A thought inspired by reading a friend's blog post. But I didn't want to write the world's longest comment, so I thought I would re-post my thoughts here.
I'm not sure if anger and forgiveness are mutually exclusive. Being angry with someone doesn't have to mean that you are unwilling to forgive them, though sometimes that kind of anger can be resentment--the holding grudges kind of anger. I once read a definition of resentment that I found terribly helpful and terribly convicting: resentment is the desire for revenge that you somehow feel that you are not able to take. (Hence Nietzsche on resentment in Genealogy of Morals . . . oops, interject philosophy ramble!) I do think believing in the justice of God and especially the final justice of God is important for resolving resentment and desire for revenge and deep anger.
Sometimes other people crush us and there is nothing we can do about it because we just aren't strong enough to stop them. That's not our fault. It's also true that God just doesn't intervene every time (though sometimes) something goes wrong. But he does promise that there will be ultimate justice and things will be put right in the end. For me, the process of forgiving someone who has crushed me involves turning someone over to God in my heart--turning them over to him both for their judgment and their salvation because the cross both judges our sin and forgives it. For me it has also involved seeing myself as a sinner as well who has also done wrong and also stands as one who has received a lot of mercy and grace from God, who has received my whole life from God. So, if I know that I have received my life from God as a gracious gift, and that he has rescued me from my own brokenness, weakness, and my own sin (or that he has promised to rescue me) I also want to hope that he can do that for someone else who doesn't deserve it.
Maybe one of the best but also one of the most repulsive doctrines of Christianity is the fact that Jesus really wants to save people who have done really bad things. He wanted to save the people who murdered him and he wants to save the "bad guys" who hurt us. And he wants to save us even when we are the bad guys. And if we let him, he will. But God wanted to save Cain as well as Abel, but Cain wouldn't repent. I think the more we have suffered at the hands of other people the more this becomes real to us and we struggle to accept the cross. I think, though, the only reason why the cross is ultimately palatable is because of the Resurrection. If there weren't a Resurrection, the cross isn't good news. And if there isn't healing for our hurts now, the gospel isn't good news. But I do think God has shown us in his Word particularly and in good communities where his Word is faithfully lived and preached, that he does want to heal us. Forgiveness comes from God in that he gives us healing and gives us Jesus and makes us truly able to forgive. I think it is a mistake to treat forgiveness as if it were not a thing of mercy and grace and therefore a gift from God.
Some people speak as if forgiveness were merely an action or an act from the will that one can obey because commanded to by God. I don't believe that is true or helpful. God also commands, "Love me with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength" and "Love your neighbor as yourself". We are utterly unable to do those things without the help and transforming work of God, why would we be able to forgive without his help and transformation?
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Dreamform One: Jesus Walks Into a Dream
The first dream that I can remember that ever really mattered to me was one in which Jesus actually showed up in person. I have never had another dream like it and it certainly made me pay attention at the time.
In the dream, I was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I remember looking at the row of ships on docks off to my left, and to my right was nothing much beside sand. At some point, I remember peering down onto the deck flooring of a ship that was curiously clear--I could see straight down into the water. That was a moment of fun outside of the dream and wonder within the dream. At some point--I had no sense of being in a hurry--I wandered up to where Jesus was. He was working on mending some nets and seemed also in no particular hurry.
If I was surprised to see him there, I wasn't very much surprised: it was the sort of surprise you have when you're not exactly expecting to see a friend to show up in a place where he or she might very well naturally show up, but you like your friend so much you are excited to see him or her anyway. So I was a little excited to see Jesus, but not crazy excited to see him as I would be if I turned around in my living room now and saw him standing there.
I knew very clearly in the dream that I could ask Jesus anything at all that I wanted to, although I had no particular sense of anxiety or nervousness about it. So, naturally, I asked him some wandering and convoluted question about how one should interpret some complicated problem of "authorial voice" in Scripture. My question had something to do with both epistemology and ontology and I think had some relevance to some modernist quibbling about the inspiration of Scripture. Honestly, I don't quite remember exactly what I asked, but since Jesus never quite got around to answering my question, I suppose that didn't matter too much. What did matter and what was remarkable and what was the lesson for me was how he responded to my question.
The first thing Jesus did was actually think about my question. He mulled over my question for a moment, asked me a clarifying question that went along the lines of, "So what you're really asking is x because of y and z?" In turn, I thought about it for a little while and rephrased my question with his question in mind. All the while, I noticed this sort of scrawny, mopey looking young man with quite the bush of thick brown hair sort of skulking around the edges of our conversation. At some point he wandered off down a pier, looking remarkably sad and forlorn. Jesus and I were still talking, but I remember watching the guy and feeling sort of sorry for him and distressed for him at the same time. (I got the impression this was the Apostle John of all people.) Both my eyes and Jesus' eyes followed the young man down the pier.
Jesus then interrupted our conversation by saying that he needed to go and talk to him. Then he put down whatever he was working with in his hands, followed John down the pier, and put his arm around his shoulders. I remember watching that and wondering whether I should feel put off because Jesus ditched me to go talk to someone else. Oddly, I didn't really feel ditched. I milled around the pier for a few minutes, not sure what I was going to do next, and then I woke up.
At first, I was rather puzzled by the dream. Why have a dream with Jesus in it, in which he didn't really say anything to me that was informative? Why get a chance to ask any question, but not have the question answered? I puzzled over it for a moment or two, but then I went off to do my daily morning routine of Morning Prayer plus hymn singing. The hymn I opened to, unplanned, happened to be: "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" by Frederick Faber. After I sang through especially verse 3, I knew exactly why I had dreamed the dream. The meaning of the dream was threefold: One, that Jesus is far more human than I believe him to be, two, that Jesus is far kinder than I believe him to be, and three, that Jesus "speaks my language".
The dream was meant to be corrective of the kind of "gnostic" or overly-spiritualized intuition I had about Jesus--that he was "god in a bod" (Apollinarian heresy)--God's mind in a human body. The Jesus I spoke to actually had to think about my questions and process them and respond to me in a human and therefore limited way. What I was really surprised about in the dream was how sharp and incisive Jesus' question was: the way he began to consider my question showed that he could more than keep up with me intellectually, and I've always been a little paranoid about the fact that the Jesus in the gospels doesn't seem to be a nerd, so how could he really relate to me. (More on that in another post.) I was being myself and Jesus seemed to be being himself when he asked a nerd question about my nerd question. Fascinating.
But the dream was also corrective in that I tend to think of God the Father and the Son as strict disciplinarians, partly because of my own upbringing. It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that the first thing Jesus would do with John was just give him a hug instead of, say, scolding him for acting like a baby. In the dream, I felt some degree of compassion for John, but I didn't expect Jesus to. I expected him to demand that John grow up and behave more sensibly. That Jesus is so naturally and casually compassionate and kind . . . that really hadn't been a part of my image of God.
The Jesus "speaking my language" bit now reminds me quite a bit of the Luke 5 text wherein Jesus goes fishing with Simon and basically says, "You think I don't know how fishing works? I know how fish work so well they just do what I want." When I read that text, I see Simon confronted with the fact that he's honored by this rabbi's interest in him, but he really doesn't know what Jesus has to do with his life. But then Jesus says through his actions, "I own this, I own fishing, I know how it all works, I know and have mastered your livelihood--so why don't you trust me, and moreover, why don't you just come follow me already?" In my dream, Jesus was telling me, "You know, I really get the life of the mind. I really have that down. You don't actually have to worry that I won't understand you or we'll run out of things to talk about or I won't be interested in you or your life. Actually, I own all this, and I made it all up and it's all beautiful and fascinating--so why don't you stop dithering and come, follow me?"
Anyway, that's the impression I get about the dream and one of the reasons I rather like dreams, and rather like when Jesus walks into one.
"For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord."
~Third stanza of Faber's "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy"
In the dream, I was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I remember looking at the row of ships on docks off to my left, and to my right was nothing much beside sand. At some point, I remember peering down onto the deck flooring of a ship that was curiously clear--I could see straight down into the water. That was a moment of fun outside of the dream and wonder within the dream. At some point--I had no sense of being in a hurry--I wandered up to where Jesus was. He was working on mending some nets and seemed also in no particular hurry.
If I was surprised to see him there, I wasn't very much surprised: it was the sort of surprise you have when you're not exactly expecting to see a friend to show up in a place where he or she might very well naturally show up, but you like your friend so much you are excited to see him or her anyway. So I was a little excited to see Jesus, but not crazy excited to see him as I would be if I turned around in my living room now and saw him standing there.
I knew very clearly in the dream that I could ask Jesus anything at all that I wanted to, although I had no particular sense of anxiety or nervousness about it. So, naturally, I asked him some wandering and convoluted question about how one should interpret some complicated problem of "authorial voice" in Scripture. My question had something to do with both epistemology and ontology and I think had some relevance to some modernist quibbling about the inspiration of Scripture. Honestly, I don't quite remember exactly what I asked, but since Jesus never quite got around to answering my question, I suppose that didn't matter too much. What did matter and what was remarkable and what was the lesson for me was how he responded to my question.
The first thing Jesus did was actually think about my question. He mulled over my question for a moment, asked me a clarifying question that went along the lines of, "So what you're really asking is x because of y and z?" In turn, I thought about it for a little while and rephrased my question with his question in mind. All the while, I noticed this sort of scrawny, mopey looking young man with quite the bush of thick brown hair sort of skulking around the edges of our conversation. At some point he wandered off down a pier, looking remarkably sad and forlorn. Jesus and I were still talking, but I remember watching the guy and feeling sort of sorry for him and distressed for him at the same time. (I got the impression this was the Apostle John of all people.) Both my eyes and Jesus' eyes followed the young man down the pier.
Jesus then interrupted our conversation by saying that he needed to go and talk to him. Then he put down whatever he was working with in his hands, followed John down the pier, and put his arm around his shoulders. I remember watching that and wondering whether I should feel put off because Jesus ditched me to go talk to someone else. Oddly, I didn't really feel ditched. I milled around the pier for a few minutes, not sure what I was going to do next, and then I woke up.
At first, I was rather puzzled by the dream. Why have a dream with Jesus in it, in which he didn't really say anything to me that was informative? Why get a chance to ask any question, but not have the question answered? I puzzled over it for a moment or two, but then I went off to do my daily morning routine of Morning Prayer plus hymn singing. The hymn I opened to, unplanned, happened to be: "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" by Frederick Faber. After I sang through especially verse 3, I knew exactly why I had dreamed the dream. The meaning of the dream was threefold: One, that Jesus is far more human than I believe him to be, two, that Jesus is far kinder than I believe him to be, and three, that Jesus "speaks my language".
The dream was meant to be corrective of the kind of "gnostic" or overly-spiritualized intuition I had about Jesus--that he was "god in a bod" (Apollinarian heresy)--God's mind in a human body. The Jesus I spoke to actually had to think about my questions and process them and respond to me in a human and therefore limited way. What I was really surprised about in the dream was how sharp and incisive Jesus' question was: the way he began to consider my question showed that he could more than keep up with me intellectually, and I've always been a little paranoid about the fact that the Jesus in the gospels doesn't seem to be a nerd, so how could he really relate to me. (More on that in another post.) I was being myself and Jesus seemed to be being himself when he asked a nerd question about my nerd question. Fascinating.
But the dream was also corrective in that I tend to think of God the Father and the Son as strict disciplinarians, partly because of my own upbringing. It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that the first thing Jesus would do with John was just give him a hug instead of, say, scolding him for acting like a baby. In the dream, I felt some degree of compassion for John, but I didn't expect Jesus to. I expected him to demand that John grow up and behave more sensibly. That Jesus is so naturally and casually compassionate and kind . . . that really hadn't been a part of my image of God.
The Jesus "speaking my language" bit now reminds me quite a bit of the Luke 5 text wherein Jesus goes fishing with Simon and basically says, "You think I don't know how fishing works? I know how fish work so well they just do what I want." When I read that text, I see Simon confronted with the fact that he's honored by this rabbi's interest in him, but he really doesn't know what Jesus has to do with his life. But then Jesus says through his actions, "I own this, I own fishing, I know how it all works, I know and have mastered your livelihood--so why don't you trust me, and moreover, why don't you just come follow me already?" In my dream, Jesus was telling me, "You know, I really get the life of the mind. I really have that down. You don't actually have to worry that I won't understand you or we'll run out of things to talk about or I won't be interested in you or your life. Actually, I own all this, and I made it all up and it's all beautiful and fascinating--so why don't you stop dithering and come, follow me?"
Anyway, that's the impression I get about the dream and one of the reasons I rather like dreams, and rather like when Jesus walks into one.
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord."
~Third stanza of Faber's "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy"
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Creative Writing and the Spirit of Celebration
I suppose that many writers write for many reasons and out of many motivations. I imagine one could spend a great deal of time cataloging those reasons, and could come up with a fantastic array of vices and virtues, healthy and abnormal psychological conditions. I used to wonder what sort of mood fed my times of most intense creative writing--especially the reams and reams of ink on works of fiction (each ream having 500 or so pages, quite literally). At some point in time, I called it "joy", but I think it is more verbal than that--I think I write fiction especially when I am in times of celebration, and find it difficult to write when I lose touch with that sense of celebration.
I originally entitled my blog "sublimation" because the bits of non-fiction writing I've been most happy with lately (because they've been the most creative) have been bits of sublimation: things I have written to process that have been caught up in something a little bit better than my confusing whirl of thought and emotion about them. In the past, my fiction creative writing has been much different--it has been an almost aggressive pursuit and delight in aspects of God's creation (all of it--physical, spiritual, personal), God's own self, and God's interaction with us. There's something about writing fiction and I think fantasy/science-fiction in particular that lets one really grasp creation--createdness--by two hands and shake it in joyous enthusiasm. Tolkien and Lewis had their conception of "sub-creation" by which an artist of some kind enters into the similar (analogously so) kind of work that God does in creation. In writing a story, I get to celebrate all of God's marvelous creativity by demonstrating the creation's awesome contingency: the fact that it could be, it has been, and it will be other than it is right now, and that is a good thing! No where else is God's generosity and plenitude on display than in the vastness of the cosmos . . . and the sci-fi/fantasy section at Barnes and Nobles! This is a part of God's own mind and character that we get to see and imitate whenever we do art, and especially when we imagine alternate worlds and histories and species and persons. Paradoxically, we illuminate what is and call to mind what could be by celebrating what is not.
Question 44 of the Summa Theologica is the first "question" that Thomas Aquinas puts to exploring the creation and it goes like this: "The procession of creatures from God, and of the first cause of all things." (As you can see, the question isn't exactly in question form . . . this probably isn't a case of allofunctional implicature, but I will bring it up anyway.) I love this "question" and especially the grand use of the term "procession" almost as much as I love Boethius' definition of eternity. Aquinas uses the term "procession" somewhat loosely. God has both internal processions and external processions. The internal ones are nothing less than the Personal processions of Son and Spirit and the external procession is the creation as a whole. Procession simply refers to God as source, but it gives such a richness to the imagery! When I think of the creation "processing" from God (though not from his being and substance, of course), I think of everything God has made marching before his throne in humble but joyous celebration of the goodness of God and the goodness of the gift of their own creation and existence. That, perhaps, is why celebration is the key to my creative writing. When I write, I celebrate the goodness of the created order and my own creation: I celebrate everything particular to that order, it's richness, its giftedness, its contingency, its fleetingness, the fact that it must begin and end.
Which is also why I'm not always in the mood to celebrate the createdness of the creation. Oftentimes, I am more frightened than joyous at the fact that neither creation nor myself are necessary beings. Oftentimes, I want to be a determinist because I want to be able to figure out all things before hand. Or, I want to be a panentheist and be merged with God such that I am just as necessary to exist as God. In short, I often either want to make an idol of myself or of the world in order to bring false comfort to myself that all is safe and sturdy and secure. Contingency and giftedness displace us from occupying a too central role even in our own estimation because it displaces us ontologically, at the very root of our existence and our being. But all false comfort is ultimately poison, and when I try to make myself too necessary (logically, ontologically, relationally) I end up making a burden for myself that I cannot possibly bear and web myself in with anxieties. When I really trust God enough to relinquish control to him and accept my existence and my life and my being as the contingent, unneccesary, but beloved gift that I am, I can start opening my heart and hands to embrace createdness and creation again. Otherwise, I close my heart and resent everything I don't know and don't understand. I would rather have the spirit of adventure, but the spirit is willing while the flesh is weak.
There's something that happens in the transition from childhood to adulthood that makes most of us have to learn how to accept again. (In many childhoods, anyway.) Both my childhood and adolescence were fairly undisturbed and thus free to be filled with wonder. But when I ran off to college I found myself confronted with crises after crises of different sorts (some personal, some epistemological, some in matters of faith) that made trusting God and myself and the basic goodness of the world quite a bit more of a challenge! I imagine some people never experience basic trust of the world in that way, and some people never have that trust shaken. But I wonder whether the majority of people have a hiccup or two at the beginning or end of adolescence and have to learn again what it means to be a child. I also imagine that many of us spend a great deal of time flubbing this lesson and having to be taken through it again and again until we really learn how to be led to Jesus like little children.
There's something childlike about joy and celebration--which makes it harder for those of us who feel the need to be sober-minded adults much of the time. I don't have anything against genuine adulthood--in fact, praise Jesus if you actually manage to become a self-respecting, contributing adult. But not if it makes you boring and self-protective and think you are the one who must be in control and in charge of your life. That pose sometimes makes me feel more secure or more adult, but it also makes me curl up in on myself and have less to give and less to celebrate.
Art is one of the closest things we have to pure gift on this side of the veil. Ultimately we engage in art for the sake of beauty and not for the sake of utility. We know that beauty makes life better, but only because it appears that human beings are made for beauty, not because of any "practical" gain or reason. The thing that refreshes us about the imagination-in-act is that it awakens us to our true nature--to our true identity as beings given an identity for no other reason that we were thought by One to be lovely, to be worthy, to be gift. In life we are receivers before we are ever givers, and what we receive is as deep as our own bodies, souls, and minds.
I originally entitled my blog "sublimation" because the bits of non-fiction writing I've been most happy with lately (because they've been the most creative) have been bits of sublimation: things I have written to process that have been caught up in something a little bit better than my confusing whirl of thought and emotion about them. In the past, my fiction creative writing has been much different--it has been an almost aggressive pursuit and delight in aspects of God's creation (all of it--physical, spiritual, personal), God's own self, and God's interaction with us. There's something about writing fiction and I think fantasy/science-fiction in particular that lets one really grasp creation--createdness--by two hands and shake it in joyous enthusiasm. Tolkien and Lewis had their conception of "sub-creation" by which an artist of some kind enters into the similar (analogously so) kind of work that God does in creation. In writing a story, I get to celebrate all of God's marvelous creativity by demonstrating the creation's awesome contingency: the fact that it could be, it has been, and it will be other than it is right now, and that is a good thing! No where else is God's generosity and plenitude on display than in the vastness of the cosmos . . . and the sci-fi/fantasy section at Barnes and Nobles! This is a part of God's own mind and character that we get to see and imitate whenever we do art, and especially when we imagine alternate worlds and histories and species and persons. Paradoxically, we illuminate what is and call to mind what could be by celebrating what is not.
Question 44 of the Summa Theologica is the first "question" that Thomas Aquinas puts to exploring the creation and it goes like this: "The procession of creatures from God, and of the first cause of all things." (As you can see, the question isn't exactly in question form . . . this probably isn't a case of allofunctional implicature, but I will bring it up anyway.) I love this "question" and especially the grand use of the term "procession" almost as much as I love Boethius' definition of eternity. Aquinas uses the term "procession" somewhat loosely. God has both internal processions and external processions. The internal ones are nothing less than the Personal processions of Son and Spirit and the external procession is the creation as a whole. Procession simply refers to God as source, but it gives such a richness to the imagery! When I think of the creation "processing" from God (though not from his being and substance, of course), I think of everything God has made marching before his throne in humble but joyous celebration of the goodness of God and the goodness of the gift of their own creation and existence. That, perhaps, is why celebration is the key to my creative writing. When I write, I celebrate the goodness of the created order and my own creation: I celebrate everything particular to that order, it's richness, its giftedness, its contingency, its fleetingness, the fact that it must begin and end.
Which is also why I'm not always in the mood to celebrate the createdness of the creation. Oftentimes, I am more frightened than joyous at the fact that neither creation nor myself are necessary beings. Oftentimes, I want to be a determinist because I want to be able to figure out all things before hand. Or, I want to be a panentheist and be merged with God such that I am just as necessary to exist as God. In short, I often either want to make an idol of myself or of the world in order to bring false comfort to myself that all is safe and sturdy and secure. Contingency and giftedness displace us from occupying a too central role even in our own estimation because it displaces us ontologically, at the very root of our existence and our being. But all false comfort is ultimately poison, and when I try to make myself too necessary (logically, ontologically, relationally) I end up making a burden for myself that I cannot possibly bear and web myself in with anxieties. When I really trust God enough to relinquish control to him and accept my existence and my life and my being as the contingent, unneccesary, but beloved gift that I am, I can start opening my heart and hands to embrace createdness and creation again. Otherwise, I close my heart and resent everything I don't know and don't understand. I would rather have the spirit of adventure, but the spirit is willing while the flesh is weak.
There's something that happens in the transition from childhood to adulthood that makes most of us have to learn how to accept again. (In many childhoods, anyway.) Both my childhood and adolescence were fairly undisturbed and thus free to be filled with wonder. But when I ran off to college I found myself confronted with crises after crises of different sorts (some personal, some epistemological, some in matters of faith) that made trusting God and myself and the basic goodness of the world quite a bit more of a challenge! I imagine some people never experience basic trust of the world in that way, and some people never have that trust shaken. But I wonder whether the majority of people have a hiccup or two at the beginning or end of adolescence and have to learn again what it means to be a child. I also imagine that many of us spend a great deal of time flubbing this lesson and having to be taken through it again and again until we really learn how to be led to Jesus like little children.
There's something childlike about joy and celebration--which makes it harder for those of us who feel the need to be sober-minded adults much of the time. I don't have anything against genuine adulthood--in fact, praise Jesus if you actually manage to become a self-respecting, contributing adult. But not if it makes you boring and self-protective and think you are the one who must be in control and in charge of your life. That pose sometimes makes me feel more secure or more adult, but it also makes me curl up in on myself and have less to give and less to celebrate.
Art is one of the closest things we have to pure gift on this side of the veil. Ultimately we engage in art for the sake of beauty and not for the sake of utility. We know that beauty makes life better, but only because it appears that human beings are made for beauty, not because of any "practical" gain or reason. The thing that refreshes us about the imagination-in-act is that it awakens us to our true nature--to our true identity as beings given an identity for no other reason that we were thought by One to be lovely, to be worthy, to be gift. In life we are receivers before we are ever givers, and what we receive is as deep as our own bodies, souls, and minds.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Sermon: The Silence and Absence of God in Esther 7
Our passage today is from the middle of the book of Esther. We have to talk a little bit about what makes this book unique before we go on to examine the particular passage we find ourselves in this morning. Esther is set in the period of the Exile—after the conquest of Jerusalem by foreign powers, and it is set among the people of the Exile—a people who have been banished from the land promised to their forefathers and to their decedents. It is set in a time between times—between judgment and punishment by God and the deliverance promised. Right now Esther and Mordecai are a part of a people vanquished and banished, one conquered people among many conquered peoples, scraping along by wit and guile for survival. It is a book that resounds with the silence and the absence of God, or so it appears, and it is filled with people that do not necessarily seem to have personal faith and devotion to Yahweh, the God of Israel, or the Law of Moses, or even Jewish identity. We don’t hear the name of God in this passage, we don’t hear any mention of the Law of Moses, and you won’t find either in the rest of the book either.
There’s something else odd about the way the characters act in this book. In other books of the Bible, the Biblical heroes are normally remarkable because of the ways in which God interacts with them. We remember Abraham because God first spoke the words of promise to him. We remember Moses because God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. We even remember a sneaky trickster like Jacob because God sent him dreams and answered his prayers and eventually transformed Jacob into someone you might actually like to meet. We even have other stories in the Bible that are set in the Exile in which the characters and heroes do all of the normal things (Daniel is one conspicuous example): other characters pray, they keep the Law of Moses, they hear from God, they do great deeds in the name and power of God. But not in Esther. In Esther, the characters fast, but they don’t pray, it is not certain whether Esther or Mordecai are interested in keeping the Law, and they certainly aren’t getting about the task of evangelizing Haman or King Xerxes or anyone else. Esther seems to have hidden her Jewish identity for most of the story, and would have gone on hiding it had not she been forced to reveal it for the sake of saving her people. The characters in this story don’t seem to do what they do for the glory and fame of God. The most religious thing a character does besides fast is cast lots, and that’s what Haman does in order to discover when he ought to begin exterminating the Jews. In the rest of the story, religious observance is inconspicuous if it is present at all. But this story is still about redemption, and our passage today is about the defeat of the enemy who is seeking to destroy all of the Jewish Exiles. Let’s get caught up on the action.
Esther 7 walks us into the climax of the action of the story. Esther 1 sets the scene for our story with the downfall of the previous queen, Queen Vashti, which paves the way for Esther to rise in the Persian Court. Esther 2 paints a pretty distressing picture of how Esther is chosen by the licentious Xerxes as queen and shows us just how little power Esther has had over her own life and her own fate. Esther 2 also tells us how Mordecai warns the King about an assassination plot against his life, and establishes Mordecai as an important figure at least temporarily in good graces with the king. Chapter 3 tells us about the rise of Haman the Egomaniac and how Mordecai slights him and Haman the Egomaniac decides a fitting punishment for Mordecai should be the destruction of all of Mordecai’s people. (By the way, the portrayals of Xerxes and Haman are preposterous and exaggerated on purpose—their evil is so evil, it’s absurd. Both of them are insanely greedy egomaniacs who have incredible amounts of power and seemingly very little discretion. Your reaction is supposed to be something like, “These are the people in power? Who put them in charge?) Chapter 3 also chronicles Haman tricking Xerxes into killing off the Jews—Haman doesn’t actually tell Xerxes it’s the Jews he’s killing and Xerxes seems perfectly willing and content to commit genocide just on the word of one trusted official. And Haman gets the king to pay him to do it. Chapter 4 is about Mordecai freaking out and rightly so, and his appeal to Queen Esther to intercede for the Jews. Esther initially refuses, saying she risks her own life in such an appeal and Mordecai responds with some of the most important words in the entire book: "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther's response is also pretty awesome: “Hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”
The rest of the book until our passage chronicles Esther’s response to Mordecai’s words, and foreshadows Haman’s demise. She gathers her people together to fast, and then approaches the King. She spends what we might consider a really ridiculous amount of time buttering up King Xerxes to accept her petition—apparently she has no reason to expect benevolence from him, or to be able to appeal to his better nature. Xerxes doesn’t appear to have a hard time ordering the death of an entire group of people and Esther has to use wit, guile, and charm in order to maneuver Xerxes into favoring her over Haman.
Which brings us to our present passage. This is the second banquet that Esther has hosted for Xerxes and for Haman, and our scene finds Haman and Xerxes relaxing and drinking wine after the feast. Xerxes says to Esther for the second time, “What is your wish?” Xerxes said this to Esther at the feast on the day before, but Esther deferred her request, asking for a second banquet. Even now, she must wait until the end of the feast, until Xerxes turns to her and asks her what her wish and her request is. It is clear that Xerxes is the one with absolute power here. Esther knew she was taking her life into her own hands by going against the law to approach the king without being summoned. Now she does it again, knowing that Xerxes could banish or depose or even kill her for opposing Haman. She doesn’t bother to try approaching Haman at all, to try to wheedle a compromise of some sort from him. In Persia, she doesn’t have that kind of independent power.
The words that Esther uses to beg the king for her life and the life of her people are interesting. She speaks in terms of finding favor with the king, and she finally identifies herself with her people (though she doesn’t mention she’s a Jew, yet, that’s the next chapter), and identifies herself with her people when it means getting killed along with her people. She asks for her life and for her people and doesn’t allow herself to be parted from them, and doesn’t allow Xerxes the chance to only save Esther—she demands that he save her people as well. She also casts her presently unnamed enemy’s motives in economic terms—in terms of greed: “we have been sold to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.” Haman’s a greedy would-be mass-murderer.
These three words are a constant refrain in Esther: the Jews are “to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.” It is said this way and repeated so often I think for a couple of reasons: On one level, it’s a part of the exaggeration we see throughout the book. The villains are crazy villainous and the dramatic tension is epic—so why not turn up the hype? On another level, you can tease out distinctions between destruction, killing, and annihilation. “Destruction” in this context suggests something being violently ripped apart. If the decree of Haman goes forward, the Jews as a people—as a corporate body with corporate unity—will be destroyed. Probably not every single Jew will be killed—no doubt some will escape. But the Jewish identity will be destroyed and erased from the face of the earth. “Killing” is the most literal—Haman destroys the Jews by killing them all, not just destroying their capital city or their local places of worship, or enslaving them all or forbidding worship of the True God. Horrifically, he actually wants to kill them all. Finally, Haman’s purpose is annihilation. He doesn’t just want to kill a few Jewish troublemakers like he perceives Mordecai to be, he wants to completely and utterly destroy them and wipe them off the planet. Annihilation is an appropriately dramatic word for genocide, especially for a coolly calculated genocide such as this, which is motivated solely by Haman’s egomania. A normal person would have found a way to punish Mordecai alone—who resorts to genocide because of personal insult?
Almost surprisingly, Xerxes is moved by Esther’s plea. Partially this is true because he doesn’t really know that he is ultimately the one responsible for the decree. Esther has set it up such that the plight of the Jews is identified with her and has managed to get Xerxes enraged on her behalf. It is only then that Esther identifies Haman as the villain. It’s all over for Haman now. The rest of our reading and the rest of the book of Esther is about poetic justice. The plan that Haman devises for Mordecai falls on his own head, and the people who set out to destroy the Jews on the day that Haman appoints are actually destroyed by the Jews because Xerxes allows the Jews to arm and defend themselves. Genocide is averted and Purim is inaugurated to celebrate this kind of second Passover.
And what is it that we are supposed to learn from this peculiar story of deliverance, in which we see vividly evil and powerful characters at work and so much absence from God? First, God wants us to know that he works through history and he works for our good—for salvation and for redemption and for peace—whether or not we are aware of it. So God seems silent in Esther. Well. Take a look at the world. Take a look at secular history. Take a look at your own life. I am sure that there are gaps and moments or maybe even decades in your own life and in the life of the world in general when God seems conspicuously absent. It doesn’t seem like he’s speaking. It doesn’t seem like he’s around. It certainly doesn’t seem like he’s delivering. It seems as though the powers that be who are in control of the world are evil and clueless and who really knows what God is up to. I think there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time in God’s silence or apparent absence—and they don’t know why. Now, we happen to know that there is a reason for silence in the book of Esther because Esther and her people are in Exile—they have been thrown out of the Promised Land because of the sin and rebellion of the people just as Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Part of the reason that God is silent is because the people don’t listen and that lack of ability to hear and obey creates distance between us and God. In Esther we find ourselves with a heroine who may have some strength of character, but may not necessarily have any faith. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. Probably she doesn’t—books in the Bible like to mention faith if people have it.
Another reason why this story is good for us is because it tells a story of God’s faithfulness and God’s redemption of people who have been Exiled, who are religiously clueless and probably disobedient, and who don’t seem to deserve or warrant God’s use of them . . . even as, to a certain extent, they still remain in Exile. So often in Scripture we find heroes—like Abraham, for example-- that seem to “deserve” being used by God. That’s probably not a very good way of reading those stories, but biblical heroes are often remarkable and we oftentimes wish that at the very least, we had their connection to God. I don’t how you feel, but I don’t feel that way about Esther. Esther is basically a slave who is valued because Xerxes thinks she’s beautiful and thinks that he is in love with her. She’s stuck with a powerful man in the most powerful country on the planet, and that man is not a good man. She hides her identity and who knows what kind of freedom she has. Esther doesn’t seem to really know what’s she doing insofar as God is concerned. And at the end of the day, she delivers her people and is herself delivered, but she still doesn’t meet with God. Yuck. I don’t want anything to do with any of that. In many respects, she isn’t your typical role model, and her life is not enviable. But God still redeems her life. He takes someone who could have done absolutely nothing remarkable and made her a deliverer of the entire Jewish people. In that way, she is on par with the earlier Judges of Israel. She’s like Gideon or Sampson or Debrah. And that is completely characteristic of God. He takes our lives, and the lives of others less fortunate than ourselves, and turns what is simply unenviable and tragic into his vehicle for redemption. That is what God does—and you know what, he is always doing it for people who don’t deserve it and for people who don’t recognize that he is the one acting in their lives. And the weakness of Esther reminds us that we, too, are unable to save ourselves and must appeal to someone else with power—to Xerxes. We may think it unfortunate that Xerxes has the power he does, but it does serve to remind us that we don’t have enough power in ourselves to defeat the evil and brokenness in our own hearts and minds.
In many ways, I wonder if the story of Esther is for people who don’t recognize that the good that comes into their lives, the gifts they receive, whatever kind of redemption they receive, is really from God. God doesn’t sign every good thing he does, “Love, from Jesus.” But he does sign it, “Love.” Or “Grace.” or “Mercy.” Or, “Salvation.” As Christians, we know that God is the author of Love and Grace and Mercy and Salvation. Jewish theologians and later Christian theologians knew that God was the only redeemer, the only one who saved. If there was salvation, it was from God. That’s part of the reason we know Esther is a theological book—because it’s a story of redemption, and only God redeems, though he often uses human instruments, willing or unwilling, knowing or unknowing, to do so.
There’s one more element of the story that is important. And it is this element of the story that makes remembering why “believing that only God saves” crucially important. This last element of the story is the character Haman. Haman is the enemy, and in so many ways he is The Enemy, and yes, I mean, Haman is really a Satanic figure. Haman and Satan have a lot of things in common insofar as the Bible characterizes both people. Satan is always someone who is out to get human beings out of pride and malice. He is always accusing people or tempting people or deceiving people who have certainly done him no wrong—and he is always a force working for destruction, for killing, and for annihilation. For whatever the enemy’s reasons are, he wants to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate the people of God. He tricked Adam and Eve into something that actually got them killed and doomed the entire human race to the daily struggle with evil and brokenness and sin. While Haman’s powers are a little more constricted, he is little less malevolent. He only goes after the Jewish people (though the Jews are often representative of humanity in general in Scripture), but does so for senseless and malicious reasons. He wants to destroy all Jews because of a small slight to his pride, and he is only satisfied with their complete destruction. I think this serves as a warning to us on more than one level. After all, Haman’s evil notions aren’t unique—genocide is an old evil that people with too much power seem to employ all too readily. Esther does a good job of showing how absurd and truly insane Haman’s malice is. But why does Haman choose such disproportionately evil actions?
It’s because there is an enemy behind Haman and Hitler and all the other power-crazed psychopaths that keeps creeping back into the scene from every nook and cranny possible, and keeps coming back, time and again. If Haman were unique, Esther’s story would be a little happier than it is. But Haman’s story isn’t unique, and because his story isn’t unique, we know there’s something more going on. That something more is the spiritual kingdom of darkness that wars against God, against human beings, and especially targets the people of God to take them out—to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate.
And this is why Queen Esther is only a temporary deliverer, who is upheld by the Great Deliverer. This is why Mordecai can say to Esther, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place.” The Jews and human beings will always have a deliverer because God is present even when he appears to be absent. Esther just had the privilege of her life being redeemed to serve God’s purposes. There will always be salvation for the undeserving and for the weak, and we always have a defender.
And we know how this story plays out better than Queen Esther does. We can see the universal themes in Esther because we already know what Jesus did. We know from the New Testament that the real fight for the life of the world doesn’t ultimately concern things like murder and genocide and hatred—unfortunately, those horrible things are only symptoms of a condition that would have been utterly tragic had not God intervened at the source. We need someone who can intercede for us, who can fight that battle for us. Jesus, when he fights for us, wins the battle at the very root of the problem. He’s takes on all the powers of the world and all the spiritual powers behind those powers and shows them how he takes on humanity’s sin in the cross and defeats their punishment and defeats death in the Easter Resurrection. By mercy and grace and redemption and destroying death for us, Jesus humiliates the evil powers. Jesus destroys the real power that sin has, so he can start to loose the chains that enslave us to brokenness, to sin, to defeat, and to evil. But it’s only when you take on the real problem that you have real results. We can’t pretend that symptoms are causes. Esther is a small story that tells the same story as the big story, and reminds us not to fool ourselves about what’s really going on in human life. What’s going on with both the problem and power of evil and the deliverance and salvation of God is far more than immediately meets the eye.
Let’s take a moment to remember who we are and where we are. Father, we live in the midst of a broken world that you sent your Son Jesus to save. Jesus has completely his work and sent his Spirit to create a new people with whom you are very present and very active. But we still live in a time of Exile even though we know that time is coming to an end. Help us to remember who the real enemy is and who the real Deliverer is, and that because of what you have done for us in Jesus Christ, life triumphs over death.
Sources: I found two books of particular use and interest in crafting this sermon. The first is The Gospel in Esther by Michael Beckett . . . and I can’t quite find the second book, so I will update it when I do.
There’s something else odd about the way the characters act in this book. In other books of the Bible, the Biblical heroes are normally remarkable because of the ways in which God interacts with them. We remember Abraham because God first spoke the words of promise to him. We remember Moses because God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. We even remember a sneaky trickster like Jacob because God sent him dreams and answered his prayers and eventually transformed Jacob into someone you might actually like to meet. We even have other stories in the Bible that are set in the Exile in which the characters and heroes do all of the normal things (Daniel is one conspicuous example): other characters pray, they keep the Law of Moses, they hear from God, they do great deeds in the name and power of God. But not in Esther. In Esther, the characters fast, but they don’t pray, it is not certain whether Esther or Mordecai are interested in keeping the Law, and they certainly aren’t getting about the task of evangelizing Haman or King Xerxes or anyone else. Esther seems to have hidden her Jewish identity for most of the story, and would have gone on hiding it had not she been forced to reveal it for the sake of saving her people. The characters in this story don’t seem to do what they do for the glory and fame of God. The most religious thing a character does besides fast is cast lots, and that’s what Haman does in order to discover when he ought to begin exterminating the Jews. In the rest of the story, religious observance is inconspicuous if it is present at all. But this story is still about redemption, and our passage today is about the defeat of the enemy who is seeking to destroy all of the Jewish Exiles. Let’s get caught up on the action.
Esther 7 walks us into the climax of the action of the story. Esther 1 sets the scene for our story with the downfall of the previous queen, Queen Vashti, which paves the way for Esther to rise in the Persian Court. Esther 2 paints a pretty distressing picture of how Esther is chosen by the licentious Xerxes as queen and shows us just how little power Esther has had over her own life and her own fate. Esther 2 also tells us how Mordecai warns the King about an assassination plot against his life, and establishes Mordecai as an important figure at least temporarily in good graces with the king. Chapter 3 tells us about the rise of Haman the Egomaniac and how Mordecai slights him and Haman the Egomaniac decides a fitting punishment for Mordecai should be the destruction of all of Mordecai’s people. (By the way, the portrayals of Xerxes and Haman are preposterous and exaggerated on purpose—their evil is so evil, it’s absurd. Both of them are insanely greedy egomaniacs who have incredible amounts of power and seemingly very little discretion. Your reaction is supposed to be something like, “These are the people in power? Who put them in charge?) Chapter 3 also chronicles Haman tricking Xerxes into killing off the Jews—Haman doesn’t actually tell Xerxes it’s the Jews he’s killing and Xerxes seems perfectly willing and content to commit genocide just on the word of one trusted official. And Haman gets the king to pay him to do it. Chapter 4 is about Mordecai freaking out and rightly so, and his appeal to Queen Esther to intercede for the Jews. Esther initially refuses, saying she risks her own life in such an appeal and Mordecai responds with some of the most important words in the entire book: "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther's response is also pretty awesome: “Hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”
The rest of the book until our passage chronicles Esther’s response to Mordecai’s words, and foreshadows Haman’s demise. She gathers her people together to fast, and then approaches the King. She spends what we might consider a really ridiculous amount of time buttering up King Xerxes to accept her petition—apparently she has no reason to expect benevolence from him, or to be able to appeal to his better nature. Xerxes doesn’t appear to have a hard time ordering the death of an entire group of people and Esther has to use wit, guile, and charm in order to maneuver Xerxes into favoring her over Haman.
Which brings us to our present passage. This is the second banquet that Esther has hosted for Xerxes and for Haman, and our scene finds Haman and Xerxes relaxing and drinking wine after the feast. Xerxes says to Esther for the second time, “What is your wish?” Xerxes said this to Esther at the feast on the day before, but Esther deferred her request, asking for a second banquet. Even now, she must wait until the end of the feast, until Xerxes turns to her and asks her what her wish and her request is. It is clear that Xerxes is the one with absolute power here. Esther knew she was taking her life into her own hands by going against the law to approach the king without being summoned. Now she does it again, knowing that Xerxes could banish or depose or even kill her for opposing Haman. She doesn’t bother to try approaching Haman at all, to try to wheedle a compromise of some sort from him. In Persia, she doesn’t have that kind of independent power.
The words that Esther uses to beg the king for her life and the life of her people are interesting. She speaks in terms of finding favor with the king, and she finally identifies herself with her people (though she doesn’t mention she’s a Jew, yet, that’s the next chapter), and identifies herself with her people when it means getting killed along with her people. She asks for her life and for her people and doesn’t allow herself to be parted from them, and doesn’t allow Xerxes the chance to only save Esther—she demands that he save her people as well. She also casts her presently unnamed enemy’s motives in economic terms—in terms of greed: “we have been sold to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.” Haman’s a greedy would-be mass-murderer.
These three words are a constant refrain in Esther: the Jews are “to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.” It is said this way and repeated so often I think for a couple of reasons: On one level, it’s a part of the exaggeration we see throughout the book. The villains are crazy villainous and the dramatic tension is epic—so why not turn up the hype? On another level, you can tease out distinctions between destruction, killing, and annihilation. “Destruction” in this context suggests something being violently ripped apart. If the decree of Haman goes forward, the Jews as a people—as a corporate body with corporate unity—will be destroyed. Probably not every single Jew will be killed—no doubt some will escape. But the Jewish identity will be destroyed and erased from the face of the earth. “Killing” is the most literal—Haman destroys the Jews by killing them all, not just destroying their capital city or their local places of worship, or enslaving them all or forbidding worship of the True God. Horrifically, he actually wants to kill them all. Finally, Haman’s purpose is annihilation. He doesn’t just want to kill a few Jewish troublemakers like he perceives Mordecai to be, he wants to completely and utterly destroy them and wipe them off the planet. Annihilation is an appropriately dramatic word for genocide, especially for a coolly calculated genocide such as this, which is motivated solely by Haman’s egomania. A normal person would have found a way to punish Mordecai alone—who resorts to genocide because of personal insult?
Almost surprisingly, Xerxes is moved by Esther’s plea. Partially this is true because he doesn’t really know that he is ultimately the one responsible for the decree. Esther has set it up such that the plight of the Jews is identified with her and has managed to get Xerxes enraged on her behalf. It is only then that Esther identifies Haman as the villain. It’s all over for Haman now. The rest of our reading and the rest of the book of Esther is about poetic justice. The plan that Haman devises for Mordecai falls on his own head, and the people who set out to destroy the Jews on the day that Haman appoints are actually destroyed by the Jews because Xerxes allows the Jews to arm and defend themselves. Genocide is averted and Purim is inaugurated to celebrate this kind of second Passover.
And what is it that we are supposed to learn from this peculiar story of deliverance, in which we see vividly evil and powerful characters at work and so much absence from God? First, God wants us to know that he works through history and he works for our good—for salvation and for redemption and for peace—whether or not we are aware of it. So God seems silent in Esther. Well. Take a look at the world. Take a look at secular history. Take a look at your own life. I am sure that there are gaps and moments or maybe even decades in your own life and in the life of the world in general when God seems conspicuously absent. It doesn’t seem like he’s speaking. It doesn’t seem like he’s around. It certainly doesn’t seem like he’s delivering. It seems as though the powers that be who are in control of the world are evil and clueless and who really knows what God is up to. I think there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time in God’s silence or apparent absence—and they don’t know why. Now, we happen to know that there is a reason for silence in the book of Esther because Esther and her people are in Exile—they have been thrown out of the Promised Land because of the sin and rebellion of the people just as Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Part of the reason that God is silent is because the people don’t listen and that lack of ability to hear and obey creates distance between us and God. In Esther we find ourselves with a heroine who may have some strength of character, but may not necessarily have any faith. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. Probably she doesn’t—books in the Bible like to mention faith if people have it.
Another reason why this story is good for us is because it tells a story of God’s faithfulness and God’s redemption of people who have been Exiled, who are religiously clueless and probably disobedient, and who don’t seem to deserve or warrant God’s use of them . . . even as, to a certain extent, they still remain in Exile. So often in Scripture we find heroes—like Abraham, for example-- that seem to “deserve” being used by God. That’s probably not a very good way of reading those stories, but biblical heroes are often remarkable and we oftentimes wish that at the very least, we had their connection to God. I don’t how you feel, but I don’t feel that way about Esther. Esther is basically a slave who is valued because Xerxes thinks she’s beautiful and thinks that he is in love with her. She’s stuck with a powerful man in the most powerful country on the planet, and that man is not a good man. She hides her identity and who knows what kind of freedom she has. Esther doesn’t seem to really know what’s she doing insofar as God is concerned. And at the end of the day, she delivers her people and is herself delivered, but she still doesn’t meet with God. Yuck. I don’t want anything to do with any of that. In many respects, she isn’t your typical role model, and her life is not enviable. But God still redeems her life. He takes someone who could have done absolutely nothing remarkable and made her a deliverer of the entire Jewish people. In that way, she is on par with the earlier Judges of Israel. She’s like Gideon or Sampson or Debrah. And that is completely characteristic of God. He takes our lives, and the lives of others less fortunate than ourselves, and turns what is simply unenviable and tragic into his vehicle for redemption. That is what God does—and you know what, he is always doing it for people who don’t deserve it and for people who don’t recognize that he is the one acting in their lives. And the weakness of Esther reminds us that we, too, are unable to save ourselves and must appeal to someone else with power—to Xerxes. We may think it unfortunate that Xerxes has the power he does, but it does serve to remind us that we don’t have enough power in ourselves to defeat the evil and brokenness in our own hearts and minds.
In many ways, I wonder if the story of Esther is for people who don’t recognize that the good that comes into their lives, the gifts they receive, whatever kind of redemption they receive, is really from God. God doesn’t sign every good thing he does, “Love, from Jesus.” But he does sign it, “Love.” Or “Grace.” or “Mercy.” Or, “Salvation.” As Christians, we know that God is the author of Love and Grace and Mercy and Salvation. Jewish theologians and later Christian theologians knew that God was the only redeemer, the only one who saved. If there was salvation, it was from God. That’s part of the reason we know Esther is a theological book—because it’s a story of redemption, and only God redeems, though he often uses human instruments, willing or unwilling, knowing or unknowing, to do so.
There’s one more element of the story that is important. And it is this element of the story that makes remembering why “believing that only God saves” crucially important. This last element of the story is the character Haman. Haman is the enemy, and in so many ways he is The Enemy, and yes, I mean, Haman is really a Satanic figure. Haman and Satan have a lot of things in common insofar as the Bible characterizes both people. Satan is always someone who is out to get human beings out of pride and malice. He is always accusing people or tempting people or deceiving people who have certainly done him no wrong—and he is always a force working for destruction, for killing, and for annihilation. For whatever the enemy’s reasons are, he wants to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate the people of God. He tricked Adam and Eve into something that actually got them killed and doomed the entire human race to the daily struggle with evil and brokenness and sin. While Haman’s powers are a little more constricted, he is little less malevolent. He only goes after the Jewish people (though the Jews are often representative of humanity in general in Scripture), but does so for senseless and malicious reasons. He wants to destroy all Jews because of a small slight to his pride, and he is only satisfied with their complete destruction. I think this serves as a warning to us on more than one level. After all, Haman’s evil notions aren’t unique—genocide is an old evil that people with too much power seem to employ all too readily. Esther does a good job of showing how absurd and truly insane Haman’s malice is. But why does Haman choose such disproportionately evil actions?
It’s because there is an enemy behind Haman and Hitler and all the other power-crazed psychopaths that keeps creeping back into the scene from every nook and cranny possible, and keeps coming back, time and again. If Haman were unique, Esther’s story would be a little happier than it is. But Haman’s story isn’t unique, and because his story isn’t unique, we know there’s something more going on. That something more is the spiritual kingdom of darkness that wars against God, against human beings, and especially targets the people of God to take them out—to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate.
And this is why Queen Esther is only a temporary deliverer, who is upheld by the Great Deliverer. This is why Mordecai can say to Esther, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place.” The Jews and human beings will always have a deliverer because God is present even when he appears to be absent. Esther just had the privilege of her life being redeemed to serve God’s purposes. There will always be salvation for the undeserving and for the weak, and we always have a defender.
And we know how this story plays out better than Queen Esther does. We can see the universal themes in Esther because we already know what Jesus did. We know from the New Testament that the real fight for the life of the world doesn’t ultimately concern things like murder and genocide and hatred—unfortunately, those horrible things are only symptoms of a condition that would have been utterly tragic had not God intervened at the source. We need someone who can intercede for us, who can fight that battle for us. Jesus, when he fights for us, wins the battle at the very root of the problem. He’s takes on all the powers of the world and all the spiritual powers behind those powers and shows them how he takes on humanity’s sin in the cross and defeats their punishment and defeats death in the Easter Resurrection. By mercy and grace and redemption and destroying death for us, Jesus humiliates the evil powers. Jesus destroys the real power that sin has, so he can start to loose the chains that enslave us to brokenness, to sin, to defeat, and to evil. But it’s only when you take on the real problem that you have real results. We can’t pretend that symptoms are causes. Esther is a small story that tells the same story as the big story, and reminds us not to fool ourselves about what’s really going on in human life. What’s going on with both the problem and power of evil and the deliverance and salvation of God is far more than immediately meets the eye.
Let’s take a moment to remember who we are and where we are. Father, we live in the midst of a broken world that you sent your Son Jesus to save. Jesus has completely his work and sent his Spirit to create a new people with whom you are very present and very active. But we still live in a time of Exile even though we know that time is coming to an end. Help us to remember who the real enemy is and who the real Deliverer is, and that because of what you have done for us in Jesus Christ, life triumphs over death.
Sources: I found two books of particular use and interest in crafting this sermon. The first is The Gospel in Esther by Michael Beckett . . . and I can’t quite find the second book, so I will update it when I do.
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