rich’s blog

At SRBC we’re walking through the book of Esther together.  This is the little sign on the gate at the start of the path.  Enjoy it. 

Intro to Esther or “God, Why is this in the Bible?”

 

Preface Time!

You know I did everything I could to talk Jeff into preaching again, but he was all, “Obey the call of God, Rich.”  And I was all, “It’s nice to sit, Jeff.” And he was all, “You sit anyway when you preach, Mr. Lazy.”   

 

I’m kidding, none of that happened.  Seriously, though: I’m honored, as always, to be here.  And this stool–man, Stan,  you really did hit a home run with this thing.

 

Let’s pray!

 

Prayer Time!

God of language and thought; God of wisdom and our tongues.  Be with me: Well up within me, for I am in need of your courage, and your strength.  I have great need, right now, of you, King.

 

Introduction Time!

I need to be frank, friends: today’s message is just, simply, not the most compelling thing to come down the pike, you know. Because–well, is Melody here?  No.  Oh well.  She likes plain yogurt.   

 

Does anyone else like plain yogurt?  There’s that sort of, piquant Mediterranean-style plain yogurt.  I can’t get enough of that.  

 

Today’s message is a plain-yogurt sort of message: healthy, it’ll provide a lot of tasty biblical nutrition, keep your spiritual digestive system in order, you know. But it’s probably not the first thing you hit on a buffet. 

 

This morning we’re going to review the book of Esther, in a very broad sort of way.  I hope that at the end of this morning, we’ll be graced with a couple of things.  I hope that we’ll be able to discover why this book is in the Bible; I hope we’ll be able to discover ways we can build bridges between this book, and all it says, and our lives. And I hope that we’ll be well-prepared through today’s discussion to talk about this book in greater detail as we move forward through it.  

 

So today we’ll look at some basic info about the book that bears Esther’s name, we’ll review it’s main characters, and I’ll suggest a couple of take away things: but really, today is preparatory work. 

 

But first: I need to share something. 

 

Sharing Time!

I want you all to know where I’m coming from, as we walk together through the book of Esther.  

 

I have been reflecting upon this book: contemplating it, and studying about it. 

 

And the more I read it, and let it sit in my heart, the more I am convinced that this is a dark book, a sad book.  God is hard to find in the book of Esther; hope is more or less based on opportunism and vengeance.  And honestly, it doesn’t seem to me as if there is a single role model in Esther; not one. By and large, the people we meet in Esther–seem to fail to me.   

 

There are not a lot of “winners,” in Esther; and the ones that seem to come out on top at the end of Esther, get there by doing a lot of things that we teach our kindergartners to avoid doing. 

 

This whole book is, I think, bleak and dark, and the celebration that we hear about at its end, is to me, a sorrowful one.  This is not bed-time story, wake up to your new, positive life stuff.  God is not mentioned; only hinted at-and even the hints are a stretch. Misuse and Abuse of Power are all over the place.  This book is troubling to me, in many ways.  

 

I felt some time ago that we should walk through it together; for no real reason.  It seemed to me as if God desired us to; but when I read over it–a thing I don’t think I had done for ages–I thought to myself, “This book is lame.” God, why is this in the Bible?

 

Because it is in the Bible, right?  Esther is part of Scripture–the Word of God, that tells us about God’s work in history that has brought us to right now, and tells us about Jesus, and what it means to cast our lots with him; The Bible derives its authority from its witness to God’s work, which reached its pinnacle in Jesus and the creation of the Church.  Esther is part of the thing–Scripture–that for Christians, really, determines what is real and true about all creation and our own lives.  

 

But, man, it is a bleak, dark, sad story. 

 

And yet, we are going to discover so much in this story that can be so good for us.  And before we end this morning, we’ll look at a couple of reasons God might have thought it was important for us to have this story. 

 

So: this is where I’m coming from on the book of Esther.  I’d invite any one of you to read it over sometime this week, or the next; it will take you, seriously, ten minutes. In just a sec, we’re going to review some basic facts about the book: it’s characters, when it was written, good, foundational bible-study type stuff. 

 

But first, I do want us to think about ways we usually engage with the book of Esther.  It’s important to sort of clear-the-air as best as we’re able before we dive into this book, and part of that is just, noting how we generally engage with it. 

 

Engagement Time! 

I think there are a few different things Christians do with the book of Esther.  A few different ways we engage with it. 

 

Engagement: Ignore!

There’s the most common thing we do: We ignore it!  We’re sort of: “Oh yeah, Esther…that’s somewhere near, umm, Kings? Right? Isn’t it by Ruth? Before or after Job?”  We don’t know where it is; we don’t read the thing.    

 

Engagement: 4:14!

Except, except, for one verse: We Christians do like one verse in Esther.  4:14.  Mordecai-a fella we’ll talk about in a second–is talking to Esther, and he says to her: “Who knows, perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” 

 

And that preaches, right? We can roll with that!  “Who knows? Maybe I have been dropped into history for this moment?”  That doesn’t look bad on a fridge magnet. So if we know any verse from Esther, typically, it’s that verse we know. 

 

Engagement: “Women of the Bible!”

Or, we may toss Esther into a “Women of the Bible” sermon, or book, or pamphlet, or something. And it’s not a bad thing to do, you know: notice that God loves women as much as men, and that women have played a critical part in the formation, the care, the guidance, and the nurturing of God’s people.  

 

Honestly, the church has done a scandalously poor job of nurturing, promoting, and protecting gifted, called, female children of God as well as it has male children of God.  But simply mentioning that there is a book in the Bible named after a woman will not replace the hard work of wisely nurturing both women and men, something we’re all called as Christians to do. We can do better by Esther–both the book and the lady–than simply lumping her into a collection.   

 

Question Time!

But who is she, right?  Who is Esther?  Who are the major characters of the book that bears her name?  And what are the basic things we need to know about this book so that we can understand it well, and be positioned to hear it well. 

 

You know what we need?  We need a fun fact time.  

 

Fun Fact Time!

Let’s start with that little introduction to the book that was read to us earlier: 

 

This is what happened during the time of Xerxes, the Xerxes who ruled over 127 provinces stretching from India to Cush.  At that time King Xerxes reigned from his royal throne in the citadel of Susa, and in the third year of his reign he gave a banquet for all his nobles and officials. The military leaders of Persia and Media, the princes, and the nobles of the provinces were present. (Esther 1:1-3 tniv)

 

Fun Facts: Introduction

So let’s just talk about this introduction, okay?  We’re told that King Ahasuerus, or Xerxes depending on your translation–these are different names for the same king. But this king, we’re told, rules from “India to Cush.”  Cush is another name for an area that is sort of southern Egypt today, near Ethiopia; northern Sudan. This area, is the Persian Empire. 

 

(insert map here)

 

Old King Xerxes ruled the huge Persian Empire from 485 to 465 BC; about a hundred years after another famous Persian King, Nebuchadnezzer, who figures pretty heavily in the book of Daniel, and about 17 generations before Jesus. 

 

The capital city of this Empire is Susa.  We know where Susa is.  It’s in Iran; and over the centuries things have changed for Susa, and it is now called “Shush,” and about 65,000 people Jesus died for live there (Wikipedia; “susa”).  

 

In terms of genre, Esther is a “court tale,” and there were all sorts of stories floating around the ancient world about goings-on at the Persian court. (IHB, 536)  If you’ve ever heard of the book of Daniel, it’s the same sort of thing: a court tale about what’s going down at the Persian court; only Daniel is set in history about a hundred years before Esther.  

 

The Jews that we’ll read about in Esther are not Jerusalem-living, go-to-the-Temple jews: they are jews who had been taken captive as slaves the Babylonian empire took over what was left of Israel some 400 years before the period the story of Esther is written in.  The Babylonian empire was itself overcome by the Persian empire; and later on, the Greeks took out the Persians, and they were in turn engulfed by Romans.  And starting with the Persian empire, often Jerusalem was allowed some sort of self-rule and self-governance, at the whim of whichever emperor happened to be around at the time. 

 

So, by the time Jesus comes around, even though many people have returned to Jerusalem, there are way more Jews scattered throughout the regions on that map I showed us earlier than there are actually in Jerusalem. This dispersion of Jewish people, which started with the Babylonian Empire and just kept going for hundreds of years, is called the diaspora.  

 

And it’s worth noting that diaspora jews–like Esther, and Mordecai–who live far from Jerusalem, and are generations removed from Jerusalem, may not always have the same perspective on things that Jews living in Jerusalem might have.  Sort of a town mouse/country mouse thing.  Does this make sense? And this fact–that this is a story of diaspora life–may account for some of the perspectives that we see as we roll through Esther together. 

 

And really, as a “court tale,” Esther is explicitly concerned with telling us where the Jewish holiday of Purim came from.  It’s sort of an explanation story; so you can think of the whole Pilgrims & the First Thanksgiving story.  “Why do we do this?”  Here’s the explanation. 

 

Fun Fact Time: Characters!

So.  Let’s look at some of the characters that live in this story, and we’ll also talk about the plot a bit itself as we do this, okay? 

 

King Xerxes:

We already talked about King Xerxes, or King Ahasuerus.  And he was an emperor who ruled Persia for about 20 years, 485-465 BC.  In the story he’s an ostentatious guy.  He throws a party for half a year; he wants to parade his wife in front of all his drunk cabinet members, he’s just a scoundrel.  A guy with a lot of power and really poor, sly, advisors, and a penchant for virgins that he enslaves to be a part of his harem.  He isn’t a role model; but he is effectively the most powerful man in the ancient near east. 

 

Queen Vashti:

Vashti, at the start of Esther, is his queen: and she doesn’t really want to be gawked at by his drunken friends, and so doesn’t show up when she’s called.  She’s replaced early on, a law is made in her honor that forces wives to do whatever their husbands say, and we never hear about her again.  So. Great life, right? 

 

Esther:

Esther is the adopted daughter of her uncle, Mordecai.  She’s Jewish, though she keeps quiet about it, and is enslaved into Xerxes harem a few years after Vashti disappears, and soon is chosen by Xerxes to replace Vashti as his queen. She seeks a lot of counsel from her uncle, and ends up using her position as queen to save the jewish people from genocide and to help them get revenge on their enemies, and 75,000 people are killed.

 

Mordecai:

Mordecai, is Esther’s older cousin.  I don’t know what he does; he’s always sitting around the gates of the palace.  But it works out for him, you know: at one point he overhears a plot to assassinate Xerxes, and ends up saving his life.  Later on he’s rewarded for it, and eventually ends up at the end of the story as King Xerxes right-hand man, the second most powerful person in the empire.  He, with Esther, inaugurates Purim, which commemorates the Jews deliverance from genocide and their retaliation.  He also has a run in with a guy named Haman.

 

Haman:

Haman is introduced shortly into the book of Esther as King Xerxes highest advisor & official.  And he is a power hungry, proud, man.  And for some reason or other–we’ll talk about it in a few weeks–Mordecai won’t bow to him when he leaves the palace, so Haman sweet-talks Xerxes into setting forth a decree that all Jews in the empire should be killed and plundered.  (This happens about 5 years after Esther had been chosen to replace Vashti.) 

Xerxes says go for it, and most this story, most of Esther, is concerned with how the tables are turned on Haman: all his efforts are undone, Mordecai replaces him, and Haman ends up hanging on the gallows he had built to kill Mordecai. 

 

God? 

Is God a character in the book of Esther.  This is something we’ll talk about again and again; where is God?  How is God present?  How is God working?   God is never directly named; the Jewish characters make some religious overtures, but do a lot of questionable things, too. It’s a tricky question; and I want it to be in our heads as we walk through this book together. 

 

Summary Time! 

So we’ve talked about the sort of “tenor” of the book: it is dark, and it is dreary.  It’s a story that it’s hard to find a hero in, and God seems, at best, someone behind a curtain.  The characters in the book are wily, they are a little opportunistic, and some of them are power hungry.  And it’s set in a world that we are far removed from.  As a work, it explains for us about how Purim was founded, and gives as inside look at the sort of intrigue and politicking and power that is abused and used in the court of the Persian King. 

 

What are we supposed to do with this? Why would God give us this story and say to us, let this inform your life.  

 

Conclusion Time

I know you’re sad, people of God: but all good things come to an end.  Except, you know, the resurrected life and redemption of the world we look forward to.  Just think: a world without sermons!  Amazing. 

 

But again, how might we apply this stuff: this introductory, plain yogurt, healthy-but-I’m-not-eating-it-on-my-birthday sort of stuff?  

 

We could do all sorts of things, couldn’t we? 

 

We could, say, talk about how it is important for us to have explanations for things.  We like to have reasons for the things we do–even if the reasons are hard for us to deal with.  And God wants us to have reasons for the things we do; and Esther is a book about, if its about anything, why Purim “is,” why celebrate this holiday. So maybe we could think of our own lives, the things we celebrate, and ask ourselves why do we celebrate this?  And we could examine our reasons, the explanations we have for the things we do with our lives, and really ask if they are good.  Are our explanations good ones; are they ones that bring glory to God?  

 

We could wonder about the way we live, and the things that we use to justify our habits and our behaviors, and then we could maybe, if we have courage, get quiet, and get honest, and examine ourselves to see if maybe we need to reconsider some of our behaviors, and reconsider some of our practices, and take a harder look at the things we use to justify them.  That’s one thing we could take away from this introduction to Esther. 

 

We could, say, talk about how the story of Esther is so much like real life.  So often, we live our lives as though God is not all that present, and not all that accounted for.  When we tell what we have done with ourselves and our time, God can be nothing more than a figure behind a curtain, unseen and barely alluded to.  We just go through our days, and say, “Who knows,” and give things a shot, without praying.  We do our religious things pretty well, and we act a little different from most other people–we’re still “Christians,” right–but often in the midst of living our lives we just don’t think about God all that much. 

 

And more darkly, because we have not chosen to wake up to God’s love for us, what we take for granted as God’s blessing and favor may the very thing that is another person’s terror and curse.  We do things we never meant to do, and wouldn’t have imagined ourselves doing. And this introduction could challenge us to consider if we treat God like someone far aware, a person behind a curtain, or someone in whom we live and move and have our very being, someone who fills us, and gives us power to see His handiwork in every single thing we experience our come across. 

 

And we will talk about many things in the coming weeks: We will talk about power.  We will talk about jealousy.  We will talk about extravagance, and what a hero is.  We’ll talk about intrigue, about making the most of things, about what it means to be one of God’s people among those who aren’t God’s people.  

 

But today is an introduction; that’s all it is. I hope that it has prepared us for the things we’ll discuss soon, but I also hope that it does remind us to examine our lives.  What justifications do we use for our behaviors?  How do we explain the things we do?  Do we live as though God is real and invested in our lives?  Or do we live differently? 

 

Look over Esther if you get a chance.  I’ll hopefully see you in the Philosophy of Ministry class.

 

Prayer: 

God: you have given Esther to us; a story about life going on, and people living in the midst of it.  As we live, lord, and leave here and go out into the world, pick back up the things that make up our weeks, help us to be people who notice you, and help us to be people who examine the justifications and the explanations we make for our own behaviors, for whatever it is we do or celebrate. Be for us the sure foundation of our lives; and the thing that we can’t lose, no matter what.  

 

Be real to us, Father: and protect us with your love.  Fill us with our Spirit, and give us eyes to see your involvement in our lives.  Protect us from evil; in Jesus’ name: Amen.