That is why we need stories like this one about
Esther.
We need them to remind us of what we
can do with God’s help and to remind us that deep inside, in our heart of
hearts, lies buried the courage we need to really be a follower of Jesus.
The question was once raised – if you
were put on trial as a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict
you? How would you answer that?
We all need a dose of courage. We all need a role model to follow and a
heroine to emulate. We all need the
strength to respond when God calls. As Episcopal priest Thomas James Brown once
wrote, “God works through humanity, through community, to bring about Christ’s
reign of justice and of never-ending love. We probably won’t be tapped to
deliver God’s people in the same way that Esther was, but (when we are called)
we must act,”
–
and act with profound hope and courage as Esther did. After all - “If not you, then who? If not
now, then when?”
Need courage? Read Esther.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church
www.rvccme.org
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