A Time for Us to Act—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 19B (Esther 7, 9)

Esther 7:1-10; 9:20-22 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

7 ¹ So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. ² 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 half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” ³ Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. ⁴ 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.” ⁵ Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?” ⁶ Esther said, “A foe and an enemy, this wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen. ⁷ 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. ⁸ 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 violate the queen in my presence, in my own house?” As the words left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. ⁹ Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Look, the very pole 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.” ¹⁰ So they hung Haman on the pole that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.  (The Revised Common Lectionary omits verses 7-8).

²⁰ Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, ²¹ enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, ²² as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday, that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor. 

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                The story of Esther is an intriguing one. It serves as the basis for the Jewish festival of Purim. Purim celebrates the victory of Queen Esther and her uncle Mordechai over the evil villain Haman, which leads to the rescue of the Jewish people from genocide. During the celebration, the entire book is read twice. Participants may dress up in period costumes and participate in the telling, cheering the heroes (Esther and Mordechai) and booing the villain (Haman). But who are these characters and why do they appear in the Bible, especially since God is never mentioned in the book?  

                While the Revised Common Lectionary stops for a quick visit in the Book of Esther, if we stick with the selected verses we’ll miss the larger picture. The Book opens by telling us that “This happened in the days of Ahasuerus, the same Ahasuerus, who ruled over some one hundred provinces from India to Ethiopia” (Esther1:1-4). In other words, this takes place during the post-exilic era, when the Jews lived under Persian rule. This Ahasuerus is probably the Persian king Xerxes I (r. 486-465 BCE), though none of the characters in the story appear to be historical figures. As for Xerxes, he comes off as something of a drunken buffoon who is easily manipulated and likes parties. As for the Jewish exiles, although some returned home to Palestine, while others remained in Babylon, wherever they lived most Jews of this period lived within the boundaries of the expansive Persian Empire. Their existence was precarious.

                Although it would be difficult to reconstruct the story, it is helpful to remember why Esther is in a position to save her people from certain destruction. That requires us to go to the beginning of the story and a banquet thrown by the king. On the seventh day of the banquet, after the king and his courtiers had gotten rather drunk, the king decided to show off his beautiful Queen, Vashti. However, Vashti refused to comply. That made the king rather mad. He had to do something otherwise the wives of other nobles might follow Vashti’s example and disobey their husbands. So, he banished Vashti and sent out a decree commanding wives to honor their husbands. Although Vashti’s banishment provides the opportunity for a Jewish woman to rise to prominence in the kingdom, you have to admire Vashti’s boldness. She suffered for her resistance, but she also showed courage. We should not forget her as we ponder this story.

                After Vashti’s banishment, King Ahasuerus gets lonely. So, his advisors come up with a plan to provide the king with a new queen. So, they set up a beauty contest. All the beautiful women in the kingdom are invited to participate. Among those who participate is a Jewish woman named Hadassah. She joins the contest at the urging of her cousin Mordechai who had earlier adopted Hadassah after her parents died. He believes that his adopted daughter, who will now go by the name Esther,  can be of service to her people if selected. As the story goes, she earns the admiration of Hegai the Eunuch, who helps her win the favor of the king. So, she becomes the queen.

                The lectionary takes us to the closing of the story. A court official named Haman became annoyed with Mordechai because he refused to bow to Haman. Because of this perceived disrespect for him and his position, plots against Mordechai and the Jewish people.  It’s a common story in history, which is why Purim celebrates Esther’s victory. Haman seeks to get the king to issue a decree ordering the killing of all Jews in the kingdom. Apparently, Hadassah, now known as Esther, hid the fact that she was Jewish. So, when Mordechai got word of Haman’s plan, he enlisted Esther in his effort to thwart Haman’s plans. Esther agreed to Mordechai’s request even though it put her at great risk. She did this by hosting a banquet to which she invited both the king and Haman. During the banquet, she revealed to the king that she was Jewish and that if Haman’s plan went ahead her people would be killed. She got the king’s attention and turned the tables on Haman, saving her people. She also contributed to Haman’s downfall.

                Here again, the king is easily enraged and manipulated. When Esther points to Haman as the one who plotted against her people, the king flies into a rage and heads off to the garden, perhaps to cool off. As for Haman, fearing for his life, begged Esther to save him from the king’s wrath.  Then, when the king returned, he saw Haman throwing himself at Esther, who lay on her couch. The king said: “Will he even violate the queen in my presence, in my own house?” This part of the story is omitted from the lectionary reading, which is unfortunate because we need this to make sense of the larger story.

                What happens next fully illustrates the ebb and flow of imperial politics. One of the eunuchs who was serving the king, a man named Harbona, pointed out to the king that Haman had erected a gallows on which he would have Mordechai executed, though Mordechai had uncovered a plot to kill the king. Harbona suggested that the king could order Haman to be executed using this very same gallows. The king answered, “Hang’em high!” Well, not quite those words, but that was the intent. That is what happened. After that Ahasuerus was no longer angry.

                The reading for the day jumps down to Esther 9:20-22, which describes the establishment of the festival of Purim.  What we skip over are the details concerning Esther’s efforts to save her people. Among the decisions made by the king was to give Haman’s signet ring to Mordechai, placing Mordechai over Haman’s household. She also pleaded with the king, successfully, to have him stay the decree against her people. Not only that but the king ordered the execution of the plotters against the Jews. So, all the leaders of the empire supported the Jews because Mordechai was the most powerful person in the king’s administration. And all was good! To celebrate, Mordechai wrote a letter to all the Jews living in the empire, inviting them to gather for an annual festival to be held on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar. This festival will celebrate the moment Jews got relief from their enemies. On these days, the people could celebrate the moment when sorrow turned to gladness and a day of mourning would become a holiday. Or so the story goes. Unfortunately, the plans that Haman devised would get reused many times through the years as Jews faced oppression and even destruction.

                It’s important to point out that God is essentially absent from the story that is told in Esther. This is the story of salvation that rests upon the actions of human actors, who do what is needed to survive. You might say that it is a rather untheological book. But perhaps that is why we find it here. It serves as a reminder that humans play an important role in the biblical story. There are times when God seems to be absent from the story, which makes it necessary for humans to take the lead. Here they do. It’s a partnership between Esther and Mordechai that saves the people from destruction.

                One of the questions we might ponder as we consider this story, which does not feature God serving as the primary actor, in contrast to much of the rest of Scripture, is how and why this book ended up in the biblical canon. Noelle Damico wrote that the book offers us “vulnerable characters who are unafraid to handle power and who view their future as something for which they, not a monarch or even God is responsible.” This is the story of human agency in defense of their own personhood. As for what the story of Esther might say to our times, Damico writes:

In our own day it’s not only political leaders that hold the fate of whole peoples in their hand, but corporations and international agreements as well as economic, political, and social systems. How is the church working together with vulnerable people to analyze and alter those forces that treat people as expendable? [Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, p. 416].

Although the absence of God in the story might be one reason why this is the only passage from Esther to make it into the lectionary cycle, that doesn’t mean it is not an important story. After all, for Jews, it serves as the foundation for a major holiday. The question then focuses on the two primary characters, Esther and Mordecai. What do their stories say to us about our own faith journeys in the world? What kinds of responsibilities might it call for us to take up? Might we be called for a time such as this? Now, we needn’t omit God from our story, but perhaps this story reminds us that we are not passive participants in the larger story. Let us remember that both Mordecai and Esther were from a small and marginal people, and yet they stood up to a mighty empire and succeeded. That is something worth celebrating. As we celebrate these two, let us not forget Vashti, whose resistance against exploitation set this whole thing in motion.

                While God stays unnamed in this story, perhaps Bruce Epperly has put his finger on how God might be present, even if not acknowledged:

The book of Esther provides us with two contrasting ways of understanding the divine-human relationship. The Hebraic text portrays the human adventure as a journey without clear signposts. God is guiding us, but implicitly and indirectly. We discover God in the walking and not by doctrines or revelations. God’s guidance is never obvious, but comes as we are going about our daily tasks, not from the outside, but from within the process itself.  [Epperly, Bruce G. Ruth and Esther: Women of Agency and Adventure (Topical Line DrivesBook 21). Energion Publications. Kindle Edition].

So, as Epperly writes: “God depends on us to bring about God’s vision on earth as it is in heaven. Like a good parent, God gives us space to act and develop our own value systems.”   [Epperly, Ruth and Esther]. Again, the message of Esther appears to be that when it comes to the journey of faith, we are not passive participants. Prayer is something that connects with God, but we have work to do as well.