In 36 years of ministry I have never preached on the book of Esther. It’s a unique bit of Scripture. Nowhere does it mention God, though one can see a divine hand guiding events and protecting Jewish people. Like the more read book of Ruth, its heroes are more the women than the men. And, as an article in the New York Times last year by suggested, it is strangely disturbing and unsettling in its portrayal of how fragile the Jewish position is in the world in the face of hostile forces both social and political.
Esther’s ascent to a place where she can influence the king of Persia (Ahasuerus in Hebrew, Xerxes) at first blush grates on modern, egalitarian ears. She basically wins a beauty contest which lands her first place in a harem of women who visit the king’s bed at his whim. The contest takes place because the actual queen, Vashti, is found disobedient to the king’s commands and is banished, lest women throughout Persia follow her example and become disobedient to their own husbands.
Xerxes punished his queen for refusing to attend a drunken banquet of his male buddies and display herself for them. He accepts his advisors’ suggestion of the subsequent beauty contest to find a replacement. None of Xerxes’ behavior is condemned in the narrative, but neither is it approved. There is room to see a mocking tone in the description of the lavishness of his partying and his susceptibility to manipulation by several characters in the story, including Esther herself. And in recent times, a number of biblical scholars have suggested that the pagan queen Vashti is also worthy of some respect and admiration for her stand against being exploited as a woman, despite the great cost to herself.
The text I’m focusing on for Sunday, Esther 4:1-17, dwells on Esther’s great moment of decision. Mordecai asks her to dare going to the king even though uninvited, an act punishable by death unless the king “holds out his gold scepter” in a show of mercy. Will she remain quiet about her ethnic background and remain safely in the privileged position which her beauty has obtained for her? Or will she risk the loss of position, even of life, in order to stand with her own people as they are oppressed and threatened? Her uncle Mordecai confronts her with the fact of her privilege and suggests that, if she ignores those who are more vulnerable, she herself will not remain safe.
Mordecai’s final appeal to Esther contains the barest hint of a faith in divine order of the events happening around them: “Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” A sense that God has arranged Esther’s elevation is combined with a challenge that it is her responsibility to now use her privilege for the protection of the Jewish people.
That Esther acted on behalf of her own might possibly suggest that the lesson for Christians is behave courageously to maintain our own safety in an increasingly hostile world. But as Rabbi wrote, the lesson is also that “The Purim tale reminds us that a government, and the society it oversees, can turn against its most vulnerable in a matter of moments.” And, one might infer, we who enjoy relative safety and privilege ought to be ready to stand with those persecuted vulnerable, whoever they might be, even at great cost to ourselves.
So Esther’s challenge has actually been the challenge for many of us over the last couple of years. Will we stand and say “Black lives matter” with Black sisters and brothers, or will we be silent in order to maintain relationship with those who, for whatever reasons, find that affirmation of black lives offensive? Will we speak out against political forces that abuse and criminalize migrants seeking asylum in this country, or will we ignore what happens to vulnerable people at our southern border so as to insure our own security? Will we advocate for vaccination and mask-wearing to protect the elderly, immuno-compromised, and children in our midst, or will we, for the sake of an uneasy “unity,” acquiesce in submission to misguided notions of personal liberty taking precedence over the good of those vulnerable people and even over the common good of us all?
Both Vashti and Esther in this story invite us to follow their examples of standing up to unjust and cruel authority when it is clearly in the wrong and in opposition to God’s love and care for all people. If we are blessed, as many of us like myself are here in America, with privilege and security, perhaps God has given us these gifts in order to now risk them in “just such a time as this.”