The Girl Queen, the Captive Conqueror: A Devotional Commentary on Esther (8:1-10)

In 8:6, Esther asks a rhetorical question that sort of stops us in our tracks; or at least I think it's meant to. She’s beseeching the Emperor to reverse his edict to destroy the Jews, and she says, “How can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?” It is, like I say, a rhetorical question, and the point is, she can’t bear it. So heart-wrenching would that loss be, that she’s willing to risk everything--status and wealth, peace and comfort, life and death itself--in an effort to save them.  I say it should stop us in our tracks, because if we listen closely hear, I think we will hear the Word of God asking us, as Christians, "Do you share Esther’s heart for the harried and threatened People of God?"

There are some theological dots we need to connect here, before this question comes into focus, but once you do connect them, it should give us all pause. This story is about the attempted annihilation of the Jewish People, of course (and lest we forget, the history books can confirm that this isn't the first or the only time insidious “Hamanesque” powers have attempted to wipe Abraham’s family from the face of the earth); but the Christian conviction is that, through the self-offering of Jesus Christ, a 1st Century Jew from Nazareth, we Gentiles are now grafted into the Jewish story, the Family of Abraham, the People of God (see Romans 11:11-24 for more in this one). Esther’s Story can only become our story through faith in Jesus, who invites us into it; but in Jesus, this story does indeed become ours. It becomes, in fact, the story of the whole “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16), Jew and Gentile, wherever and however they are threatened with annihilation.

And here’s where Esther stopped me in my tracks. Because there are parts of the world today where God’s People are still facing very real—all too real—persecution. Not in comfortable, tolerant Canada, perhaps, but in those parts of the world where belonging to Abraham's Family (by birth or by faith) invites all sorts of abuse, danger and persecution. And I confess that I don’t take the plight of my brothers and sisters in Christ as seriously as Esther took the plight of her people. Esther asked Ahasuerus, “How can I bear to see my people destroyed?”; and with that question, God turns to his people today and asks: “How can you?”