Esther 2
continuing in the book of esther…
Hadassah Way I Like It!
Let me just be really honest. I couldn’t for the life of me come up with a title for today’s message. And, uh, well: that’s what happens. Hadassah is, of course, Esther’s Hebrew name. But; lame message title. So my bad. Unh-huh, unh-huh. Pray with me, would you.
Prayer:
Jesus, thank you for today, for this time, for right now. We know you are here; we acknowledge your presence and ask that you would draw us close to you. Take away my voice if I mislead us. Well up your Spirit within us, and open our hearts to you. Receive this time as an offering. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Introduction:
So. Last week we talked about the first narrative out of many that makes up the book of Esther. And it was a narrative all about Vashti and King Xerxes’ interaction, and we looked at ways Xerxes and Vashti and his advisors could all be people who serve as mirrors for us, mirrors we look into, and see just how much or how little of ourselves is reflected back. And then we adjust our lives if we have to, right? That was last week.
This week we’re talking about the second mini-narrative in the book of Esther. It’s one in which we’re introduced to Esther, the book’s heroine, and Mordecai her cousin or second cousin–I think I called him her Uncle before. I’m sorry.
But this little mini-narrative, which is such an important part of the structure of the book of Esther, is structured in its own way, too, right? Let’s look at it.
Intro: 2:1-4
Body: 2:5-18
Intro to E. & M: 2:5-7
Esther Taken: 2:5-11
Explanatory Aside: 2:12-14
Esther Tested & Triumphant: 2:15-18
Conclusion: 2:19-23
(Commentary Here) (Commentary Here)
vv19-23:
Now: we aren’t going to look much at vv19-23 today. It’s both the conclusion to this scene, tied tightly to it, but also it’s own sort of tiny little narrative. And it’s a very batman-y, you know, “Meanwhile, back in the Commissioner’s office” sort of scene. It is important; as readers or hearers this keeps us plugged into Esther, keeps us engaged and interested to see how things play out; but because it is also such a total set-up for something coming later on in the story, we’re going to wait until then to really look at it. Is that okay? Great.
And just like last week, we’ll review this passage a little, because I do want to point out some things that we should notice. Let me first say, that as I review and describe today’s text: people of God, there are awful things here. A king who steals, kidnaps, because it is his “right,” every beautiful young virgin in his empire so that he can put them in his harem. And Herodotus, an ancient historian, tells us that Xerxes gathers something like 500 young men a year to forcefully make them eunechs, too.) (NIV AC ??). That’s the basic plot thing going on in today’s passage. And we could talk about all sorts of things simply from this stuff, right? The way there are more sex slaves right now in the world than most people think there have ever been. And someday we will discuss that more, I hope. But for today I just want to make it clear that this whole scene is mired down in really negative, deplorable stuff. Self-interested power is on display, and its terrible.
So let’s talk about that stuff!
Intro: 2:1-4
So at the start of this passage it’s been a few years since the whole Vashti thing went down, Xerxes has chilled out a bit since we first saw him—he’s actually been spending time losing a military campaign against Greece. And apparently he’s thinking about the whole Vashti episode, and like we saw last week, it’s his advisors who give him a plan on how to deal with things.
They suggest he gather up all the beautiful young virgins in his empire, put them in his harem, and choose whichever one of them pleases him the most. As is usually the case with the advice the king gets, this does please him, and he begins gathering these young women up.
Intro to E. & M: 2:5-7
And we’re introduced to Mordecai, a Jew, who we talked about last week. We’re told how he ended up here in the capital of Persia, and then we’re also told that he has been taking care of a cousin of his, Esther. Mordecai is linked back to the exiled Israelites.
Now: remember, the King is busy right now gathering up every beautiful young virgin in his empire so that he can take them into his harem, and make one lucky enslaved girl his queen.
And we’re introduced to Esther with this statement:
“Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, his cousin, for she had neither father nor mother; the girl was fair and beautiful, and when her father and her mother died, Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter.” (Esther 2:7 nrsv)
Now, we’re not only told that Esther is beautiful, but it is what the author of Esther wants us to see, at least right now, as her defining characteristic.
We’ve talked about the way ancient authors communicated what was important through structuring their phrases and sentences in certain ways, the same way we might italicize something or make it bold, or add an exclamation point or whatever.
And they would make a sort of sandwich out of clauses–stay with me here–with the most important delicious thing right in the middle, and then in matching layers, concentric sort of rings, they would expand out from that. But what was most important to notice was the thing in the center; like the delicious custard in a donut. You don’t eat it for the flaky wonderful pastry–although that’s nice–you want the custard, right?
Let’s look at this sentence again.
“Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, his cousin, for she had neither
Father nor Mother
the girl was fair and beautiful
and when her father and her mother died
Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter.”
It’s sort of clear, I hope, that what we’re supposed to see is that Esther is really attractive. It’s what the author wants to give us as her defining characteristic at this point. That does not mean we can write her off, or respond with any sort of anger or indignation or any other thing we may want to do; it simply means that it’s the authors intention for us to see that Esther is beautiful–and because of this, she’s a perfect candidate for the whole “pretty virgins being taken by imperial order into the King’s harem” thing.
Esther Taken: 2:5-11
And she is taken! Go fig. And we’re told interesting things. She immediately, it seems, wins the favor of the head of the harem, Hegai. We aren’t told why; she simply garners his favor, she pleases him. And he gives her an entourage to help her, he puts her in the number one seed in the Harem; she is even given food. Amazing. And we have to assume that because of this special treatment–all because she finds favor in the eyes of Hegai–she is positioned better than anyone else for this race to be queen.
And we’re given insight into at least one way Esther and Xerxes are alike. They both take advice; we talked about Xerxes’ last week, and how his advisors are basically interested in their own good. Today we’ve seen them again set imperial policy (cf. NIV AC, ??). We’re supposed to assume that Mordecai isn’t self-interested, that he’s involved in Esther’s life in a positive way, but it’s the case that Esther listens; she does what Mordecai tells her to do, even from a distance.
Explanatory Aside: 2:12-14
And our narrative is interrupted all of a sudden with some behind-the-scenes footage. We’re told what exactly happens to all these virgins once they end up in the King’s harem.
They are basically given a year of spa treatments with expensive oils and expensive perfumes and all sorts of things. And at the end of it, they go to the king, they’re given anything they want to take with them. And they spend the night with him. And they are no longer virgins. After this, their lives are spent in another part, or a second, harem; different from the one in which the virgins live. They spend their lives on stand-by, waiting to see if they will be called to the king again.
And just as quickly, we leave behind this explanatory, insiders look at harem life, and return to Esther’s story, now knowing what she’s been up to the past 12 months.
Esther Tested & Triumphant: 2:15-18
And then it’s Esther’s turn. And, just as she takes the advice of Mordecai, she also takes the advice of Hegai, who has given her so much favor. And we’re told again, that “Esther won the favor of everyone who saw her.” Not, you know, who talked to her or listened to her philosophical discourse on the objective nature of beauty, or anything: whoever saw her, favored her. She’s apparently quite beautiful. And she is taken to the king—over and over we see this passive voice, Esther being taken, the Jews gathered (NIV AC ??)—and he is more attracted to her than he has been to any other woman he took, and again, “she won his favor and approval.”
In some children’s versions of this story Esther reads the king bed-time stories. Maybe, you know. Maybe they were given diction lessons during those twelve months and the authors forgot to put it in there. I dunno. I think maybe something else was going on when the ladies were called to Xerxes bedroom for the night. But I might be corrupted by the world.
But Esther wins! She’s made queen, there’s a banquet set in her honor–“Esther’s Banquet”–it’s named, we could go find someone and say, hey, you remember Esther’s Banquet, and they’d say, oh yeah, that was a great time, in the month of Tebeth, right? The seventh year of Xerxes reign, if I recall. An empire-wide holiday is proclaimed, and gifts are tossed around, and it’s just a great time. You had to be there.
What do we see?
We could look at so many things this morning. Multiple sermons of things.
What I want us to notice this morning–one thing out of many things we could look at, as always–is the favor Esther receives. You noticed this, I hope? Favor from Hegai, favor from the King, favor from everyone, we’re told–even Mordecai takes her in.
Over and over and over again, Esther is favored.
And being favored means, simply, that we are given something that we didn’t really earn from someone else: power, connections, praise. People are disposed to be good to us, to cut us some slack and give us a longer leash than they give others. For some reason outside us.
Straightforward:
And let’s be straightforward, okay? The author of Esther wants us to see that Esther is favored because she is beautiful. She’s beautiful; and because she is beautiful by whatever standards of beauty the Persian Empire had at the time, she receives the favor of those around her.
And we could talk about how this is shallow–which it is. We could talk about how this whole process, the whole plot we’ve been reviewing–makes objects of women, turning them into sort of bottles of water only Xerxes can sip from, petit-a-fors that Xerxes takes a bite out of, then puts away unless he wants another bite. We could talk about how this dehumanizes women, right? I mean, the whole forcing young virgins to become the king’s sexual partners isn’t pro-anybody but the king, and even then, it makes of him nothing but a power-blinded consumer.
We could talk in all sorts of negative ways about the way Esther may be finding favor simply because she’s beautiful in a situation where beauty is what people want.
And we might praise God that our society doesn’t give favor to people simply because they are beautiful.
Oh…wait. Where am I? Hmmm.
Where We Could Go From Here:
Here’s where we could go from here. We could talk about how bad it is to be a part of a society like ours, and discuss what God thinks is beautiful or handsome or worth giving favor to. This would be fruitful wouldn’t it?
We could discuss what it meant for Jesus to find favor, and what sort of people favored him, and what that means for us if we’re called and enabled by God to become like him.
Or we could be really honest, and confess that we are all recipients of other people’s favor.
We are all recipients of other people’s favor.
Recipients of Favor:
Sometimes it is because we are physically attractive to another person or a group of people–a whole society. Sometimes it is because we know someone who knows someone. Sometimes it’s because of where we went to school, or what sports we have played, or books we have read. Sometimes its because of what our last name is, or our sex, or skin color, or it’s because of what our native language happens to be. Maybe it’s because we’re smart, or clever, or funny, or thin, or strong, or helpless, or sarcastic.
We are all the time given unwarranted favor–people take a liking to us, and that’s that. We end up reaping some sort of benefit, just because someone else has, for some reason, decided they like something about us.
Favor, often, has much more to do with other people’s perceptions than it has anything to do with us. We remind them of someone they loved, we sound like their favorite sibling, we’re shaped like their best friend. Whatever. It usually has very little to do with those things that Christianity so values–character, Christ-likeness, etc, but is “just a thing,” and if we backed someone against the wall, and said, honestly, why have you favored me, why have you given me this special attention, this almost imperceptible special treatment, this extra care–why? The answers the person would come up with would be very real, but usually remarkably shallow.
We may of course reinforce the favor we receive from others by acting in ways that garner us more favor. If people just seem to like us, and we know that really its because they think we’re funny, we’ll be funnier. We’ll make them laugh more.
But we find ourselves initially on the inside, initially favored by someone, because we’re just who we are. Whether that favor means we are “in,” with people who have power and influence, as Esther was, or are “in” with those who have very little, we have received favor and special attention of other just because.
And If I were a gambling man, I would bet that every single one of us has received the favor of someone, at some time, and we have benefited from it. I would bet on that.
There are people, you know, who do not receive other people’s favor. You know that right? They don’t know the right people, they are the inverse of all the nice things we are, they smell too strong, or make others uncomfortable. Maybe some of these people do find some context, some small slice of society, where they can find a little favor from others. But there are many who don’t.
And I just toss this out here to hopefully trigger that part of us that knows that we Christians are supposed to go to those people who get no favor, and be the favor of God to them, however they may need it. I know you know! I just thought I’d remind us.
God in the Plot:
But we do need to ask, when we are the favored ones, the recipients of other peoples’ favor, is God in this. We need to ask, “God, are you here?”
Because God is, right? I mean, at least in some real sense wherever we are God is, as we all of us who have joined with Jesus have the Holy Spirit. Lo, Jesus is with us unto the end of the age, until his return. We are not orphaned, alone, here. And when we speak about all of us–as a group, Smoky Row Brethren Church or just two or three of us together–we can make an even more biblical case that where we are, God is. What we involve ourselves in, God is involved in.
We are preaching through a narrative, right? And we’ll discover in the coming weeks the way Esther used the favor that she had. But we need to ask ourselves, right now: Where have I found favor? With whom?
This is less than rhetorical, this is a real question I wish we could all consider. Right now, in our lives, who is favoring us. And then we need to pray, and ask, “Father, what would you have me do with the favor I have been given.” That question needs to sit in our stomachs like an ache, buzz around our heads like a fly, nag at us, really: What, Lord, should I do with the favor I have been given or find I am being given?
“With whom have I found favor? What would you have me do with the favor I’ve been given?”
God is not present in Esther except in these behind the scenes way, these wonderful plot points, upon which the whole story rests–favor granted for a reason that Esther had very little to do with. It’s these serendipitous coincidences that move the story forward.
And we could live that way, if we wanted to; live believing that our life is just one big series of coincidences, moments that direct us in one way or another. We could be walking examples of the book of Esther, and leave God behind the scenes.
But it would be a failure to do that if we are Christians, people who are invested in Jesus-backed securities. We have the promise that God is invested, and present and engaged in every moment we live, in each decision we make, in each plot twist of our lives.
Every coincidence should be for us a prompt that returns us to God, who is wise and capable, and it should cause us to ask, “God, are you in this? God be in this. What are you doing here? What would you have me do?”
Because our God is wise, and capable, and there are tasks that we have been given in this world as Christians, and hopes God has for us as Jesus followers, that are important for us to follow through on. God’s concern for us extends to every area of our lives, and nothing, if we give it to him, can go untouched by Him.
These are “should’s,” though, right? We should ask, we should notice. We all live Esther lives, so often, don’t we? We get caught up in coincidences, excited that we have other people’s favor when we get it, because basically, it means things go easier for us. And it’s nice when things go easier. But we need to do more than be pleased when someone else feels like favoring us.
We do need to remember that our lives are not our own, that we have been bought with a price, and that these favored situations in which we find ourselves may be the things God wants to use to build his kingdom in ways we would never daydream up. The favor of others isn’t a luxury; it is an opportunity.
Conclusion:
So. At work. At school. At home. In those other places we find ourselves all the time. Notice favor. Notice it. Have you been taken under someone’s wing? Does everyone get in trouble but you? Does someone just love you because you remind them so much of whoever. Are you favored for some reason. And this will take courage to face, because we really want the good things that come our way to be because we’ve somehow done the right things, or whatever: not because someone else just takes a liking to us for their own inexplicable reasons.
But ask, with courage: Am I favored. And if so, if you find that you are, “Lord, what would you have me do with the favor I’ve been given?” It’s a simple question. But the answers that come of it, the ways we end up using the favor we’ve received, may change our lives and a thousand lives around us. I’m not exaggerating this morning.
“With whom have I found favor? Lord, what would you have me do with the favor I’ve been given?”
Prayer:
Lord. We know that we have found favor in your sight through your son; something we could never have mustered up, no matter how pretty are. But we find ourselves daily receiving other people’s favor. Why, father? What would you have us do with the favor we’ve been given? Speak to us. Fill us with your Spirit as we engage with our lives, as we reflect on the relationships and situations in which we find ourselves. Guide us; and Lord, do allow us to find favor with those around us, that we might use the opportunities we have been given to build your Kingdom. Protect us from evil. In Jesus’ name. Amen.