And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. Colossians 2:14-15 (NKJV)
This weekend, we find ourselves in the midst of what, on the surface, appears to be a conflict of two very different celebrations on the Jewish and the modern calendar followed by most Christians in the West.
Today is Good Friday, the remembrance of the Crucifixion of Messiah Jesus for our sins. It is generally a time of introspection, of mourning, and of metanoia, repentance. Many will wear black (or in India, wear white, which signifies mourning as well as purity in many cultures there), and many will fast. In India, Good Friday is one of two Christian festivals which are public holidays; the other is Christmas (Easter, being on a Sunday, is a holiday anyway).
Purim, on the other hand, is traditionally the most celebratory Jewish festival (even more so than Hanukkah). Gifts, parties, costumes, special pastries, all in celebration of the deliverance of our people from the plans of the evil Haman. The book of Esther is read aloud in the synagogue, and every time Haman's name is read, everyone boos and drowns out the sound of his name with noise makers of various sorts. Cheers go up at the sound of the names of Esther and Mordecai; curiously, God isn't mentioned once in the book of Esther, though His providential hand is all over it. It's actually quite a lot of fun.
But.... how on earth can these two very different remembrances fit together? They seem at first to clash (e.g., mourning for one, celebration for the other). Until, that is, one takes a little bit of a look under the surface. What is Purim? The Jews had fallen into the hands of an enemy, the evil Haman the Agagite; as some have noted and Jewish tradition affirms, he was descended from Agag, the evil Amalekite king upon whom the Israelite King Saul had delayed in executing justice. Haman demanded that the Jew Mordecai bow to him, and when Mordecai refused, he made plans to wipe out the Jews completely. Miraculously, Esther, a Jewish teenager, becomes queen of the Persian empire, and figuratively lays down her life for that of her people: But for an act of mercy by the king, according to the law, she would have been executed. Her act of laying down her life for her people succeeds: It is through her willingness to lay down her life that the enemy, Haman, is utterly defeated and himself tastes the death he had planned for the Jews, and moreover, through her willingness to sacrifice that her righteous cousin Mordecai is raised up and her people were brought from a place of death to a place of exaltation! Esther's action and the king's mercy, in this regard, function as a foreshadowing of another, similar action several hundred years later, much as the patriarch Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac on the mountains of Moriah also foreshadow the same thing.
When the Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) went to the Cross to die for our sins, this time there would be no last-minute rescue. The hammer-blow fell, and the Word made flesh died bearing the sins of humankind. Thank God, that was not the end of the story! Even as Esther's near-sacrifice was required to rescue her people from the grip of the enemy, so Yeshua's self-giving on the Cross was necessary to free the Jews, as well as panta ta ethne, all peoples, from the grip of a far more potent enemy. Even as Esther's actions led to Haman's utter humiliation and defeat, so Yeshua's death leads to the disarming and public humiliation of Satan and his demon hordes. And even as Esther's vindication brought life and exaltation to the Jews of the Persian empire, so much more, indeed eternally more, does the Resurrection of Yeshua from the grave bring life and exaltation to us all, Jew and Gentile.
The thing is, Yeshua and his apostles were all Jewish. If Haman had succeeded, there would have been no Good Friday or Easter to celebrate, because there would have been no Messiah. Even as faith in Jesus rests on Jewish roots, the celebration of the sacrifice which enabled our eternal salvation depended in a very real way on the success of the foreshadowing, earlier willingness of a wavering Jewish teenager to lay down her life for her nation hundreds of years before.
Good Friday, or Purim? I believe I'll celebrate both! :-)
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