Episode Transcript
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to my podcast. For those who don't know, my name is Renee, and I am super blessed to currently be serving as a pastoral intern at Victory Lutheran Church in Mesa. It's so much fun, and if I'm honest, a lot of work. I hope you truly appreciate all of your pastors and just all the people that make church work.
It's truly a wonder that God uses us sin filled mere mortals to share his good news. But he does. And because of my new adventure, you may have noticed my podcasts have not been as frequent, but I'm hoping to find a way soon to link my sermons. And also, I do a weekly devotion. So look for this soon on my website. I'm gonna find out a way for you guys to be able to listen to that also. In the meantime, please feel free to go to victorylutheran.com and click on watch. And you can see not only all my sermons and daily devotions, but the entire team's. So one of the projects I will be working on for this summer is a summer sermon series on my favorite book of the Bible.
Do you know which one it is? It's actually the Book of Esther. I did a podcast series on this book a few years ago, so feel free to go back and listen to it if you have time. But just as a refresher, the Book of Esther is found in the Old Testament, and it's one of only two books out of the 66 books of the entire Bible, Old and New Testament, that don't specifically mention God's name. Do you know which other book in the Bible doesn't mention the name God?
Well, the other book is the song of Solomon. Ooh. Remember that bit of trivia and you can impress your friends or, who knows, maybe win at jeopardy.
So my topic today has to do with Esther, but really it has to do with you and with me specifically.
Are we the heroes or. This may sound harsh, but the zeros? In other words, are we the good guys or the bad guys?
So, when you read through Bible stories like Esther, do you often identify with some of the characters? I know I do. I mean, these stories are about real people with real problems. I remember reading through many of the stories as a child, and I always saw the stories in terms of heroes and zeros. So for this episode, I want us to reflect on who we identify with in the story of Esther.
Are we the hero or are we the zero?
As you might recall, the Book of Esther highlights a jewish woman named Esther, but her original name was actually Hadassah her name became Esther when she became queen, and this was to hide her jewish identity.
Maybe we should stop right there. Changing her name to protect your identity seems like not a bad idea, especially for a jewish woman who lives in Persia. After the babylonian exile from Jerusalem, not all the jews returned to Israel after they were released by Cyrus the Great. After spending 70 years in captivity, some of the offspring, Esther included, stayed behind in Babylon. But it wasn't a great life. They actually faced many hardships, prejudice, and super difficult choices. They weren't living in a land that was hospitable to practicing Judaism. Now, perhaps you know of people whose families changed their names to escape persecution, religious or ethnic. You or someone you know may have changed your name to protect yourself from an evil person, so you might actually be able to identify with Esther Lemma. So, over the next few weeks, as I work through my Esther sermon series, we're going to be faced with some really difficult truths that I'll try to point out in the podcast.
In the book of Esther, the reader grapples with some tough stuff about God and the world around us. And the amazing thing is that if we are honest, we might just start to see ourselves in some of the less than savory characters, not just the heroes.
Why?
Well, because if we're honest, we don't always act heroically. We might want to, but we don't. We don't always act nobly, and we definitely don't always put God first in our lives.
And therefore, we're not always focused on the good of the neighbor. Often we're focused on the good of self.
According to psychologists, we're actually not very objective when it comes to understanding ourselves, our motives, or even the world around us. We think we're always the good guy if we have high self esteem, and we think we're always the bad guy if we have low self esteem. You see, our lens is cloudy when we look in the mirror by being either too critical or way too prideful.
So I'm going to challenge us to be more objective with our evaluation of our sinful selves by describing some of the characters in the Book of Esther.
In our current media focused culture, would you assume that people in general are more positive about themselves or negative about themselves based on what I just told you?
Well, according to scientists, never has there been a time when we were more obsessed with appearance than our current selfie age. And many argue that this obsession with selfies and manipulation of images can work one of two ways. It can turn some of us into narcissists. Not surprising. While others may also experience greater body image dissatisfaction. Also not surprising. Turning them into self loathing.
We, in other words, see the world through the lens that we see ourselves.
Do we see ourselves as heroes or zeros? Are we the villain, the victor or the victim in the story?
So here's the truth about the book of Esther. It's really not about Esther at all. I mean, it is, but it's really all about God.
Even though God is not specifically mentioned, the book is about how God moves in spite of all our unbelief, disobedient dysfunction and pain, which is sometimes self inflicted, sometimes inflicted upon us and sometimes caused by us towards other people.
In other words, we're not always the good guys.
If someone wants to follow you around all day and write down everything that you say you think you do, what do you think? Would the book be a best seller? I often think about the royal family and how tough it must be to literally not be able to go the grocery store without someone judging your posture, your clothing, the store you came from, whether you look happy, sad or indifferent.
So if someone followed you around all day, every day, what would the story be?
A drama? A tragedy? A comedy? Good guys versus bad guys.
What would your story be rated? Could the story of your life be read to children or would the rating make it parental guidance suggested or worse?
The point is, as we study Esther or really any book of the Bible it's easy for us to divide the story into the good guys and the bad guys. In fact, when the story of Esther is told in jewish families every year at a holiday called Purim, the kids are encouraged to boo every time they hear the name Haman.
My question is, is your life worthy of being read out loud? And would children be booing or cheering for you? Maybe it's fair to say they'd be doing a little bit of both. Right?
And Esther Heyman, just to remind you, he's the villain of the story.
He's very self promoting. He's described as a man with an insatiable quest for power and wealth.
He's a lover of pleasure.
And this is kind of interesting. He seeks undeserved accolades. Interesting idea to ponder. Haman doesn't care if he has earned the praise himself or if he is receiving credit for something someone else has done. Doesn't matter as long as he's the one receiving the affirmation.
In the story of Esther, Haman lets his pride and ego cloud his judgment to the point where he's willing to commit genocide just to rid himself of the Jews.
Why? Well, he doesn't understand the Jews. He doesn't trust the Jews because they answer to a higher power, aka God, even though God's name isn't mentioned. And the Jews don't feel that they need to answer to the king, which freaks Haman out, since the king is his main source of affirmation. Haman wants the Jews destroyed because they are a people whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king's laws.
Therefore, Haman, in the story, proudly tells the king it's not in your majesty's interest to tolerate them. And he shares this bit of gossip with the hope that he's gonna ingratiate himself to the king and becomes the king's sole confidant. Boo his right.
Or if we're honest, are we sometimes like Haman? Now, Haman doesn't understand a group of people like I told you. Maybe he's threatened by this group of people. They don't look like him, they don't eat the same foods as him, and they worship someone Haman doesn't understand.
Haman's also incredibly insecure, and he wants to make sure he's the one to tattle to the king about the potentially threatening behavior of the Jews.
I find it interesting that in some ways, this describes the Sadducees and Pharisees of Jesus day. Now, while they didn't want to wipe out an entire race of people, since they themselves were Jews, they certainly felt threatened by Jesus, and they wanted to eliminate the threat because they didn't understand him.
Did Judas betray Jesus because he wanted to be the one to turn him over to the Sanhedrin to demonstrate his own standing among the disciples?
Interesting thought.
And have we ever tried to impress someone with our knowledge of the situation?
Have we ever tried to take credit for someone else's success?
Or have we ever ridden on the coattails of someone else's success without bringing this to anyone's attention?
Perhaps sometimes we're the villain.
Well, the truth is that every single one of us, when left to our own devices, will focus on our own self preservation. When others threaten our way of life or challenge our understanding of how things should be, we're uncomfortable, and we want to remove the threat, be it Jesus, the Jews, or the guy in the cubicle next to us, we don't always want what is best for our neighbor.
Okay, what about Esther? Well, she was part of a harem, a beauty pageant of sorts to replace the displaced queen.
She subjected herself to a year of pampering just to be presentable to the king.
Villain, victim, heroine.
Well, we perhaps shouldn't be so quick to judge. She was a poor jewish peasant woman who was really in no position to say no to the advances of a king. The grooming, was it a necessary evil or indulgent pampering?
How many men and women today undergo eye surgery, neck surgery, hair dying, tummy tucks, whatever else they feel it necessary for them to present their best face forward for their careers or to secure a spouse or just to make themselves feel better about themselves?
Is this you?
And if it's not you, do you judge those who undergo these procedures?
Is it self indulgence, self preservation?
Hero or zero?
And what about King Ahasuerus? He was partying for months. Months? That's what the Bible says, to try to win the favor of the surrounding leaders, and he wanted them to aid him in winning a major battle. Just think like world domination.
He felt that he needed to show strength and wealth by feeding the masses the best food and offering the best drink for months on end to demonstrate he could afford it. He wanted the surrounding leaders to see him as a leader of strength so they'd get on board with his plan for, as I said, world domination.
So is he a good guy or a bad guy?
And before you're so quick to judge, ask yourself, have you ever tried to impress your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, potential clients, by demonstrating your financial strength or your skills in a particular area in order to impress them and position yourself favorably?
Maybe.
We also learned the king has a temperature, and he flies off the handle when he doesn't get his own way.
Do you know anyone like that?
Another character I want us to consider is Vashti.
This is the king's first wife.
In the story of Esther, Vashti refuses the summon of her husband.
It sounds like he's been drinking for days on end, so he's probably not super sober.
And the king summons her to come before him and his guests.
Now, we have to be careful to not speculate on her reasons for this refusal, because the author really doesn't go into detail other than describing the fact that there had been large amounts of drinking before her summons.
Well, is she a hero or a zero?
Is she a sympathetic character? After all, she's a female who was in a potentially vulnerable situation, being paraded in front of a large group of men who maybe had been drinking.
We do know that the men were being entertained by her husband and that Queen Vashti was holding a separate gathering with the women.
Was Queen Vashti justified in her refusal, or was queen Vashti being disrespectful?
Her actions culturally are a trifecta of no nos. She's a wife refusing the summoning of her husband. She's a subject rebelling against her sovereign.
Have you ever rejected the call to be somewhere or to do something you didn't want to do?
Have you always respected your spouse? Spouse? Have you always acted in a noble way with what you have requested of your spouse?
Is Vashti a heroine here, or was this a situation where submission to the authority of her sovereign was her duty?
Have there been times when you didn't respond well to the summoning of a boss, a leader, a spouse, a friend?
So far, can you identify with anyone in the story?
The selfish king, the defiant queen?
What about all those party revelers who are just along for the ride? Free food, free drink? Not a bad deal.
Haman, he's a bit of a self promoter who takes credit for everyone else's actions.
And then there's Esther, who at this point is being led down a path of pampering and self indulgence.
Hero, sero, villain, victim.
The point is we look at the characters and stories in the Bible not as a how to book, but as a true reflection. If we're honest of our own sinful nature, we're Haman, vashti, Esther, the king.
And sometimes, yes, we are the good uncle Mordecai.
But now we're just at the middle of Holy Week and the promise of the resurrection is important for us to remember because it's only through the life giving blood of Jesus that we're able to look outside of ourselves and truly love our neighbor. It's only because Jesus died for us and has forgiven us all our sins that we're even able to know that when we've acted more like Haman or the angry king, Jesus still calls us back to him and reminds us we're his.
And honestly, the only identity we need to focus on is that we are beloved children of God. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and look for another one soon. In the meantime, have a blessed day.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: Renee Bennett is a student of Luther House of study, pursuing her master's of divinity. Since February 1, Renee has been serving as an intern associate pastor at Victory Lutheran Church. Her goal is to complete her Master of Divinity later this year and become an ordained pastor. Since 2020. She has been producing podcasts on various Old Testament and New Testament topics. She has been to Israel twice and has been a student of the Bible for over 30 years. She's had various ministry positions in youth leadership, Bible study, lutheran social studies services, and most recently she is a member of the Unite Leadership collective that works to equip the priesthood of all believers. She would like to direct you to her website, studentofthebible.com, where you can enjoy her over 100 podcasts and her recent addition of blogs on various contemporary as well as biblical topics. Please also follow her on her Facebook page, Student of the Bible for updates on the latest podcasts and blogs. Renee welcomes any feedback or suggestions for future podcast episodes.
