When I accepted the task of giving today’s sermon on the Old Testament figure Esther, I didn’t realize what a controversial book I was getting myself into. A quick peek into one of my father’s commentaries, however, and I was overwhelmed by arguments claiming that Esther does not even deserve a place in the biblical canon. Some experts argue that the book is too secular, meaning that it doesn’t mention God enough. Some experts say that the book of Esther reads less like fact and more like fiction, perhaps less like the real life experiences of a young woman and more like the over-the-top drama of a soap opera, like One Life to Live.

There are some merits to these arguments: there is, in fact, no direct reference to God in the entire book, and no one can deny that Esther is filled with drama, what with a nation wide search for love, government nepotism, a heroine living a double life, a foiled assassination plot of the king, an evil sidekick, an attempt at mass genocide, and, eventually, redemption for the main character we were all rooting for. But to deny the validity of this book for these reasons would be a major oversight. There is an important lesson to be learned in the pages of Esther when its heroine is forced to make a crucial, potentially life or death decision.

But before we dive into that, we must first hear the story. We must first understand what brought her to that point. The setting is the city of Susa in Persia, about 478, B.C. King Xerxes is throwing a huge party for all his officials and ministers, as well as the princes and governors of his provinces and the military leaders of both Persia and Media. Persian kings were known for their over-the-top opulence, and this party was no exception.

The action begins one evening toward the end of this 6 month long display of wealth and power. King Xerxes and all his men had been drinking, a lot. The respectable women had long since left the party—the only women left were likely prostitutes and women of ill repute. King Xerxes looks around and says to his guests, “My queen is more beautiful than all these women put together!”

“No way!” One might have responded.

“I don’t believe it!” Another shouts out.

The King puffs his chest out and yells to his eunuchs, “Bring Queen Vashti to me! Let them see how beautiful she is!”

And so the eunuchs go to her. I imagine that Queen Vashti was probably already in bed when the eunuchs come for her. They wake her and tell her the king’s wish for her to rejoin the party. And Vashti is faced with a difficult decision here: does she do what her king requested, even though to do so would be to demean herself and her position? Should she compromise her values and her cultural upbringing, or should she stay true to her convictions and pray that the king will be too drunk to remember all this in the morning?

Vashti decides to stay true to her convictions, a choice that would cost her dearly: the king is so enraged by her refusal that he casts her aside and banishes her from ever setting foot in his presence again. If that was not enough, Xerxes drafts a bulletin that he sends to every province in Persia declaring that the man’s word is final word in his household and encouraging men not to allow their wives to behave like Vashti.

Next, the Bible tells us that Xerxes embarked on a journey not unlike the one we see on the popular reality show, The Bachelor. All the most beautiful women in the country were gathered together so that Xerxes might find himself a new queen, a queen who “knows her place.” He does not want a queen with her own mind; he wants one who would obey everything he says without question.

Enter Esther, an incredibly beautiful young Jewish woman whose parents had died and whose older cousin, Mordecai was raising her in the city. She’s called into the king’s harem and, eventually, is made queen, though she never reveals her identity as a Jew. And so begins Esther’s double life: one life as queen of Persia, and one as a Jewish woman.

Around the same time, King Xerxes promotes from his ranks a man named Haman to be his right-hand man. Now, Haman was full of himself. No, that’s an understatement. Haman’s head was so big with self-importance, I’m surprised he was able to walk upright. In those days, when the king of Persia issued a decree, it was irreversible. And Haman knew this. His egocentricity was so pronounced, that he persuaded the king to pass a law saying that everyone in the country should bow down to him, Haman, when he walks by.

So one day Haman is strutting through the court, just to watch everyone getting on their knees as he approached, when he came upon a man who refused to bow down and worship him! The man is Mordecai, Esther’s cousin.

“Why won’t you bow down to me?!” Haman demands to know.

“It is against Jewish law to bow down before anyone but God,” Mordecai tells him.

Well! An entire race of people living in Persia who would refuse to bow down before him?! Haman would not stand for it! Mordecai would pay for his insolence—his entire people would pay! Haman was so incensed that he went to King Xerxes again and manipulated him into passing yet another irrevocable decree, this one proclaiming that, in about a year’s time, all the Jews in Persia would be put to death.

It’s easy to disassociate ourselves from what that really means. It happened so long ago, it’s just words on a page. But we’re talking about genocide, here-- mass genocide. We’re talking about an evil man intent on rounding up Jewish people and killing them. Sound familiar?

Well, Mordecai hears of Haman’s plan to kill all the Jews, and he goes to the palace gates dressed in sackcloth and ashes. He wails loudly and bitterly, drawing attention to himself. Esther, having heard from her maids of Mordecai’s actions, sends a eunuch to him to find out what happened to cause her cousin such distress. Mordecai tells him everything that happened, even giving the eunuch a copy of the king’s decree to prove that what he said was true. Mordecai’s message to Esther is clear: Go to the King and intercede and plead with him to save her people.

Her initial reaction: “Are you kidding me? No way!”

See, according to Persia law, if someone approached the king at court uninvited, he was pretty much a dead man. The king, on occasion, would show mercy and hear the person’s request, but going to the king uninvited was a dangerous proposition. When I first read this part I thought, “What’s the problem? She’s his wife! She can ask him over breakfast!” But upon some further investigation I learned that it was not customary for Middle Eastern kings to see their wives on a regular basis in those days. And Xerxes had sent for Esther, but she was not to see him for 30 more days.

Esther reminds Mordecai of this, of the huge risk involved in approaching the king unbidden. The risk was even bigger when we consider that Esther knew all about Vashti, the queen before her whom Xerxes had forever banished from his presence because she did not do what he had asked. Esther had been made queen in part because she “knew her place,” remember? Esther followed the rules, did what the king asked of her, kept her head down, and never rocked the boat. What would Xerxes do in his anger if she stepped outside the boundaries of her position as queen? Surely it would be wisest to keep her head down and see how this situation played out.

But Mordecai sends her this response: “Don’t think that just because you live in the king’s house that you’re the one Jew who will get out of this alive! If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive for the Jews from someplace else, but you and your family will be wiped out. Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for such a time as this?”

Mordecai is calling Esther on her double life. “Time for playing the pagan queen is over, cousin. Are you a daughter of God or not?” And Esther knows she has a choice to make—to fight for the lives of her people, or to stay on the sidelines and hope that she goes unnoticed. You could say that Esther was between a rock and a hard place.

Earlier this week as I struggled to write about Esther, as I struggled with what message I would bring to you today, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to get up out of my chair, hop on my bike, and go for a ride down the canal. So I did. Fifteen minutes later I found myself at Scusset Beach walking along the jetty, feeling certain that God had led me there for something—for inspiration, I hoped. I made my way along the rocks, boat-watching, people-watching, until I looked into the sky and saw about a dozen Little Gulls hovering in the air. I stopped. I looked below and saw a fisherman, clearly done for the day, tossing his leftover minnows into the water for the birds.

Have you ever seen Little Gulls fish? Little Gulls are the smaller birds with white bodies, black heads and red beaks. These birds hover over shallow water until they see something tasty below. Then, they drop like dead weights out of the sky into the water! The first time I saw this I thought that surely the bird had died mid-flight, but a second later the bird emerged from the water, healthy and whole! Having seen these birds fish before, I wasn’t surprised when they began to take it in turns to drop suddenly out of the sky into the water below.

I began to watch one gull in particular who hovered around the edge of the scene, watching as the other birds followed their instincts and dove into the water. This gull seemed to hold back, seemed almost afraid to act for some reason. Finally, I called out to the bird, “Come on! You can do it! If you don’t dive into that water, you’ll go hungry later! God made you for this!” The next moment, that bird dropped into the water. He got in a short scuffle with another bird going for the same fish, but he emerged from the water and from the scuffle safe and sound, and with a minnow in tow.

I think that, just like the Little Gull I watched hovering around the edges, Esther knew instinctively what to do in the situation she faced. Instinctively, she knew what the right thing to do was. But she let her fears cloud her judgment. And Mordecai knew just what she needed to hear—a reminder that God is great, that, not only could she do this and be successful, but that maybe God had made her just for this moment, to save her people.

After considering his words, Esther tells him to start the equivalent of a modern day prayer chain: she asks that every Jew in the city fast for her for three days and three nights. She herself fasts, along with her maids. The decision to fast and pray, and asking for others to fast and pray for her as well, shows wisdom. If Esther had acted recklessly and immediately sought an audience with the king, she probably would not have her own book in the Bible. But she knew that she could not successfully plead her case to King Xerxes without the help of her Heavenly King.

It does not say this explicitly in the book, but I imagine that Esther spent a lot of time in prayer, asking God for guidance. With God’s help, Esther formulated a plan to ask Xerxes to spare her people. And, you know what? It worked.

Esther stepped out of the secular shadows where she had been living her life at a crucial moment. She made a courageous decision to trust God, even in the face of death, because Mordecai reminded her that the time had come to make a choice between the two separate lives she was living. And when she no longer allowed her fear to keep her on the sidelines of life, when she made choices confident in her identity not as Queen of Persia, but as a beloved daughter of God, that’s when God was able to accomplish great things through her.

Are you, like Esther, hovering around the sidelines of your Christian life? Are you afraid to act out in faith because of how others might react? Are you stuck between a rock and a hard place? In Isaiah 43 verses 1-3, God tells us, “Don’t be afraid! I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called you by name. You’re mine. When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you. When you’re in rough waters, you won’t go down. When you’re between a rock and a hard place, it won’t be a dead end—Because I am God, your personal God, your Savior.”

Has the time come, my friends, to make a choice between two lives? The God that took care of Esther when she made her choice to live as a beloved child of God is the very same God who will care for you when you step out in faith. And who knows? Maybe God made you for just such a time as this.

Amen.

Read More 0 comments | Posted by Jenna