Read Esther 7:1-10; and 9:20-22
If you have just joined us, we are spending these weeks after Christmas delving into the lives of some women characters of the Bible. We got to this place by having the Worship Design Team ask you for your favorite Bible stories, and then seeing a pattern emerge, choosing to focus them all on women. We started with an unnamed woman – Lot’s wife – and learned that there is a time for not looking back because it can be dangerous. Then last week, we retold the story of Ruth, the Moabite woman who stayed with her Hebrew mother-in-law Naomi when they were both widowed; returned to Bethlehem where she found favor with a noble leader named Boaz, married him, gave birth to Obed, who was the father of Jesse, who was the father of David, shepherd/king from Bethlehem.
Today our story is about Esther.
A story…
Back when I was about 30, I had a pastor friend who along with me was involved in youth ministry. But he messed up. I guess he thought he could get away with it, because things went along fine for him until a youth council weekend retreat where he was supposed to stay overnight with the youth, but he left with someone he wasn’t supposed to leave with. He let the kids down. What was worse, some of the kids were starting to figure out that he was messing up. Encouraging him to stop didn’t work, so to make a long story short, I blew the whistle. It was an agonizing decision to report him; but there were higher principles at stake – there were young, trusting teenagers whose feelings would be crushed. I couldn’t let it continue.
Homiletics magazine reminds us that in the December 2002 issue of Time Magazine, three women were celebrated as Persons of the Year. They were deemed "whistleblowers" by Time. You may remember their names: Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, Colleen Rowley of the FBI, and Sherron Watkins of Enron. Their pictures appeared on the cover of the December 22, 2002 cover of Time Magazine, which chose these three as Persons of the Year for 2002. Each of these courageous women had circumstances not unlike Esther. They were in positions of authority, though not at the top. Each of them saw wrongdoing and reported it to a superior. Each of them risked safety, humiliation and career in speaking truth to power. They were heroes; each, a modern-day Esther; whistleblowers in our time.
Have you ever been there? Ever been in a position when you saw a wrong being done, and had the opportunity to stop it? Maybe not the same level as these women, but I’ll bet some of you know this experience first-hand. It’s not fun to bet there, is it? If you didn’t step up and put a stop to it, I’m guessing that you wanted to; you know what I’m talking about.
When we do manage to muster the courage, we take a deep breath and blow the whistle, not so much so we’ll feel better, but because it’s right.
Our Bible has a story about a whistle-blower. Her name was Esther.
When you look in the Bible for the book of Esther, you find it right after the Book of Nehemiah, and that’s important. Nehemiah’s book is about the rebuilding of Jerusalem when the Jews returned after the exile in Babylon. But not all the Jews returned. They had made lives for themselves in Babylon-now-Persia, and felt they had nothing pulling them back to Jerusalem. Esther’s story concerns Jews who remained in the Persian Empire after the exile was over. She was orphaned at an early age so her older cousin Mordecai adopted her and raised her as his daughter.
In 486 B.C., a king named Ahasuerus came to the Persian throne. He had a volatile temperament, not given to forethought. Some years into his reign, he banished his Queen Vashti because she wouldn’t parade her beauty in front of his friends. She embarrassed him. Vashti gets my vote for Woman of the Century, 500-400 B.C. Anyway, the king couldn’t stand to be without a trophy to show off, so he held his own private beauty contest involving all the young women of the kingdom. Esther won the contest and he made her the new queen. She was Jewish, but neither Ahasuerus nor anyone in the royal court was aware of it.
Some time after Esther was made queen, her cousin Mordecai overheard a plot to kill the king. He sent a warning to Esther, who, in the name of Mordecai, warned the king. The plotters were executed and the king was saved.
Meanwhile, there was a man, high up in the king’s court, a devious man, named Haman. He liked to win the favor of wealthy and powerful people by flattering them. Haman hated Mordecai, mainly because Mordecai could see through his pompousness. So Haman calculated a plot against Mordecai. He persuaded the king to issue a death edict against “a certain people” living in the empire. Haman did not tell the king the targets were Jews, and the king didn’t bother to ask. So the king said, “Okay Haman. Do your thing.”
When Mordecai learned about Haman’s plan, he asked Esther to intervene with the king. What followed was an intricate and careful plan to approach to the king, which was quite risky for Esther, because she was in effect functioning as a whistleblower and having to do so in the face of the king’s own edict.
But she did it. She hosted a banquet for the king, with Haman as a special guest, and then proceeded to point out that he was scheming behind the king’s back to kill all the Jews in the empire.
She was successful, however, and in the end, Haman was hanged on the very gallows on which he had planned to execute Mordecai. And though the original edict couldn’t be withdrawn, the king issued a second edict that permitted the Jews to defend themselves.
As a result, the Jews were saved. This whole story and the good outcome are celebrated to this day in Judaism in an annual festival called Purim.
This is a tale of long ago, but we can gain something for ourselves out of it by considering Esther’s role in this drama.
Being married to the king, she’s an insider in the empire’s government, but she has no obvious power and influence. Although she is the queen, in Ahasuerus’ world, that didn’t mean very much. And their marriage is nothing like the union of equals that marriage should be today.
Being the queen simply means that she’s the first among the women in the king’s harem. She’s the one with the most clothes and shoes in her closet. She’s the one who’s trotted out when the king wants to impress visiting dignitaries with the beauty of the women at his disposal. The biblical account says that Ahasuerus actually loved her (2:17), but his love did not grant her any special rights. Women had no role in governmental affairs in the Persian Empire. They were trophies, expected simply to keep the men happy.
Esther herself is a person of great goodness, but that doesn’t become obvious until the king’s edict puts all of her people under threat, and she takes the extraordinary step of blowing the whistle on a plot in which her powerful husband was complicit. By considering her actions, however, we can learn some things about the nature of goodness, and see how the goodness of God shows up in Esther. If we do that, we may be able to see the goodness of God at work in our own time and place.
First, Esther shows us that goodness is courageous, but not in the superhero mode.
Once Mordecai informed Esther of Haman’s plot against the Jews, the immediate problem was how to get an audience with the king. The empire operated on protocols, and by those protocols, the queen was not supposed to ever approach the king unless he summoned her, and he had not done so for a month. He held her life in his hands. If she violated the protocols, and the king was so inclined, he could have her executed. Esther pointed all this out to Mordecai, but he urged her to proceed anyway; there was just too much at stake for Esther not to make the attempt. And so she finally agreed, saying, “I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish” (4:16). That, I think, is the whistleblower’s declaration. It is not a chest-thumping, “I’ll save the day!” exclamation, but a quiet, perhaps even fear-filled resolve to do the right thing despite the probable cost.
Second, Esther shows us that goodness is rooted in prayer. Though she has resolved to act, she first asks her fellow Jews to join her in a three-day fast, a means of seeking God’s help and blessing.
Third, goodness does not seek martyrdom — it does not needlessly provoke violence. It does not throw life away when there is any other possibility. Wisely, when Esther told the king her request, she first mentioned the sparing of her own life, and then added the sparing of her people. She named herself first, not out of self-interest, but because she knew that saving her would be more important to the king, and the rest of her people could ride to safety on the tails of her royal gown.
Fourth, goodness is oriented toward others. Esther herself was in no immediate danger. If her goal had merely been to save herself, all she had to do was keep her mouth shut, as nobody in the court knew she was Jewish. Mordecai had told her that once the purge began, even she would not be safe (4:13), but when she chose to act, it wasn’t her own hide she was thinking of saving. Mordecai had painted the larger picture: “Who knows?” he had said, “Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this” (4:14). Mordecai was suggesting that God had strategically enabled Esther to become queen for the good of the others, and that was her main goal.
Goodness is a powerful force, but it often operates through those who seem to have little power, through ordinary people who seemingly are not in positions of great influence, people who see something they know will harm others, and they act or blow the whistle for the good of all. It can be a way of loving our neighbor.
On this Sunday every year, the day before the observance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, the United Methodist Church observes Human Relations Day. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” Human Relations Day calls upon all United Methodists to do something for others, by furthering the development of race relations. Most people don’t run for this position. It is hard work; risky. It may involve challenging injustice where we find it. It may involve using our position in a way we never dreamed we would need to. It’s the same question that Mordecai implied when he said to his cousin Esther, “Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” In a world increasingly dominated by unapologetic selfishness, the idea of doing things for others may seem quaint and outdated. Yet, for those who have a grand vision of their purpose and value, striving to be of service is not only a noble thing to do; it’s the best way to lead a truly fulfilling and significant life.
Perhaps in our time we have seen a modern day Esther named Rosa Parks.
Rosa Parks never intended to start a civil rights revolution. That’s not why the black seamstress refused to give up her seat to a white man. She always insisted that her feet were tired and she just didn’t want to walk another step.
Like Esther, Rosa didn’t set out to be a hero. She was just weary at the end of the day, her feet tired from standing. She just wanted to sit in the nearest seat. She never thought she was doing anything special. But, she must have known that her refusal to move to the back of the bus would have consequences. Her simple, but courageous, act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and captured the attention of the nation. She blew the whistle on the humiliation and cruelty of the segregation laws of the time.
God calls us to holiness, and doing good through whatever circumstances present themselves to us is a way to be holy.
What is God calling you to do with your life?
Here’s the prescription for an answer:
· Does it require courage?
· Has you prayed about it?
· Are you seeking to be a martyr?
· Is it oriented toward others?
Perhaps you have come…for just such a time as this. Is it your time?
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