(Preached on Sunday, May 9, 2010)
“For if keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” - Esther 4:14
The short story of Esther 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, beautiful women and powerful men, and, of course, the hero who rises to the challenge and saves the day. Only this time, the hero is a heroine, and not at all a likely one. We read, for example, in the first chapter, about the earlier queen, Vashti, who stood up to the king and paid the price for her disobedience. Never mind it was a sexist and chauvinistic request from the king who was having a party with some of his buddies. Drinking heavily and boasting about who had the most beautiful woman, the king summoned his queen, Vashti, so she could parade her beauty before those gathered. But the queen said, “No!” The king’s legal experts and sages were appalled at her actions and worried this could lead women of the kingdom to “look with contempt on their husbands.” The only way to deal with it was to banish her from the king’s presence, thus punishing her for her disobedience and making an example of her.
But this is not Vashti’s story. It is Esther’s story, as the title indicates. And though it is not a mother’s story, it is, I think, a most appropriate story for Mother’s Day. This is a story about strong women and about the difficult choices women often face in what was, and still is, primarily a man’s world.
It is also a story which can speak a powerful word to us today. It is a story about a people, the Jews, who were no longer living in an isolated, mono-cultural world where their culture and faith and ways of life were the dominant way. This story comes from a time when the Jews were living in exile in Persia. They had been in exile for over 60 years, a good three generations. By this time most of the first generation exiles, the abuelos and abuelas who had known Jerusalem first hand, those who only spoke Hebrew and survived by living in the Jewish ghetto and never traveling outside of that neighborhood, had all died. Most of the second generation – those who had become bilingual, but who remembered and practiced the old ways – are still around, but many of them are also passing away. This has become the time for the third generation exiles: those fully immersed and assimilated into Persian culture and its values and assumptions. These are the Jews who have adapted to a new world.
Is that not us? Consider our own bewildering ways of making sense of who and where we are: patriotic observances, sporting championships, musical festivals, celebrity obsessions, and economic forecasts. These are the events, the dominant ethos, which shape the rhythms of our lives not the church’s worship year. Is that not why we struggle to remember that we profess to follow a Teacher who taught us to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, and lay down our lives? A Teacher who observed how difficult it is for a rich person to enter heaven, and encouraged the earnestly religious to “sell everything and give it to the poor”? We’ve somehow managed to make ourselves feel quite at home with very different values, even as we claim to follow Jesus. How often do we find a way to justify any number of contradictions to the teachings of Jesus? Suddenly this colorful little story of vengeance and intrigue becomes very much our story.
So this little story buried in the Hebrew scripture just might have some insights to offer us as we struggle to live our lives today. Especially in these difficult and often traumatic times: when people are experiencing record periods of joblessness; when the worst ecological disaster our nation has ever faced is underway; when the stock market continues to bungee jump; when nations teeter on the brink of economic collapse; when our political life is extremely polarized; when our nation is engaged in two wars and every day seems to bring a new terrorist threat, never mind our own personal medical, financial, emotional, and relational struggles. This little story of Esther and Mordecai, who discover grace and strength in hard times centuries before the birth of Jesus just might offer some grace and strength for us today.
That is why the Stewardship Committee chose this story for us to study and reflect upon this year during our Stewardship Campaign. In the coming weeks we will explore Esther’s journey, taken with Mordecai’s help, in eight steps. At each step we will pause to reflect on our journey as people of faith and as a Church in these difficult economic times, seeking to hear what the stillspeaking God might offer us through Esther’s witness.
To prepare ourselves for that journey though, we need to remember together Esther’s story. Let me share it with you in the time we have remaining, in a sort of Reader’s Digest condensed version, in the interest of time.
I have already given you the background of the story: how the Jews were living in Persia in the days of the great King Xerxes, not as slaves, but as a minority ethnic group, somewhat assimilated, but often persecuted as minorities in any culture can be. Mordecai, a Jew, was a minor court official, a government bureaucrat, and Esther was his cousin. As I said earlier the king’s wife had displeased him, so he decided to hold a sort of beauty contest to choose a new wife. Esther was taken to be part of the contest, and Mordecai urged her to be silent about her Jewish heritage for fear this would disqualify her. To make a long story short, Esther won the king’s heart and he made her his new queen!
Now while all this was happening, Mordecai sat outside the gate to the harem so he could learn how Esther fared, and while there he heard two of the eunuchs who worked in the harem plotting to kill the King. He reported this and his loyalty was recorded for future reward. This is important later.
At this point a new character enters the story: Haman, a member of the King’s court. If you were at a Jewish Purim celebration, which is all about the book of Esther, you would all boo at this point, as he is our villain. Haman gets upset because Mordecai, who often sat at the king’s gate hoping for news of Esther, refused to bow to him when he passed. As a Jew, Mordecai could not commit the idolatry of bowing to a human being. Instead of putting out a contract on Mordecai alone, Haman decides to convince the king that the Jews are a threat to him and that they should all be destroyed: genocide, as it were. Haman tells the king that he’d bring the money held by the Jews to enrich the king’s treasury. So the king signs the edict for the Persian holocaust. The date is set and the plan publicly announced.
Mordecai hears the announcement and immediately goes into mourning in the traditional Israelite manner: he tears his robes and puts ashes on his head and fasts. Esther, who has not heard the king’s edict (harems are very sheltered and isolated places), is told about Mordecai’s behavior and she sends a messenger to bring food and new clothes for Mordecai and to find out what is going on. Mordecai sends back the clothes with the news of the king’s genocidal edict as well as a plea for her to approach the king to have this edict rescinded. Esther replies that she can’t do that; she has no power and in fact her life is forfeit if she dares to approach the king on her own unless he holds out a golden scepter to signal his willingness to hear her. She goes on to say she hasn’t even seen the king for a month! Mordecai replies with the words we heard this morning: “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to the royal court for just such a time as this?”
Those words cut Esther to the heart. She asks Mordecai to call all the Jews to fast on her behalf for three days, and she will do the same. Then, even at the risk of death, she will go to the king. After three days, she does go, and the king holds out the golden scepter and says he will grant whatever request she makes. Does she say, “Let my people go?” No, she invites the king and Haman to a banquet in her quarters. They come, they eat, they drink, they have a great time and she invites them to come back the next day. Haman thinks he’s pretty hot stuff to get this invite, and he arrives the next night pretty confident. But that night, after wining and dining, Esther begs for the life of her people and tells the king of Haman’s lies about her people. To make a rather complicated story short, the king orders Haman killed, revokes the orders concerning the Jews, gives Haman’s property to Mordecai to reward his loyalty and affirms his love for Esther. God is good, all the time.
As I told you, it’s a great story. But you might be wondering, what does this have to do with stewardship, and with living in these challenging times? That is what we are going to explore together in the weeks to come. But let me just point out today the two central themes which dominate the decisions that Esther and Mordecai make and the subsequent actions they take. Those themes are:
1. Faithful risk-taking
2. Openness to see the grace upon grace we have been given.
These are the two attitudes that are central to stewardship in hard times: faithful risk-taking and the openness to see the grace upon grace we have been given.
Not that it’s easy to adopt these attitudes. Esther herself did not come by an attitude of faith and the willingness to take risks easily; she is not a cardboard cut-out Bible superhero. She struggled with what to believe and what to do. With Mordecai’s help and encouragement, she underwent a mental, emotional, spiritual and physical journey that resulted in saving thousands of lives. That is the journey we are going to explore together and see what insights we might gather for such a time as this.