Re:Charge - Esther: A heroine in the shadows

The Full Monty: Esther 1:1 - 9:19 To read if you have time to take in the whole epic.

The Continental Option: Esther 4:1-17 Read this if you only have time for a few, key verses.

One Shot Espresso: Esther 4:14 ‘If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?’

Esther 4:14 is without a doubt the most familiar verse in this entire book. It is also the most misunderstood. Mention Esther to a group of Christian young people and this verse will in all likelihood be part of the conversation: ‘For such a time as this’. We refer to it when people become rock stars; win competitions; prove themselves massively talented; pass their exams. Is it for such a time as this that God has given you these blessings? What we miss entirely is the context.

What did Esther hear when her guardian Mordecai issued this challenge? Was it for such a time as this that she had been taken from her home; deprived of her liberty; forced to have sex with a man much older than herself who chose a different virgin each night, and only called them back if they truly pleased him? Was it for this that she was pampered for months to arouse him; that she walked in fear for her very life lest she displease him for one moment and be killed; that her exile had become a still deeper slavery; that she had said goodbye to any dream she’d ever had of marrying a man for love, of raising a family; of building a home? Was it for this moment that God had done all this?

Esther is forced to give away the one thing most precious to her - her virginity, her very body - and yet discovers that good can come from it. Consider these words from modern-day victims of trafficking. Can you hear an echo of Esther’s voice?

Sophie, UK:

‘Two years ago everything changed. I was trafficked. I was fooled. I was deceived by a man who said that he loved me. The tragedy is that I believed him. Now I know that love is not shown by forcing me to work on the streets, beating me up, force-feeding me and turning me into someone with no mind of my own. I had become like a frightened rabbit. I was terrified that he would kill me. Death too often felt like my only way to escape.’

Memey, Indonesia:

‘We were watched closely, there was no opportunity to escape. Our passports were taken away, and we did not have access to a phone either.’

Sopeah, Cambodia:

‘I had no hope and was full of fear. It was hard to breathe. I had no self-worth, and I didn’t want to live. Every day I had nightmares and could not sleep. I always seemed to have a fever too. I had panic attacks and intense fears.’

It is a great shame that in our love for Daniel as the hero of the exile we lose sight of Esther, the heroine. Her exile is more extreme than  Daniel’s ever was: her loss more real, and yet she finds, along with the great Jewish hero Joseph, that ‘God meant it for good’. What can we learn from this compelling and often misunderstood story?  Esther’s story is not an account of God turning gifts and opportunities into gold. It is a story of slavery redeemed

Redemption holds a place for trafficked people

It’s good to be reminded, in our often safe and middle-class churches, that God has plans for the victims of sex-trafficking. So many of the Bible’s heroes and heroines are slaves; so many start with nothing. Redemption doesn’t mean we all get to be rock stars. It means that God finds rubies in the rubble: that the purposes of God include the poor and destitute. Everything Esther has to offer, even her self-worth, is taken from her. But she has one thing left - one thing neither exile, nor slavery, nor forced sex work can take from her: her availability for the purposes of God. As a powerless slave, in fear for her life, she changes the destiny and future of her nation.

God is sovereign over all our circumstances

Perhaps you haven’t been sold into sexslavery. Perhaps you are not the play-thing of a king. But are there other ways in which your liberty has been curtailed? Are there circumstances in your life that mean you may not get what you want? Might it be that the purposes of God will be fulfilled not in your escape from these circumstances, but in your being available to God despite them? If you make a mental list of the things God has allowed for such a time as this do you include  the things you have struggled with: the exilic experiences you had hoped to escape from? Esther joins Daniel and Joseph, Jeremiah and Isaiah and, yes, Jesus and Mary, in asserting that God’s purposes can be discovered in the very place of exile.

God is active in the shadows  

I love the women of the Bible: the faith-filled heroines who, from the shadows of a male-dominated narrative, play their part in God’s unfolding drama; the midwives who save the life of the baby Moses; Deborah bringing out the heroism of the weak-willed men around her; Ruth and Naomi, from a place of total poverty, creating a vital link in the lineage of David and of Jesus; Elizabeth and Mary in a time of loss and occupation, when the nation had all but lost its hope, hearing the Holy Spirit whisper, ‘Messiah’. All too often it is men who hold the centre stage of history, thinking the play is all about them: but God is active off-stage among the poor and powerless - so many of them the women of the world - making miracles from their availability.

When you look at a group of young people, do you assume that God will work primarily through those spot-lit on the centre stage? Or have you understood that he works through  the poor; through those sold into slavery; through those whose story has not been a glory-fest of gifts and opportunities? Anyone can bet on the successful; it takes Jesus to change nations through the powerless.

If ever there was a time of year when we should see that God works in the shadows, it is now. Mary didn’t give up her virginity in quite the way that Esther had to, but she did give up her rights. She surrendered her dreams, her freedoms, for the greater cause of God’s unfolding kingdom. Faced with the trauma of an unwanted pregnancy; with the disgrace of being thought a tramp; with the knowledge that her youth and liberty were about to be taken from her, she prayed the prayer that every one of us, male or female, young or old, can learn from: ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38, ESV). 

TAKE AWAY Two easily digestible tweet-sized bites

THOUGHT: Esther, like Mary, surrenders to the purposes of God. Like Mary, she discerns his hidden plan. Like Mary, she moves forward, step by step, to make possible the life of the Messiah.

PRAYER: Even in exile angels address me. In my suffering the song of hope sings out. In the place of my powerlessness the purposes of God are found.