Esther 4:1-17
What
we have before us this morning is a nice rages-to-riches story; perhaps the
prototype of the Cinderella stories ever written. A young minority girl loses
her family, is orphaned but then is taken in by her cousin, raised and provided
for. Meanwhile, the queen angers our dimwitted King who can never make a
decision with out asking others what he should do first and then always does
what they say without thinking thoroughly through the consequences of following
their advice.
But
then there is what seems to be this tangential story of her cousin, Mordecai. Some
good stuff happens to him. He uncovers an assignation plot and saves the King’s
life, which is always note worthy, but it kind of goes unnoticed by the king,
which is not bad, but it is also not so great. And then some bad stuff begins
to happen. The villain of our story comes into the picture, his name is Haman and
he threatens the peace and security of our beautiful and rather lucky, up to
this point, heroine, by developing this unseemly hatred for Mordecai.
Haman
is one of the king’s top men and he takes offense to the fact that Mordecai,
refuses to bow down to him when he passes by. So, Haman, being a reasonable
man, plots not only to kill Mordecai but also to kill all the Jews who live in
country and its outlying providences, as well. Seems like reasonable
retribution for refusing to bow down to a man doesn’t it?
Meanwhile
it comes to the King’s attention that Mordecai never got his reward for saving
the kings life and so being the wonderful free thinking kind of man that he is
the king asks Haman what he should do to honor someone he thinks of whom he really
highly. Haman, being wonderfully modest, believes the king means to honor him,
that is Haman, and tells the king to put on an elaborate show with the one to
be honored riding on the king’s horse and wearing the king’s clothes with
someone going before him telling everyone how much the king thinks this is one truly
amazing guy.
So,
the king tells Haman to go do this for his servant Mordecai. Haman is a little
disappointed and greatly annoyed by all this, to say the least. It does nothing
but solidify his bitter hatred of our heroine’s cousin and Haman seeks to do
away with this troublemaker and all his kindred. After all genocide is the only
way to appease his vendetta.
So,
Haman still intent on the murder of Mordecai via genocide, he talks to the king
about this disreputable man who is a nuisance and a menace to society and he is
just the tip of the iceberg he represents an entire people group who disrespect
the king and are a threat to his authority. The king is naturally dismayed by
this and gives Haman the authority to do as he wishes to rid the kingdom of
these loathsome people. Genocide is the only answer in Haman’s mind and uses
the king’s seal of authority to make an edict, which declares a great day of
wiping out all the Jews.
Cousin
Mordecai gets wind of what is going on and pulls his dear sweet cousin aside,
telling her perhaps you have come to this royal position for just a time as
this.
At
this point, everything is just background, to show us that our heroine is a heroine
not only in name but in deed as well. And this is where the small piece of
Esther’s story which we encountered today comes in. And Esther begins to contemplate what she
must do. She calls for all the Jews to pray and fast with her. While she builds
up the courage to do what she knows she must do. What is arguably the thing God
is calling her to do at this point in her life?
Then
following this time of prayer and fasting, somewhat ironically, Esther sets out
to do just the opposite of her predecessor. Where Vashti had refused to come
into the king’s presence when summoned, Esther seeks to come into his presence when
not summoned. Her new life as queen
and the lives of all whom she holds dear hang in the balance. Will the king be
more pleased with a new wife who comes when unbidden as opposed to the last who
refused to come when called?
Luckily
for Esther and the Jews, the King was in a good mood that day, not only
does he accept Esther’s imposition of her presence into his, happily, but he is
so pleased with her coming that he hyperbolically offers her anything she
wishes, up to half his kingdom. Esther, being wise, does not ask for half the
kingdom, but instead either to flatter the king or to give herself time to
build up the courage to confront the King about Haman, (after all she has just
stared death in the face and come away unscathed) she instead invites the king
and Haman to dinner and there she invites them to join her for yet another
dinner. It is taking some time for her to gather her courage again.
It
is at this second dinner that Esther steps into her purpose and exposes Haman
for who he truly is. She tells the king Haman has used the authority vested in
him to try to do away with all the Jews in the kingdom, which would include
herself. Our bumbling king, who apparently is still quite enamored with his
beautiful new bride takes offense to this and then interprets Haman’s pleading
as an affront to his Queen and has Haman hanged on a set of gallows Haman had
made especially for Mordecai if that is not irony I don’t know what is.
The
king then gives Mordecai the ability to set in motion a new edict, which
although he can’t change the previous edict – once a king’s law has been made,
it cannot rescinded. This clause in Persian policy making has come up in other
Biblical stories such as Daniel and the lion’s den when the king realized his
decree incriminated his most favored advisor but had to go through with putting
Daniel in the lion’s den because it was the law and not even the king can
change a law or disobey a law once it is made. So, although the current law
declaring there to there to be a day for killing all the Jew, Mordecai is able to make a second edict, which
states the Jews can fight back against anyone who moves against them. And thus
the Jews are saved from destruction and peace is brought upon their lives once
again.
There
are actually a surprising number of women mentioned in the Bible and who play
important if not prominent roles. All patriarchs had a least one wife who was
instrumental in the foundational stories of our Faith, but still there are not
very many Heroines in the Bible, by my reasoning there are only a handful,
Sarah, Deborah, Ruth, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Esther (there
are a handful of other women who get some press in both the Old and New
Testaments but I am not sure the count at “heroines”) But Esther is a true
heroine, she holds onto her roots and arguably her faith when she could have
kept both hidden and thus herself remains unthreatened and unscathed, no one in
the court knew she was a Jew. She would not have been killed in Haman’s purge
if she did not expose herself. She could have decided that she was just a girl,
that she had no power, she could have chosen not to look certain death in the
face, by walking into the king’s chamber that day. But she took the words of
Mordecai, to heart, “perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a
time as this.” And steps out in faith to do what arguably is what God is
calling her to do.
But
the problem is that throughout the entirety of the book of Esther, God is not
mentioned. Not even once! Nine chapters of narrative and there is not a single reference
to God in any of them. God is just barely alluded to. At face value, there is
NO God in Esther. There is no paragraph or explanation of how God had worked
through Esther. No line is traced that shows us where God is working and how
God is working. No recorded instance of Esther conversing with God. Other than
Esther declaring a time of prayer and fasting for all the Jews. But really that
hints more toward her faith than it does God’s presence in this situation. The
lack of a clear declaration of God at work in this book has bothered many people
down through the centuries.
It
bothered some people so much that there are some versions of the book of Esther
written in Greek, dating from shortly before the birth of Christ in which whole
sections are added. Some deeply spiritual prayers of Esther and Mordecai in
which they call to God asking for guidance and help and others that give thanks
to God for God’s direction and aid in times of struggle and hardship, as well
as added narrative, which places God directly in the center of all the action
of the book.
But
really truly they are not needed to “add” God to the story. God is in this story
whether it mentions God or not. The book of Esther is perhaps the best
statement of God’s ability to bring redemption to ANY situation I have ever
read. After all, how do all these “good” things come to Esther in the face of
all the “bad” things that also happen? Her parents die, but she is provided a kindly uncle who takes her in and treats her
as a daughter. Then she is taken from her new family, forced to be a part of a
harem, and has to hide her Jewish identity. But then she ends up not just
another woman in the king’s harem, she becomes Queen of all Persia, which as
you can imagine is not without its perks. But then her people are in danger and
she is in a place to do something
about it. Her story could have been so much worse. What might look to some like
a series of fortunate turns in a poor girls tumultuous journey toward royalty,
I see the hand of God continually working to bring redemption and ultimately
salvation to a series of unfortunate events. Each time death or destruction,
the ignorance and shortsightedness of what seems to be a bumbling buffoon of a
monarch threatens to ruin her life and her happiness, God steps in and cuts the
sharp edges off what are otherwise terrible things happening to this young
woman.
God
does not need to be “added” to this book because mentioned or not, explicitly
pointed out or not, God is in this book. God is all over this story. Where
others see a complete lack of God I see a story that shows us how God looks to
us in the events of real life. Rarely in “real” life is God seen explicitly. In
the grand narrative how God is moving in our lives, God is there working and
moving often times without drawing much attention.
It
is not often that we get lead, almost by the hand, out into the dark night to converse
with God as we look at the night sky, like God did with Abraham? Never in my
life, and I am pretty sure you can say this as well, have I ever been minding
my own business and then Boom
burning bush, or burning anything for that matter, from which the voice of God
speaks. Very few of us can say we have been woken up and mistaken the audible
voice of God, so real and so very present, for the voice of the person next to
us. I have yet to have visions of eye wheels that help me understand how the
full picture of God’s redemptive plan for the world will work itself out. And
much to my disappointment not one single raven has come and fed me when I was
hungry. Now perhaps I cannot speak for all of you but I think I speak for most
of us when I say God is not quite that easy to spot in my life.
Amazing
things do happen, but not very often. Not to me. The God I experience is much
more like the God I see in Esther’s story than the one seen in Abraham’s. The
God we find in Esther is a little more commonplace. God may not be mentioned in
the entirety of the book. God may be little more than alluded to in the
statement, “perhaps you have come to royal position for such a time as this.” And
only tangentially pointed to when Esther declares a day of prayer and fasting, but
those are not the only places where god is in the story. God is there,
throughout Esther’s life. God WAS there – redeeming it all. It is ultimately
the hand of God at work throughout this story, in the life of Esther in the
faith of Mordecai, in all of it, bringing peace to the people of God at a time
death and destruction are immanent.
Now
don’t get me wrong, God did not make Esther’s parents die. God did not cause
her to be forced to be part of the harem or even to chosen to be Queen (most
likely without ever being consulted about whether she wanted to be or not). God
does not cause people to die, or have a young woman taken away from the only
family she has really known, to bring about the “greater good”. Some terrible,
hurtful things happen to Esther. But God
was there in it all taking the hurtful things in her life and redeeming them,
bringing good where there was only pain and heartache, making things right
where it seemed they were all wrong, bringing peace to the chaos. She lost her
mother and father but God was there. In the face of the loss of her parents and
becoming an orphan, God provided for her to be taken care of by her cousin who
raised her as if she was his daughter. That is God bringing redemption to a
terrible situation
As
a young woman, she is taken from the home to be in the harem of the king, and
come on guys this is not every young woman’s dream true. This is sexual
slavery. But God was there with Esther, even in the harem. Then to make things worse (because again begin
taken at a wife without her consent is not necessarily a good thing) she is not
only chosen to be one of the kings many consorts in his harem but she is chosen
(forced?) to be his queen. But God at works once again keeping her safe and
allowing for her to continue to be in relationship with Mordecai, kindly eunuch
enable to keep in contact with him, allowing her to have the support and love
of her family even in what was probably overwhelming loneliness in the king’s
household.
God’s
hand continue to be at work bring redemption what into what was not really a
great situation. God was there when Mordecai gave her advice on what to do. God
was there in the presence of Mordecai as he encouraged her to do what she
needed to do. So that through her God
could bring redemption to her people. God was there giving her strength to face
the king and soften the heart of the king when she came into his presence.
God
is at work through all of this. God was there giving her the courage to speak against
Haman. God was there when the king allowed Mordecai to write the edict, which
would save the Jews from immanent destruction. God was there! God was there
always taking the pain, the hurt, the terrible situations and working to bring
redemption, working to set the wrongs right, working to take the evil in the
world and bend it so that even in the face of that evil, malice and hatred
redemption can be found. Because God is continually at work in this broken
world redeeming the pain, the hurt, the loss that is in this world due to sin
and the destructive forces it unleashes in this world. God’s redemptive work in
this story brings peace to the entire Jewish population in Persia when it was
threatened with death and destruction!
God
might not have been standing in the foreground of all the action but God’s
hands are at work in the situations and God’s fingerprints are all over the
glorious events of this story. God is in the book, even if God is not mentioned
even once. God may not be outwardly seen or visibly noticed in the story but the
fingerprints of God’s redemption are all over the action, the climax, and the
victorious end of these events.
It
seems to me that the way God works in the story of Esther is the way God works
more often than not. When I look at the story of my life, God is not booming
voices and pillars of fire leading the way. And I would venture to say when you
look at the story of your life, God is not outwardly or visibly present in the
foreground of all that is going on, but when you look God is there. God’s
finger prints are all over the events and the happenings that when you look
close enough even in your darkest days and through your most difficult
struggles you can see God working and bringing about good when otherwise there might
have only hardship and pain. Even when it might have seemed at the time that
God was nowhere to be found, when you look back you can see that God was always
there.
The
fact of the matter is, that very few of us will hear the thunderous voice of
God, very few of us will have undeniable miracles happen in our lives, but that
does not mean God is not there, it does not mean God is not at work.
Sometimes,
I think we look at the miraculous lives of the people of the Bible and we can
see undeniably that God is at work in mighty and powerful ways in their lives,
sending whales to swallow them up and spit them out, staying the mouths of
hungry lions and saving young men from the fires of a furnace and then we look
at lives and it is hard to see how God could possibly be in our lives. We are
not hearing God’s voice out of burning bushes or dark thunderclouds in or in
fantastical dreams. We do not see ourselves calling fire to come down from
heaven or the rulers of nations seeking our counsel because they know God
speaks to us in a mighty way. But, God is at work in our lives, quietly,
softly, walking alongside of us, giving us strength and peace and mercy to make
it through all of our days. Helping us to make it through the struggles of our
lives, working and breathing the Spirit into the dark and lowly places we walk.
Giving us strength to make it through the dark times and rejoicing with us in
the times of victory.
We
may not have walls tumbling down when we shout and blast our trumpets, we may
not see water coming out a rock when we touch them but that does not mean God
is not at work in our lives. Providing for us and walking with us, guiding us
and placing us in certain places at certain times so that God might not only
bring redemption into our lives but using us, and the places our lives have
brought us, to work through us to the glory of God’s kingdom and so that God’s
will might be accomplished on this earth. When we look it is really neat how
often God is able to use us, and our broken stories to bring redemption to the
world around us.
We
might not think God is at work, but I could bet that as you move through you
life; as you have the ability to look back you will see over and over again how
God used you, and your faithfulness and persistence to do God’s work in this
world, to bring God’s redemption to people and into certain situation and into
the lives of people around you. in this world to accomplish things that make a
difference for the Kingdom, and to bring the goodness and grace of God, that
each of us are able to be agents of God’s redemption in this work, in both big
and small ways, into this world and into the lives of people who might not
otherwise experience the goodness and greatness of God. God is continually at
righting the wrongs, healing the hurts, bringing salvation and redemption into
the darkest places and the most desperate situations and God works in and
through each of us when, we like Esther seek God’s guidance and direction
throughout the course of our lives.
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