Faces of Our Faith: Vashti | Esther 1-2:17 | 7.5.26

Amen.

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As you may have seen demonstrated just now, we are in the middle of a series called Faces of Our Faith, where we are collecting names of people, either in our families that we've known or people throughout history who we've learned about who inspire us and who are faces of our faith.

They could be people from the Bible, people from history, people we know, and we're collecting those names and uh uh assembling them, a kind of faith tree uh for us to remember those folks together this summer.

Um today we're gonna be taking a look at uh a face of our faith from the book of Esther.

Uh but the person is not the person in the title of the book, so be excited.

All right.

Um as readers, we tend to jump straight to, when we approach this book of the Bible, we jump straight to reflecting on the title character, Esther.

And there is very much to admire and be learned about from her.

But in fact, there's only one lectionary reading from this book in the three-year lectionary cycle.

And that reading doesn't take place until the second half of the story.

But today we're gonna take a look at the very first chapter.

Uh, and we're gonna we're gonna learn about a brave woman who chooses dignity over shame at great personal cost.

But before we dig in, let's pray and ask God to bless our time in the scriptures this morning.

Pray with me.

Well, Lord, your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

Give us grace to receive your truth in faith and love, and give us strength to follow on the path you set before us through Jesus Christ.

Amen.

The Book of Esther is one of the most unique books in the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that within its chapters, uh, not once is God mentioned.

And while at first this may seem odd for a Bible story, but God isn't directly named, the anonymous author has done something really clever.

This leaves us, as readers, always asking ourselves, where and how does God show up in this story?

That question guides us all the time as we look around in our daily lives, at the stories that are unfolding in our lives and in our communities.

We ask ourselves, where is God in this?

Can we see what God is up to in our world, even when it's not explicitly stated for us?

The book takes place in the years after the exile in a city called Susa.

This is the capital of the Persian Empire.

During that time, the Persians had taken down uh the Babylonian Empire, which took them into exile, and now they are being ruled by a king Ahazurus, Ahazurus.

Easy for me to say, uh, also known as Xerxes.

If you've ever seen the movie 300, you know, the guy with the chains and the people carrying him.

That guy.

That's the guy, the historical character this guy's based on.

Uh, and in this version of the story, uh, we from the get-go we get a picture of the king of Persia as an easily manipulated, egotistical, drunken doofus.

Okay, so that's the picture that's painted of this king.

In the opening verses, we learn that this all-powerful king has decided that the best way to serve his people is to host a six-month-long frat party for all the generals and nobles and governors in his vast kingdom.

They all come to the capital and they have a party for six months.

Then, after all of that rejoicing in his own greatness and in the power of his empire, he decides.

My guess is, this isn't explicit in the text, but my guess is he decides he needs to win back the goodwill of some of the people in his kingdom.

And so, how does he win it back?

I'm just guessing here.

Maybe they didn't love that he spent half a year spending a bunch of resources so that he could party with his friends.

So, to win back the public's admiration, does he build roads or bridges?

Does he fund schools or libraries?

No, he decides to host a week-long party on the Capitol grounds for everyone in the city.

The author spends three full verses, spends three full verses describing the extravagance of this party.

Verses six, seven, and eight in chapter one, if you're if you're looking at it, uh he describes all the grand decorations and the golden glassware, and notes that drinking was by decree without restraint, because the king had ordered his officials to do whatever they wanted to do.

And then in verse nine, we learn that Queen Vashti, the king's queen, has decided to create a separate banquet.

So she hosts her own banquet in the palace, inside the palace for the women in the city.

And so we're gonna pick up our reading right at this point.

Um, you'll see in the bulletin, I've listed kind of the whole text that we'll be thinking about, but I'm just gonna read verses 10 through 21 of this passage, okay?

Uh yes.

Vashti has created a separate banquet, and then we'll pick up the reading right here at verse 10.

Let's listen together for the scripture for the day.

On the seventh day of that week-long festival, when the king was merry with wine, he commanded the seven eunuchs who attended him to bring Queen Vashti before the king, wearing the royal crown, in order to show the peoples and the officials her beauty, because she was fair to behold.

But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king's command, conveyed by the eunuchs, and at this time the king was enraged, and his anger burned within him.

Then the king consulted the sages who knew the laws, for this was the king's procedure, to all who were versed in law and custom.

And those next to him were seven officials of Persia and Medea, who had access to the king and sat first in the kingdom.

According to the law, what is to be done with Queen Vashti?

Because she has not performed the command of King Asweris as conveyed by the eunuchs.

Then Mamukan, one of the seven officials, said, in the presence of the king and of the other officials, Queen Vashti has done wrong not only to the king, but also to all the officials and all the people who are in the provinces of the king, for this deed of the queen will be made known to all women, causing them to look with contempt upon their husbands.

Since they will say, The king commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come.

This very day the noble ladies of Persia and Medea who have heard of the queen's behavior will rebel against the king's officials, and there will be no end of contempt and wrath.

If it pleases the king, let a royal order go out from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, so that it may not be altered that Queen Vashti is never to come before the king again.

And let the king give her royal position to another, who is better than she.

So when the decree made by the king is proclaimed throughout all his kingdom, vast as it is, all women will give honor to their husbands, high and low alike.

This advice pleased the king and the officials, and the king did as Mamukin promised.

This is God's word for God's people.

Thanks be to God.

The rest of the story unfolds from this inciting incident.

The queen refused to be paraded in front of all of the king's drunken friends for their amusement.

And yet, in fear of what this refusal might inspire in the other women of the land, the king is persuaded to remove her title from her and to banish her from the empire.

They then proceed to do what many other wealthy and secure men have done throughout history, they hosted a beauty pageant, soothing their bruised egos by using their wealth and authority to surround themselves with young unmarried women.

I'm sure that if Sousa had been a little closer to the ocean, mega yachts and private islands would have also been a part of the story.

But what they don't know yet, and what the readers of Esther will soon find out is that what fragile masculinity had designed for objectification, the primary hero of the story, Esther, would use to save her people and to rid the palace of a vengeful nativist named Haman, the real bad guy in the story.

Esther was a Jewish orphan raised by her cousin Mordecai, and she's taken into the king's harem and wins his favor, and she becomes the queen.

Though she keeps her Jewish identity hidden at Mordecai's urging, Mordecai overhears an assassination plot against the king and reports it, quietly earning the king's trust.

The king yet doesn't even remember that he owes Mordecai a favor, but that comes back later.

Enter Haman.

Boo! We all boo boo at Haman.

You hear boo Haman.

When we hear about Haman, uh, whose ego also is easily bruised, when Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman, passing him in the street.

Haman doesn't just target Mordecai with his bruised ego.

He convinces the king to issue a decree annihilating all the Judeans residing in the empire on a day that would be chosen by casting lots.

Mordecai sends word to Esther, who's now in the palace.

He tells her her silence will not save her.

And who knows, but she might have come to the kingdom for such a time as this.

Esther risks her life by approaching the king unsummoned, and instead of pleading immediately, she invites the king and Haman to a banquet, and then another.

And that delay lets the tension build.

Haman, meanwhile, builds a gallows.

A gallows that was meant for Mordecai to be hanged.

And the king has a sleepless night that leads him to remember.

He remembers Mordecai's act of loyalty that saved his life.

And the reversal sort of cascades from here, from this dream, right?

Haman is forced to publicly honor the man he meant to hang, and then is exposed by Esther at the second banquet as the architect of genocide against her own people.

And Haman, who is executed on the same gallows that he built for Mordecai.

I should tell you, this is not a kid's story.

The Bible often is not a children's book, but it is a powerful drama here.

And a second decree comes that lets the Judean people defend themselves, and they do.

So they turn mourning, they were mourning their own loss.

And through Esther, that mourning was turned into deliverance.

That which was designed for shame and subjugation and ultimately execution in the end becomes the downfall of those who would use them for evil.

And the salvation becomes the salvation of the outcast and the foreigner in this foreign land.

And the book closes with purim, which shares root for the word lots that were cast.

Purim is a festival that is declared to be honored every year.

Sorrow turns into joy, and powerless turns into deliverance, all without God's name ever appearing on the page.

And so the scripture invites us to ask, and I ask you now, where was God in the story?

Because we know God was somewhere.

Where was God in this story?

Where do we see the divine show up in this story of great reversal?

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born a free person in Baltimore in 1825.

She was orphaned as a child.

She was raised by an uncle who ran a school for free black children in Baltimore before the Civil War, a household where literacy and moral conviction were inseparable from the start.

And she would go on to become one of the most powerful voices of her century, an abolitionist orator who toured the country before the Civil War, often speaking to hostile crowds, and a poet, a poet whose 1854 collection of poetry became a bestseller.

She was a suffragist as well, who pushed the movement to reckon honestly with race, refusing to let black freedom and women's freedom be set against each other.

Her work probably inspired later civil rights movers to say, My freedom is not complete until you are free, until all are free.

Harper wrote at the intersection of her own experience and of scripture and justice and the dignity of women who refuse to be diminished, which is exactly why she turned her pen to Vashti.

Long before it was accepted in scholarly circles to read the Bible's verses for its overlooked women, Harper looked at this queen who chose banishment over spectacle and heard in her story something worth telling.

She saw in Vashti not the footnote that the text almost makes her, not the preamble to another story, but she saw a model of costly resistance.

In Vashti, Harper saw a woman who understood that some forms of obedience cost us too much.

And they asked us to trade our dignity and our moral foundations in support of the whims of those who are drunk with power.

So now let's listen to Harper's own telling of the story we just read in her poem, simply titled Vashti.

She writes, She leaned her head upon her hand and heard the king's decree.

My lords are feasting in my halls, bid Vashti come to me.

I've shown the treasures of my house, my costly jewels rare, but with the glory of her eyes, no rubies can compare.

Adorned and crowned, I'll have her come with all her queenly grace, and bid my lords and mighty men unveil her lovely face.

Each gem that sparkles in my crown or glitters on my throne, grows poor and pale when she appears, my beautiful, my own.

All waiting stood the chamberlains to hear the queen's reply.

They saw her cheeks grow deathly pale, but light flashed to her eye.

Go tell the king, she proudly said, that I am Persia's queen, and by his crowds of drunken men I never will be seen.

I'll take the crown off from my head and tread it beneath my feet, before their rude and careless gaze, my shrinking eyes shall meet.

A queen unveiled before the crowd, upon each lip my name, why Persia's women all would blush and weep for Vashti's shame.

Go back, she cried, and waved her hand, and grief was in her eye.

Go tell the king, she sadly said, that I would rather die.

They brought her message to the king.

Dark flashed his angry eye, 'twas as lightning ere the storm hath swept in fury by.

Then bitterly out spoke the king through purple lips of wrath, What shall be done to her who dares to cross your monarch's path?

Then spake his wily counsellors, O king of this fair land, from distant end to Ethiop, all bow to thy command.

But if before thy servants' eyes this thing they plainly see, that Vashti do not heed thy will, nor yield herself to thee, the women rest of neath our rule, would learn to scorn our name, and from her deed would come to us reproach and burning shame.

Then gracious king, sign with thy hand this stern but just decree that Vashti lay aside her crown, thy queen no more to be.

She heard again the king's command and left her high estate.

Strong in her earnest womanhood, she calmly met her fate and left the palace of the king, proud of her spotless name.

A woman who could bend to grief but would not bow to shame.

Friends, there's a reason our Jewish siblings retell and reenact this story every year.

It's because in our own lives, though not always in the same sort of heightened dramatic register as the Book of Esther, but in many ways in our own small and normal lives, large and small, we will be asked by those in power to shed a bit of our dignity and of our moral foundations in order to be a part of their club.

In order to protect their egos and remain a part of their team, and yet, as Vashti and Francis Harper show us, speaking up and refusing to participate in cycles of objectification and dehumanization is our call as people of faith.

To trust that even when we lose our titles or our privileges or even our lives, that there is a light within each of us that is just not worth extinguishing.

A dignity, a spark of divinity that not even the most powerful in the world can take from us.

So what does that look like for us this week here in our little corner of the world God so loves?

Not in Sousa, not in antebellum, Baltimore, or in any other part of our shared history, but here in East Tennessee, in our own ordinary rounds of grocery stores and school pickup lines and summer barbecues, it looks like refusing to participate in systems or conversations that scapegoat our immigrant neighbors.

Just because someone above us on the org chart or with a seat at the policy-making tables asks us to, doesn't mean we have to participate.

It means speaking up when it would definitely be easier to just go along to get along.

And it looks like asking harder questions about where our money goes and whose pocket it lines, noticing when our conveniences are propped up by someone else's exploitation, and demanding accountability and equity from systems that set up one set of rules for the wealthy and another set for the rest of us who are just supposed to be grateful for the scraps.

And I think most of all, most of all, above all these other things, it looks like refusing the oldest trick in the King of Persia's playbook.

The trick Mamukin pulled on Vashti, and the trick that every empire pulls on its people, convincing us that our neighbors are the threat, and that the real enemy is the family down the street, who votes differently, or worships differently, or prays differently, or crossed a border at some different time than our own ancestors did.

Empires have always stayed in power by getting us to fight each other instead of them, by pitting folks against people of other classes or genders or religions or nationalities, and Vashti did not fall for this trick, even though she was probably the most powerful woman in the world at the time.

Esther didn't fall for it, and we don't have to fall for it either.

Friends' dignity is not a finite resource that we have to hoard and protect by stepping on someone else.

It's a spark of divinity that is placed in every single one of us.

The immigrant neighbor, the queen who said no, the poet who remembered her, and all of us sitting right here this morning, may we spend our days refusing every invitation to trade that away.

And may we find the courage when it's our turn to say no, I won't do it.

May it be so.

Amen.