Substance - not style!

A sermon preached at Highbury by Becky Hartwell on Sunday, 6th March

The story of Esther is an interesting one and I have been fascinated by it for many years.
Just a normal, beautiful girl chosen to be queen. It’s the stuff that good childhood films are made of. It has a lot of the ingredients for a good film as well, although maybe not a film for children after all.

It has intrigue, courage, a bad guy, a makeover, a hero, romance, murder, and central to this, a story and a decision that could have a good or bad outcome but ultimately the decision has to be made and an outcome will happen.

But let me give you a quick summary of this story.

We are in Persia, King Xerxes is reigning. Some Jews have returned to Jerusalem after they had been exiled, some have not. During a banquet the King demands his wife join the guests, she refuses and based on some advice from the Kings experts he fires her from being the queen. This means he needs a new queen. The net is cast far and wide for beautiful women. During all this we find the wise man of our story. He is a Jew in exile called Mordecai and he is the uncle and carer to his orphaned niece, Esther. He puts Esther forward as a potential queen.
She is chosen and like the other beautiful ladies also chosen she is given a year to get ready for the King. They have beauty treatments, special food, their own servants and so much more. It is like a Disney movie. BUT, on advice from Mordecai, Esther hasn’t told anyone she is a Jew. Now everyone who sees Esther likes her. It is not just the beauty on the outside but her inner beauty that gets her noticed above the other women and eventually she is chosen as queen. One day Mordecai discovers a plot to kill the King. He tells Esther about this and she shares it with the king. It is recorded in the daily court record that Mordecai did this for the king.
But of course, this is just the start of our story, the introduction to the characters. This is only the first 30 minutes of our film. We next have our introduction to the bad guy. We are at the start of our reading.

Haman is one of the people who work for the King, he is given a rank higher than all the others. All royal officers have to bow to him and here we have a problem because Mordecai refuses to do so. This makes Haman so angry that he not only decides to kill Mordecai for his actions but ALL the Jews. He convinces the king to allow him to do this. An order is sent out to tell people to attack and kill all the Jews on a certain day.

And here we have a crucial part of our story. Mordecai tells Esther about the planned extermination of the Jews, he tells her she has to go see the King, to change it. But as we heard there is a rule about anyone approaching the King in the inner court without being asked. Unless the King holds out his golden sceptre the person will be killed – we know about his situation with the previous queen and what her actions got her and Esther has not been called. So Esther has to make the decision and Mordecai tells her to think about her situation, finishing with one of the most famous pieces from this book, “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Esther decides to go to the King whatever the consequences but first she prays and fasts for three days, not alone but with her attendants and all the Jews in Susa.
So that is the story so far and I am going to pause there. Already we have heard so much that can be translated into our lives. One of the things I think this book of Esther shows us is character.

We see what it is to have a good character and what it is to have a bad character. We have examples of great men and women but examples of a person who has been eaten up inside.
Esther is talked of as being a beautiful woman. Not just a woman who is beautiful on the outside but one who is so beautiful on the inside that everyone who meets her likes her. It takes more than outer beauty to be like that. Have you ever met someone who seems to be beautiful on the outside but not on the inside, not with beautiful personality. The more you get to know them the uglier they appear. There are people we know who are incredibly beautiful to us, not because they would appear on the front of the best magazines, they would never be showcasing the new fashions on the Paris catwalks but because their inner beauty shines forth. Inevitably all you see is the person of love, of care and of true beauty. Inner beauty is something that people want to be around and that was the case for Esther, even the King could see her inner beauty.
Jesus is a person who we have no real idea of his looks, he could have been the most attractive man of his generation or he could have been really ugly. However, one of the prophecies from

Isaiah 53 states, “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” To quote one of my grandma’s he probably wasn’t a looker, but he had something different about him. People came to hear him speak to be around him. He was a man of character, a man we can aim to be like.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to the children at Transformers, the junior school youth group, about David. The man who became the greatest King of the Israelites was not chosen by God based on his strength, his height and his looks, if that had been the aim of God’s choice he probably would have chosen one of his older brothers. God sent Samuel to David because he could see his heart. He wanted a king based on the heart that was inside him. For David to realise all of Gods plans he had to have substance and not just style. David made his mistakes but God was looking at his heart. His words to Samuel were, “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
Now that is great news in one way, you don’t have to be an oil painting to be loved by God. God looks at us differently he sees the people we are, not the people we have on show through makeup, hairdressers hard work and everything else. But in another way it can be scary, God knows the person we are deep down, the person that maybe we try to hide, the person behind the mask we put on every day so that we can get through the things the world throws at us. God looks at the heart. Maybe, and I could definitely spend time listening to myself on this one, maybe if we spent as much time on our inward, spiritual selves as we do on our outward appearance we would be able to drop the mask and allow our hearts to glow outward as Esther’s did.

I am sure Esther was beautiful but she was more than that.

Mordecai is also someone who we can use as an example to our lives. Mordecai was a man who stood up for his beliefs. Mordecai didn’t bow because he was told someone was important. Now the book of Esther doesn’t mention God specifically by name at any point. But this is not the only incidence of a Jew refusing to bow to something named as important, we see it in the book of Daniel. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow down to a gold statue and because of this they were thrown into a fiery furnace. Mordecai was faced with a decision, was he going to be a man of integrity and not go against his faith, after all it could mean serious consequences or would he bow. It was just a bow, how much did it matter.

In life we are faced with decisions, decisions that might challenge something we always believed, something we have stood by in easier circumstances. Maybe it is something small, do we take the extra change we have been given at a shop or do we give it back, do we tell a little white lie rather than have to say we just didn’t return the call or put the letter in the post when we said we would. Do we listen to an offensive joke and let it go or do we challenge the person who made it? Life can be full of these situations. Mordecai was a man with integrity no matter what the cost, he is a great example to our lives.

We have others in the book of Esther who show us good or bad parts of someone’s character.

One of the main people who is an example of how not to be is Haman. Haman is an awful man, if this was a pantomime he would be the one we would be booing at.

Haman cannot enjoy his moment of being powerful, recognised by the King. Instead he sees the one who disobeys him and makes it his mission to destroy him. In fact not just destroy him but destroy those who have the same faith as him. Now this is an extremely angry and worrying man. But maybe we can even see parts of ourselves in his character.

Have we ever been faced with a situation where many have complemented us but one hasn’t and just fixated on that? Or maybe where lots of good things have happened but we have let ourselves been eaten up by the one bad thing. Haman shows us what it is like to let the minor things attack us. The things that can slowly destroy us, stopping us from being the people we could be, stopping us from embracing all that is planned for us. We don’t know what, if anything God had planned for Haman but Haman let himself become angry by things he felt undermined his power. Rather than dealing with the situation in a calm way he decided to exterminate all of Mordecai’s people. Is there something in our lives that is consuming us, are we letting it get in the way of all the good things or the things that are important in our lives? Do we need to pass it to God and ask him to take away our suffering, or anger, or problems so that we can walk away?

But this book isn’t just about character, I think it touches on many things including taking risks. Now race week is coming up, I’m surely not encouraging you to gamble on a particular horse for Gold Cup, to take those sorts of risks. Well, let me read a story that is about the wrong sorts of risks.

This is a true story about a man in Russia survived jumping out of the window, twice. The 22 year old jumped out of an open kitchen window while very drunk and survived the 15m fall without barely even a scratch. But then he walked back into his apartment and did it again! When the man, now teetotal after giving up drinking, was asked why he did it, he said, "I have no idea why I jumped the first time but when I came back up and I heard my wife screaming angrily at me I thought it was best if I left the room again - out of the window."

Now that is just an amusing story that I think displays what I mean by a stupid risk. The story of Esther is not about risking money on gold cup or jumping out of a window with a drop on the other side. The book of Esther is about taking risks for God and praying to him about it. Esther doesn’t just say, “right, I’m going to the King’s court right now.”

Esther talks to Mordecai and then she fasts and prays for three days. She asks for her attendants and all the other Jews in Susa to pray as well. Esther needed great courage to approach the King with an understanding of what the consequences could be. She doesn’t do this recklessly though, she prays about it, she has the prayer support of all those around her. Bad things can and do happen, the bible is full of these. The prayers were not about hiding herself from these, thinking “It will be all right on the night”. I feel the prayers were about focusing her mind on the work and support of God and realising that no matter what the consequences may be she had been put in the place she was for such a moment as this.

This wasn’t a stupid risk, although I’m sure it was a terrifying one, it was a risk that was left to God.

Maybe you are facing a situation that involves risk at the moment. Risks to do with your relationship with God. In John 20 it says “ “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Trusting in God is taking a risk. Praying to a being you haven’t seen when there are people around us living different lives is a risk. Looking to God in decisions, use of our time, the way we respond to people is a risk. But it is a risk that we can see the results of. There are people throughout the bible, people around us in church and our lives who are also taking these risks. Like Esther we are not alone.

Maybe we are faced with a particular risk right now. Is there something we can be asking for prayer support with, just one or two people to be praying about it with us? Esther was not alone in her risk taking, as she walked to meet with the King she had the support of Jews throughout Susa and God was with her.

Now I don’t want to spoil the ending for you but I think I am going to have to. However, you can
read the middle bit of how we got to the end for yourselves.

Let’s just say the story of Esther ends well. In fact the Jews, on a particular day, the day they were meant to have been killed, celebrated the feast of Purim. The feast of Purim is still celebrated today. During this celebratory day there is a recitation of the book of Esther, a celebratory meal, people give each other food and drink and charity is given to the poor. What a way to celebrate what happened in the book of Esther. People are saying thank you to God.

How often do we forget to say thank you to God for something we have previously asked him for. The book of Esther can teach us so much, to pray before taking risks but to return and say thank you when God answers our prayers. I find myself asking God for something but not always thanking him for that which I asked him for. Something that fills my head, my worries once gone is forgotten. God has answered my prayers and because of it I forget. The children we have at Sunday Special are fantastic at saying thank you to God. There have been occasions when we have said thank you for every possible thing and reminded them that we can pray about other things as well. But every month they always have something to say thank you for, it is a real life lesson. Do they do this because their lives are easy, no, I think to be a child in our world is actually a difficult thing. Do they do it because they can’t think of anything else to pray for, maybe sometimes but not always. Do they do it because they see so much to be thankful for. I suspect yes.

We can learn from Esther and from our own children, remembering to say thank you to God.

Maybe there is something that we had forgotten to say thank you for. In the prayer time coming up maybe we can grab that opportunity with both hands.

Finally I want to leave you with this. I said earlier that the book of Esther does not mention God by name. Some people think it is a book of coincidences, the things just happened at the right time in the right way. I was once told by someone a lot wiser than me that there are no such thing as coincidences but God working through situations to help things happen. Some Jews during Purim dress up in masks and hide their faces to remember that God was there during the events of Esther. Some believe that God’s name is absent to highlight the point that God remained hidden throughout the story but was present and played a large role in the outcome. And in fact in our world, today, although God isn’t obviously present at all times he plays an important role in the lives of everyone.

I think that God is always with us, this is something I seem to say a lot but I think it is because we need reminding of it. One week everything might be okay and then suddenly everything changes and it is not. We can forget the support we have always had. God is always with us, through the dark times, through the sadnesses.

There is something that was shared in the parade service last month that I think is very telling. I have never had a friend die on a cross but I have experienced pain, sadness, confusion and guilt. I have never experienced being a queen, faced with the situation that to share things with the King could result in my death and the extermination of thousands of people. Can this story be translated to our lives? Well, I have experienced and seen prejudice, I have experienced fear of what my words can do, I have experienced struggles as a female. There are bits of the bible that relate to us, our world, our experiences. The bible can be translated into all our lives.

Maybe when we go home we can read the bits of Esther we didn’t hear about today, the bits that give us the missing parts of the story.

Maybe we can search for where God is at work in the book of Esther and in our own lives.

Maybe we can look at our character and see what is missing, how can we be more like Jesus? We can ask him to help us through this.

Maybe we can take a risk in our relationship with God, remembering to pray about it first, and even asking others to pray with us.

In March the annual feast of Purim will again be celebrated. This year it will be sunset on the 19th March to nightfall on 20th March. Is this a day we could spend saying thank you to God. Inviting people round for food and celebrating all that God has done for us over the last year. Saying thank you isn’t just one day we put in our calendar but we can still make the most of it and celebrate all that God has done for us and those around us.