The Old Testament begins with a series of books that tell the grand history of the nation of Israel, books like Genesis and Exodus, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. It continues with the poetic expression of the wisdom and faith of the people, in books like Job and Psalms and Proverbs. It ends with the dynamic and challenging vision of the prophets, in books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos. Sandwiched in between these familiar writings are many shorter works, one of which is the little tale of Esther.

The story of Esther occurs during the time of the Jews’ exile from their homeland, which had followed the occupation and destruction of the Israelite nation. The setting is Persia during the reign of King Ahasuerus, also known as Xerxes, from 486 to 465 B.C. As the story line begins, Ahasuerus is replacing his current queen, Vashti, because of her refusal of the king’s command to display her beauty during a lavish governmental banquet. Ahasuerus conducts an elaborate beauty contest to find her successor, and Esther wins the prize of becoming the next queen of Persia. In the contest Esther does not reveal her identity as one of the exiled Jews now living under Persian domination.

Esther was an orphan who had been taken under the wing of her cousin, Mordecai. Not long after Esther was crowned queen, Mordecai discovered a plot against King Ahasuerus’ life, and through Esther Mordecai is able to warn the king and thus save his life. Mordecai, however, runs into trouble with Haman, whom the king has appointed as second-in-command of the empire. All the people were ordered to bow to Haman, but Mordecai refused. In his anger at Mordecai, Haman hatched a plot to kill not only Mordecai, but all the Jews living in Persia. Through his power with King Ahasuerus, Haman chose a day on which the Jews would be slaughtered.

Mordecai and Esther are—understandably—very upset. Mordecai, along with many of the other Jews in Persia, begins to mourn and weep, using the traditional rituals of putting on sackcloth and covering oneself with ashes. Mordecai mourns in a very public place, at the entrance of the king’s gate, and Esther hears of his display. Esther sends a messenger to talk to Mordecai, who then returns to Esther with details of Haman’s plot against the Jews. Esther sends back to Mordecai with the message that she is powerless to do anything about it because she has not been called into the presence of King Ahasuerus. In the ancient world, to approach the king without his express invitation was to invite death for yourself, for you might be an assassin. Mordecai does not accept Esther’s excuse, and he pleads with her to risk her life since it is at risk anyway, and to go to the king without invitation, to see if she can save the Jews from destruction. Mordecai’s words ring true into her heart this time, as he says to her, “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”

Every once in a while this question hits me: “How in the world did I ever get here?” Does that happen to you? Do you ever sit back and review the events and themes of your life and say to yourself, “Wow, what a story! I never dreamed that my life would go like this.” Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed to make a big decision that you knew would change the course of your life, and maybe of others’ lives, and say, “Oh my, why have I been put in this place at this time?”

What must have been running through Esther’s mind? Had she planned all her life to connive and manipulate her way to the top? It doesn’t seem so. Had she found herself the subject of circumstances outside her control that thrust her into a tough spot? Probably. Were decisions made for her or were decisions made by her that led along a crooked path to where she found herself now? Both are probably true. Was there a higher power working behind the scenes to orchestrate a complex set of characters and circumstances into just this particular alignment that now presented a crisis and a threat to the survival of the people God had chosen to be his special representatives on earth?

That last question helps us begin to see why the little story of Esther made its way and found a place among the giant stories and theologies of the Old Testament. Esther’s story is partly a story about providence, the theological idea that there is a God who stands outside our human history and who directs that history to his own purposes. Why was Esther born beautiful so that she could win a contest to become queen? Why did Esther’s parents die so that she would be put into the care of her cousin? Why was Mordecai put in the position to learn of a plot against the king’s life? The whole testimony of scripture is nothing if it is not a witness to the amazing power and grace of a God who created all things with a specific purpose in mind and then who acts in human history to ensure that the purpose is realized. This is one of the great themes of scripture that we mean to summarize and highlight when we talk about providence.

With eyes of faith, we look into the past and we find there unmistakable evidence of the God in whom we live and move and have our being who establishes and directs all things for his eternal glory. But history involves more than that. Mordecai presented Esther with a simple choice that only she could make: should she risk her life and approach the king without his consent? Would that be her undoing? Or would there be a chance that she could change the course of events and save her people?

At the same time that we affirm God’s providential hand that moves in all things, we also acknowledge that God works his way through the decisions we make, through the actions we take, through the future that we shape by the will that God himself gives us. Esther decides to risk her life and crafts a strategy that just might save her people from destruction. In a plot twisted enough to satisfy any writer of suspense novels, Esther manages to trick King Ahasuerus into allowing the Jews to be warned of the date of the attack upon them, and they defend themselves and so save a part of the remnant of God’s people. To this day, Jews around the world celebrate their rescue with the Feast of Purim. Esther herself has gone down in history as a great hero for her courage and her willingness to risk her life in the great moment of need in which she found herself, answering the call to step forward “for such a time as this.” And so we see two great themes of scripture blend together into the life of one Jewish woman, who exercised her freedom to respond to a need within the framework of God’s overarching purpose for the people from whom she came.

History is filled with stories, some famous, most not, of pivotal moments in people’s individual lives and in the lives of entire nations, when men and women have had to answer for themselves the question if perhaps they have been actors in God’s unfolding providence. The great moments we know, moments like Martin Luther’s decision to stand before the Church of Rome and proclaim his faith, or like the Founding Fathers’ decision to declare the independence of the colonies from England. The private moments occur in microcosm every day, as people like you and I confront choices that arise from our circumstances and in the choosing we determine the course of the future. The greatest moment of decision came, of course, when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, and took the final step toward his death and resurrection and the redemption and reconciliation of the world.

Esther’s story has inspired countless numbers of God’s people, not the least of whom was a woman named Henrietta Mears. Some of you know her name, many do not. In the middle part of the last century, Henrietta Mears headed what was then one of the largest and most creative Sunday Schools in the nation, at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Shortly after World War II, Mears had a crisis of faith. She had seen the destruction and perversion of the Christian faith in Germany, supposedly a Christian nation. She saw similar dynamics at work in America. She searched the scriptures and landed on Esther. Through meditating on Esther’s life and work, Mears began to wonder if the Lord had brought her to a particular place in ministry “for such a time as this.” In 1947, with the company of four young men, the decision was made to step out in faith and make a bold attempt to renew the world. Focusing on college students, they launched the College Briefing Conference at Forest Home, where many of the children and youth of our church go every year for camp. Among the young men who joined Mears in this enterprise were Louis Evans, Jr., who became Senior Minister of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington and a recognized renewal leader; Richard Halverson, who became Senior Minister of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington and later Chaplain of the United States Senate; and Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. At the College Briefing Conference in 1949, a young evangelist came to a significant turning point in his ministry that changed him forever. His name was Billy Graham.ⁱ

Fifty years ago, a group of faithful Christians took a step of faith and founded a church whose ministry has had an impact on people all around the world, through its direct missions and through the influence of its members in the course of their lives. Fifty years ago, those brothers and sisters in the faith developed a dream for building a church facility here that would serve the growing population of Rancho Santa Fe and North County. Over the successive generations of church life, the leaders of our church have continued to step forward in faith to continue to build this church. Almost fifteen years ago, a new master plan was developed that resulted in the construction of our Fellowship Center. That plan, reflecting the same overall patterns as the original, also called for the construction of a new administration building and a new education building. When yours truly arrived on the scene, this plan was updated, and for seven years now the elders of the church have pressed forward. Along the way we sensed the need for what the founders of this church envisioned five decades ago: the construction of a larger sanctuary and music complex. And so here we are today, ready to take a major step forward in realizing the dreams of past generations.

As we move into this new phase of church construction, some of us and perhaps all of us are a bit overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. It involves a major commitment of time and money. I find it interesting, however, that at the same time that our church leaders have sensed the need for expansion, similar efforts are being started in other parts of our community. The local golf club is hoping to begin a $12 million expansion. Soon a $45 million school bond will be voted on and perhaps a new school begun. And the local animal shelter is launching a $50 million campaign to improve and expand its facilities. Yes, the $18 million our own project is expected to cost is a lot of money, but it is no more than about five times the cost of an average home in our community. And the most important question is not the cost of doing the project. To me, the most important question is about the cost of not doing the project. If we do not accommodate the increasing population around us, then what is the cost of turning people away from involvement in the church?

Over the last several Sundays we have considered together how God has a plan to build people through the ministries that are centered in this place. Last Sunday we noted that the provisions for this good work come through your and my giving of our many different kinds of resources. And today we see how the entire process works. The process of realizing God’s plan demands the faithful and courageous response of people like Esther, who realized that God had put them in a particular place at a particular time in order to fulfill a particular part of God’s mission. And that is what we are about today: we are about the business of taking the next step forward in building this church.

We must never be mistaken, though, in thinking that this church is built once its buildings are in place. No, the buildings are merely means to an end. The church we are building is us. Esther’s story calls us to new depths of discipleship. Perhaps in your personal life you need to move to a new level of engagement with Jesus and his plan for your life. Perhaps God is calling you to participate in our present capital stewardship campaign in a significant and sacrificial way. And perhaps God is inviting all of us to use the opportunity of this campaign to consider more carefully and more critically than ever before how it is that we corporately answer the call of Christ to make disciples of all the nations. What we accomplish here in this season of focus upon our physical church location must result in more intentional missions of service and more fruitful evangelism, or our efforts to build buildings will have been in vain. Our goal must be to be faithful to the task God has laid before us, and then to pray and hope and plan that God will do great things for his kingdom as a result.

Esther’s story is the story of one person’s decision to take seriously her role in God’s providential plan at a particular time and place in history. Each of us individually is confronted with similar decisions as God directs. And we are all together, at this juncture of our church’s history, confronted with a decision as a body of believers in Christ. God is calling us, I believe, to join together not only in this capital campaign but also in the much more important expansion of all our ministries, to the end that we become a more effective agent of the kingdom here and around the world.

In 1491, when the Christians of the Spanish town of Seville set out to build a cathedral, they wrote and signed a resolution that read like this: “Let us build a church so great that those who come after us will think us mad for ever having dreamed of it.”ⁱⁱ The church that you and I are building is not so much a cathedral of bricks and stone, but a cathedral of the heart and soul, a cathedral that welcomes all people into the transforming and redeeming fellowship of Christ, to benefit from his grace and to extend his grace to a hurting world. Who knows? Perhaps the Lord has brought you and me together for just such a time as this, to continue to make this church great, for God’s glory.

Amen.

ⁱ As told by Mark Roberts in The Communicator’s Commentary
ⁱⁱLeonard Sweet, Homiletics, Vol. 6, No. 1, Canton, Ohio, Communication Resources, 1994, p. 37.

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