Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22

Okay, Esther, this is your one shot in the Lectionary. You aren't a prophet. You don't even say much about God in your book. You aren't in the series of books about the kingdom. You are a story of a Jewish woman who actually has some effect on what people do, not just a womb that bears a first born son. It is an actual tale, not some thinly veiled "just so" story telling us why to believe or what to believe. It's not history, but there were Jews living throughout the Greek empire at the time, so a story of Jews in Persia could resonate with any number of them or their progeny today. It's a story of hope for exiles.

This passage is peeking at the end, so I'll catch up you a bit. King Ahasuerus treats his queen like chattle and Esther replaces her because she's beautiful. Esther's uncle Mordecai, who raised Esther refuses to bow down to Haman, the king's chief official, so Haman decides Mordecai and all Jews should be killed. Haman gets the hapless king to go along with it. Esther foils the plot with diplomacy and trickery and gets the king to hang Haman on the gallows that were built for Mordecai (Chapter 7).

The Lectionary skips over the confusing chapter 8 where it is either determined the Jews can defend themselves or can just slaughter their enemy since Haman said they could slaughter the Jews. Either way, since they killed thousands of people, there should be a party. And that should be celebrated every year. And so it was and still is. Apparently some synagogues have kids act this story out. I wonder how that goes.

Simply pointing out the evil would be too easy. Throughout, Mordecai and Esther have navigated the world of evil officials and bumbling kings, like most of us do all the time, although for most of us it's politicians not kings. Choices are rarely easy. We have our heritage, our community, our nation and our futures to consider. Becoming queen may not have fit with her heritage, but what would have been the fate of her people if she had not. The pivotal famous verse at 4:14 sums this up. "Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this"

In skipping the violent part of these chapters, the 3 times the Jewish people refuse to plunder is also skipped. This is a tradition going back to Deuteronomy and Joshua. Feasting after battle is also a tradition. Keep in mind, wars did not go on for years like they do now. A two or three day battle often settled things, and making peace and giving of gifts followed quickly as a form of healing. The Lectionary gives you the option to avoid this difficult discussion of violence. You will need to judge your audience and decide how to handle it.

Just reading this text does not give us the whole picture either. We are reading text that was controversial even before it was added to the Old Testament canon. Additions were made in the later Greek versions, with God taking more of a role, instead of having this be a story of how people have to deal with their private faith and their public positions. These changes tell us more about how Jewish leadership has wanted us to view their past instead of giving us a window into that distant past.

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

Numbers doesn't get covered much, but part of this week's entry was covered last year on Pentecost. Must be important. I can't tell if this is a story of how it's cool that everyone can prophesy, or if it's something to do with how you get selected to prophesy. Much has been made of this and who knows how this text has changed. What we lack is any evidence of who these people were, what they thought and who wrote all this down.

Mark 9:38-50

As I mentioned 2 weeks ago on James, hell is getting correctly translated more often these days. This passage goes on a bit more at length about the eternal torment nature of hell. As before, the word is Gehenna, a place in the actual world of the Jewish people, although in the 1st century it would have been folkloric and already gone through translations. Whether or not actual human sacrifices by fire occurred there is not certain, but certainly people in the 1st century believed that was true. Getting from this ancient lore to an actual place where you are tortured forever, hinges a lot on that one word, "forever". It holds no more special meaning in this context than it does anywhere else. It can mean a lifetime, a long time or for however long it takes to be done.

There is also the word "never" in "their worm never dies". This is a reference to Isaiah 66:24 where they are looking upon carcasses of men who were lost from God. This comes after some sort of cleansing of the earth and creation of a new earth. Besides being rather obvious metaphorical prophecy it is not clear that this spectacle goes on for eternity or for that matter, where or when it will ever happen. It took centuries to turn all this into the visions of hell we have today.

We get some verses that I have not noticed too many people taking literally. Thank God. The ones about cutting off feet and hands. Verses like these are dangerous to just leave lying around. Maybe they are so outrageous that they are recognized as metaphor. All of these grotesque ideas for dealing with a "stumble" distract from what he is responding to in the first place. Someone was doing Jesus' work, good deeds, and his disciples tried to stop him because he wasn't technically a follower.

Tony Campolo calls these people "anonymous Christians". Tony is an evangelical preacher. His son Bart was following in his footsteps, but then changed to calling himself a humanist. They tell their story in the documentary "Leaving my Father's Faith". Tony tells his atheist son that he is "doing what Jesus calls us to do but you are not doing it in His name. Of such people, Jesus said, if they're not against us, they're for us." He elaborates that Bart is not a believer but he sure looks like a disciple and even admits that his own work, now in mega churches, preaching to the rich, doesn't look all that much like a disciple. It's good to have preachers like that out there, willing to reflect on their own actions and challenge all of his listeners to consider what these ancient words mean.