Today’s Scripture Reading (July 6,
2014): Esther 4
Would you
break the law for your faith? I remembering hearing the words being asked and
not being sure why they would be asked of me in this situation. I was sitting
in a seminar that was being led by an accomplished church consultant. Maybe it
is part of the easy religious time that I have grown up in and have become
accustomed to that made the question hard to evaluate. I mean, I am a
Christian. On one hand we believe that we are saved by faith and not by the
law, but on the other hand we do not recklessly disobey the laws of the land. We
are not a sect that believed that the laws of the nations only apply to other
people and not to us. In fact, in the places where I have lived the laws of the
nation were largely based on the laws found in the Bible. Do not murder, or
steal. Do not lie. Treat others as you would have them treat you. These, and a
few others, form the basis for the laws that we follow – and all of them are
found in the Bible. We believe that the people who are placed in authority over
us are placed there by God. We pray for them regularly. We want to be seen as
good citizens. One of the questions that has always bothered me is whether or
not the neighborhood would miss us if the church simply closed its doors and
disappeared. My hope is that they would, but that kind of respect is rarely
afforded to lawless anarchists.
But the
church consultant continued. Every time someone smuggles a Bible into a country
where the Bible has been outlawed, they are breaking the law. Every time a
church meets in a society where such activities have been banned, they are
breaking the law. Those Christians that hid the hunted Jews during the Second
World War, or the ones who hid the Tutsi and moderate Hutu from the Hutu
majority during the Rwandan Civil War were breaking the law. And I had to admit
that I had never experienced anything like that – I had never lived in a nation
where the Government had turned its power on its own people. I had never had to
make that choice. And because I have never been in a situation that demanded me
to break the law, I was not sure that I really could answer the question. But
my hope is that, in those circumstances, I would be willing to act against the
dictates of government, to peacefully advance the cause of Christ and to
protect the dignity of all of the people of the earth – regardless of their
personal belief or lifestyle. But how could I be sure having never experienced that
necessity.
The Jews are
being threatened with extinction. And Mordecai begs Esther to go to the king
and reveal the plot against the Jews. While earlier she had been encouraged to
hide her heritage, it would seem that now was the time that her heritage needed
to be revealed. But the problem was that entering into the presence of the king
without being summoned was against the law – and the punishment for such an act
was death. Yet, in spite of the stiff penalty, Esther decides that she will
break the law in an attempt to save her people. And for this reason the story
of Esther has always been of importance to the Jews, and is commemorated by the
celebration of Purim (late winter – early spring) each year.
But one of
the surprising characteristics of this passage is that even here we find no
mention of God. Esther asks Mordecai and the Jews to fast and promises that she
will fast, but there is no mention of prayer. The obvious interpretation is
that Esther is asking for a miracle from God – but neither the miracle nor the
giver of the miracle is explicitly mentioned. Instead, it is simply left to the
imagination of the reader. It is assumed that we know that the giver of the
miracle could be no one other than Yahweh, the God of the Jews. And since the
Hebrew people are the primary target of the story, that assumption is probably
an easy one to make.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Esther
5
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