Added to the list of things I love: teachings on classic Bible stories that reveal new insights about context, specifically culture. Shane Hipps never disappoints. As he was retelling the story of Daniel, I thought to myself, “I’ve heard this before. Except not about Daniel.” I had to wrack my brain a little but it finally came to mind: Esther. I’m completely enamored by her story, a slight little obsession. I think it’s my love of a good spa and her year of basically living in one.
No seriously. (And my last 2 friends will suddenly be “busy” on all Saturday nights).
In stark contrast to Daniel’s defiance we find Esther. Making dinner. Twice. Then she slips in that she’d really like her people to be rescued from the grip of looming death. Pretty please? If it were mere slavery, I wouldn’t bother you with such a matter.
A real scholar can provide insight into Biblical storytelling and narrative and how it powerfully spoke to the audience through both form and function, but I have none of those insights. I’m guessing these stories are similar for a reason. I believe that the commonalities reveal something about its nature. However, the distinct divergence from commonalities leaves me to question, as I’ve been doing with much of scripture, “What makes this remarkable? What does the different twist to this story reveal about the nature of God?”
I’m still in hypothesis-forming mode, but key to the story is when Uncle Mordi tells Esther, “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time is this?” (Emphasis mine. Singing it to the chorus of one of my favorite Helvetica is for Lovers songs).
Position. In the King’s house. Power and favor and loyalty and heritage and belonging and exiling and what does it mean to be faithful to God in this? What do we believe God’s faithfulness looks like?
I wonder if Esther’s hospitable approach had anything to do with the fact she was a woman. A young girl, at that. I wonder if a Daniel-inspired rebellion simply lived outside the bounds of possibility thanks to a culture that gave women such little status (read the first chapter and see how King Xerxes believed in a disposable nature of women). But at such a time as this, God can and will use any willing follower. Heroes of faith don’t only arise from the strong and strapping young gentlemen like Daniel, though he needs commended. The lowly, the least of these*, aren’t excluded from Kingdom work.
And kingdom work doesn’t just pick up a few stones or enter a den of lions. Kingdom work also makes dinner. It reminds the world that She’s beautiful and can be trusted.
Daniel and Esther remind me that there’s more than one way to convince a king. We can fight power with power and win. Or we can fight power with humility and win. God isn’t beyond any method; he just needs a willing heart to invade. He’s looking for a home for His spirit and how that seeps into the world around us cannot be controlled or reduced to a formula. God will move and he will save and he will do it through willing participants, asking them to pick up and use whatever tool is sitting next to them at the moment.
*Esther was also an orphan, a noted group within the “least of these”
