“Little Book, Big Message: Esther” Based on Esther 4:1-5, 10-17, 7:1-10 Rev. Jacqueline Decker Vanderpol The Jewish holiday of Purim doesn’t get a lot of airtime in our world, but it’s the holiday based on the book of Esther. Thanks are owed to Har HaShem next door for loaning us some of their groggers for this service, and thanks to Robert for teaching me this week that these things have a name, and that it’s “grogger.” Groggers are a necessary tool for Purim, but we’ll come back to them. When I went to pick these up this week, Har HaShem was actively preparing for Purim – which is on Wednesday. They were setting up the staging and the costumes for their reenactment of Esther’s story. Andrew, their facilities manager, told me they like to change it up every year. Last year, the production was a mash-up of Esther and the musical “Hairspray.” A few years back, it was a mash-up with the musical “Annie,” with the little orphan Esther appropriately promising everyone that “the sun will come out tomorrow.” The reenactments are rather elaborate and intentionally comical, maybe even absurd. This isn’t unique to Har HaShem. This is how you celebrate Purim: with masks and costumes and general revelry. Think Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or Carnivale in Italy. In fact, that’s probably how costumes and masks got included in Purim a few centuries back, with its date falling so close to Fat Tuesday. Before the show starts this Wednesday at Har HaShem, the Megillah will be read – that’s the name for the scroll of Esther in Hebrew. And during the reading, each of the 54 times the name of the evil Haman is read, everyone will spin their groggers so loudly that his name can’t be heard and is effectively blotted out. Sort of like the “one who shall not be named” from Harry Potter. People will eat triangular cookies – hamantaschen, or “Haman’s pockets” – that remind them of the bribe Haman made to earn the privilege to kill. But, perhaps most important to the celebration of Purim, they will drink wine. A lot of wine. There are hilarious portions of the Talmud – the Jewish commentary on Scripture – that debate how much wine should be drunk. Some rabbis advocate “total intoxication” while other, more moderate rabbis, teach that “one should only drink a little more than usual and then fall asleep.” These are the actual debates about this religious observance. But, if you’ve read the book of Esther, you know they’re being true to the text. Because the entire story begins with a 180-day drinking binge given by King Ahasuerus for the army and the princes. The six-months of intoxication are topped off with a seven-day drinking feast for all of the inhabitants of Susa, rich and poor. While the king had his feast, Queen Vashti organized her own for the women, but she was summoned from her feast by the king. Ahasuerus was thoroughly drunk at this point, and after a little locker room talk with his courtiers, orders his wife to display her beauty in front of everyone wearing only her royal crown. Embracing her own Me Too movement, Vashti refuses, but, in this case, it isn’t the king who loses his job. Instead, with Vashti gone, he’s now in the market for a new wife. Ahasuerus holds what is essentially a beauty contest with all the young women paraded in front of him. Among the parade is Esther, who was orphaned at a young age and is now being raised by her cousin Mordecai. Esther stands out from the rest and is quickly made queen, all the while hiding her Jewish heritage. Outside the palace gates, a different drama is playing out. Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, spends his time hanging out at the entrance to the palace where many people come and go – including the king’s vizier, Haman. Haman thinks rather highly of himself and is horrified when this man, who is nothing special, refuses to bow to him. The indignity! Not one to suffer fools, Haman decides that not only Mordecai should be put to death, but all of his Jewish countrymen along with him. So the next time he has the chance, Haman says to the king: “There’s a certain people: they’re not like us, so it’s not appropriate for you, as King, to tolerate them living among us. I can see that a little extra be added to your treasury if you decree their destruction.” Compelled by the argument from Haman’s pocketbook, the King passes over his signet ring, so Haman can make it so. And then they draw lots, or “purim,” to know what day the extermination of the Jews should take place. Stationed at the palace gates, Mordecai is one of the first to learn of the decree. He puts on sackcloth, as if he’s mourning someone who already died, and he begins to fast. As word travels among the Jews of the empire, they do the same. Before long, even the insulated Queen Esther learns of the plan. Exchanging letters with her cousin through a palace servant, he encourages her to intercede, but she tells him that anyone who approaches the king without being summoned does so on penalty of death. Mordecai reminds her that she’s likely to die along with all the other Jews and then says, “Who knows? Perhaps you were born for such a time as this.” Convinced by her cousin and her conscience that she can’t keep silent, Esther fasts and prays for three days. Then she approaches the king and invites him to dinner with her and Haman. At dinner, Esther invites the men to dinner again the next night where she reveals to the king that she is Jewish and that Haman’s plan to exterminate a group of people is directed at her people. Then she pleads for their lives. In a final turn of irony, not only does the king protect her people, he orders Haman killed by hanging him on the gallows where Haman intended to hang Mordecai. And so the story ends. Other than the opening of the book where people are sloppy drunk for six months, this doesn’t seem like a book that would lend itself to revelry, what with its overarching theme of genocide. In fact, Hitler once said that if the Nazis were ever defeated, Jews would celebrate a second Purim. But, there’s more spiritual meat to the Purim celebration than it may first seem. You may have noticed reading the story this week, that while prayer and the Jewish people are mentioned, God is never mentioned. God doesn’t “do anything” in this book. s nowhere to be found. More than simple cultural appropriation, that’s where the masks and costumes come in. They’re a way of remembering God who “disguised” the divine presence behind human history. The masquerade is a way of remembering a God who has remained concealed, yet ever-present, in history. It’s a way of saying that Esther’s promotion into a place of power right as her people were threatened may not have been a coincidence. And the drinking, believe it or not, has spiritual significance too. The reason why you’re supposed to drink so much is so you get to a place where you can’t tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman. It replicates the experience of spiritual blindness in which we can’t distinguish between good and evil. Unfortunately, that’s not really the problem these days. It’s pretty easy to see evil. In fact, it gets a lot of headlines. While it may seem worse, it’s nothing new for violence and hatred to draw top billing in the news. It was the same 50 years ago when Mr. Rogers started his iconic TV show. While trained as a Presbyterian pastor, Mr. Rogers didn’t like how TV was presenting shows for children, so he began his own, where every morning, he would walk in the front door, change into his house shoes, put on his zip-up cardigan, and ask us, “won’t you be my neighbor?” Proving that the more things change the more they stay the same, Mr. Rogers sat down for a candid conversation with his young viewers in one show. He said: “There are people in the world who are so sick or so angry that sometimes they hurt other people. And they’re sometimes the ones who end up in the news. But, when we get sad and angry – you and I – we know what to do with our feelings, so we don’t have to hurt other people. When I was a boy, and I would hear about something scary, somebody getting badly hurt, or something like that, I’d ask my parents or grandparents about it. My mother would always try to find out about who was helping the person who got hurt. ‘Always look for the people who are helping,’ she would tell us. ‘You’ll always find somebody who’s trying to help.’ So even today, when I read the newspaper and see the television, I look for the people who are trying to help.”1 A couple decades later, when asked about his mother’s wisdom by a journalist, Mr. Rogers said, “There are always helpers. That’s why I think that if new programs could make a conscious effort of showing rescue teams, of showing medical people, anybody who is coming into a place where there is a tragedy, to be sure that you include that, because if you look for the helpers, you’ll know that there is hope.”2 We may not be so drunk that we can’t tell the difference between good and evil, between Mordecai and Haman, but we are far more likely to read a newspaper article about Haman, more likely to retell it to our friends the next day, more likely to pay for news that is salacious.