The Plot Thickens

“The Plot Thickens”  // Esther 3 

Message @ Jericho Ridge– Sun, July 4, 2021 (Series: Truth To Power)

Hello, friends. My name is Brad Sumner and I am part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.  Welcome to our digital gathering space for teaching and worship.  As you have no doubt heard, we are now in phase 3 of BC’s restart plan which means that we have returned to in-person gatherings this summer at Jericho which means live preaching and live children’s ministry every weekend and live music on long weekends.  

I also want to assure you as part of our online community that we intend to keep on with digital ministry as an integrated part of our core activities and that you will not be abandoned or made to feel like a second-class citizen if you engage with Jericho in this space.  

You are most welcome to join us in person or move between venues over the summer as you track with us.  We love you.  We respect comfort levels and travel schedules and all manner of reasons that you might choose to remain in this digital space.  Our goal is the same for you here as it always has been – that you are growing as a disciple and learning to embody God’s love everywhere you go.  We’re here to support you on that journey.  

So with that said, let’s jump into our topic for today.  We are going to look at the dynamic and complicated interplay between individuals and their actions and systems.  We talk about things, for example, like systemic racism.  But what does that mean and where does it come from?  This topic has come to our collective attention over the past year as part of ongoing discussions on institutional racism through the Black Lives Matter movement.  

And it has really come home with the recent discoveries of over 1500 unmarked graves art former residential school sites across multiple provinces.  And we have had to grapple with the past and present impact of the residential school system on not only indigenous peoples but also on our society here in Canada as a whole.    

It can be easy to say “well, I’m not a racist so why do I have to think about this kind of stuff?”  But it is important to realize that “individual" racism is not created in a vacuum but instead emerges from a society's foundational beliefs and "ways" of seeing/doing things, and is manifested in organizations, institutions, and systems.” (https://www.aclrc.com/forms-of-racism) 

This interaction between persons and systems makes sense when we step back for a moment.  For example, if you are a teacher, you set a kind of tone in your classroom.  Just like Principals and administration set a tone in the school and district as a whole.  If you are in a business, the management or supervisory team set the pace for the space and then reinforce it through policies and protocols.  The same is true in churches.  Each church or faith community has a unique culture or ethos that is set by those who provide leadership and by those who are part of it.  And the same is true for Jericho Ridge.  

16.5 years ago, when we were launched Jericho  as a satellite of North Langley Community Church, I was the campus pastor.  And one of the things I learned most about church planting was that the church plant takes on both the strengths and the weaknesses of the planter.  The strengths of the planter become the strengths of the church. And the weaknesses of the planter, well, those get transferred to the organization or the system.  There’s actually a name for this – it’s called “founders syndrome”.  

This because a real challenge for myself and for Jericho around 7 years ago.  I had to wrestle with the notion that Jericho was becoming more like me as an individual and that that was not always a good thing.  So we as an elders team embarked on a process that helped us move and keep moving from a founder led or personality led church to a team led, or elder lead church.  This has been a challenging but healthy journey for us all.    

I bring this up because in our text today, we are going to see this dynamic interplay between the individual and the system.  It is not always pretty but exploring it can help us expose some of our temptations and tendencies in this area and maybe, God’s grace helping us, we can change some of the patterns we live into and out of.  So let’s dive in, shall we?      

This summer, we are going through a teaching series on the Old Testament book of Esther entitled Truth To Power.  The story of Esther is a story about how a young immigrant woman moves from obscurity to the position of queen of the land and who, at great personal cost to her and her family, speaks a very difficult truth to power and saves her people.  

We’ve already been introduced to the main characters – King Xerxes, who led the powerful Persian empire in the fifth century BCE that stretched form India to Ethiopia to Greece and was the dominant political, cultural and economic  and military power at the time.  Pastor Wally introduced us to Ester last weekend in chapter two with a strong and wise word on what our value is as persons and where that comes from.  

We met Ester’s family, Mordecai, who is her uncle and who is some kind of civil servant in the court of King Xerxes.  At the end of chapter 2, we see that Mordecai foils an assassination plot against the king but he isn’t really honored for it.  We’ll return to this subplot in the coming weeks.  

But now here in chapter 3, the plot really thickens as we meet our main villain in the story.  The man’s name is Haman.  And he is an egomaniacal leader who is promoted to the very highest position in the land underneath the king. But there is something else going on here that we learn about in his introduction to us in Esther 3.  So turn with me in your Bibles or on your devices to Esther 3:1, I’ll be reading from the New Living Translation and the words will come up on your screen.  

Some time later King Xerxes promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite over all the other nobles, making him the most powerful official in the empire. 2 All the king’s officials would bow down before Haman to show him respect whenever he passed by, for so the king had commanded. But Mordecai refused to bow down or show him respect.  (Esther 3:1-2)

This scene sets in motion a sho-down that is going to carry us through the whole of the rest of the book so it’s important that we understand what is going on here.  

First off, Haman is referred to as an Agag-ite.  Now Agag was the king of an ancient group or nation known as the Amalekites, who were the archenemies of Israel in the time of Saul and Samuel.  The Amalekites were constantly harassing and attacking Israel and were known for their violence towards Israel.  So this historical skirmish would have left a lasting antagonism between the two groups or nations.  

So we are being told by the text that though Haman has a Persian name and ancestry, that he really is sided with the enemies of God’s ancient people, Israel.  He is a hater whose gonna hate them, the text is saying.  Which makes his later racist behavior a bit more clear, if still inexcusable.  

The other thing we see here is that Mordecai refused to bow down and pay Haman the homage that Haman demanded of everyone around him.  And again, we don’t’ quite know why Mordecai chose not to do this.  It doesn’t seem to be connected to religious conviction or any specific Old Testament law.  Ancient Jews did not see bowing before a king as breaking the first or second commandment to have no other God before the One True God.  

Mordecai may have felt that this kind of obedience was due to God alone, but the text doesn’t give us that detail.  Whatever the reasons, This sets up a kind of showdown between two ancient enemies – Haman representing Agag and the Amalekites and Mordecai representing the ancient Jewish people.  Two races who have nothing but antagonism recorded between them.   

Let’s keep reading because the story moves from personal to national…. 

Then the palace officials at the king’s gate asked Mordecai, “Why are you disobeying the king’s command?” 4 They spoke to him day after day, but still he refused to comply with the order. So they spoke to Haman about this to see if he would tolerate Mordecai’s conduct, since Mordecai had told them he was a Jew. 

5 When Haman saw that Mordecai would not bow down or show him respect, he was filled with rage. 6 He had learned of Mordecai’s nationality, so he decided it was not enough to lay hands on Mordecai alone. Instead, he looked for a way to destroy all the Jews throughout the entire empire of Xerxes.” (Esther 3:3-6) 

Mordecai’s refusal to bow has become quite the topic of conversation at the king’s gate.  The servants are curious as to why he would take his stand on this issue and eventually, Mortdecai tells that that it is on the basis of his identity as an ancient Jew.   

Well, once this news reaches Haman (who, intriguingly didn’t seem to know about the non-bowing until someone told him), his ego drives him to a place of rage.  And he makes an intriguing leap from the individual / personal to the ethnic / collective.  In other words, if he is being dishonored by a Jew, it isn’t enough to deal with that one person. No, his rage and his hatred now falls on all Jews because of the actions of one.  

Here he is making a leap in unsubstantiated non-logic.  Just like King Xerxes in chapter 1 who has one woman, Queen Vashti, disobey him and he immediately decided to write up an edit to send to all women, here we see Haman doing the same thing.  Haman is determined to punish all for the sins of one.  If one Jew is disobeying him, he will kill them all.  

And before we get the hate on for Haman, let me pause and invite us to do some self-examination here.  I know in my own life and heart it is actually relatively easy to do this kind of mental move.  If I have a bad experience at a chain coffee shop, for example, I can assume that all coffee shops of that brand are equally as insipid as my most recent bad experience.  If I have a negative run in with a person of a certain nationality, it can be easy to extrapolate and think that all persons who share their history or identity would be the same.  If I meet a person of one denomination who is a jerk, then I can unfairly carry that perception into other conversations.    

This is one way in which racism takes root – we negatively extrapolate from the individual to the group.  We begin to think that what is true of one First Nations person whom we meet on the downtown east side is true of all.  Or people think that just because the historical Catholic church was involved in the residential school system that it justifies burning down churches today.  But this just isn’t true.  Just like you don’t represent all persons in Langley or whatever city you live in, those priests and nuns who ran those schools don’t represent all Christians.  

That is just lazy stereotyping. And stereotypes like “oh she’s a Surrey girl” or “they’re a snob because they live in Walnut Grove” are just not true or healthy.  And of all people, we who are Christ-followers should have NO tolerance for that kind of sloppy thinking.  Because in God’s new family, the church, that kind of barrier driven thinking is to be broken down and done away with. 

The biggest barrier in the early Christian movement was actually one of ethnic identity.  Jews thought that they were more special because they had a long history with God.  But I love what Paul who was one of the most zealous of all Jews says writing to a group of mostly Gentiles or non-Jews in the Book of Ephesians: “But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ. 14 For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.”

Christ breaks down walls of hostility – be they racial, political, economic, or ideological.  These kinds of divisions have no place in the body of Christ.   (I can’t hear you but this would be that time for an amen)

But let’s get back to our narrative.  Haman has racially profiled the ancient Jewish people based on his negative experiences with Mordecai and now he begins to put in place a sinister plot to eliminate them.  Let’s pick up this part of the story in Esther 3:7-11  

“So in the month of April, during the twelfth year of King Xerxes’ reign, lots were cast in Haman’s presence (the lots were called purim) to determine the best day and month to take action. And the day selected was March 7, nearly a year later. 

8 Then Haman approached King Xerxes and said, “There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So it is not in the king’s interest to let them live. 9 If it please the king, issue a decree that they be destroyed, and I will give 10,000 large sacks[c] of silver to the government administrators to be deposited in the royal treasury.” 

10 The king agreed, confirming his decision by removing his signet ring from his finger and giving it to Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. 11 The king said, “The money and the people are both yours to do with as you see fit.”

We see here the sinister and less than honest nature of Haman’s scheme.  He tells the king a vague non-truth “certain people” refuse to obey your laws.  This simply isn’t true!  Then he also helps the king say yes to this plan by offering to cover the costs and in fact, more than that, actively enrich the king’s treasury.  

Haman proposed a silver deposit of a ridiculously large volume – 2/3 of a year’s tribute money from the whole of the realm!  We are not sure where he was going to get this money from, either he had the means to pay it himself or, more likely, he felt he was going to be able to take property and money and things of value away from the Jewish people as he slaughtered them and then turn that in to the king.  

The king says equally vaguely “the money and the people are both yours to do with as you see fit.”  This could mean that he is saying that the money is not really necessary.  Or it could mean that he is saying “do whatever you want, Haman” and giving him a blank cheque.  Regardless of this, Haman has the authority to carry out mass genocide in the name of the most powerful ruler in the world.  

But here’s the thing, friends, this is not really new news for Persia.  They had a long history of genocide.  Take, for example, the story of The Massacre of the Magians in 522 BCE.  The Greek historian Herodotus, records that two bothers names Smerdis and Patizeithese, who were Magians, usurped the throne after the death of king Cambyses.  The brothers attempted to pass of Smerdis as of murdered brother of Cambyses.  However, their ruse was discovered 8 months later and they were assassinated by the Persians lead by King Darius I.  But the Persians didn’t stop by killing those two – they went through the streets of the capital killing every Magian they met.  Then the memorialized this massacre day as a holy day and celebrated it yearly (Herodotus, Histories, 3.67-80).  

So genocidal actions were not particularly new to either the Amalekites nor the Persians. If we pause to see it, there is real racial tension in this story.  There is a very real shown down with real world stakes for the ancient people of God as they face oppression and potential annihilation at the hands of not just an evil man but an evil law that is rooted in an unjust way of thinking about people of other races.  

Haman has consulted the ancient sorcerers and astrologers who would almost always consult ‘the gods’ before they acted.  In this case, it was the throwing of a stone die that helped set a date for this genocide around 11 months in the future.  Haman then calls the scribes together then they write the decree exactly as Haman dictates in 3:12.  Then it gets sealed up with the king’s signet ring (a symbol of authority) and then the message gets set out to all the realms in the kingdom.  

Even the swiftest messengers need time to travel in the ancient world and so this would have taken 3-4 months to disseminate the order that “all Jews – young and old, including women and children – must be killed, slaughtered, and annihilated on a single day.  March 7 of the following year. 473 BCE.  And the property of the Jews would be given to those who killed them.’  

Even here, God, while unnamed in the book of Esther, is at work.  Those lots could have fallen much closed to the time, but 11 months now allows Esther and Mordecai time to hatch a plot of their own to save their people.  It’s like Proverbs 16:33 says “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.”  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s just sit with the weight of chapter 3 without needed to rush into the future.

We see at the end of the chapter that while the king and Haman are sitting down to drink, the capital city of Susa, fell into confusion.  There is a sense that there is dissonance here.  People outside of the palace walls are receiving news of their upcoming death while those in power and authority are enjoying a lavish feast.  The city is bewildered: “who are these Jewish people who are so horrible that they need to be destroyed?  I don’t know if I know anyone like that – but if I did, I could kill them and take their land – that might be a way to advantage myself!” And evil begins to take root.

What I want us to see here is the nature of evil…. We like to think of evil as personal, and it most certainly is.  Sin and personal human sinfulness is very clearly taught in the Scriptures.  But what is also taught is that, as our Confession of Faith puts it “Sin opens up individuals and groups to the bondage of demonic principalities and powers.  These powers work through political, economic, social and even religious systems to turn people away from holiness, justice and righteous.” (Article 4).  

Sin is personal, yes, but we also need to think about sin in terms of being a power that enslaves.  It is in my heart and your heart because of our actions and our humanness, but it is also in systems and institutions and organizations.  This is part of what the Bible means when it talks about principalities and powers and rulers of this world in Colossians 2 of Ephesians 6.  Yes, Haman was a racist individual, and he also put in place a policy a law that was racist.  It moves from the individual to the systemic.  

The commentary on Article 4 in our Confession of Faith says it well: “Groups, nations, structure, are susceptible to demonic forces [such as racism].  Structures such as governments, military forces, economic systems, or religious institutions, family systems and structures determined by class, race, gender, or nationality can incite people to do evil they would have not have chosen on their own.  Such systems exercise a collective, ensuring power far more destructive than the sum of the individuals who support or comply with them.”  

This is what we see happening in this chapter.  There is a system that is animated with desire for power and control and that has a history of killing to maintain and preserve and expand it – a kind of theology of empire – that now comes to clash with the people and purposes of God in redemptive history.  And this conflict goes far beyond Haman and Mordecai not getting along.  It goes beyond racial genocide.  This is now a plot that is animated and moved along by the evil one to wipe out the plan God has to bring redemption to the world through Jesus.  If the evil one can wipe out the line of David, the promise of God to bring deliverance and healing might just not come to pass.  

That is what is at stake here.  So why bother with this kind of thinking?  Well, sometimes we make two mistakes about the nature of evil.  Sometimes we think of it as only personal.  And yes, it is certain individual and individuals can and do chose wrong and need to be called to places of repentance.  There is of course a personal dimension to sin.  

We are called to be those who receive and live into the news of God’s liberating power as we say yes to Jesus in repentance and faith.  And if you have never done that, today is your day.  

If you are watching out church online platform click the “Request Prayer” button now and that will put you into a private and confidential chat with one of our staff.  If you are watching online or YouTube or Telus TV, email us at and we would love to be in touch

But there is also a social / spiritual dimension to sin. Sin is a power that enslaves.  We need to have a theology of principalities and powers that understands things like addiction, victimization, multi-generational trauma and multinational corporate structures are powers which can and do enslave people.  Yet even here, friends the good news of the gospel comes in the form of liberation.  

We are called as a church, to collectively bear witness and take liberation from sin beyond the realm of private religious experience.  That is one reason why we take communion together.  Which I invite you to get prepared for now.  If you’d like, you can pause. The live stream and come back to it in a few moments once you have some bread and some juice to partake together with.  

You see, Jesus came to break not just the bonds of personal sin, but also the bonds of behavior patterns, ideologies, and institutions that exalt themselves against God and the knowledge of God.  Things like racism need to be repented of and rejected not just personally, but also publicly and collectively.  This is done often in the Old and New Testaments where leaders and people take responsibility for what is or has transpired.  

And so today, as we take communion, I want to invite you to think in terms of individual and also the systemic.  Individually, ask the Spirit to search your heart.  Is there anything that comes to mind you need to repent of?  Actions, thoughts, things done of left undone.  Maybe some elements of racism that have taken root or gone unchecked.  Talk to God about them now.  Say you are sorry.  Receive God’s forgiveness because of the sacrifice Christ made on the cross for you.  

So take, and eat the bread, which represents Christ’s body, broken for you so that you might be whole.

Now pause and think about the aspects of corporate sin that need to be named and repented of.  Think about our treatment of Indigenous persons, persons of Chinese and South Asian heritage with things like head taxes.  Here in our communities today, our apathy of the plight of those who are homeless or addicted.  Invited God to change your heart and our hearts collectively.  To accept and actualize the forgivesness and liberation that represents God’s kingdom coming here on earth.   

Take and drink the cup, which represents Christ’s blood, shed for you.  Poured out so that you and those around you might know new life and be free.    

In invite you to sing these next two songs together with me in the posture of a prayer.  A prayer where we say “bring light into those dark places.  I trust that You are at work, in me and in Your world, and I want to be a part of the work and ministry of reconciliation.