Tuesday 12 May 2015

The morning after the night before

Last year 175,000 people visited the Glastonbury festival to enjoy an excellent line-up of acts from across the world spread across 100 stages, along with circus performers, comedians and other entertainers. It was a heck of a party. Now I wasn’t there, choosing instead to dip in to the TV coverage, and I accept that means I get a sanitised version of events. I didn’t get to see the state the farm was left in afterwards, which required a clean-up operation of nearly six weeks costing almost £1 million. That’s a lot of mess for just three days of partying.

In the second chapter of Esther King Xerxes wakes from a much bigger party with an even bigger headache. During a lavish and extended banquet to win the favour of his military leaders, he has managed to turn a drunken squabble with his wife into a national crisis by effectively banishing the queen; this PR crisis is a public embarrassment and amounts to a royal mess of epic proportions. Now  in chapter two he's sobered up and realised that in the aftermath of that terrible decision he’s got a clean-up operation of his own to carry out, and the same trusted advisors who encouraged him to alienate his wife come up with the perfect solution…a nationwide search for a new wife.
It’s into this aftermath that we’re introduced to Mordecai and Esther, who play their part in the bigger picture of this book: God leading his people into rest. If we left it there, you might be tempted to think that they did this by some superhuman feat, or perhaps, as this is an account we find in the Bible there might be a miracle or two involved. However, Esther is a story of how God works through ordinary people like you and me.

We have Mordecai, a Jew living in exile and caring for his orphaned cousin. He’s trying to be a good Jew living in a non-Jewish society. Even Esther herself, who appears to be the total package (brains and beauty) is part of a subjugated people living in a strange land. This takes us back to our studies in Ephesians, doesn’t it? God’s people are called to be set apart and live differently even now, while still engaging in the culture they live in.

Mordecai and Esther are ordinary people, doing what they need to survive, and in chapter two we see some strange decisions we perhaps don’t agree with. Mordecai doesn’t put up a fight to stop Esther being part of what was a pretty grubby state of affairs as a member of Xerxes’ harem; in fact he tells her to hide her identity. As for Esther, she doesn’t shy away from the process and plays to win. Yet when Mordecai overhears a plot to oust the king, he’s in the right place at the right time – and Esther’s speedy rise to royalty no longer seems like a simple ‘rags to riches’ tale of a very lucky girl with a pretty face. Esther is in the perfect position to protect her king and save her people.  

This book isn’t a parenting manual, or a guide for teenage girls on how to live for God. However, what it does show is how God works behind the scenes, not always with great drama, but in small ways, through ordinary people and their messy lives – our messy lives - for his glory and our good.

Wednesday 6 May 2015

The epitome of control?

Hollywood taught me that King Xerxes, the Persian ruler who features so strongly in the story of Esther, was an eight-foot tall megalomaniac with an enormous all-conquering army who wore far too much jewellery to be practicable. It turns out that was only half true…


Accepting then, that my preconceptions of Xerxes were wrong, what do we know about him from the opening chapter of Esther?

He’s wealthy, famous, successful, and has a beautiful wife. He’d assembled the greatest army in the history of Persia, and plotted to secure their backing to commit to his war by wining and dining their leaders for six months, blinding them with bravado and the trappings of wealth and royalty, and blinding them with the beauty of his wife.  

This is one shrewd operator, and he’s in control. Or is he?

Ultimately, Xerxes controlled everyone around him, but he couldn’t control himself. After too much wine he gets flummoxed by his wife, who wasn’t happy to be ogled by his assembled guests, can’t make a decision for himself and accepts some strange advice that ultimately banishes her from the kingdom. Would he have acted so rashly if sober? Would he have been more in control?

Xerxes was proud and boastful, and here he's held up as a comparison to the real King. We’re deliberately shown the wow-factor of a flawed leader – Xerxes - in order to show the power of the almighty God and King.

Paul tells us that we have the Old Testament for our encouragement, endurance and hope, and ultimately to point us to Jesus – God’s anointed King, who is so majestic, and whose wow-factor is so great, that John can barely find words to describe him. Yes, Xerxes had awesome wealth which paid for a banquet lasting 180 days, but Paul tells us that pales into insignificance compared to Jesus’ riches in mercy and grace, wisdom and glory.
 
So for all of Xerxes’ displays of power he was a weak human just like us.  He thought he was in control, but he made mistakes and lived with the consequences in the same way we do.

Ultimately our efforts to take control of ourselves and our lives fail because of the self-destruct button we call ‘sin’. But God's blueprint is for us to live under his control and blessing. He knows that we get things wrong and reject him, but through Jesus he offers us true rest from our enemies of sin and Satan; he offers us forgiveness, and gives us the Holy Spirit to help us live a more controlled life.

So that’s our first impression of King Xerxes, but if we’re making comparisons, what’s your first impression of Jesus? He didn’t have the traditional trappings of a king but he had complete control over his life and death.

Remember the purpose of the author; this book is about how a covenant-keeping King brings rest to his people. Jesus is the king who will never lose control and he’s offering you rest today.