Reflection by the Rev. Elizabeth Felicetti
This week’s readings include the most famous line of Esther. Her cousin, Mordecai, asks: “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14b). The readings also reveal Esther’s courageous act of going before the king unsummoned, a reversal of Vashti refusing to go to the king when summoned. This act marks the major “turn” of the book.
I grew up in the Episcopal Church, but as a teen, I experimented with other Protestant denominations, including a conservative evangelical church that my brother and his wife (the same ones who gave me a novelized version of Esther) attended with their two young sons. They were happy to pick me up and take me with them to the service, and I was happy to go with them because of a tall blond guy named Frank who was a year ahead of me in a different high school and sat in the very back row of the balcony.
Frank did not take notes like I did. I don’t think he even brought a Bible. My strongest memory of those Sundays was the time he idly took my Bible and started thumbing through it during the sermon before dropping it into my lap as if electrified. “You have those books in there!” he hissed.
I was mystified. “Those” books? In my Bible that my godmother had given me when I had been confirmed years before? “What are you talking about?” I whispered.
He gingerly opened and pointed to the Apocrypha in the table of contents. “Those,” he snarled. “They aren’t supposed to be there.” I was distressed that Frank would probably never ask me out now that he had discovered this contraband in what was supposed to be a holy book. I stared at that table of contents in dismay, wondering what kind of heresy the Episcopal Church had inflicted on me.
Episcopal and Roman Catholic Bibles tend to include these books, while many other Protestant Bibles do not. The Apocrypha can be found between the Old and New Testaments and are believed to have been written in between them. One of the books in the Apocrypha is the Greek version of the book of Esther, which has much more God written into it—otherwise, God isn’t directly mentioned in Esther.
I strongly prefer the unedited version of Esther that we are reading for the Good Book Club but consulting the Greek additions can be edifying. In the Greek version, for example, Esther prays a long prayer before going to the king. The long-ago editors not only added a prayer but also distaste for her life from her lips, as her prayer includes, “Your servant has had no joy since the day that I was brought here until now, except in you, O Lord God of Abraham” (Esther Greek 14:18). While I find the prayer overdone and unnecessary, as I believe the faith of Esther and Mordecai comes through the original even though not directly mentioned, I appreciate that the Greek editors wanted to convey that Esther had been compelled into this life without her consent. Still, I don’t need this information communicated via prayer.
In the Greek version, Esther collapses on her way to the “terrifying” king until the Lord changes the king’s spirit to gentleness. I appreciate her dignity and assertiveness in the original version, part of our readings this week.
For further reflection:
What do you think of the famous line, “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Do you think that God orchestrates our lives so that we can be in a certain place at a certain time? Have you ever felt that you were called to a certain place at a certain time?
