Thursday of the First Week in Lent

Lectionary: 227

Queen Esther, seized with mortal anguish, 

had recourse to the LORD.

In today's first reading, we meet a beautiful young woman in the flush of youth. She is entirely wrapped in a cocoon of aristocratic wealth, power, and security. Although her relationship to her husband is odd by our 21st century standards, we can readily suppose she is set for life so long as she plays her cards right. Queen Esther and her companions in the king's harem have certainly pondered the lesson of her predecessor, Queen Vashti. She too was beautiful and well placed, but vain. She had overplayed her hand and suffered the consequences. Although the world of power appeared fixed and stable, it was actually quite brittle. In the twinkling of an eye, people could fall from grace and disappear without a trace. Esther, burdened with Jewish ancestry and more prudent by nature, would lie low and wait upon her emperor-husband's privilege.

However, as our story begins, Esther's uncle has confronted the young woman with a profound moral dilemma. She is, he says, the only one who can save her people from annihilation; or, to use the Nazi euphemism, liquidation. The vast Syrian empire had little love for the Jews; its greedy population could readily absorb the assets of a disappeared Jewish minority.

The story, apparently in the remote past in a distant part of the world, sounds entirely too familiar. Millions of Jews disappeared under the Nazi regime, as their properties were stolen; and their wealth, erased.

But even more familiar is the distance between Esther's security and her people's plight. She might have played it safe and hoped to escape the catastrophe. She could have delayed a few hours or a few days. She could have "not got the message," or dismissed it as someone else's problem. Or perhaps explained to herself and others, "Dear Uncle Mordecai is overreacting." She might have argued she was no longer a Jew; she had adopted the religion of her husband.

But this is a story of heroic virtue, which should be typical of people in the stratosphere of government hierarchy. The Greeks looked for courage among their ancient leaders, as did the English in the tragedies of Shakespeare. The Bible has many heroic men and women; it recognizes their human flaws even as it celebrates the spirit of God moving in them.

The Book of Esther is remarkable for God's failing to appear. We have only heroes, Mordecai and Esther, and a scoundrel, Haman the Agagite. And Esther's prayers, which won the day. The Book of Tobit gives us a glimpse of heaven in a single verse:

At that very time, the prayer of both of them (Tobit and Sarah) was heard in the glorious presence of God. So Raphael was sent to heal them both...."

Psalm 18 gives a more wonderful description of prayer and God's response:

In my distress I called out: LORD! I cried out to my God. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry to him reached his ears. The earth rocked and shook; the foundations of the mountains trembled; they shook as his wrath flared up.

...and so forth, Buckle your seat belts for the Lord's appearance!

But there is no epiphany in Esther. She simply prays, concocts a scheme, and courageously sets out. (Her fainting in the presence of the Emperor was a nice touch. Did God add that?)

In this twenty-first century, Esther reminds us that we must pray daily and ask for God's guidance and inspiration. As the polarization of America and Europe worsens day by day, as we plunge onward toward some kind of apocalyptic denouement -- a catastrophe not unlike that which threatened Esther and her people, similar to the Shoah -- we don't know what to do. As Yeats wrote, 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

We beg God to deliver us: 

Save us from the hand of our enemies;

turn our mourning into gladness

and our sorrows into wholeness.”

And then we act.