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September 30, 2012
Old
Testament Reading: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 9:20-22
1So
the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. 2On 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 the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled." 3Then
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. 4For 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." 5Then King
Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, "Who is he, and where is he, who has
presumed to do this?" 6Esther said, "A foe and enemy, this
wicked Haman!" Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
9Then
Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the
very gallows 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." 10So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had
prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.
9:20Mordecai
recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the
provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, 21enjoining them
that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the
fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, 22as 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.
SERMON:
“What are we saved for?”
I have a confession to make,
y’all. While I realize it might change
the way you see me, I must be honest. I
have to be true to who I am.
I love fantasy fiction! Throw me into some alternative world where
magic abounds and everyone inexplicably talks with a British accent and I am a
happy camper. It’s why I love Lord of
the Rings and Narnia, Mary Stewart and J.K. Rowling.
And it’s why, when my
fantasy-appreciating father handed me Game of Thrones I loved it. Well, to be honest I loved the first book,
and then I had a rather big life change involving some charming place called
Cameron, and the second book in the series gathered dust until I couldn’t
remember what I’d already read.
It should come as no surprise that
it’s now made into a T.V. show on HBO, but that show is so racy it would make
Madonna blush. Anyway, back to that
fascinating fantasy series:
It details the dangerous and
dazzling interactions between seven kingdoms of a medieval world, where battles
for power are everyday events and the threat of a crippling winter looms. Fiery dragons dot the pages, complicated
family relationships intrigue and beneath it all, one question drives the
story: who will have power? Which kingdom, which people, will win the
Game of Thrones?
Perhaps this is why my mind
immediately went to this series when I read our Esther reading for this
morning. It, too, is about a game of
thrones battling for power, but one people, the Jews, were enslaved, nearly beyond
hope, crushed under the weight of the other people, the Persians, led by the
mighty King Ahasuerus. The scales of
fortune were tipped in the favor of those downtrodden Jewish people all because
of one woman: Esther. But first we have
to remember how Esther came into the story.
The powerful King Ahasuerus was
drunk with wine and wanted his wife Vashti to come be paraded in front of his
friends so they could ogle at her and “appreciate her beauty.” But Vashti was tired of being paraded. So she said no. And the King chucked her out of the palace
and issued a decree that “every man should be master in his own home.”
But a King does not long wait for a
Queen. It was made known that King
Ahasuerus required a new (younger) Queen.
A man named Mordecai heard this, and knowing that his cousin Esther,
whom he had raised since her parents died, was beautiful, he seized an
opportunity. Esther was a poor Jew, but
once she was given a makeover by palace professionals and thrown into a beauty
pageant worthy of Miss America, it didn’t make one bit of difference. What was raw beauty became perfectly
polished, and the King was smitten. They
were married.
But no amount of makeup or perfume
could erase Esther’s memory of her heritage and faith. She was still a Jew. And when her cousin Mordecai, who had also
been invited to the palace with Esther, told her of a plot by Haman, the King’s
right-hand man, to kill all of the Jews, she knew she had to act.
And now we come to this morning’s
chapter of the story. The scene was
another lavish palace party and King Ahasuerus was enjoying a cup of his
favorite wine with his favorite girl by his side. Even though she could have been killed for
approaching the King without being summoned, she went anyway. “What’s it gonna be, darlin’?” he asked
Esther, eager to please her. “Even half
of my kingdom (not all of it) is yours, just name it.” Esther batted those immaculately mascaraed
eyelashes at him and said with passion, “Please just spare the lives of my
people. For we have been sold, to be
destroyed, killed and annihilated.”
King Ahasuerus then asked an
interesting question: “Who has done this??”
Funny he should ask that. He is
the King after all. Of course he has a
hand in all of the goings on of the kingdom, even the terrible ones. But Esther does not mention his complicity
(perhaps another reason he loved her) and shouted with anger, “It is a foe and
enemy, this wicked Haman!”
The King made a big show about
being angry that someone would do such a thing to his wife’s people. And then a eunuch gave him something to do
with that anger.
Eunuchs in this time were an awful
lot like the eunuch who appears in Game of Thrones: seemingly holy men,
separated from the tempations of the world and yet fully aware of all the good
palace gossip and subtly manipulative when it served their purpose. The eunuch says one sentence, “Look, Haman
was making gallows to hang Mordecai and they’re still in his house.” He knew
full well where such an observation would lead.
The King jumped at the chance for
revenge and Haman was hanged on his own gallows. Our text then skips ahead to the celebration
of the Jewish people in being saved from great evil, in being the victors over
the powerful, the surviving people, and these celebrations took the form of gifts
for one another and special care for the poor.
The Jewish festival of Purim finds its roots here. When the powerless are given a voice, when
the corrupt powers that be are put in their place, there is cause for
rejoicing.
But there is a crucial flaw in our
story this morning: God’s not here. In
the entire book of Esther, there’s not even the smallest hint of a mention of
God. Perhaps when the game of thrones is
being played with the powerful toppled by those who use that same power to kill
their enemies, God wants no part of that.
Perhaps when an orphaned girl is shoved around from man to man,
manipulated her whole life through from her cousin Mordecai to a King, and then
becomes the very thing she despises, there is no room for God.
Because however joyful that
victory, Esther did turn into Haman.
Like he called for the destruction of her people, she called for the
annihilation of his people. 75,000 of
them. And because that’s just not enough
revenge, she had each of his ten sons hanged.
Where is God in such a hopelessly endless cycle of hatred and
retaliation? Nowhere to be found, it
seems.
And that cycle of revenge keeps on
encircling peoples and nations, even into our time. On the festival day of Purim in 1942, Nazis
hung ten Jews to “avenge” the hanging of Haman’s sons, some 23 centuries
later. It seems hate has no expiration
date.
Even the current conversation about
Iran and Israel and the possibility of violence circles around fear that this
would occur when the Jews celebrate Purim.
When the game of thrones is played,
no one wins. Certainly not God.
That first Purim, the Jews were
saved from the total annihilation Haman planned for them. Many would say that the God who never
abandoned them, who led them by a pillar of cloud and fire and fed them with
manna in the desert, had a hand in this salvation, even if the text doesn’t
mention God. I tend to agree that God
did continue showing steadfast love and care for the people of Israel in our
story. They were saved from Haman. But what were they saved FOR? For revenge and retaliation, for the power to
do to Haman what he had planned to do to them?
I don’t believe so.
I believe that God working through
history did save them, just as much as God saves us from despair through
moments of light, from cynicism through the wisdom of a child, from isolation
through communities like ours, from the fear of death through the promise of
life eternal. But it’s not enough to
claim that we are saved FROM these things.
We are also saved FOR something.
Saved from cycles that perpetuate
hate and revenge so that we can proclaim in our very lives the way of a Savior
who gave his life for all.
Saved from one-upmanship so that we
can become great through being the servant of all.
Saved from believing we can earn
grace so that we can fully worship the God responsible for our salvation.
Saved from thinking God is absent
in our stories so that we can see the hand of our Savior woven into the magical
and ordinary fabric of our days.
Thanks be to God – we are
saved! Now, what will we do with that
salvation? Amen.
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