The Good and the Bad
On my first week at theology college I showed myself up, just a little bit. One of our lecture rooms was called Vashti and I thought this must be the name of a Hindu god. Saying that to a Baptist fellow student brought a smile to his face – “Ah yes”, he said, “you Unitarians aren’t the keenest of Biblical scholars are you”. The truth was out. I’d clearly never read the Biblical Old Testament Book of Esther – because Vashti, I subsequently learnt, plays a pivotal role in the first chapter of that book. What happens to her tells us something of the precarious position of women in that era. The scene is set. We are in the Persian empire ruled by King Ahasuerus and at a drunken banquet the king demands that his queen appears before his guests wearing her royal finery. Some interpreters consider this as a demand for Vashti to appear naked, naked that is apart from her royal crown. She refuses to demean herself in this way and the king is advised to banish or even execute her and to find instead another queen. Not surprisingly, Vashti has been viewed as an early feminist, her disobedience being described by Harriet Beecher Stowe as the “first stand for women’s rights”. She stood up for herself and in so doing lost her royal position and possibly even her life. These are the lengths you have to go to in order to have a theology college room named after you.
The Book of Esther is not generally considered to be a historical text. I doubt that Vashti, or her impossible to pronounce husband Ahasueris, ever really existed. But the background to the Book of Esther is a situation that the Jews have known repeatedly in their long history as a people. For this is a story of diaspora, of exile in a foreign land, of struggling to survive and longing to maintain a separate identity as a people. It’s also a story of sexual politics, of power and seeming submission. After Vashti is banished, the kingdom’s most beautiful young women are gathered together and given what seems to amount to a year -long spa treatment before being paraded before the king for him to choose his next queen. In the royal harem the young women receive “cosmetic treatment, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes and cosmetics for women” and only after the completion of these treatments are the girls taken, one each night, to spend time with the king. Esther won the king’s “favour and devotion” and was duly selected to replace Vashti as queen. With a plot full of sudden turnarounds and secrets at last revealed, the Book of Esther is as good as any 21st century soap opera. For we the readers know that Esther is a Jew, one of the people subjugated by the Persians, and we know that her uncle Mordecai has advised her to keep this detail of her race hidden from her new husband the king. What will happen next? What will be revealed? And what happened to Vashti? That we shall never know.
Now the twists and turns of this tale start to emerge. King Ahasueris is shown to be a vain buffoon who cannot hold his liquor. But for really evil behaviour we are introduced to Haman the king’s senior minister, the villain of the piece. So evil is he that in Jewish gatherings all around the world today, when his very name is mentioned, people are encouraged to shake rattles and stamp their feet so that his name cannot be heard. Because today is the Festival of Purim (24th February 2013) and on this day the Book of Esther is recited in synagogues, as it has been for millennia. We have a few rattle shakers here today.
Young Esther had been brought up by her uncle Mordechai, an astute man, who had guided Esther into her role as the new queen and who tells her of a plot to kill the king by two of his closest advisors. Once that plot is revealed and the plotters are hanged, Haman is announced as the new minister. Haman expects everyone to bow down before him now that he has such a powerful job, but Mordechai refuses, for the Jewish law does not allow him to bow down before any man. Haman is furious and vows to take his revenge, not just on Mordechai but on all the Jewish people. The name of this festival Purim comes from the word for casting lots – or dice – for this is how Haman decides on the date for his intended massacre. A royal edict is issued for all the Jews to be slaughtered on the 13th day of the 12th month. Mordechai hears of this and promptly dons sackcloth and ashes, mourning the impending fate of their people. Esther finds out and although as a women she is not allowed to petition the king her husband, even though she is married to him, yet she bravely approaches Ahasueris, and asks if he and Haman can attend a banquet she will provide. There she reveals Haman’s plot and he is taken to hang on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordechai. Justice seemingly is done, though this is not quite the end of the story.
It’s no wonder that the festival of Purim is the most joyous of Jewish festivals. It involves a great story with many twists and turns in its plot, feasting – including the eating of little three cornered sweet biscuits in the shape of Haman’s hat known as ‘hamantaschen’. And Judaism, which is generally quite abstemious as a religion when it comes to the consumption of alcohol, on this day Jews are encouraged to drink so that they can no longer distinguish between “Blessed is Mordechai” and “Cursed is Haman”. There are also requirements to give to the needy, to provide food for friends and to fast the night before the festival.
We could probably leave the story at this point, but The Book of Esther ends much more harshly. The royal edict requiring the slaughter of the Jews cannot be revoked but another edict can over-ride it. So King Ahasueris, having hanged Haman, now allowed Mordechai to write an edict giving the Jews permission to defend themselves. This led to an almighty slaughter in which thousands of Persians lost their lives, some 75,000 it is said.
So this story of Esther and her people is no longer a straightforward tale of good and bad, right and wrong. The people who were oppressed are now the oppressors. We could simply accept this as a story from thousands of years ago. Yet it has resonances in modern life. Hitler famously spoke of his ‘Final Solution’ as bringing another ending to the story of Purim. And I am perhaps not alone in finding painful mirrors in this story with the problems faced by Palestinians and Israelis today. The Book of Esther is the only biblical book that makes no mention of God. This story is a human story, a story of the powerful and the powerless, a story of a woman standing up for her rights and another woman using all her charms in order to save her people. And whilst it is always pleasurable for us to scapegoat someone, surely this story reminds us that the Hamans of this world are rarely all bad, nor are the world’s Mordechais usually all good, once you look below the surface. Isn’t that what it is to be human? To hold the potential within us for the greatest good and the greatest bad and to work with the tension between the two? Few of us turn out to be complete saints or sinners, and yet we are given the free will to choose, each and every day of our lives, which character we’re going to play today. So on this festival of Purim my hope for all people is
that our life circumstances allow us the freedom to be who we truly are,
that we allow others to be fully themselves and do not force them to fit narrow roles prescribed by society or our media
and that when we find ourselves demonising or idolising anyone, we remember the story of Haman and Mordechai, Esther and Vashti, and how hard it can sometimes be to decide who are the good and who are the bad.
Rev. Sarah Tinker
Sermon – 24th January 2013