rich’s blog

Haman’s Undoing

 

Preface:

When we looked at last week’s passage, we gained some insight into what Haman’s identity was all wrapped up in; and how easily his ability to take pleasure in his life was knocked off balance by Mordecai. 

 

I had hoped that by talking about this, we’d be spurred on a little to figure out what makes us feel important, be challenged to ask why we think we’re valuable, and of course, decide to begin to really live out of the value that comes from Jesus’ love for us–instead of any…

 

Introduction:

The passage that X read to us today was really all about the undoing of Haman: the undoing of his intentions, of his power, of his wealth, of everything but his family… and later in the book even his family is undone. 

 

After walking through today’s text, we’ll talk a bit about sowing and reaping–planting seeds and gathering a harvest–and the connection between the two.  This will be a metaphor for us to talk about what happens to Haman…and what happens in our own lives. 

 

But first; let’s pray. 

 

Prayer:

Christ, as a shield, overshadow us: above us, below us, beside us–on our left and on our right. 

 

Walking Through: Intro

So!  Let’s just walk through today’s passage; we’ll notice a thing or two together.  Feel free to follow along in your Bibles if you’d like–there are some in the seats in front of you.  Esther, again, is a little bit before Job & Psalms. 

 

Walking Through: The Set-Up (vv7:1-6ish)

Today’s section stars with Esther apparently having spent some time putting a plan together. And honestly, she is shrewd; you get the sense that she’s figured out how to live at the royal palace.  She’s figured out how to navigate the system.  

 

And because, as Queen, she has no real power, she’s had to cultivate some skills that, I don’t know: are necessary when you are only kept alive at someone else’s whim.  Esther has become a shrewd, savvy person, able to use the little power of influence she has to survive the royal court.  

 

She’s able to get what she wants; and what she wants, of course, is the release of her people from the promise of genocide, orchestrated by Haman. 

 

And she sets this up and knocks it down perfectly, this attempt to get the king to act on her behalf against this enemy she leaves nameless.  She says: “I and my people have been sold to be destroyed!  Killed!  Annihilated!” 

 

And the King says, “Who!  Where!”  And as readers, we’re like: It’s Haman, it’s Haman!  This is sort of like watching a movie when you find out the bad guy is right behind the person, but they don’t know yet.  It’s Haman!  Esther answers!  “”An adversary and enemy! This vile Haman!”

 

And Haman panics, right.

 

Walking Through: Full Disclosure (vv7:7-10ish)

The king leaves–so angry he doesn’t take his wine with him, right? I mean, that’s angry.  He heads to the garden. Haman’s sure that Xerxes is out there planning how best to kill him, and so Haman begins to beg with Esther to save his life; he realizes that she’s the one with all the king’s influence now.  

 

And Haman is desperate.  He tosses himself at her mercy, probably grabs onto her: please, intercede for me–and of course, Xerxes walks in right then, when Haman is grabby and clingy and trying to convince Esther to help him, save him.  Bad timing, this.  

 

And they put a bag over his head, and haul him away.  And a helpful attendant tells the king that there’s a pole in Haman’s yard that was just built for Mordecai; and the attendant helpfully reminds the king that Mordecai saved his life, too. So the king sends Haman to the pole that was meant for Mordecai; and Xerxes’ anger leaves the room with Haman. 

 

Walking Through: Undoing Haman (vv8:1-17)

And later on in the day, all the stuff we saw Haman boast in last week–all his wealth–Xerxes gives it to Esther.  She tells the king that Mordecai not only saved her life, but is her cousin; and when he’s brought into the room, Mordecai is given the king’s signet ring, the one Haman used to wear.  And in giving Mordecai his ring, of course, Xerxes puts all the power of persia and its emperor into his hands.  And Esther, we’re told, appoints Mordecai over Haman’s estate.  

 

All Haman’s power, and all Haman’s wealth, pass to Mordecai. 

 

And more than this; but the real problem of the book, the scheduled genocide, begins to be solved.  Esther falls before the king the way Haman fell before her, pleading that he somehow overrule the genocide Haman set in motion.  

 

We’d expect him to do whatever she asks, I mean he’s been pretty giving to her in the last 5 sentences, which he actually points out to her–but Xerxes listens to her pleading. Of course, no document written in the king’s name can be revoked, right?  And so a decree is sent out asap by riders on the Xerxes special horses.  It’s dictated by Mordecai, written by the scribes, and it allows the jews to assemble and protect themselves on the day that everyone else will be assembling to attack them. 

 

They’re allowed to fight back, and to take whatever they want from the enemies they kill. They are given the same privileges as their potential attackers.  

 

Mordecai leaves the King’s Palace wearing the same royal colors that were all over the place during the party the book of Esther starts with. 

 

The Jews in Susa rejoice, because their destruction is no longer guaranteed, and they feast and they celebrate: and this turn around is so weird, so odd–it must have seemed almost supernatural, as if the powers that be were on the side of the jews–and the jews so happy and congratulatory about how the tables have turned, that those people who thought they were in for a free lunch if they killed a few jews in a few months, all of a sudden decide to convert.  

 

They probably don’t want to be on the wrong side of these people, on the wrong side of whatever power seems to be on their side: which is the power of God, of course.

 

Transition

And we could talk about this fear, and other windows into the part God plays in Esther.  We could talk about what leads someone to convert, to toss their hat in with the people of God.  We could talk about anything!  The biblical support for a quickly activated, fast-moving communications system.  

 

(Seriously, though: are we starting to see the rich depth of the ways this Bible, this Word of God–at least this book in it, Esther–can speak to us about all sorts of things that matter to life?) 

 

Anyway, let’s talk about something else.    

 

A Saying: 

There is a saying that people say (it’s what we do with sayings, really) from a poem by robert burns.  It’s about a man, who startles a mouse, and in the process, destroys its home.  He’s talking to the mouse–very Fievel Goes West, you know–

 

–that movie scared the everything out of me as a kid. Anyway–

 

the poet tells the mouse, basically, to chill out: he’s not going to kill her, he can spare an ear of corn.  But seeing her panic, he starts thinking about his life, and how easily plans we have–whether it’s to sleep in a silo for a winter with corn all around us, or one of the thousand human plans we humans make–how easily they can go wrong.  Pretty depressing poem, really.  

 

And the poet tells the mouse: you aren’t alone.  He says: 

 

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane, 

In proving foresight may be vain: 

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,

Gang aft agley, 

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, 

For promis’d joy!

 

“Mouse, you aren’t alone in the fact that what you expect to happen doesn’t: the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, wrong, leaving us nothing but grief and pain in place of the joy they promised.” 

 

Identifying with the “bad guy?”

And it’s unnatural for us to identify with a bad guy, right?  But if there’s anything that we’ve seen here in Haman’s life, its that his best laid plans did not work out.  All his posturing, and all his intentions turned on him, didn’t they.  

 

All the joy he hoped to gain from killing the Jews–which he couldn’t get unless he killed mordecai, too–it just didn’t happen, it never came; he ended up with the grief of knowing he was going to die, and the pain of being stuck on pole.  And all his wealth and power passed to his enemy.  His best laid plans went wrong. 

 

But we could if we wanted to–and some of us are thinking it–step back and say, well, Haman deserved it; he was a bad guy.  Right?  We can feel like that: we can forget that when Jesus wept over Jerusalem because he wanted everyone in it to take the comfort he offered, it was a city filled with all sorts of people–bad guys, good guys–that he loved; and anyone of them could have been a Haman, just like I could have been, had only a few things happened differently in my life.  

 

But there’s this sense–probably quite a few of us have it–that Haman got what was coming to him.  And in at least one way, that’s not entirely untrue.  

 

Galatians: “Whatsoever…”

Paul in Galatians reminds us that: as a whatever.  

 

In at least one way, Haman did get what was coming to him.  Paul reminds us, in Galatians 6, that “Whatsoever a person reaps, that is what he or she sows.” Or, in a more modern translation, “People reap what they sow.”  

 

Sowing, of course, means scattering seeds, planting: reaping is gathering in whatever has grown from those seeds.  

 

Now, let’s be clear: Paul is talking about eternal things, really: those who plant seeds of all sorts of negative things “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like”–reap destruction, Paul says: but those who, as Paul puts it, “sow to please the Spirit”–which blossoms in the life of Christians  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control–he says that those who “sow to please the Spirit they reap eternal life.”  And he says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  

 

Basic Harvest Rules:

But Paul takes seriously this idea that if we live our lives in a certain way; sowing a certain seed, in this metaphor, we will reap whatever vegetable grows out of that fruit. These are the basic rules of the harvest, right? Like follows like–in daily life, and eternally, Paul highlights.

 

If you plant pumpkin seeds, you get pumpkins, not tomatoes.  If you plant corn, you don’t grow rice.  If you plant candy; you don’t get anything but disappointment–trust me on this one. 

 

And so if anyone should say “Haman got what was coming to him,” Paul would say, “seems like.”  He sowed seeds of destruction to another; and the bloomed and grew in his own life; and he was destroyed. 

 

This is all about personal responsibility, about understanding the results our actions have in others lives and healthily realizing that those results may very well bear fruit in our own lives. This is about the reality that when it seems as if “what goes around comes around” is true, it’s because it often is.  Gossips find they are gossiped about; users get used, players get played, “those who live by the sword die by the sword.”

 

Some Things: Introduction

But there are some things we should say about this. 

 

Some Things: Exceptions

We should remember that sometimes there are, simply, exceptions.

 

But–and I hope this has been true for all of us–sometimes there are exceptions, aren’t there.  Sometimes we get what we don’t deserve; we plant an embarrassing number of seeds that really should grow into things that are negative for us: and they don’t sprout. I have prayed, many times, that myself, or friends, not reap what we have sown, even though we deserve too–and sometimes we don’t.  This is grace; and it is from the Lord, and we do need to be thankful when these harvest rules are broken for us.   

 

But often this rule holds true.

 

Some things: Us

Here’s the thing, though: we are gardeners, we are planters, we are sowers–we are going to toss seeds out there, it’s just going to happen.  Some of us might be so motivated by fear that we’ll do something wrong, and that it will come back to us, that we try and not do anything at all (which is impossible).  We could just as easily remember that planting nice seeds can really result in us reaping some nice things.  Love, Joy, Peace, Gentleness–these aren’t such bad things to have blooming in our lives because we’ve drawn close to the Spirit, and work hard to do good–a thing Paul tells us not to give up doing. 

 

Some Things: Consequences

But we do need to remember that our actions in this life nearly always have consequences, even when we don’t reap them in our lives, someone else may, good or bad.  Our actions have consequences. 

 

Flipping the Breakers:

And while it may be totally true that there are results to our actions, that weeds often grow up in our gardens, when we’ve been planting them in other people’s gardens, there is something that sometimes interrupts consequences–only, honestly, sometimes–and can kill weeds well before they grow.  It’s something everyone of God’s people has benefited from, and, honestly, if we had seen more of it in today’s passage the book of Esther would be really be a different thing entirely. 

 

It’s forgiveness. 

 

Forgiveness:

Haman, we might say, got what was coming to him. He sowed destruction and reaped it in his life.  And many of us have reaped what we have sown, good or bad, have had to deal with the consequences of our actions, good or bad.  

 

But those of us who are God’s people, who have that Spirit to sow to that Paul talks about in Galatians, who have a resurrection to look forward to, who have the love of God that we cannot lose if we cling to it–who have one another, and–I mean, a lot of good things, right?  An all loving, all wise God who wants to be beside us in all things-

 

We don’t deserve any of it. We don’t deserve resurrection and the power of God, peace and hope society cannot tear from us or claim ownership of, mercy.  Not a single one of us had the seeds to plant these things; they were just given to us, extravagantly, the way neighbors give tomatoes.

 

But these things that have been given to us are worth so much more than tomatoes…which makes it even more amazing that they are given away.  God’s like; go on, take some more; I’ve got bushels of salvation, love, power and the Holy Spirit. You couldn’t buy the suckers, but I grow ‘em easy. 

 

And over and over in the New Testament it is made clear that as Christians, forgiven people, we are called to be forgivers.  We are called to do what we can to help those around us–those who have hurt us–to not reap what they have sown. We are called to minimize the yield of hurt, and pain, and terror that people should, reasonably, reap in their lives.  We are disallowed vengeance, revenge.  

 

Conclusion:

Each one of us, as a member of God’s forgiven people, has the power to break, at least a little bit, the rules of the harvest.  We have the power to forgive and not seek vengeance on those who have hurt us.  We have the power of God–that Spirit of patience and love and gentleness and self-control, if only we could remember.  

 

We have the power to forgive those who have hurt us, and to work to create a world in which more and more people experience the forgiveness of God so that they too may forgive others.  I mean, seriously, forgiveness is viral; it spreads out and out, and while it cannot take away entirely, sometimes, the consequences of our actions; it can really minimize the harvest we reap. 

 

We’re banking on this, aren’t we?  That because of Jesus, we won’t have to reap what we sow?  The things we do that we know do not please God’s heart, or honor God’s love for us?  We’re trusting that we will be able to–and even are right now able to–reap instead all the good that Jesus sowed, even though we don’t deserve it.  

 

So let’s try to be people who instead of taking vengeance, forgive.  And I’d ask: Who do you need to forgive?  Let’s be people who give to others the good things we have reaped, like Jesus has given and will give good things to us.  And I’d ask: Who needs to share in the harvest of good things of your life?  Let’s remember Haman as a horrible reminder that if it weren’t for the forgiveness and mercy of God, worked out through Jesus, the world would really be ruled daily by everyone reaping terrible things, because we live in such a pervasive web of sin and not-nice stuff. And I’d ask: Are we thankful for what God says you’ll reap if you draw close to him?  Are these things real in our lives? 

 

This is stuff we can be reminded of from today’s passage, though there are many others. 

 

Prayer: