March 13, 2025
The Festival of Purim
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Esther
Queen Esther, seized with mortal anguish,
had recourse to the LORD.
She lay prostrate upon the ground, together with her handmaids,
from morning until evening, and said:
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, blessed are you.
Help me, who am alone and have no help but you,
for I am taking my life in my hand.
Esther was never alone. She walked alone toward the king, but her entire community had fasted three days before she began that walk. Her entire community, led by her cousin Mordecai, knew what was at stake for all of them. The Persian Prime Minister Haman hated them, and he was plotting, successfully at first, to exterminate the entire Jewish people.
(Sound familiar? Like in 1933 and after in Germany?)
But in this famous story from the Bible, Haman is found out. Haman, in fact, is exterminated himself. Esther was queen, but she was also Jewish, and Haman knew it. He convinced the king that all Jews were evil. But Esther’s prayers flew before her.
And now, come to help me, an orphan.
Put in my mouth persuasive words in the presence of the lion
and turn his heart to hatred for our enemy,
so that he and those who are in league with him may perish.
Save us from the hand of our enemies;
turn our mourning into gladness
and our sorrows into wholeness.
In a story of confused identity worthy of Shakespeare, the king asks Haman how he should honor a hero. Haman assumes he’s the hero, but he was not. Haman had planned to ask the king to impale Mordecai on a stake, but he first suggested that the king find this unnamed hero, clothe him with a royal robe, place a royal crest on his head, and praise him to all the people in the public square.
Ah, great idea, Haman!
“Hurry! Take the robe and horse and do this … for the Jew Mordecai. Do everything as you have proposed.”
Haman was thunderstruck. Mordecai?
Haman did as he was told. In his own voice, he shouted to his neighbors, “This is what is done for the man the king wishes to honor!” Then he hurried home, grieving, with his head covered.
Suddenly the Jews of the country, slated to all be killed in the next few days, had renewed hope. The beautiful Jewish woman Queen Esther held a banquet the next night for the king and for Haman. The king was pleased, and he offered Esther anything she desired, even to half his kingdom.
(Sound familiar? Didn’t Herod offer Salome half his kingdom?)
Queen Esther, on the strength of her community’s prayer and fasting, rose to the occasion.
If it pleases your majesty, I ask that my life be spared, and I beg that you spare the lives of my people. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, killed, and annihilated. If we were only to be sold into slavery I would remain silent, for then our distress would not have been worth troubling the king.
King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who and where is the man who has dared to do this?”
Esther turned and looked straight at Haman, “The enemy oppressing us is this wicked Haman!”
In anger the king left the banquet. Haman pleaded with Esther for his life.
When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman had thrown himself on the couch on which Esther was reclining; and the king exclaimed, “Will he also violate the queen while she is with me in my own house!”
Harbona, one of the eunuchs who attended the king, said, “At the house of Haman stands a stake fifty cubits high. Haman made it for Mordecai, who gave the report that benefited the king.” The king answered, “Impale Hamon on his own stake.”
So they impaled Haman on the stake he had set up for Mordecai.
As so often happens, a story in Scripture guides us into faith, and also into celebration, in fact the Jewish festival Purim, a festival of reading, costumes, carnival and gifts, which begins today and continues through tomorrow. Dance to the music! Esther has pleaded with God, and God has saved her people!
(Esther C12, Psalm 138, Psalm 51, Matthew 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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