Esther 7:1-6, 9:20-22; Mark 9:38-50

 But Esther, though odd, is important, and read every spring in the synagogue, because it alone explains the Jewish festival of Purim. Purim celebrates God’s deliverance, much like the greater festival, Passover.  Except that the festival of Purim is more joyous – maybe even raucous – than solemnly sacred.

 That’s enough of an introduction.  I want you to hear the story in the same way a Jewish congregation might hear it, interactively, enjoying it with a bit of fun.  So, I’m going to tell the story, briefly.  As I do so, imagine our congregation’s children with us, the girls dressed as beautiful queen Esther, and the boys attired as her adoptive father, the brave and wise Mordecai.  None of the children ever want to dress as the evil and doomed Haman.  And here’s the best part:  for the next few minutes, as I tell you the story, when I say “Mordecai” or “Esther,” respond out loud with “Yeah!”  You can even put your hands in the air, in a gesture of victory.  Even more fun, when I say the name of the villain, “Haman,” make a hissing noise, or even say, “Boo!” and make a face of disgust.  In the synagogue, they use noisemakers designed just for this story.  But we’ll have to improvise with face and voice.  And remember, the point is to enjoy the story.  So, here we go.

 When they were captives in Susa, in Persia, God’s chosen people, the Jews, began to do well for themselves.  One of the faithful, Mordecai (Yeah!) became an advisor to King Ahasuerus, and his beautiful adopted daughter, Esther, (Yeah!) became the king’s wife.  Things went well for a while, until another of King Ahasuerus’ advisors, the wicked Haman (Boo!), became jealous of Mordecai (yeah) and decided to get rid of him and all the other Jews, too. Like other Jews before, and since, they found themselves in dire straits.

 Thank goodness those years before, Mordecai (yeah) had warned Queen Esther (yeah) that she might have to make a stand for her people and herself.  When the evil Haman (boo!) hatched his plot, she was ready.  Queen Esther (yeah) invited King Ahasuerus and his advisors, including Haman (boo!) to a great feast.  At the feast (not on the first day, notice, but the second day, when folks were all feeling pretty happy) the king invited Queen Esther (yeah) to make any request.  Though it involved some personal risk, she told the king of the plot against her and her people, and asked him for justice against her people’s foe, the treacherous Haman (boo!).

 The king was angry that someone would want to do such a thing.  He quickly decided to use the gallows (75 feet tall; about 8 stories!) that Haman (boo!) had himself constructed to hang Mordecai (yeah) and instead the king hanged Haman (boo!). 

 To celebrate this escape from genocide, and to remember that every generation needs courage to face its own dangers, the Jews celebrate Purim every spring by telling this story and by eating little triangular cookies called “hamantaschen,” recalling the tri-corner hat worn by their enemy, Haman (boo!). Purim also celebrates the goodness of God’s justice for the poor.  The last sentence of our lesson for today remembers the instruction to make the festival of Purim “days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.” (Esther 9:22, New Revised Standard Version)

 Thanks for your help in evoking the joy of this story.  Purim and Passover both celebrate deliverance, each in different ways, with a resultant different feel.  This story is a joyful reminder that God’s hand is at work in the lives of God’s people.  And it is almost playful reminder of an all too sobering truth: the powerful faithful have a responsibility to speak for the powerless. God acts for justice in our world, and we, too, have a responsibility to speak and act for justice as well.

 Merely remembering our responsibility to speak for the voiceless reminds me of the poem by Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoeller, who lived in Germany during World War II, and who wrote a poem critical of all the intellectuals and others in power who, following the Nazi rise to power, remained all to silent.  Here’s one version I found: 

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.”  (Wikipedia, “Martin Niemoeller”.)  Each of us carries the responsibility to speak for our neighbors because, as Mordecai taught Esther, as people of faith we are inevitably bound together in community.  A danger to one of us is a danger to all of us.  No person is an island.

 I suppose that’s why, finally, I’m struck by how Purim celebrates not only the hero and heroine of the story, Mordecai and Esther, but it celebrates this larger community of which we are all a part.  It’s a festival of food and fun, and, as we hear at the end of the lesson, the food and the fun are not just for one another, but for the poor as well.

 Purim, said one commentator, “was to be made unique by its exuberant gladness, the sharing of gifts of food with one another, and the giving of presents to the poor.  … This celebration is a remembrance of attempted genocide, [the Jews’] escape from it, and their continued life together in community.  [And] This story … stands as a critique of his ways of empire, of governments that benefit only a few and harm others.”  (Kathleen M. O’Connor, in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, pages 102-103.)God is with us, yes.  But never forget that God is in the world through us as well as beside us.  God needs us, even though we are naught but a company of sinners.  God needs us to hold each other in love, for we need our common strength.  God needs us to hold each other accountable, for we need our common wisdom.  And God needs us to hold each other with the graceful forgiveness born from our own humble acceptance of God’s forgiveness when we fail. God gives us each other for support, for guidance, and for the love born out of a common understanding that in this life, and most likely in the life to come, we need each other as reminders of God’s loving grace in spite of both our sin and our weakness.  Esther is ultimately a song of God’s grace in the midst of human brokenness. I hope you will understand that it is in this same spirit of grace that we will end our worship when we later stand to sing the final song today, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”  It’s a fitting coda to Esther, I think.  Like Esther, our closing hymn celebrates the triumph of truth and grace over evil and injustice.  As some of you know, James Weldon Johnson firsts penned the words to the hymn as a poem welcoming Booker T. Washington to the school where Johnson then served as principal.  Set to music later, it has become known as “the Black National Anthem,” because it speaks so eloquently of the grace of a people in the face of massive and systemic injustice born of slavery and racism.  In the face of all manner of suffering and injustice, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” is a hymn of hope.  Written in an emotionally trying and unjust time, it dares to dream a better world.  The little book of Esther does much the same.  And such a dream, such a hope, is born in every life that dares to live as God calls, rather than as the world tempts us.  We dare to enjoy our faith and live in hope, not because we are holy, nor because we are good, or nor because we are always true to our faith.  Rather, we live in hope because God, in Christ, sustains us with grace, and invites us to live as witness of truth, justice, hope and love in the world.  As the lesson says, not matter what our circumstance, we move “from sorrow into gladness.”

 That’s the message of Esther for all God’s people.

Amen.