The Passover Preparation
During Lent, our Dust of the Rabbi series has been focused on the Passover Preparation. This Sunday, in the midst of a focus on the holiday of Passover, we observe another holiday - Purim, the Feast of Lots.
Purim (literally meaning "Lots" in Hebrew) is the remembrance of God's salvation of His people through Queen Esther. The holiday is so named because the enemies of the Jews cast lots to determine the day and month that they would murder all the Jewish people. While the entire book of Esther is devoted to recounting these events, Esther 9:24-28 offers a brief summary of the events and the command to perpetually observe the holiday of Purim.
Purim, Jesus' Feast of Lots
(A Passover Story)
In Esther, we learn that Haman son of Hammedatha contrived the first genocide against the Jewish people. During the time after the return from exile in Babylon, the Persian Empire, which conquered the Babylonians and released the Jews, remained the dominant power in the Middle East. While the Persian Kings released the Jews from their exile, they did not make them a free people; the lands and people of Israel remained part of the Persian Empire. Some of our ancestors chose not to return to Israel, but instead remained in the foreign cities where they had lived for the last seventy years. Amongst those who remained were a man named Mordecai and his niece Esther.
Ultimately, Esther becomes Queen of Persia by marrying King Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes) and courageously uses her new position to stop Haman's plot. Thus, Purim is a Passover story because both tell a similar tale; a foreign empire enslaved the Jews and threatened their very existence, and God responded by saving our ancestors and turning the intended violence back upon the perpetrators. The repetition of history is clear - just as God saved the people from Pharaoh in Egypt, so too He saves the people from Haman in Persia.
However, Purim is a Passover story in another sense as well. While the holiday is celebrated on the 13th day of the 12th month (the day chosen by lot for the destruction of the Jews), the majority of the story takes place almost a year earlier, during the week of Passover. In fact, Esther holds a Passover banquet (a meal on the day of Passover itself) to persuade the King to save her people. How extraordinary is God's timing?
Both Purim and Passover foreshadow God's saving work in Jesus Christ. But Purim also makes participating in God's salvation a realistic goal for us individually - Esther is no Moses, and yet God works mightily through her. How are you called to be a part of God's plan of salvation? Where have you been placed "for such a time as this?"
Extras
This is the only holiday mandated in the Old Testament that is not ordained in the Torah (the books of Moses).
Esther is the only book in the Bible that never mentions God. For this reason, many people debated over whether it was appropriate to include Esther in the canon. Ultimately, our ancestors agreed that the absence of God by name only emphasized His obvious presence throughout this Passover story.