SERMONS

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Sarah Agnew – 27/9/09

Introduction to the story of Esther

In the opening scenes of the book of Esther we meet King Ahasueras, the rash, vain and easily led king of Persia. When he demands that Queen Vashti parade in front of a banquet hall full of drunken men and she refuses to compromise her dignity, he is persuaded not only to banish the queen as an example to other women of the kingdom, but to write an edict to reinforce the absolute power a man is to have in his own household. In this story, the king’s edicts are irreversible.

Other characters include Mordecai and Esther, Jews in exile in Persia. Mordecai is in service to the king, and Esther is chosen from many beautiful young women from the kingdom to be the next queen. Mordecai uncovers a plot threatening the life of the king, which earns him the respect of the king.
Haman is the evil character in this story. His meteoric rise to the highest position of any official in the king’s court demonstrates Haman’s thirst for power. His anger at Mordecai’s refusal to pay him the honour he feels is due to one in his position is taken out on all the Jews in Persia. Haman flatters the king with money and manipulates him into allowing him to write an irreversible edict for the destruction, the annihilation of the Jews in Persia on the 14th day in the month of Adar. This is a cat playing with a mouse before the inevitable.

Mordecai and the Jews mourn and wail at their imminent destruction. Mordecai brings the edict to the queen’s attention and begs her to go to the king to petition on behalf of their people. The eunuch Hatach is acting as messenger between Mordecai and Esther … 

Esther 4:9–17
Hatach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. Then Esther spoke to Hatach and gave him a message for Mordecai, saying, ‘All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law – all alike are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden sceptre to someone, may that person live. I myself have not been called to come in to the king for thirty days.’ When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘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 royal dignity for just such a time as this.’ Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, ‘Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.’ Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

Queen Esther does approach the king, and she has obviously found favour with the king, because he holds out his sceptre to her. She invites the king and Haman to a banquet. At this banquet, the king asks her again, what is her petition and her request. She invites them to another banquet.
Though Haman feels honoured by the queen with these invitations to dine with her and the king, Mordecai again refuses to bow to him. Haman’s anger at Mordecai now leads him to make a direct attack on Mordecai’s life, building a gallows at his home on which he, at the suggestion of his wife and friends, plans to hang him. He then suffers the humiliation of the king asking him to lead a parade for Mordecai, who the king wishes to honour for his words that saved his life earlier in the story. Haman runs home and vents his anger and frustration to his wife, who observes that if his demise has thus begun at the hands of a Jew, Haman will surely not prevail. And we pick up the story again …

Esther 6:14–7:10
While they were still talking with Haman, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried him off to the banquet that Esther had prepared. So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, ‘What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.’ Then Queen Esther answered, ‘If I have won your favour, O King, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me – that is my petition – and the lives of my people – that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.’ Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, ‘Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?’ Esther said, ‘A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!’ Then Haman was terrified before the king and queen. The king rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that the king had determined to destroy him.

When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman had thrown himself on the couch where Esther was reclining; and the king said, ‘Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?’ As the words left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, ‘Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.’ And the king said, ‘Hang him on that.’ So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.

We’ll leave the story there for now, because it is these two scenes that I have read aloud for you that I would like to explore together this morning.

In particular, Mordecai’s words to Esther – ‘Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’

A – the story of Esther

1 – Dislocation from home

The northern kingdom of Israel had fallen in 722 BCE, and the southern kingdom of Judah, where Jerusalem was situated, fell around 587/586 BCE. The people of the southern kingdom were in exile for many years, under the rule of Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. The Jewish people maintained their customs and also kept hope alive that Jerusalem and the Temple would one day be restored. And the Persians eventually did allow the people to return to Jerusalem.

The Persian empire was generally ruled in tolerance of the different customs and religions of the people they conquered, and the Jewish people benefited from this, living relatively peacefully within the Persian empire. However, rebellions within the Persian empire – one King Cambyses was called to the capital of Persia to deal with an uprising, but died on the way. After that there was a struggle for the crown, with Darius emerging successful.

Esther begins the story as Hadassah, the Jewish girl whose parents have died, we are not told how or when, living with her uncle Mordecai in Susa. When she is taken to the palace for the king’s choice of queen, Hadassah becomes Esther, and buries her Jewish identity. They may have lived in peace, but the position of Jews was obviously still precarious enough to make this necessary.

2 – Peace interrupted

This is the earliest recorded story of an attempt to wipe out an entire Jewish race, though by no means the only fictional or historical story of such an attempt. There were attacks on Jewish communities as described in the book of Esther, though a wholesale attack such as that proposed by Haman seems not to have occurred in history (it is most likely that the Book of Esther is fiction) until about the 1st Century CE in Alexandria. There is no evidence for any attack as described here occurring within the kingdom of Persia, and in fact though the king is somewhat impulsive, he seems to have created an atmosphere of peace within the kingdom and a safe environment in which Jews were able to live.

Why would the author of this story have depicted such a wholesale threat to the people of Israel living in exile in Persia?

The reason given by Haman is that the Jewish people follow a different set of laws to those of the king. As we know, it’s a lie to suggest that these people do not follow the laws of the king, because Mordecai shows great loyalty to the king and saves him from a threat on his life. It does seem to be a theme running through the life of the people of Israel that they are a people set apart. Their laws and customs were quite different to those of any Gentile nation, creating a distinct boundary between Gentiles and Jews. So it may be that when the conflict arises between Mordecai and Haman, and Haman discovers that Mordecai is a Jew, their alien nature makes the Jewish people an easy target.

A further factor lies in the history of Haman himself. He is described as being of the family of Agag, an Amelakite. There is a history of conflict between the Amelakite and Israelite people, described in 1 Samuel 15. The references to this story are obscure, mentioning the names of some protagonists rather than the conflict directly, but the original audiences would have understood the reference. Perhaps this, too, influences Haman’s desire to attack the Jewish people.

3 – Power plays

The scene in which we see Vashti sets the scene for the story. Her banishment opens up the vacant throne beside the King into which Esther is later placed. It also establishes the sexual behaviour of the court of Ahasueras – which the king abuses, to which the officials overreact, and which Esther manipulates in order to save her people. This scene introduces the King as a vain and stupid king who likes to display his wealth and women, and who acts rashly and unpredictably, though it is easy to influence him. All of this establishes the mood in which the story takes place; it is not a safe place to be, because power is wielded in unrelenting, abusive and unpredictable ways. Even Haman is eventually undone by the very power plays of which he was such a master.  

Esther has good reason to be hesitant to approach the king. She has not been called to him for thirty days – she cannot be certain of her standing with him, though she may have had indications early that she had won his favour. If he is at court with his advisors and officials, one of whom she knows to be Haman, the author of the threat to her people, it is quite possible that they will goad him into executing her as they had goaded him into banishing the previous queen. She would be well aware of the precarious nature of her position in that court. If she does succeed in gaining an audience with the king, there is certainly no guarantee that the king will take the position that the Jews should not be annihilated, that he should act to save her and her people, or that he would believe her accusation of Haman, whom the king clearly trusts. If she is not successful in gaining an audience with the king, and she is put to death, will deliverance come from another quarter as Mordecai has suggested? There is no guarantee of that, either.
However, Esther is the person in the best position to plead for the life of her people, and her response to finding herself in this position is to do whatever is in her power to do in order to save her people.

B – our response to the story
1 – remembering our story

The circumstances and times to which we have come will likely not look like those of Esther. Although it is true that an Australian has joined a royal family in our lifetime, that seems to be a unique event.

But I wonder … what are the times and circumstances that have demanded that we take action, speak up for others, for ourselves?
Have others taken action or spoken out on your behalf?
What was it like to act for others or to have others act for you?
Take a few minutes in silence to think about your own story. 

2 – the time and circumstances of our world, to which we have come; what are the pleas we hear for our action on behalf of others in our world? How do we respond?

We may think that we have a certain amount of freedom here in Australia, and that’s quite true isn’t it? A wise person once said, however, that we are not truly free until all people are free. While there are still people oppressed by war, famine, disease, dictatorships, unjust access to education or health, they are not free, and neither are we. We must sacrifice some of the freedom that we are fortunate to have, in order to work towards the freedom of all people.

How are these times, the circumstances of the world in which we live, calling for us to sacrifice our freedom for the sake of others who are not free?

When I talk about our freedom, what am I saying? There is a sense in which our freedom enables us to fulfil who we are, to realise our potential. The lack of freedom that others encounter inhibits their wholeness, their healing, their becoming all that they may be.

I was at the national gathering of the Network of Biblical Storytellers last weekend, and this short story was told.

A person is walking beside a lake and sees a child struggling. This person considers running into the lake to help the child, but decides against this action because of the new Nikes they’ve just purchased, which they would rather not ruin in the water. So the person walks on. If you or I were that person beside the lake, we might decide differently, we think. But when we buy a pair of Nikes rather than giving that money to save a drowning, or a starving, child, are we not walking past that child too?

 

What are the times and circumstances that demand that we act, that demand that we change the way we are living?

As followers of Christ, there is another narrative line to our story. We try to be mindful of the integrity of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament and not impose a New Testament theology back onto the earlier Sacred stories. But the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus does shed particular light on the other stories of our tradition and our lives. I wonder how our knowledge of Jesus does shed light onto this story of Esther? What might words he spoke, such as the words we have heard this morning from the gospel of Mark, say to us alongside this story? ‘If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.’ These words, for me, speak of Jesus’ deep commitment to the care of the little ones – the little ones are those without any power in society, who depend on others for protection and food and shelter. The little ones were the women, the children, widows, orphans, the ones marginalised because of sickness or ritual uncleanness. Jesus heard their pleas for help and spoke out on their behalf. His actions affirmed the little ones, the powerless, and modelled the way to act with lovingkindness towards one another in the realising of the reign of God in our midst.

I wonder how the stories of Jesus and Esther shed light on one another?

Pause for a minute or so.

3 – drawing the stories together

Esther heeds the call of her uncle Mordecai, the call of her people, to act from the position she has found herself in. Esther chooses to find the courage within, to embrace a wisdom we didn’t know was there, and to stand strong, realising her potential as a human being to give voice to the voiceless and bring liberation from persecution. She chooses not to diminish who she is by giving in to fear for her own safety, but rather to embrace the fullness of who she may become.

Are there times when circumstances have brought a strength, courage, wisdom, passion out of the depths of you that you didn’t know was there?
When we hear the cries of the people, how will we respond? Will we walk past keeping our new shoes clean, or will we dive in regardless. Will we walk past the new shoes and hand the money to the hungry?

Our time, the circumstances of our world demand our attention, demand our action. Are we listening for the cries of those who are not yet free? How will we respond?

I’m not saying we should heed every cry, in a world as global as ours is, we certainly hear the cries of many people for our help. I was helped by some words spoken by then Queensland General Secretary or Moderator Jenny Tymms at a Synod meeting four or five years ago. She said that when it comes to deciding where and how we will engage in God’s mission in the world, how we will respond to the cries for help that we hear, we should start with the place that our deep passion meets the world’s deep hunger. So my deep passion is for the connection between art and spirituality, for creating spaces in which people can express and explore their faith with integrity for who they are and the culture in which they live. And this is meeting the hunger of the world, or our corner of it, for such spaces, for communities that nurture spirituality through the arts, spaces that are not so alien as church has become for many people today. And thus the Esther Project. So we gather for story and dinner. And we will tell the story in the context of theatre, a familiar storytelling space in our wider community. And we will hold arts events through which we might celebrate the shared story of different faith traditions, and the shared yearning for peace in our communities.

So what is your deep passion?
Where might it meet a deep hunger in the world?
How might it be the answer to the cry of someone not yet free?
No matter what age you are, what your experiences, your gifts, or your abilities, we are all passionate people. And we all have something to offer in response to the cries for help, for our action, for our voice on behalf of the persecuted, oppressed, threatened people, the little people in our midst.   

‘who knows? Perhaps you have come to this place in your life, whatever that place might be, for just such a time as this.’