Selflessly I Will Go & Purposefully I Will Plea

06 December 11^th

 

 Mordecai persuades Esther to help.  To persuade is to cause to believe or do something by reasoning (Oxford Dictionary).  Why would this virtuous woman need to be coaxed into saving her people?  What, then does it mean to be a woman of virtue?  Esther is respected, upright, pure, and in a place of favor ( 2:9, 15).  Where then is her concern for the future of her people?  The future of humanity?  If she is Lady Wisdom then she must acknowledge how the present circumstance and present opportunities will influence the future.  Does wisdom include doubt, hesitation, unknowability, and faith to make a choice even though reason may never understand?  Is wisdom choosing to submit, comply, obey, yield, and surrender to the mystery of the cosmos, the intuitive nature of humanity, to be a part of something so much greater? 

What if wisdom, therefore, God, is both and instead of either or?  Maybe wisdom is simply a chosen dialogue, to be eternally in conversation, with great teachers.  Maybe these great teachers aren’t limited to the Name of God, the Bible itself.  Maybe it isn’t exclusive at all.  Maybe it includes the entire cosmos as a whole, excluding nothing.  Maybe that’s just it- wisdom is what transcends any boundary and gently holds the idea of exclusivity until it no longer exists.  Esther confronts exclusivity as she is asked to plead for the deliverance of her people, never forgetting that she too, a Jew, may not escape (4:13) Haman’s dreams of genocide (4:1????). 

Esther introduces wisdom as something wrestled, hesitated, forgotten, then discovered, spoken, submitted to, and lived.  By her own free will, she seeks it.  She obtains wisdom but does she live wisely?  So what if she seeks it?  What happens when she finds it?  Is it a means to an end?  What is her motivation?  Does she experience obligation or the peace beyond understanding that comes with the freedom of making a choice?  If she only seeks to find then there is no hope.  If she acknowledges the vastness and purpose she may or may not posses in the cosmos and find wisdom in the universes’ teaching, then there is hope and a future (Jer. 29:11-13?). 

Esther is ever presented with choices (4:12).  She can submit to Mordecai’s instruction or not.  Merely seeking wisdom isn’t the point, rather what one is submitted to is.  If wisdom is found, then yield to its teaching.  This Eshet Chayil, Rescuer, chooses to no longer need to understand the details of circumstance in order to have hope and trust in the purpose of her existence.  She freely chooses to approach the King Xerxes, though not summoned, which is punishable by death (4:11, 15).  Esther goes without expectation or all-knowingness into a place of encounter.  Selflessly she goes and purposely she pleas.  She chooses to trust and moves into an essential understanding.  Perfect Love never promises comfortablity, long life, or a life without suffering.  However, a life of encounter, of eternal relationship, of inclusion is.

The author of this book it thought to be Jewish.  This record of the institution of the annual Festival of Purium, which remembers the greatest deliverance of the Jewish people under Xerses’ reign, is geographically in Susa, the Persian capital 486-465 B.C.  The name of God is absent and His care for His chosen people is clearly shown. 

Active faith, confrontation, Messianic Kingship, the repeated use of messengers, living as a chosen people submitting and serving the God who is order in chaos are in-textual laces throughout this text.  There is a dialogue between wisdom and the human predicament.  (DEFINE HUMAN PREDICAMENT…HOPELESSNESS???)