I want to talk this morning a little about Queen Esther. Esther was married to one of the most powerful men of their time, the King of Persia. The problem was that an evil man had tricked the king into condemning all people of Jewish descent to death. The king didn’t realize that his wife Esther was one of them.
Esther’s uncle came to her and convinced her to go to the king and beg him to do something about it. The first line tells us how serious this was. The scriptures say that Queen Esther was seized with mortal anguish. That’s because it was illegal for her to appear before the king without him sending for her. The punishment was death. Esther was walking into a situation that would probably end up with her dying.
There is a movie that depicts this scene in a way that moved me. In the movie “One Night with the King,” Esther begins to walk up the stairs toward her beloved. The executioner raises his sword and begins to move toward her. At the very last second, the king moves between her and the executioner and catches the sword with his bare hand, taking the blade and spilling his own blood instead of hers.
That story should bring obvious parallels to us. All of these symbols: the bride, the king, the ‘trial’ if you will. All of it points to the same situation we will be in at the end of our lives. Jesus Christ is the King, and we are the Church, His Bride. At the end of our lives, we, too, will walk up the steps to greet our beloved. The enemy will be calling out our sins, begging the executioner to step in and end us because nothing less than perfection can enter the presence of God. We hope that the King will step into our place, just as He did on Calvary, to prevent us from receiving the punishment we are due.
The church reminds us today that we need to be preparing for that. Esther didn’t just walk in; she spent an entire day prostrate on the ground praying from morning till evening. So too, we should be spending the entirety of our lives, from the moment of our baptism till the dusk begins to settle on the day our mortal journey ends. Then we, too, can have hope that God will indeed turn our mourning into gladness.
Thursday of the First Week of Lent: February 25th, 2021