Proper 21 B
Transcribed from a
sermon
Given on September
30, 2012
By Rev Valerie Ann
Hart
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
Arroyo Grande, CA
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10:
9:20-22
The book of Esther is not
scripture that we run into very often. In fact, in the Prayerbook Lectionary it
is not included at all, so some of you could have been coming to church for years
and never have heard it. But the Revised Common Lectionary includes this one
passage from Esther. If you do the daily office, which is the lectionary for each
day and is what is in the Day by Day, you may have been reading Esther. We just
finished Esther. But many of you may never have encountered this book.
It is not real popular for one
reason, and that is that it never mentions the word God. It is the only book in
the Bible that never uses the word God. They don’t even pray in this book. Now
they do have a time when they fast, but there is no prayer. Yet when you read
the book there is a sense of the presence of something more because it so often
it says, “It just happened that.” It just happened that something good
happened, and that would be the action of God. It is what we might today call
synchronicity.
So because some of you might not
be familiar with Esther, and I actually love the book very much, (it is
wonderful to have a whole book of scripture about a woman and named after a
woman) I will tell the story. Esther is a very interesting story. It takes
place in Persia during what would have been called the Diaspora. It is when the
Jews were conquered by the Persians and resettled throughout the Middle East in
different cities and towns.
One thing to note about the book
of Esther is that it exaggerates everything, including the size of the Persian Empire.
It says that it went all the way from India to Egypt, and it never actually was
that big. Exaggeration is just part of the book of Esther.
It starts with the king in his
palace who is having a great banquet. It is a banquet that has gone, not just
for days, but for weeks and weeks. He has been having a huge banquet, and
everybody is having a good time. One evening the king’s wine is flowing
greatly, and he says, “I want all of you to get a chance to see my beautiful
wife, my beautiful queen.” So he tells to one of his people, “Go get my queen
and bring her in. Tell her to come to me.” But she says, “No.” She doesn’t
come. Now one of the things about the book of Esther is that the king never
decides anything on his own. He is always asking for advice. So to his group
around him, his group of advisors, he says, “What do you think I ought to do?”
And they respond, “Well you’ve got to do something. The queen didn’t come when
the king told her to. If that gets out and the women of the empire find out, no
husband is ever going to get his wife to do anything.” (You can see why I like
this book.) The advice to the king is that he has to get rid of your queen. So
that queen is eliminated - she is sent away. She is gone in order to make an
example for the women of the empire.
But after a while the king starts
to kind of miss having a queen. Then he says, “I really want to have a queen,
what should I do?” And his advisors say, “What you should do is you should have
your people go all around the empire and bring all the most beautiful virgins
here. We will take care of them and make them beautiful and then you can decide
which one will be your queen.” He likes that idea. So they go out and they get
all the most beautiful virgins and they bring them to the palace. Well one of
the virgins that they bring to the palace is Esther. Esther is an unlikely
hero. She is an orphan, and she is a Jewish person. She is a Jewish orphan who
is being raised by her uncle Mordecai. Her uncle tells her, “Don’t tell anybody
at the palace who your people are.” Clearly there is a lot of prejudice against
the Jewish people, even back then.
So they then spent two years on
beauty treatments. One year of beauty treatments for their skin, another year
of beauty treatments for something else. All these virgins are prepared. Now
Esther is really smart, she makes friends with the chief Eunuch. The Eunuchs
are the ones who take care of the potential concubines. She does everything
that the chief Eunuch tells her to do. So finally, after the two years are up,
each evening one of the virgins is taken in to spend the night with the king. After
they spend the night with the king they go to the other part of the palace
where the concubines are. When it is Esther’s turn, she pleases the king. The
king likes her a lot and decides to make her the queen. So now this Jewish
orphan girl is the queen of all Persia.
Meanwhile, (the plot is more
complex) Haman has become the chief counselor to the king. And he is a very
arrogant fool. That’s the only way to describe him. Well actually that is a
nice way to describe him. If you read Esther for yourself you can figure out
how you would like to describe him. But now that he is the chief counselor to
the king he feels that everyone should bow down to him. He goes out of the
palace, and Mordecai (remember Mordecai) Esther’s uncle is out there and he
refuses to stand up and bow to Haman as he goes by. Even though everything is
going great for Haman, he is the chief counselor, he is angry. He is so
frustrated because Mordecai is not giving him the respect he deserves that he
goes home and he asks his friends what he should do about this? He says that he
can’t sleep at night because of the Mordecai. They say, “Well what you should
do is you should build a gallows 50 cubits high.” Now that is huge - much
taller than this church. So he
does it to get ready to use the gallows on Mordecai.
But that is not enough, he is
still irritated by Mordecai because Mordecai is not giving him the respect he
is due. Since Mordecai is Jewish he decides that it is all those Jewish people
that are the problem. He has to get rid of all of them. And so he goes to the
king and he says, “There is this group of people that are disrespectful to you
and we need to get rid of them.” Like I said the king does whatever the people
around him tell him to do so he says, “Okay, do whatever you want.” So Haman
goes home ant throws lots to decide what day the Jews will be destroyed. The
date that is chosen is almost a year later. Then he sends out under the king’s
seal, all over the empire, that in every town and every city, everyone should
gather together and kill every Jew and plunder whatever they own. When Mordecai
hears this he is very upset, obviously, and he goes in front of the palace in sackcloth
and ashes. When Esther hears about Mordecai being out there in sackcloth and
ashes she sends one of the Eunuchs out to find out what is going on. Of course
as queen she can’t interact with people outside the palace. The Eunuch comes
back and tells her the story of what has happened and says that Mordecai said the
she has to do something. And she goes back to Mordecai asking, “What can I do?
There is a law here that if anyone enters the king’s presence without having
been summoned they will be killed unless the king picks up the golden staff and
aims it at them and acknowledges them. And the king hasn’t asked me to come to
see him for over a month. If I go to him I risk my life.” And Mordecai’s answer
is, “Perhaps you have been given royal dignity for just such a time as this.”
For just such a time as this.
So she has all her maids fast for
three days and tells Mordecai to tell all the Jewish people to fast for three
days. When the fasting time is over, she dresses herself in her most beautiful
gown and she goes to the king’s presence, risking her life. A very courageous
woman. She is also very smart. When she gets there the king acknowledges her
and says, “What do you want Esther?” And Esther says, “I want you to come to a
banquet. I am giving a banquet for you, and bring Haman with you.” And so Haman
is thrilled. He is so excited. Now not only is he the chief counselor, but the
queen has invited just him to come with the king. But then there is Mordecai
out there who still doesn’t get up and acknowledge him.
So they have the first banquet,
and at the end of it the kings says, “And what is it that you want from me?”
and she says “I want you and Haman to come to a banquet again tomorrow night.”
So there is a second banquet. Everything is all so extreme, everything is
exaggerated. But you see Esther is smart. She is getting the king feeling
really good. And they come back, and after the second banquet the king asks,
“Okay Esther, what is it that you want?” Well she says, “I want you to stop and
give me my life because someone is going to kill me and all of my people.” “Who
would do such a thing?” says the king. Esther responds, “Well this person
sitting right next to you at dinner.” It is the one who has been feeling so
good about himself. Of course he ends up on the gallows he made for Mordecai.
It is great switch. It “just
happened” that there were the gallows there. It “just happened” that there were
the right people in the right place at the right time. So the tragedy for the
Jewish people is averted.
This book is part of Jewish
scripture partly because it is read every year at the holiday called Purim. It
is a holiday of feasting and giving food to one another within the Jewish
tradition. Purim comes from the word Pur, which is the name for the lots that
were thrown as to what day the Jewish people were to be annihilated. That is
the basis for the holiday of Purim.
But to me Esther is really important.
It is that line of Mordecai’s that perhaps you are exactly where you are for
just such a time as this. I think that might be true for all of us. That where
we are, who we are, the experiences we’ve had in our lives, the position we are
in, the people we know may not be an accident. We may be exactly where we are
for just such a time as this. That God can use us where we are right now - with
all our gifts and weaknesses and all our history and our pains and our hurts
and our strengths. Right now, perhaps God is calling you to something that only
you can do. Where you are right now in your life. And so we have to listen as
Esther listened to Mordecai and listened to her heart. We need to listen to
what God is calling us to do or be right now. Then we have to have the courage
to respond and the wisdom to do it wisely, aware of the politics, aware of the
situation, using every gift that God has given us, Because perhaps, even though
we may not know it, we may be where we are and who we are for just a time as
this. And being called to make a huge difference in the world.
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