Today’s First Reading (Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25) begins with this sentence: Queen Esther, seized with mortal anguish, fled to the Lord for refuge (C:12).
Who is Queen Esther? And why was she in anguish?
What was tormenting her?
The First Reading text per se does not say. But, it
really focuses on how Esther sought out God amidst her severe anguish.
Esther was a Jewish orphan raised by her father’s
nephew, Mordecai, and became wife of Persian king, Ahasuerus (a.k.a. Xerxes I,
Artaxerxes), whose reign spanned 486 – 465 BC, without revealing her Jewish
identity, replacing his previous wife, Vashti (Esther 2:1-18).
Imagine what it was like to be a diaspora Jew in
Persian Empire. Think why Mordecai advised Esther not to reveal her Jewish identity
(Esther 2:10).
It was Mordecai, who saved Ahasuerus from a possible
assassination, as it was he who found a plot to assassinate the king and told Esther, who was already queen, to inform the king (Esther 2:19-23). However, Ahasuerus
promoted Haman, rather than honoring Mordecai, and all of his servants to kneel
and bow down to Haman (Esther 3:1-2). But Mordecai refused to kneel and bow to
Haman (Esther 3:2).
Mordecai’s refusal to bow to him prompted Haman’s
anger and hatred, escalating to the point of his plot to kill all the Jews in
the empire and eventually persuading Ahasuerus to make it a king’s decree (Esther
3:5-13, B:1-7). And, this really
distressed Mordecai as he expressed his anguish by tearing his cloths and
putting ashes and sackcloth (Esther 4:1-2) and Esther, as well (Esther 4:4).
Now both Esther and Mordecai are in severe distress
about the fate of the fellow Jews in the empire. In this distress Mordecai sent
this message to Esther:
Do not imagine that you are safe in the
king’s palace, you alone of all the Jews. Even if you now remain silent, relief
and deliverance will come to the Jews from another source;* but you and your
father’s house will perish. Who knows—perhaps it was for a time like this that
you became queen? Esther 4:13-14
In reply, Esther sent Mordecai this message:
Go
and assemble all the Jews who are in Susa; fast on my behalf, all of you, not
eating or drinking night or day for three days. I and my maids will also fast
in the same way. Thus prepared, I will go to the king, contrary to the law. If
I perish, I perish! Esther
4:16
Mordecai prayed to God (Esther C:1-11), and so did
Esther (Esther C:12-30).
And, this is the background of today’s First Reading
(Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25), Esther’s prayer to God.
Now an important question, in reading this text for
Lent, is: did Esther seek God for herself to be delivered from the anguish that
had been killing her, or for a different purpose? This question is important to read this First
Reading text (Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25) in conjunction with the Gospel Reading
(Matthew 7:7-12), which is drawn from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and is about prayer.
Esther was not asking God’s help amidst her anguish
simply for her own relief but to save her fellow Israelites from the genocide
threat plotted by Haman. And her anguish was due to Haman’s evil scheme to
exterminate all Jews in the Persian Empire.
Haman was like Hitler, hating the Jews to the point of extermination.
It is also very important to note that Esther did
not ask God to stop Herman from executing his plot against the Israelites but
asked God to give her what is necessary to let her work as His instrument
against Herman’s evil scheme. There is a huge difference in simply asking God
to do something for us on our behalf and asking God to enable and empower us
with His providence to work and fight as His instrument.
“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 his conspirators may perish” (Esther C
24).
God sure made Esther His instrument to save the
Israelites in the Persian Empire from Haman’s genocide plot. So, Esther hosted banquets and had her husband,
king Ahasuerus, use his power for God, not to destroy Jewish people, though he
once honored Haman’s plot.
The Book of Esther is a great story about how
faithful persons, like Esther and Mordecai, work with God as His instruments,
through their faith. And, the happy end
of this collaboration of faithful individuals, Esther and Mordacai, is the
reason for Purim celebration to the Jews.
Jesus in the Gospel Reading (Matthew 7:7-12) calls
us to pray like Esther and Mordecai, who did not let her extreme anguish stop
her praying. And, she kept “asking, seeking, and knocking”, making her prayer
persistent and thus persevering in her prayer. And, she did not simply asked
God to remove the source of her distress but to give her what she needed to fight
the source of the distress.
The Gospel Reading assures that God provide us with
what we asked for, what we sought out, and knocked on for, in our prayers
(Matthew 7:8-11). And God did so to Esther and Mordecai. The fact that God
gives what we asked, sought, and knocked for does not necessarily mean that all
we need to do is to pray. As we read Ester 5 to 10, we are reminded that Esther
and Mordecai worked through what God granted in response to their persistent
prayers.
Finally, Jesus in the last line of today’s Gospel
(Matthew 7:12) calls us to treat others as we want them to treat ourselves:
Do
to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the
prophets.
In connection to our need to pray with perseverance,
especially during difficult times, as Esther and Mordecai did, we need to keep
this “golden rule” of Jesus. It means that our persistent prayers are not just
for our own interests but rather oriented to the wellbeing of others in light
of Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 23:31-46; John 13:34.
The way Esther and Mordecai prayed is a good example
of how we pray with persistence (Matthew 7:7-8), trusting God’s providence
(Matthew 7:9-11), to care for others (Matthew 7:12). And, this reminds us that
salvation is communal rather than individual.
*A, B, C, D texts in the Book of Esther are Septuagint
Greek texts inserts to the Masoretic text of the Tanakh. These texts are part of the Apocrypha
(Deuterocanonical books).
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