Sermon:  Queen Esther’s Banquet

Text: Esther 7:1-10; 9:20-22

26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

September 27, 2009

Scripture introduction.  Our second reading this morning is taken from the Old Testament book of Esther.  The book is set in the 500s B.C.E., a time when the Jews who had been taken from Jerusalem by the Babylonians now lived in the empire of the Persians, who by then had defeated and superseded the Babylonians.  Yet many of the historical details of the book do not square with what we know of ancient history from other sources.  Moreover, the book of Esther is characterized by extreme exaggerations of events, by one-dimensional characters, and by an undertone of satirical humor.  These and other factors have led scholars[1] to understand the book of Esther as a short-story—sort of like an historical novel.  As we know from the plays of Shakespeare or the epic poetry of John Milton or the novels of William Faulkner, a story can convey truth sometimes more powerfully than can a history.

The book of Esther has never had smooth sailing in religious circles.  For Jews, the main problem is that it never mentions God.  Its main Jewish characters—Esther and her uncle Mordecai—never pray or engage in any of the traditional practices of Jews.  Yet the book has a place in the Jewish Bible—probably because it purports to describe, in a passage that is part of our reading this morning—the origins of the Jewish festival of Purim, which my Jewish friend David Wohlberg once described to me as a cross between Halloween and April Fool’s Day.  As my teacher Johanna Bos has written, for Christians the book often seems a bit too Jewish; and we hardly know what to do with it.[2]

Plot summary.  We’ll only be reading the climax of the story this morning, so let me give you a short plot summary.  Esther, a young Jewish woman and an orphan, lived with her guardian uncle, Mordecai, in the Persian capital of Susa, which is located in current-day Iran, near the border with Iraq.  As the story opens, the king of Persia, named Ahasuerus, threw a 180-day banquet for all his governors and military commanders.  Then he hosted another banquet—this one a mere 7 days in length—for the residents of Susa.  As the Bible puts it, “Drinking was by flagons, without restraint.”  He invited his queen, named Vashti, to the banquet so that he could show off her beauty to the assembled nobles.  She wouldn’t come!  The king was afraid that her uncooperative spirit might spread to all the other women of Persia.  Plus, he was embarrassed that Vashti had disobeyed him.  So Ahasuerus followed the advice of his counselors and banished Vashti.  Now, needing a new queen, Ahasuerus called for all the most beautiful girls in the empire to be brought to him.  After they had received a year of cosmetic treatments, he selected one to be the new queen.  Of course, the woman he chose was none other than Esther.

Meanwhile Uncle Mordecai had overheard some men plotting to assassinate the king.  He warned Esther, who in turn warned the king.  The would-be assassins were caught and executed.  Now the bad guy, Haman, enters the story.  He was one of the king’s counselors; and everybody bowed down to him.  But Mordecai refused to bow, so Haman hated Mordecai.  Rather than arrest Mordecai directly, Haman hatched a plot to destroy not only Mordecai, but all of Mordecai’s people—the Jews—throughout the entire empire.  He bribed the king to issue an edict requiring the destruction of the Jews on a certain date in the month of Adar—almost a year in the future.  Mordecai found out about the edict of destruction and implored the help of Queen Esther.  At first she was frightened; even the queen could not approach the king without an invitation.  But Mordecai prevailed on her,[3] and she devised a plan.  Without an invitation, she boldly presented herself in the king’s throne-room.  The king was so infatuated with Esther that her overlooked her indiscretion and promised to grant her request.  She asked simply that he and Haman come to a banquet that she was preparing for the king.  At the banquet, the king asked again, “Esther, what do you want me to do for you?”  Esther replied by inviting the king and Haman to yet another banquet in her quarters.  On the way home, Haman saw Mordecai, who again refused to bow.  Haman resolved to be done with Mordecai once and for all; so he constructed a gallows seventy-five feet high on which he proposed to have Mordecai executed before Esther’s banquet the next day.

That night, the king could not sleep; so he asked his counselors to read to him from the official records of the empire (better than Sominex!).  One of the entries reminded him of how Mordecai had foiled the plot on the king’s life, so the king decided that the next day he would honor Mordecai.  When Haman came in the next morning, the king asked Haman what was the best way to honor someone who had done great service to the king.  Haman, thinking that the king was planning to honor Haman, suggested putting royal robes and a crown on the honoree and placing him on a horse owned by one of the king’s trusted counselors, who would then lead the honoree through the capital announcing what a great person the honoree was.  “Splendid idea,” said the king.  “I will honor Mordecai this way, and you Haman shall be the one who leads him through the street!”  When the parade was concluded, the king and Mordecai went to Queen Esther’s second banquet.  And that is where our reading begins.

[Esther 7:1-10; 9:20-22]

Sermon.  So that’s the story of the origin of the Jewish holiday of Purim.  It is customary during the festivities, which occur in February or March, to burn an effigy of Haman and for people to dress up as characters from the story—Mordecai and Esther both in royal robes.  As the book of Esther is read out loud, the people twirl noisemakers each time Haman’s name appears, so that the name of evil will be blotted out.  As the scripture indicates, gifts of celebration are exchanged.  Well, after all this explanation maybe we have some sympathy with Johanna Bos’s observation that Christians may not really know what to do with this book.

The book of Esther certainly helps us understand the dynamic of oppression and of courageous resistance.  Before and after Esther became queen, she was a member of several oppressed groups.  She was an orphan and had no family other than Mordecai to give her refuge.  She was a Jew—a minority group living in the heart of a foreign empire.  And she was a woman.  The story shows us how, even as queen, she had to be very careful about how she advanced her plan to save her people.  The previous queen, Vashti, had been deposed for her insubordination.  Esther probably took her life in her hands when she came into the king’s throne room without permission.  As Dr. Bos points out, the story can remind us Christians about a more recent, but similar, attempt to wipe out all the Jews—the Nazi plans for extermination during World War II.  This modern plan required the cooperation of thousands of Christians.  So one lesson we can take from Esther is to challenge any self-satisfied notions we might have that something like the Nazi plots could never happen again in a Christian nation.  It happened once, and it could happen again if we are not always vigilant against anti-Semitism and all forms of oppression. 

Another approach to interpreting this text would be to address oppression in general and how oppressed people keep their sanity.  The book of Esther may not have been composed during the Persian period, but later, when the Greeks were oppressing the Jews.  The way that Haman is ridiculed in the book of Esther might actually have been a winking portrayal of the hated Greeks.  Sometimes the only thing that an oppressed people can do is to make fun of the oppressors behind their backs and hope for a better day.

However, as I think about the book of Esther after this most recent reading, I find myself focusing on the point that has most often been used as a criticism against the book—the absence of any reference to God.  As I read the story this time, it seemed very obvious that God was there and was active, even though God’s name was never used.  Just think of all the amazing things that happened in the story.  Of all the young women in the Persian Empire, the king chose Esther—a Jew—to be his queen.  And Mordecai just happened to be at the city gate where he could overhear the two assassins plotting against the life of the king—information that would later prove important in reversing the king’s decree against the Jews.  Many of the Psalms contain prayers that God would cause the schemes of the enemies to backfire.  In Esther this is exactly what happens to Haman.  The honors that Haman thought he would receive from the king were instead bestowed upon Mordecai.  Then Haman literally is hung upon the gallows that he had constructed for Mordecai.  The day that Haman had convinced the king to decree the destruction of the Jews turned out to be the day that they set aside for rejoicing in their deliverance.  It was true “poetic justice.”[4]  As we read the story, although the name of God is never mentioned, we naturally assume that God is acting to protect and defend and even to prosper the vulnerable Jews.

With the eyes of faith, we can see the hand of God in this story whether or not God’s name is spoken.  It’s a lesson we can take to heart and apply in our own lives.  We look around the world and see all the suffering and oppression and long for God to appear and take care of the situation.  We raise our prayers and wish that God would answer in a voice that we could hear.  We read about the miracles of the Old and New Testaments, and we sometimes long to see those same things in our own day.  Yet as with the book of Esther, God may seem to be absent from the story of our world—at least on the surface.  But with eyes of faith we can see that God is working to bring down the Hamans we encounter on a daily basis and to lift ordinary people like Mordecai and Esther to heroic roles.  In fact, the lesson of Esther—the profound lesson—may be that God generally works through people, through us, to accomplish God’s purposes.  The challenge for persons of faith is to serve even when God seems to be absent, confident that in the end “sorrow [will be turned] into gladness and . . . mourning into a holiday.”