A sermon James preached on 20th March on the Book of Esther (picture is of ‘Unveiled’ the book we’re using for book club)
Where is God when life is a mess? How are you supposed to follow God when the culture around you is so very different? There’s quite a few different answers to this but the book of Esther is God’s gift to us for living in difficult times.
It’s the only book in the bible that has no references to God or the Lord. There’s no angels, no prophets saying ‘Thus says the Lord’, there’s no priest, no synagogue or temple, no sacrifice, no worship. And there’s no mention of prayer in this book. You could be right to think Why is this book even in the bible?
Chapter 1 starts with the emperor asking for the queen to come and parade her beauty before them all – the text winks at the suggestion that she might just wear her crown and robe and nothing else. So you’re straight into an awkward feeling – what is going on here? This isn’t right.
Please note that if you’re feeling such awkwardness then well done. I think that that is the aim. I don’t think you feel like this because you’re English and this is the 20th C , I think its because this chapter is here to make you realise that this is wrong, this is not how women should be treated. The #MeToo movement that started up after one brave actresses, Alyssa Milano, spoke of her treatment by Harvey Weinstein – which resulted in a wave of other women coming forward – this is a moment like that – Queen Vashti and she says No.
The year is 470bc plus or minus. The people of God, the northern Israelites were taken off as slaves in 720bc but then in 586bc Jerusalem fell and the southern people, Judah, they were taken off into slavery and so here they are some hundred years later.
Many have returned to the promised land courtesy of Cyrus king of Persia. He sent back Ezra and later Nehemiah and so some have come back but plenty have stayed in exile. They aren’t slaves as such but citizens of this weird vast empire and they have found a way to make a living and get by and now we are 3 generations since they saw their holy homeland.
So there are Jews living in this enormous empire which has about it some solid sense of law. When a law is written, then it is written and there’s nothing that even the king can do to just wave a hand and say Oh that doesn’t apply to my mates, this is the law of the Medes and Persians not even the king is above it. That’s a good way to run an empire that covers so very many countries. And yes this is where we get that expression the Law of the Medes and Persians meaning it’s fixed, nothing you can do about it.
Unless another law is written.
So no surprises that the King decides that he wants to have a massively huge and lengthy party to celebrate how fabulous he is. But the queen says No to being paraded like that and so she is deposed.
Lesson 1 should be about having the Courage to say No. We don’t know if she is a godly woman but it seems clear that she knows abuse and bullying and demeaning behaviour when she sees it.
And so the King needs a wife and just to keep the awkwardness levels high, lets have a beauty parade where the winner gets to be queen? And so, we come to Esther and uncle Mordecai and we’re told the secret that they are Jews.
Now I said how in the book of Esther, there’s no word for God or worship or sabbath etc etc but we do find the word Jew – its used 42 times in 10 chapters – the next nearest OT book would be Jeremiah which is five times longer and uses the word Jew only 12 times (John 34, Acts 58). It’s a big deal. The Reader needs to know that Esther and Mordecai are Jews.
We see uncle Mordecai being a good citizen and doing his public duty by reporting a plan to kill the king resulting in the king’s life being saved
But We see Haman infuriated that Mordecai wont bow to him, and so he begins to plot not merely Mordecai’s death but an extermination of all his kind, of all Jews.
I’ve been in Jerusalem when Purim is being celebrated this year it will be on 16th/17th March and people dress up throughout the day – it’s a sort of Halloween meets World Book Day sort of thing – and there’s some extra special sweets to eat – oddly called Haman’s Ears – its called Purim because that is the plural word for Dice. And very often it’s the sort of feast where you invite neighbours over to yours for supper and you act out the story of Esther in full home production pantomime style – so that every time that Haman is mentioned you should all boo!
Haman (boo) is trying to work out when to destroy the jews and he rolls dice to decide the date.
The King signs it without much thought – so there’s probably a lesson here for us all about reading the small print in things we’re asked to sign – and so we come to the central pivotal part of the story.
One more key ingredient is needed which is to understand that you can’t just saunter into the presence of the King and interrupt proceedings. To even try it is to risk death.
So now we see why Esther is reluctant to risk her life – and this is where we see first a reminder of faith.
Uncle Mordecai thinks that she should say something to the king, but to do so is to risk death. Esther asks Mordecai to gather the other Jews and to fast for her.
So we see a subtle glimpse of faith – its not possible to fast without praying, but the author of the book of Esther is studiously avoiding words like prayer and God
Slight red herring – but some of you might have a bible translation called The Jerusalem Bible – (not bad as translations go) or you might have a section in your bible called The Apocrypha, or Deutero-Canonical books – I wont explain those to you now, but there is a book called Greek Esther – the Book of Esther that we have in our bibles is a translation from the Hebrew but later it seems someone came along and added a chapter or two here and there to the hebrew Esther and mostly what was added was stuff to do with God and prayer – its almost as if the person adding in the greek extra bits didn’t trust God to let His scriptures speak for themselves. But I digress.
But the reader is to note – the lead people here Mordecai and Esther are Jews, they’re called to fast – and so you should now have two alarm bells that should be making you think about God and about prayer.
And this is the background and run up to this pivotal vocational moment. Esther does not want to bring this to the king’s attention, its seriously going to endanger her life and uncle Mordecai replies – Who knows but that you have come to your position for such a time as this.
And I think that this is the pivotal phrase – ‘for such a time as this’ – this is a real commeth the hour commeth the woman sort of comment. We’ve seen the bravery of a non-believer like Queen Vashti risking her life and now we see the sacrifice of Esther.
She expects to die, but because of the faith, the prayer, the fasting of her people the Jews, she has the courage to sacrifice herself in this way.
Last week we had Caleb being old and yet saying ‘No give me the hard jobs’. Too often we buy into the line that we’re too old for this or that. I’ve done my time, my shift. The Cardinals elected Pope John 23rd in 1962 because he was old and doddery and boring and a safe pair of hands – and I think that Pope John thought to himself – I am old and doddery and not long for this world so let’s have Vatican 2, let’s have a council and shake up the Roman Catholic Church like never before. Good for him.
Esther has this temptation to put up and shut up or to risk everything, to apply her faith or to stay in her comfort zone. We would all have sympathy for wanting to stay in her comfort zone, that’s why it is called the comfort zone. Esther asks for prayer and having other people pray for her gives her the courage that she needs to do what comes next.
There’s a take home point here about the importance of praying for other people – about holding each other in prayer, praying for peace, for courage, for the gift of faith. Take up the opportunities at holy Communion today to come and receive further prayer in the Holy Spirit Chapel.
And so Esther approaches the king – but we are not done with the pantomime – she can’t bring herself to tell the king, her husband, what she needs to say and so she says – I’d like to invite you, just you and Haman (boo) to afternoon tea – at which I will tell you what I need to ask you! And when she gets to the afternoon tea she says – come tomorrow, to one more afternoon tea and then I will tell you.
Either the author is building up the tension or Esther is really struggling with the weight of what she must say and the doubt that this will change anything other than lead to her own death and the destruction of her family, her people.
Meanwhile for comic effect we have Haman (boo) having a terrible day because he can’t kill Mordecai quickly enough so he erects a huge stake with the intent to impale him on it.
But the king has a sleepless night and someone reads him a bedtime story and that contains the story of Mordecai foiling the kings assassination plot and the King says ‘Did we do anything to thank him’, and Haman walks past just at that moment and the King says What should we do to thank a chap for being so good to the King?
And Shakespeare must have nicked this plot twist idea off the book of Esther – Haman thinks the King is asking what Haman would like the King to do for him and so he says ‘Parade this person, wink, around town and have the next most important person shout – the King really loves this fella and thanks him!’ So the king says Great idea, can you do that for Mordecai.
Can you see God at work?
Perhaps you can now! Perhaps you can see that the tables are slightly turning.
Its not easy for us, we pray and pray and nothing happens and we wonder where God is in all this mess and what we need is a small glimpse that God has not forgotten us, a small answered prayer would do us very well.
It hasn’t solved the big problem, this isn’t a happy ending, but it is a sign that God has remembered Mordecai, that God has not forgotten His people.
For me, I like the way that the book of Esther so very often gives names, even lists of names of the eunuchs. Eunuchs are very useful people to ancient kings because they are good at keeping confidences and so they are deemed to be trustworthy – but they are also deemed to be irrelevant, who cares, they are unseen, invisible people who take messages from one to another.
But in Esther – it is as if the author sees these people as people, he gives them names, – Teresh and Bigthana plot to kill the king – but Hegai looks after Esther and they take key messages – I said earlier that Mordecai tells Esther about the plot to kill the king, and about the plot to kill all the Jews – but really that’s lazy preaching when the text says that one of the Eunuchs – and we’re given his name – Hathak runs between them taking the messages.
To me these people are little invisible earthly messengers or to use another word for a messenger, angels. Let the reader understand, can you see God at work in your life?
Very often no, its hard, but sometimes yes we can. And here’s some angels, admittedly here some are good and some are bad so lets not make too much of this point.
And so we come to today’s bit of Esther that we heard read earlier. The 2nd Afternoon cup of tea – and she finally says her piece – Haman is now mortified and hoisted on his own petard, or in the popular sense of Karma coming to bite Haman or literally impaled on his own stake.
Now look this would be a really good moment to end the book of Esther. The baddy dies, the goodies live, roll the credits whilst the closing song plays.
But its hard to know when to end a story and so this last bit of Esther is about the importance, the right, of self–defence. The King cannot cancel the law that he foolishly rubber stamped and so must issue a counter law. Alas lots of fighting happens and lots of people die, but the Jews are not destroyed. And now you can roll the final credits.
The book of Esther is fraught with moral ambiguity – do not be in a rush to say ‘When I grow up I want to be like Mordecai and Esther’ – there’s lots of drinking and sex and murder and all sorts of torah violations – but it would be okay to say ‘When I grow up I would like to have the Courage, the faith, the trust and hope in God that Esther and Mordecai show’.
The book of Esther teaches us something about Vocation – we see it in the invisible eunuchs as sort of literary angels – we see it in Esther who finds herself in a place where she can do more good than she could ever have dreamed of.
It tells us something about the importance of looking for the hand of God at work in our lives. Sometimes easy, often not, keep praying, keep looking.
It tells us something about the power of being held by other people’s prayers. Because it is through the prayers of a community of faith that this woman finds the faith and courage to risk sacrificing herself and through that sacrifice she saves her people.
May you continue to hold your church family in prayer, as we together seek the gift of faith, and the courage to live by it. Amen.