Death Threats and Divine Providence

Esther 3-4

            Chapter 3 sheds light on how the Jewish people became a persecuted minority: Mordecai refused to pay homage to a mere man, no matter how high up the government ladder he was. This was emblematic of life for the post-exilic community. They had learned their lesson about worshiping anything or anybody who was not the Lord God Almighty. This refusal made them stand out in all the worst ways for their neighbors. In the Greek period, “all” their overlords asked was a veneer of Greek culture, but the Jews refused. In the Roman period, the Romans would have been satisfied with a few token sacrifices so that they could be sure of the Jews loyalty to the empire, but the Jews refused. Their faithfulness to the Lord put a target on their backs. When Christians today dare to stand against the culture, to demonstrate exclusive loyalty to the Lord, they should expect the same.

            Esther is scared to put the target on her back. Remember she had entered the harem without revealing her Jewish identity. If my hypothesis yesterday was right that she was recruited to the harem, then we should look at her experience a little closer. She didn’t volunteer for the king’s little beauty contest; she was taken for it. She did her best to survive, hiding her identity and taking the advice of the chief eunuch on how to get ahead. The story is a little bit Hunger Games. So, she had endured that trauma. Then, she won the king’s favor and basically condemned herself to being a sexual object. More trauma. Now Mordecai told her that she had to do something to save her whole people at the risk of her own life. This young lady endured more than a surface reading communicates. No wonder she was reluctant!

            Yet, Mordecai suggests that, though unnamed, the Lord is present and active. He suggests that there is meaning and purpose in her suffering. He suggests that for just such a time as this she went through all of that. We’re going to have to think about suffering a lot the next couple of weeks and months: next up is Job, a book all about suffering, and after that is Psalms, in which many of the psalms talk about suffering. For today, I’d invite you to reflect on young Esther, taken from her family, humiliated, facing an existential threat not just to her family but to her whole people, and being asked to believe that in all of that darkness the Lord is using her for some purpose she can’t imagine. I don’t know how much comfort that brings in our own darkness, when suffering engulfs us, but it brings some suffering to think that the Lord will make something of the mess…