Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Esther chapter 5 verses 9 through 12:
9 Haman went out that day happy and in good spirits. But when Haman saw Mordecai in the king’s gate, and observed that he neither rose nor trembled before him, he was infuriated with Mordecai; 10nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home. Then he sent and called for his friends and his wife Zeresh, 11and Haman recounted to them the splendour of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honoured him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and the ministers of the king. 12Haman added, ‘Even Queen Esther let no one but myself come with the king to the banquet that she prepared. Tomorrow also I am invited by her, together with the king. 13Yet all this does me no good so long as I see the Jew Mordecai sitting at the king’s gate.’ 14Then his wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, ‘Let a gallows fifty cubits high be made, and in the morning tell the king to have Mordecai hanged on it; then go with the king to the banquet in good spirits.’ This advice pleased Haman, and he had the gallows made.
Yesterday I heard a fascinating interview with Derek Black, the son of a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan and a member of the KKK’s youth movement, who later publicly disavowed his white nationalism.
In the interview, Black said, "The fundamental belief that drove my dad, drove my parents and my family, over decades, was that race was the defining feature of humanity ... and that people were only happy if they could live in a society that was only this one biologically defined racial group.”
Black commented on the trajectory of white nationalism, as essentially a more palatable synonym to white supremacy and the ways in which the movement’s talking points are so often picked up by politicians looking for dog whistles to motivate certain disaffected segments of the white populace.
In our Lesson today, Haman is vehemently and irrationally consumed with hatred toward Jews. With veiled, yet still racially-charged rhetoric, Haman uses his access to the levers of power to bring about the Jews demise. The gallows is a symbol of his hatred, just as the lynching tree was a symbol of white supremacist hatred here in the American South.
The only thing that can put a stop to Haman with his coded hatred and open access to power is another who understands the coded rhetoric, and is willing to speak against its cunning evil.
This, however, will have to wait. The denouement is not yet, and so the fate of all the Jews in the kingdom is not yet settled. For now, the King is still being played by Haman’s messaging, and the gallows are still being built . . .
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