Esther

 

The story of Esther is one of the most popular in scripture. The Jews read it in its entirety every year at the Feast of Purim. It has about everything: beauty pageants, a befuddled and dim-witted king, a malevolent chief prince, attempted genocide, and a beautiful orphan girl raised by her devoted uncle who becomes queen and risks her life to save her Jewish people.

The Book of Esther’s place in Jewish and Christian scriptures has been questioned. It’s a little racy and more than a little bloody. Furthermore God’s name is not mentioned once. The Persian King 190 times, God zero. But God is at work behind the scenes through people like you and me.

I

          As the curtain rises you see a great feast thrown by the King of Persia, Ahasuerus. He is most likely the Persian King historians call Xerxes I who reigned 486-465 BCE. Ahasuerus threw a feast for his officials and friends which lasted 180 days. Then he threw a follow up feast for all the citizens of Susa, the capital. All the women were in one hall and all the men in the other hall, a kind of stag party. It lasted seven days. On the seventh day when the king was “merry with wine” (read “sloshed”), he commanded his wife Queen Vashti to come parade her beauty before the men and dance (probably naked). She, one of the Bible’s first feminists, refused to be exploited and said no.

Furious and humiliated, the king consulted his advisors over what to do. They suggested that this set a bad example for the wives in the kingdom. It not only undermined the king’s authority, it threatened to undermine the institution of marriage and unravel the fabric of society itself. How can a society stand if wives stop obeying their husbands!?

So they advised: Get rid of Vashti as queen and get another “better than she,” i.e. more compliant. To secure the next queen the king set up a great Queen Hunt! His assistants went through the kingdom and found the most beautiful women. The “finalists” would be given a year’s beauty treatments and then be presented to the king. The mother of all “reality shows.”

II

          Enter Mordecai the Jew. He had a government position to sit at the king’s gate. He was also raising a beautiful young orphan girl named Esther, the daughter of Mordecai’s uncle. He raised her as his own daughter, loving her and teaching her the Jewish tradition.

When the finalists were chosen Esther was among them. With all the others she was given beauty treatments at the king’s spa. Six months bathing and massage with oil; six months with other perfumes and beautifiers.

Uncle Mordecai went often to see how she was doing. He carefully instructed her to keep her Jewish identity hidden. There would come a time, but not now.

When the list of finalists was whittled down to seven, they all went before the king. The moment Esther appeared the contest was over. Esther would be the next queen.

Mordecai, meanwhile, kept at his post at the king’s gate. One day he overheard a plot to kill the king being arranged by two of the king’s inner circle.

He reported this to Esther who reported it to the king and thus saved the king’s life. The king however did not know who uncovered the plot, but Mordecai’s name was recorded in the king’s chronicles.

III

          After the palace shake-up king Ahasuerus raised up a man named Haman to be his chief prince. It was a bad choice. If this were a melodrama, Haman would enter wearing a black mustache and a cape. The music would turn ominous and the audience would boo and hiss. When Esther is read aloud at the Purim Festival, every time Haman’s name is read the children hiss his name: “Haman! Haman!”

The king ordered all his servants to bow down to Haman. Mordecai refused to do so when Haman passed through the king’s gate. The reasons were more than personal. A Jew was to bow down only to God.

Haman flew into a fury. He thought about killing Mordecai on the spot, but decided to make his death part of a larger lot to exterminate all the Jews in the kingdom. Evil always overreaches.

He went to the king, and in a speech dripping with malice and racism said with a slur in his voice:

There are certain people scattered throughout the kingdom. Their laws and customs are different than everyone else’s, and they do not keep the king’s law. They are dangerous to the kingdom. It does not profit the king to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, they should be destroyed. Let us issue a decree and pay ten thousand talents to the ones who will carry out the king’s decree.

Genocide. The king who was putty in the hands of anyone who flattered him enough, or alarmed him sufficiently, said to Haman. “Do as you wish to these people.” The king signed the decree. It was an authorization,

…to destroy, to kill, to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children in one day…and to plunder their goods.

The story sends chills down our necks. I think of the Nazi horror and the heresy of white supremacy. The text says,

As the couriers swiftly fanned out with the king’s resolution, and as the decree was proclaimed in Susa’s citadel, the king and Haman settled down to drink while Susa was struck dumb.

Other translations read, the city was dumbstruck, perplexed, disturbed, thrown into confusion. The people of Susa knew in their bones something was wrong, terribly wrong.

IV

          When Mordecai heard of the decree he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes and went through the city crying out loudly and bitterly.

Esther heard of her uncle’s behavior but did not know of the decree. Though she was queen, she did not rule. She was more like the most favored of the king’s harem.

She sent new clothes to him and begged him to stop. He sent her back a copy of the king’s decree and asked her to go to the king and intercede for her people.

She replied, “Anyone who enters the king’s chambers uninvited can be put to death. I have not been invited to the king’s chamber in thirty days.” Mordecai responded with these challenging and forceful words:

Do not think you shall escape in the king’s palace any better than the rest of the Jews. If you keep silence, help will come from another quarter but you and your father’s house will perish.

And then he added these immortal words:

Who knows? Perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this!

Perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this!

To this point in the story Esther has been undistinguished except for her beauty. Physical beauty is a wonderful thing, but it can work to one’s disadvantage. There’s a character in a novel by Frederick Buechner named Mrs. Shroeder. He writes, “The main trouble with Mrs. Shroeder was that she was so pretty.”

She was so pretty she didn’t have to do anything to have friends or be successful except to be pretty. Buechner comments: “She never learned to be kind and generous and unselfish because she never had to.”

Until now Esther had never needed to be anything but beautiful. Her uncle had raised her with the stories and moral virtues of the Jewish faith. What would she do in the hour of crisis, at this time of dangerous opportunity?

What will we do with what we’ve been given, our beauty, our intelligence, our eloquence, abundance, influence? Will we care only about ourselves? Will we act on behalf of others who need someone like us? Will we listen to God’s call?

Here are Esther’s words, a testament of courage:

Go, gather the Jews in Susa. Ask them to fast with me for three days. Then I will go uninvited to the king. If I perish, I perish!

The king did receive her and promised to grant any request she would make. She skillfully delayed her request. “I will prepare a meal, come, bring Haman and I will make my request.”

The next day they gathered at her table but she put off her request  til the next day when she would prepare another meal. The suspense builds.

On the way home from the meal Haman passed by Mordecai who again refused to bow down to him. When Haman got home he poured out his anger over this insult to his wife. She offered this solution: build a gallows fifty cubits high and ask the king’s permission to execute Mordecai upon it.

Fifty cubits high! Noah’s ark was only thirty cubits high. The size is as preposterous as the size of Haman’s easily pricked ego.

A gallows the size of an ark?! An electric chair atop the county courthouse. A televised execution!  Haman licked his lips in anticipation.

V

          That night the king had trouble sleeping. Does God ever disturb our sleep? Wine no longer worked and Ambien had not yet been invented. He called his servants and asked them to bring the king’s chronicles, reading material sure to put him to sleep, as good as any sermon. As he read he discovered that it was Mordecai who had reported the assassination attempt and thus saved his life.

The next day before the scheduled dinner with Esther and Haman he saw Haman in the garden. “Come with me Haman, let me ask you a question: How would you honor a person if you wanted to do so in the most glorious way?”

Haman, thinking the king had him in the mind- why else had he been invited to dine with the king and queen?- smiled and said, “Put the king’s robe on him and have a great parade throughout the city to honor him.”

“Great!” said the king. “Prepare such a parade for Mordecai who sits at the king’s gate.”

Mordecai?! Haman was mortified! Now he had to prepare a tickertape parade for the man Haman had intended to have executed.

At dinner the king, Esther and Haman were seated. Esther now made her request to the king, for the first time indentifying herself as a Jew:

My people and I are to be destroyed, killed, annihilated.

The king replied dim-wittedly- after all he had signed the decree. “Who would presume to do this, and where is he?” Esther replied, “He is seated here. It is Haman.”

The king arose in fierce anger and went to walk in the garden. Haman, terrified, rushed to the queen’s couch to beg for his life. When the king returned he saw Haman fallen at the queen’s couch. The king exploded: What! You would even force the queen before me in my house?!

Then one of the king’s advisors came and said, “Your majesty, a gallows fifty cubits high is available. It is the one built by Haman to execute Mordecai who saved your life.” The king took the bait: “Hang Haman on these gallows!” So Haman was taken away and hanged on the very gallows he had built for Mordecai. And all the city could see.

VI

          Then Esther came before the king and pleaded that the king put away the decree he had signed to kill the Jews: “how can I endure to see evil and destruction come upon my people?”

The king could not undo the decree, but he signed another decree granting the Jews the right to self-defense. So the Jews were ready and on the appointed day of massacre defeated the mercenaries who set out to kill them. (The right to self-defense claimed by modern Israel finds a reverberation here.) The day set for their destruction became a day of deliverance and victory.

Mordecai is given royal robes to ear and the text says he grew in “greatness”

VII

          Esther’s story is told to remind us that even though God may seem to be absent, God is present. In the shadows, behind the curtain of history, but forever at work.

Esther teaches us that God needs our hands, our hearts, our minds and bodies to do the work of justice and liberation. Redemption in history is urgent business, and God uses human hands to do the work.

God is calling us to the exercise uncommon virtues in difficult times. Sir Thomas Moore said, “The times are never so bad but that a good man can live in them.” Or a good woman. Be ready for those moments when you are called to be more than you thought you were! Are there some Esthers out there? And Mordecais? I’ll bet there are.