rich’s blog

God in Esther & In Our Lives.

 

Introduction:

You are a patient bunch, you know that?  You really are. I mean we’ve been walking through the book of Esther for 2 solid months, talking about all sorts of things, you know: Integrity, the undeserved favor we receive, the way we expand our anger out to the people who remind us of those we’re really angry with, the way we spiritualize the decisions we make and deceive & mislead others so we can get what we want accomplished, we talked about the how we can’t get our sense of self, our value, from anything other than Jesus’ love for us, how we shouldn’t use the connections we have with others to make ourselves seem legitimate, we talked about reaping & sowing & how forgiveness can free us from reaping bad things we deserve–we have talked about all sorts of things. 

 

Time to Stretch:

And I bet our backs are hurting, because we’ve sort of been bending over this book, looking at these snippets of Esther, these passages, one after another.  Today is a day where we can just sort of stretch, straighten out, put our arms akimbo–this is akimbo–and look over this book as a whole, the way we’d look over or survey any sort of amazing view. 

 

And what we’ll see, as we scan through this book, today, is an amazing view.  We’ll see coincidences that force us to ask questions about God and about the coincidences we see in the narrative of our own lives.  We’ll notice how the events of Esther invite us to remember the whole history of Israel, and the many ways God has acted faithfully in his relationship with them.  And we’ll ask if we can trust God to act faithfully in his relationship with us. 

 

So. Expectations set? Wiggle a bit: Are our bums comfortable? Great! Let’s Pray. 

 

Prayer:

Father.  Anoint us, now.  Well up your Spirit within us now,  and draw our attention to your care and your character.  Silence me if I mislead us, and give us the inclination, and the ability, to live for your glory, and not for our own interests.  Wake us up to your involvement in our lives, both now, and in the past that stretches out behind us.  In Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

Remember:

Esther is a book where God’s face is hidden as if behind a veil; God behind a curtain.  It simply is. God isn’t mentioned, there’s no word from the Lord: But there are things we can remember, right?

 

Esther happens to receive favor.  She happens to become queen.  She happens to be positioned to plead with Xerxes on behalf of her people. 

 

Mordecai happens to hear an assassination plot; but happens to be unrewarded for this. 

 

He doesn’t bow to a man who happens to be incredibly insecure, vindictive, and powerful: the Jews end up scheduled for genocide because of it. 

 

The King happens to be unable to sleep; and happens to read court records, which remind him that he never did reward Mordecai.  And the man who has been orchestrating the genocide of the Jews, Haman, happens to be around, and is forced to honor Mordecai. 

 

Esther approaches the king, and happens to be granted his favor; and she sets a plot to undo what Haman has done, which happens to work beyond what anyone would have expected.  And Mordecai happens to replace Haman, in every single way.  

 

Things happen; one situation leads to another, and God’s people, who are different enough from those around them–though may be not as different as they really should be–are just as quickly freed from genocide as they were set up for it. 

 

Curtains & Veils: 

But just because there seems to be a curtain hiding God, does not mean that God is not there, right behind it, engaged and involved—just out of sight. 

 

In fact, say you come to a house, whose windows are curtained.  We may decide; “Ope! No one’s home! Guess I’ll leave.” And there could be a circus going on in there, right?  We have to knock on the door, tap on the window, to see if anyone’s home. 

 

And in a few minutes, we’ll knock on Esther’s door, tap on her window, to see if God is at home. 

 

But just because God is not mentioned, does not mean God is absent. 

 

If that were the case, really, then we’d have some problems when we’re, say, talking in the lobby before and after this time, calling one another on the phone, discussing our lives in small group or any place we chat together: because honestly, we often neglect, when we’re sharing with others immediate, important, personal things, to give any verbal nod to God at all. 

 

And yet, most of us would say that those things that are most important to us, the prayer concerns or just hopes we have and share, the chit-chat we make about work or our families or whatever: we believe God cares about it, is involved in it, and has something to say about it. 

 

Right? Or am I wrong, here? 

 

Now, instead of, oh, feeling guilty about not mentioning God more—although, honestly, even lip service is a sort of service, right? Not just lip. Let’s instead just talk for a moment, about coincidences. 

 

Coincidences?

Because all those things we looked at, that seem to just conveniently, serendipitously happen, they sort of back us against a wall and force the question: Are these things that happen in Esther coincidences only? A string of startlingly convenient things. 

 

One way to answer this is to look again at Esther, but in a different way than we have before.  In a way that takes effort for us in this room, but would be natural, and normal, for those who first read this book, who held onto and remembered the history of Israel, because it was their history.  

 

If God is behind the curtain of events of this book, we need to look at the curtain a little more closely, and see if it has a pattern on it that would be familiar to those of us who were a part of God’s household when Esther was first written. 

 

Past & Patterns: Agagite

We need to notice what anyone of us would have noticed immediately if we were some of the first readers of this book, which is the declaration that Haman is an Agagite.  Agag, was the king of a people called the Amelakites during the time of Saul, the first king of Israel.  The Amelekites were one of the first, oh, enemies of the Jews.  They inhabited an area–the Negev–that the Jews were forced to wander around in for 40 years because they didn’t trust that God could overcome–guess who?–the Amelakites and other people like them in the land God wanted to plant Israel.  

 

So if we were aware of this past, one of the first things we would do when we heard that Haman was an Agagite is replay this history we have as God’s people.  We’d remember how when Israel was freed from slavery as a nation in the Exodus, how one of the first people to attack them was the Amelakites (you can read all this in Exodus 17); we’d remember how God miraculously allowed the Israelites to survive this attack. 

 

We’d remember that because the Amelakites went after Israel, at a time when they were so weak, and fleeing from Egypt, God says, 

 

“Write this as a reminder in a book and recite it…I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven…The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (vv)

 

We’d know how calling someone an agagite or amelakite became a shorthand way to talk about any enemy of the jews that wanted to destroy them.  We’d be forced to remind ourselves every time we hear the name that God is for us and will protect us as his people. We’d be remembering this past, and this promise, and the many other times–there’s lists if you want them–that point out how famous Isrealites–Joshua, Gideon, Saul, David, Israel as a people, and others, triumphed over Amelak, the Amelakites.  

 

And, as readers who know all this stuff, we find ourselves forced to ask: will God win over Haman? This new Amelakite, Agagite? Or will God’s people be annihilated by this enemy who has decided to destroy them?  Will God protect Israel this time?  Will God protect us?  

 

Past & Patterns: Passover:

And while we’re asking this question about God’s protection, we find ourselves reading, and we discover that Haman has cast lots to discover when he “should” destroy Israel.  And the lot lands on a day near the end of the Babylonian year–”the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar.”  This is in Esther 3:7.  

 

But this decree is sent out on the thirteenth day of Nisan, the thirteenth day of Nisan; the first month of the Babylonian calendar. 

 

Calendars are tricky, right?  I still have problems: “August is the 9th month? 8th month? What?” And understanding how other cultures chop up their days and hours is even trickier, right? 

But here’s this fun fact–it would have just been a fact for us if we lived in Persia, but since we don’t, it’s a fun fact: 

 

This decree is sent out on the eve of Passover. This decree is sent out on the eve of Passover. 

 

Passover, of course, is part of the Jewish celebration that remembers God’s faithfulness to Israel. It recalls for them how God protected Israel from the plague in Egypt that took all the firstborn in Egypt, and how Israel was freed from generations of slavery to the Egyptian empire.  Israel’s exodus from Egypt. 

 

And we, engaged in this book, or Jews in Persia, are forced to ask, as knowers of Israel’s past: Will God come through?  Will God free his people again, like he did in Egypt? Or is passover a joke, a memory of something that, in light of this decree, doesn’t seem like its worth remembering? 

 

Patterns: Joel

And while we’re asking ourselves if God will come through, and remembering how God came through before, we find ourselves in Esther 4, and we see Mordecai, dressed in sackcloth and ashes, asking Esther “Who knows?” Maybe she’s come to royal dignity for right now? 

 

And the scholar Karen Jobes does an incredible job showing how this passage would immediately have brought to the mind of its original reader or hearer the second chapter of Joel, which was a book that is incredibly hard to date, but many people feel was written before Esther.

 

It’s written in Joel:  

 

Yet even now, says the Lord,

   return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 

   rend your hearts and not your clothing.

Return to the Lord, your God,

   for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,

   and relents from punishing. 

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,

   and leave a blessing behind him,

a grain-offering and a drink-offering

   for the Lord, your God? 

 

Blow the trumpet in Zion;

   sanctify a fast;

call a solemn assembly; 

   gather the people.

Sanctify the congregation;

   assemble the aged;

gather the children,

   even infants at the breast.

Let the bridegroom leave his room,

   and the bride her canopy.  (Joel 2:12-16)

 

During the time of Esther, the possible “Who Knows” of Joel hasn’t happened yet.  It’s a still-living hope; that God will come through for us, still, generations after Jerusalem’s been sacked, even now, when Persia rules the world?  Joel is about returning to God and asking for his intervention, turning to God in repentance and hope, and by echoing Joel, those who hear Esther are invited, as Jobes writes, “to turn to their Lord, who may relent from sending this calamity on them.” (niv ac 136ff).  We read this and we remember that God promised to care for us if we fasted. Promised to “restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem.”  And as we read about every Jew in Susa fasting, we are reminded of the many promises God has made and called to remember them again, and act on them as God wants us to act on them. 

 

The Past Begs Questions: 

As we move through this narrative, this story, from one coincidence to another, one reminder of God’s past faithfulness and promises to another, we are forced to both remember God’s faithfulness in the past, and ask if God will be faithful right now, today, in these things, in this time, with these problems and terrors and threats.  

 

Will God who saved us from our enemies the Amelakites, save us from this new Amelakite again? 

 

Will God who saved us from Pharoah, and brought us out of slavery, save us again, even though we learn about our genocide the day before we celebrate God’s faithfulness to us? 

 

Will God who promised in Joel that if we fast, rend our hearts, then maybe–Who knows?–God will release us from the terror that faces us?  Will he this time?  

 

And we who have finished the book, discover at the end of Esther that on the other side of our questions, having crossed the bridge of reassuring memories of God’s faithfulness and promises, we find that God’s purposes for his people will not be thwarted.  Genocide never happens.  

 

No Curtain at all: 

And these echoes, these reminders of God’s pattern of faithfulness and promise to us, and what is asked of us as God’s people; this pattern we see when we draw up close to the curtain of Esther, that seems to hide God–as we look at it, we realize that there isn’t a curtain at all. God is all over the place; all over the place.  We just needed to look again, and remember some really important things. 

 

And what seemed to be simply a string of coincidences now seems to be something that just wouldn’t hold up, hold together, unless God was completely invested and a part of the things we have read over the past couple of months. 

 

Past into Present into Future: 

And we are propelled, at the end of Esther, to believe one thing for sure: 

 

God will be at work in the things to come.

 

If we could only remember the past, and see the present pattern of events, the string of coincidences with eyes of faith.  Eyes of memory.  Eyes of hope, and trust, and obedience despite this present darkness, we wouldn’t fear anything. 

 

We are here. 

But we are here, Nov 23rd, 2008.  And it’s cold outside, and your life is filled with too many things, and the promise of Jesus’ unforced rhythms of grace seems more like a joke that a sure bet.  God’s commitment to our good, and the rhetoric of patterns of faithfulness–it just doesn’t matter, too much, in the face of all the things you’ve got going on. 

 

Or maybe I’m talking to myself, only. 

 

We forget things, you know.  We forget that Esther spans 9 years of time, and takes place some generations since Jerusalem was shut down, and Israel scattered like seed, like fertilizer, across the known world.  

 

If we read this book in one go it doesn’t seem like 9 years; we can do it while we wait for a pizza to get delivered, while we sit in a doctor’s office, wait for some laundry, hope someone replies to an e-mail or text message we just sent: this book takes as long for us to read as it does for us to do any one of the tedious, seemingly meaningless little things that fill any random day any random one of us has. 

 

We forget. 

We forget, of course, that these random days, and these random, tedious things, are strung together.  That one thing, follows another thing.  And all these things that follow each other can seem unrelated, disconnected.  But they don’t have to. 

 

And we have such short memories, forgetting as we do, the things we are meant to remember: The pattern of God’s faithfulness to his covenant hopes in history.  The way he is committed to us! We find ourselves unable to step back, to make time in the tedious mix of things we have to do, to look over the past 9 years of our lives: and ask, with eyes of faith, to see the hand of God at work among, and in, our lives. 

 

And we have the Holy Spirit; something no one in Esther, not even Mordecai the Man had.  The power of God in and among us. 

 

We forget to remember basic things; and we live our lives in accord with the shiny and slick surface of Esther, where God doesn’t show up, things just happen.  

 

But that’s not what we see in Esther at all, right? Not when we look at this book with the memories of God’s faithfulness bright in our minds.  What we see is God present in every moment, working through his people in ways that they are invited to recognize.  This is not some mysterious, unknowable God: but one that wants to communicate trust me, turn to me, trust me. 

 

And our lives? 

And our lives, too, are not slick and shiny strings of coincidences.  God is at work in our present, right now, wanting to communicate trust me, turn to me, trust me.   But for us to see, and act on what we see, we must first remember.  We must remember God’s acts of faithfulness in history.  And God’s acts of faithfulness in our own pasts.  

 

Questions:  

What important things, events, people, moments of God’s clear involvement in our lives, have we allowed to slip from our memories?  Both as a church, and as each one of us.  

 

Little children can remember patterns; but some of us have forgotten important scenes in our own lives, have forgotten the very things–one strung after another–that have brought us to where we sit, right now.  The paragraphs and sentences that form the book of Rich, or Denny, or Debbie.

 

But there are people who need to read our stories, who need to know our lives, and through knowing us, see that God has, does, and will come through.  Some of those people are in this room: life can beat us down, we need to know each other, because it’s hard to spur our own memories, remind ourselves that God’s faithful at all sometimes.  And some of those people we haven’t met yet.  

 

 

Conclusion:

Esther, at the end of the day, is a reminder: God’s been for his people since the very beginning, and he still is, more than He ever has been, really, now that his Spirit is loose in us and the world.  Esther demands that we peer into our lives and see not a disconnected string of scenes, but a whole narrative of connected chapters, with the theme of faithfulness written underneath every moment. 

 

But to see life this way, we need to become people who remember God’s faithfulness: So again, and finally, I ask: 

 

What memory of God’s faithfulness have you forgotten, not thought about for so long?  How can you see the pulse, the love of God, coursing through and tying together the events of your life?  Where is God at work in your present?  Who needs to know?  And can we believe that God’s faithfulness will be with us as the story of our lives continues to be written? 

 

The people of God are a remembering people, held together by God’s faithfulness.  It’s worth not forgetting. 

 

Prayer:

Father: thank you for the book of Esther.  How it reveals the way you’re so involved in the lives of your people.  Help us to remember these things, the truth that you have been faithful to your people, and to each of us, and are right now present and involved in our lives.  We ask you to always, always be. 

 

And If our memories are just shot, just worn down, and we can’t remember God being faithful or it just seems like our lives are one big mess of disconnected scenes instead of a story of your faithfulness and care and concern–help us, give us one another, awaken our memories and help us to hold onto the great memory we have of Jesus, and all the promises you made to us on his and our behalf. 

 

Father, too, if we don’t read Esther again for years; help us not to forget that its a book stamped all over with your presence, just like our lives.  We thank you for it, for you, for one another.  Protect us from the evil one; in Jesus name, to your glory, Amen.