This is the second week in our Sermon Series: Picture of a Prophet(ess) where we dive into the stories of Hannah, Esther, Deborah, and Miriam. This week we explored the story of Esther, a courageous queen who calls for liberation from oppressive systems that are antithetical to the way of God. You can read the Sacred Story for this week here.

Before we dive into the text, let me set the scene:

In chapter 1, we meet the ruler of the Persian Empire who is called King Ahasuerus but historically is mostly likely Xerxes I. The empire is so mighty and rich that he throws a party for 180 days, just to revel in it with the elites. That’s 6 months. That’s as if we’d spent all of 2020 so far at an epic party instead of the...whatever this has been. After that, the King throws a banquet for 7 days for everybody else. After much drinking, the king summons the queen, Vashti, to dance before the party in her Crown Jewels...and he probably means JUST the Crown Jewels if you know what I mean. And she says...um, no.

So now that the King’s ultimate authority has essentially been called into question, he calls in all his advisors to decide what to do to restore his image as a super-awesome-all-powerful guy. And do you know what they worry about? They worry that other wives will find out they can say no to their husbands and the word will spread and THEN where would they be. So Vashti is slated for replacement.

Let’s begin.

Esther 2:1-15; 4:1-5, 13-17

2 After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her. 2 Then the king’s servants who attended him said, ‘Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king. 3 And let the king appoint commissioners in all the provinces of his kingdom to gather all the beautiful young virgins to the harem in the citadel of Susa under the custody of Hegai, the king’s eunuch, who is in charge of the women; let their cosmetic treatments be given them. 4 And let the girl who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti.’ This pleased the king, and he did so.

5 Now there was a Jew in the citadel of Susa whose name was Mordecai son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish, a Benjaminite. 6 Kish had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives carried away with King Jeconiah of Judah, whom King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had carried away. 7 Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, his cousin, for she had neither father nor mother; the girl was fair and beautiful, and when her father and her mother died, Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter. 8 So when the king’s order and his edict were proclaimed, and when many young women were gathered in the citadel of Susa in the custody of Hegai, Esther also was taken into the king’s palace and put in the custody of Hegai, who had charge of the women. 9 The girl pleased him and won his favor, and he quickly provided her with her cosmetic treatments and her portion of food, and with seven chosen maids from the king’s palace, and advanced her and her maids to the best place in the harem. 10 Esther did not reveal her people or kindred, for Mordecai had charged her not to tell. 11 Every day Mordecai would walk around in front of the court of the harem, to learn how Esther was and how she fared.

12 The turn came for each girl to go into King Ahasuerus, after being twelve months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their cosmetic treatment, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes and cosmetics for women. 13 When the girl went in to the king she was given whatever she asked for to take with her from the harem to the king’s palace. 14 In the evening she went in; then in the morning she came back to the second harem in the custody of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch, who was in charge of the concubines; she did not go into the king again unless the king delighted in her and she was summoned by name.

15 When the turn came for Esther daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had adopted her as his own daughter, to go into the king, she asked for nothing except what Hegai the king’s eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised. Now Esther was admired by all who saw her.

I’ll recap what happens next:

Esther becomes queen but keeps her ethnic and religious identity as a Jew secret. Her uncle overhears a plot to assassinate the king, tells Esther, who tells the king and credits Mordecai and the usurpers are dispatched violently. And THEN, the king makes this guy Haman his right-hand guy but Mordecai won’t bow to him because he’s like...I’m Jewish we don’t do that cuz idolatry. This comes to a head in Chapter 3, verse 5-6: “When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or do obeisance to him, Haman was infuriated. But he thought it beneath him to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So, having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to destroy all Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus.”

He tells the king in verse 8: “there is a certain people scattered and separated among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued for their destruction, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king’s business, so that they may put it into the king’s treasuries.”

Haman uses the most enduring tools of manipulating empire - the lie of danger in diversity, the fear of losing power, and economic gain. The decree is announced, and the Jewish people sit in terror and mourning at this impending annihilation. “The King and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was thrown into confusion.”

Now back to the text:

4When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went through the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry; 2he went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one might enter the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth. 3In every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and most of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.

4 When Esther’s maids and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed; she sent garments to clothe Mordecai so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. 5Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why. 13Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’ 15Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, 16‘Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.’ 17Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/queen-esther-icons-of-the-bible.html

This Queen right here, y’all. She is everything. She is an orphan female child who is part of an ethnically marginalized community occupied and colonized by empire who also becomes Queen of that same empire, the world’s superpower in its time. She is the victim of horrifying sexual abuse, even if it happened through “official” means with the trappings of luxury in a palace...but she is also so much more than this. Her story is at once tragic and triumphant, profound and somber, yet darkly humorous in the absurdity of those who work so hard to appear righteous and powerful. There is room for tears and laughter, mourning, and rejoicing. She and her story do not seem so far away.

This is the moment when it becomes clear how these identities intersect and she must grapple with whether that means collision or integration or all of the above. In many ways, this is HER work to do, but in many ways, this work has always been so much bigger than her.

All along the way she has had community beside her - the extended family who raised her and taught her and checked on her when separated and mentored her and still holds her to the accountability of relationship even when it’s hard. The palace eunuchs, enslaved genderqueer folk who used what was ascribed to them as worthlessness and transformed it with their clever resourcefulness into a tool of access to advance, advise, and mobilize her for this moment. The community of faith which equipped her with a sacred connectedness, an eternal scope and the spiritual tools of fasting and reflection and yearning for divine direction and joins her in that practice. At this moment, this community is present through Mordecai as she is reminded that the moment at hand not just a matter of her individual well-being, but of collective and communal identity and care - that even as her position changes, she remains a part of this fabric of community which is affected by and contributes to each strand and the whole.

As a result, she becomes a voice for justice which may never have been if not for the presence and prodding of others. And so when she stands on the precipice, which can be so lonely and terrifying, she might find courage in the cloud of witnesses who have walked with her and continue to do so.

This is what she takes with her into the discerning sacred practice of fasting. And in the space created there for reflection and prayer and presence, this intersection becomes a catalyst for a new prophetic fire. She emerges to proclaim the promise of resistance and its ultimate power whether or not it is “successful” in implementing immediate change.

It would be impossible to overstate the courage involved. It is not simple or safe to speak truth to power, even less so when your own power and safety is tied up in it too. Perhaps it is a courage that comes not in spite of but because of the recognition that no matter how high she has risen, in this culture her identity is ultimately considered “other” and “lesser.” That existential weight is one I will never fully know. .

Because as much as I admire this prophetess and long to see myself in a similar role, I also have to grapple with the reality that my identity may sometimes be closer to resembling that of Haman or Xerxes. Another woman of intersection, Erna Kim Hackett, a biracial indigenous woman pastor of color, wrote a piece several years ago called “WHY I STOPPED TALKING ABOUT RACIAL RECONCILIATION AND STARTED TALKING ABOUT WHITE SUPREMACY” and snippets from her writing have popped up in my social media threads again recently. In addition to the problem of reading scripture with a lens of individualism and personal rather than communal eyes...she writes that “white (and I would add heteronormative) Christianity suffers from a bad case of Disney Princess theology.

As each individual reads Scripture, they see themselves as the princess in every story. They are Esther, never Xerxes, or Haman. They are Peter, but never Judas. They are the woman anointing Jesus, never the Pharisees. They are the Jews escaping slavery, never Egypt. For the citizens of the most powerful country in the world, who enslaved both Native and Black people, to see itself as Israel and not Egypt when it is studying Scripture, is a perfect example of Disney princess theology. And it means that as people in power, they have no lens for locating themselves rightly in Scripture or society- and it has made them blind and utterly ill-equipped to engage issues of power and injustice.”

It’s a punch in the gut. The Holy Spirit can be like that sometimes. It’s not about shame, that doesn’t get us anywhere. But prophets do confront us with the truth of ourselves and our world. Sometimes it feels like being torn apart or torn open. And no, Haman’s story doesn’t have a pretty ending, but it’s not the ultimate ending.

Neither is Esther’s bold move that saves her entire people. She is the vessel of help that has incredibly overcome institutionalized power to stop this impending threat to their very existence and it is an incomprehensible and awe-inspiring feat that deserves abounding celebration...but we also know that it still doesn’t grant the Jewish people eternal security from tyrants. For if the King is so fickle as to turn on his trusted right-hand man so drastically, surely the pendulum can swing as quickly and as fiercely in the other direction. Even now...we, too, have seen anti-semitism rise with attacks on synogogues. In recent days, we have seen the LGBTQI community denied healthcare access and more black lives lost to white supremacy and those black trans women at the intersection of it all suffering brutality particularly.

And yet...we have also seen the riot that followed police brutality at Stonewall turn into a movement which has led our highest court confirming that same LGBTQI community non-discrimination protections. We hear Black Lives Matter echoing in our streets and among policymakers with enduring power and just change that seemed far off, drawing near.

Esther shows us what it is to be simultaneously vulnerable and powerful. It cautions continued vigilance without forgoing the delights of celebration. The Jewish festival of Purim which tells this story with playfulness and rejoicing even in the midst of incomplete justice, shows us what it is to participate in the Gospel of defiant ultimate joy. For a moment, we have a glimpse of what is possible - of a justice and liberation that sweeps up the whole of creation, the oppressor and the oppressed set free from a death-dealing system into new life-giving ways of being together. Throughout the whole of the book of Esther, there is no direct mention of God, and yet….help has come...as it is promised to through God, our help in ages past and hope for years to come. Amen.

Powerful Vulnerability