"In a Time of Discord and Division"
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10 & 9:20-22
September 30, 2012 + Music Appreciation Sunday
Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404
Today we live in a period of discord and division so I wasn’t surprised in our history. That after my sermon last Sunday urging us to recover and keep the innocence we had as children, one of our thoughtful members asked me how that could be possible in a world like ours. There are forces in our nation that seem determined to return us to the law of the jungle where it is everyone for themselves and the only law is law of survival, not of the fittest, but those who have the most power and money. Living at such a moment it is good to remind ourselves that we are not the first to have faced such challenging times.
This week I was encouraged by reading a book that is one of the least read and most poorly understood books in the Bible. Some of us know it only because it is the answer to a question in Trivial Pursuit: “What is the only book in the Bible that never once mentions the name of God?” The answer: the book of Esther. But how could this ancient book be of any encouragement to us today? Let me tell the story and you decide.
A long time ago, when Xerxes was king of Persia and the Jewish people had been dispersed from their homeland in Palestine to kingdoms all around the ancient world, the king, also known as “Ahasuerus” decided to give a large banquet for anybody who was anybody in his kingdom. It was a big event. The army came to show off the latest in weapons, all the governors of all the provinces came, and everyone was present to see Ahasuerus show off all the great wealth of his kingdom. The parade was so long it went on for about half a year. That was followed by a banquet in the king’s palace that lasted seven days.
And while king was wowing all his guests, his spouse, Queen Vashti, was throwing a party ion the palace for all the women. On the seventh day, when everyone had had about all the banqueting anyone could stand, the king sent for Queen Vashti, so he could show her off to all the officials and their hangers-on. But she wouldn’t come! And the king was furious.
As we would suspect, all the long-bearded sages – all men who owed their lives to the king – assured him that Vashti was very naughty to have defied a royal order like that, and that before you knew it, other women all over the kingdom would start telling their important husbands to go fix their own dinner and other such rebelliousness. Who could sit still for that? They told the king he should issue a decree that would ban Vashti from the king’s presence from that time forward. The king was big on decrees, as you will see, so he was only too happy to give the Queen her comeuppance.
Of course, being a king without a queen on the premises is a lonely business, so all the servants suggested that beautiful young girls from all over the empire be brought to the king so he could pick the one that pleased him the most to be the new queen. The king found that to be a superior idea and issued the second decree of the story. You can just imagine the excitement that followed.
As it turns out, there was in the region a Jew named Mordecai, whose great grand-dad had been carried off to Babylon during the time of the great exile of Nebuchadnezzar. Mordecai had been like a father to his beautiful cousin Esther. So naturally, given her legendary beauty, when the king’s decree was proclaimed, Esther was one of the women taken to the palace to pass in review. She made a strong impression on the king’s servants, who were only too happy to help advance her ahead of the others. She was careful not to tell anyone that she was a Jew, because Mordecai had instructed her to keep that detail to herself.
Each girl was brought in to the king, and as each left, the king offered them a gift of whatever they would like to take from the harem of the king’s palace. When Esther’s turn came, she asked only what the king’s chief servant had advised. The king, needless to say, was swept away by her beauty and her reserve, and he crowned her queen on the spot. Mordecai had been keeping his distance so that no one would suspect Esther’s origins. He sat by the town gate waiting for news on the selection of a new queen. And while he sat at the gate, he overheard a plot to kill the king. He sent word to Esther, who told the king, and the usual suspects were rounded up and dealt…with severely!
It was after these things had taken place that the king selected a man named Haman to be his chief of staff, and he commanded everyone to bow and scrape whenever Haman came by. Naturally, everyone in the kingdom who came near Haman made a point of kowtowing to him, all but this one independent spirit at the gate, the man named Mordecai. Naturally, this infuriated Haman who thought it beneath his high station to deal with Mordecai’s insolence directly and he began laying plans to have all the Jews killed so that among the dead would be Mordecai.
On the first month of the year, the month of Nisan, Haman cast “Pur” which means to cast lots more or less like the Florida lottery or like rolling dice, to decide the day and month when there could be open hunting season on the Jews. The lot fell on the thirteenth of the twelfth month. The 13th of Adar was to be the day of blood-letting. Haman sidled up to the king and rasped, “There are a certain people scattered among the peoples of your kingdom, Sire. Their laws are different from those of other people. They don’t keep the king’s laws, so it isn’t appropriate for the king to tolerate them, now is it?” He volunteered that he would be willing to pay, oh, say ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasury to help offset the expenses of the slaughter.
And, wouldn’t you know it, the king who loved to issue decrees issued another one. This king didn’t have much of
a bean in his belfry, and it seems “anybody with an eighth-grade education could wrap him around his little finger without half trying.”1
Mordecai, on hearing the news, was undone, not to mention the thousands of Jews who were living peacefully all over the kingdom. Esther was deeply troubled when she got word. She found, through her messengers, that her cousin Mordecai was inconsolable. Mordecai sent word to Esther that she should intercede on behalf of her people. But Esther remembered what Vashti had done. Not going to the king when commanded was simply the flip side of going to him when he hadn’t asked for you. Both were capital crimes. Mordecai was suggesting something very dangerous. Esther didn’t want to go but here is what Mordecai said in response:
Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this. –Esther 4:13-14
Esther was convinced. She thought up a plan of her own. When she went to visit the king, he hardly wasted a moment calling her into the throne room. He was so nutty about her and told her that whatever she wanted, up to half his kingdom, he’d sign it over to her on the spot. But she simply asked if she could host a little dinner party for the king and his number one man, Haman, that night. The king could hardly summon his servants fast enough.
When Haman got the news, he also got the mistaken impression that his rising star was about to rise even higher. Imagine he, the guest at an intimate little dinner for three, with the king and his queen. Surely no one else in the whole kingdom was a more important person than he was. The next day, anticipating the second quiet evening with the royal couple, he thought it would be a good day to build an immense gallows on which to hang his arch enemy, the unbowing Mordecai. He figured he’d just tell the king that he wanted Mordecai hanged and that would be that. Though he was as good as the king’s right-hand, it all seemed like nothing to him as long as this one little Jewish man would not bow to him.
It turned out the king had a rough night after the first dinner, and he called for the royal records to be read as a sort of sedative. But as he listened to the reading he was reminded of the patriotic act of Mordecai, who, you will remember, had unearthed the plot to have the king assassinated, thus saving the king’s life. He tried to remember if any honor or distinction had been bestowed on Mordecai, but found that he had not been given him so much as a Legion of Honor medal. Haman strolled in just as the king was thinking about this, so the king asked him what he should do to honor a particular person he had in mind. Haman asked himself, “Whom would the king wish to honor more than me?” So naturally, he rattled off a laundry list of pretentious honors that should be granted to someone the king wished to honor, including royal robes, one of the King’s horses, even a royal crown to wear. On top of this, while he is wearing all this finery and riding the horse., said Haman, have a noble official walk the horse through the streets, proclaiming aloud that this is what happens when the king wants to honor someone. Haman could almost feel the crown on his head and the reins of a mighty horse in his hands.
“Fine,” said the king. “I wish to honor Mordecai, so you go on down to the gate and do all those things you just said for him.” The rest of the day didn’t go much better for Haman. When it came time for the feast, here is what happened:
“The king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have won your favor, O king, and of it pleases the king, let my life be given me – that is my petition – and the lives of my people – that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold, merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.” Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?” Esther said, “A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen. The king rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that the king had determined to destroy him. When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman had thrown himself on the couch where Esther was reclining; and the king said, “Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?” As the words left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. Then Harbona, one of those in attendance on the king said, “Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that.” So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.”
But the story does not end there. The king had decreed the slaughter of the Jews for the thirteenth of Adar, and even kings, who tend to believe in their own infallibility, cannot undo a royal decree once it is done. So it was necessary for the king to issue another decree, this time permitting the Jews to defend themselves on the day that had been intended for their slaughter. Thus, forewarned and forearmed (literally) the Jews killed hundreds of their enemies and every year since, on the 14th of Adar (sometime in February or March), Jews celebrate the Feast of Purim to commemorate their deliverance from those who would destroy them.
This is a great story, isn’t it? But we are the least bit sensitive several words of reminder ought to be added.
First this story reminds us hatred and prejudice are very common in human experience. I don’t know why, but from earliest times people have feared and hated those different from themselves. The first lesson Esther teaches is that hatred not only threatens those who are despised but ultimately it destroys those who despise others. And science has confirmed what faith knows. Psychiatrists at Duke University have concluded that persons who have continuing feelings of hostility toward others have an increased risk of illness and early death. And groups of people who hate others risk their own self-destruction. Intolerance is a fatal disease.
Second, the story of Esther reminds us that those who are hated and despised risk becoming like their persecutors. We need to be on constant guard against allowing feelings of revenge to take root in our lives. Friends, let me say this as clearly as I can: if we follow the cruel law of “an eye for an eye” then we and our nation will stumble into the future half-blind.
Finally, we need to be reminded that there may be a deeper significance to the fact that Esther is the only book in the Bible where God’s name is not mentioned. To mention God is to remember that God is the parent of all people; yes, the parent of Esther and Mordecai but also the parent of Haman. And though as human beings we may not always remember that all people are our brothers and sisters, God never forgets. Jews have always known this. The Talmud, an ancient Jewish commentary on the scripture, says that when the Israelites were saved at the Reed Sea during their Exodus from Egypt, the angels wanted to break forth into song over the drowning of the Egyptian army. But God silenced them saying: “Those who are drowning are my children, too.”
In this time of discord and division in our nation we need to remind ourselves that those with whom we have deep political and religious differences are also God’s children, our sisters and brothers. Though sometimes we may wish that some of them might be drowned in the vitriol sea of their own anger, we are called to be agents of reconciliation. That is what it means to be a Liberal Christian. When we do what we can to put out the fires of anger, our task will be to plant seeds of peace and harmony in the ashes of those fires. Pray that those seeds will grow into a more compassionate, a more tolerant, a more just society for all people.