It was one of the greatest celebrations in the history of the
American people. The bells rang in Independence Hall in
Philadelphia. There was a hundred gun salute in City Hall Park of
New York. In Chicago there was a volunteer possession of people
seven miles long. In California they celebrated for two days. This
happened in May of 1869. It was when the railroad from Omaha
and the railroad from Sacramento met at Promontory Point, Utah.
The last spike of California gold was driven by Governor Leland
Standford. Two locomotives drew up close to each other, and the
news was sent by telegraph all over the country. People rejoiced
and celebrated because the United States was now, by means of the
railroad, really united. Carl VanDoren writes, "This was probably
the most important and most exciting non-military ceremony in the
whole history of the American people.
It thrilled a whole nation then, but today you would find it hard
to find an American who even knows it happened. Those few
historians who do know certainly do not throw a party to celebrate
it. Some great events in history do not live on to capture the minds
and hearts of all future generations. But, on the other hand, some
events live on perpetually, and even grow in their intensity with
time. Such is the case with the event called Purim. It means next to
nothing to us as Gentiles, but to the Jews it means a great deal. A
study of this Jewish holiday and feast will help us understand the
book of Esther, and the purpose for it being in the Bible.
One of the greatest paradoxes of history is that the Jews, who
have suffered so incredibly, have also been the source of incredible
laughter. Tevye, the Jewish father in Fiddler On The Roof, was a
funny man in a very unfunny and tragic situation. This has always
been the case with Jews who love the book of Esther, and keep the
feast of Purim. Purim, says Herman Wach, the Jewish author, is the
nearest thing in Judaism to a carnival. It is a time of riotous
rejoicing. In some places it has made a street festival just like the
Mardi Gras.
It is the one day in the year when disordered hilarity is permitted
in the synagogue. Reverence and restraint are virtues all year long,
but not on this day. They are cast to the wind, and what would be
outrageous any other time is permitted on this day. Children are
given noise makers of all kinds, and they take them into the
synagogue. All is silent as the first two chapters of the book of
Esther are read. Then the reader comes to chapter three where he
reads the name of Hamen the Agagite, and this triggers off a
hurricane of racket. Everyone stomps their feet, and the children
make a staggering contribution to the noise with their noise makers.
Eventually the dim dies down and the reader continues, but when he
comes to the name of Hamen again, all bedlam breaks loose. Since
Hamen is named often in the book of Esther, the amount of noise is
both frequent and enormous.
This celebration has been going on for well over two thousand
years among Jews all over the world. It is Christmas, Thanksgiving,
Easter, the Fourth of July, and Halloween all rolled into one great
two day celebration. Jewish schools have all sorts of plays, skits,
and music, to reenact the drama of Esther. Is the day of all kinds of
silliness, jokes, and laughter. Men and youth dress up like clowns
and play tricks, and tell jokes. Children wear masks and go from
house to house. Gifts are exchanged, and all are required to share
with the poor so that it is a fun day for all, no matter what their
economic condition.
Now you must certainly wonder why all of this hilarity, frivolity,
and laughter? What makes Purim so different from all other feasts
of Judaism? The answer is the profound Jewish conviction that the
drama of history is a comedy and not a tragedy. This is not to say
life is not full of tragic events, but rather, that when history is over,
God will have the last laugh, and there will be a happy ending for all
who are a part of the family of God. This is a basic Biblical
philosophy of life, and it explains how the Jews can be so optimistic
through all of their trials. It also explains why Christians have even
a greater hope because of the greater revelation we have of ultimate
victory in Christ.
Purim is a holiday which proclaims the humor of history. In a
very real sense the book of Esther is a joke book. It is based on the
same theme that makes millions of people laugh every day as they
watch cartoons. Evil plots are made to capture, injure, or destroy
the innocent, but they always backfire and injure the one who
planned them instead. That is the basic theme repeated in
multitudes of cartoons, and that it the theme of Esther. Hamen, the
powerful Jew hater, so despised Mordecai that he plots not only to
destroy him, but all of the Jews. He is so clever, as evil men often
are, that it looks like he has a fool proof scheme to annihilate them.
By surprising providential events, however, a Jewish woman
becomes the Queen, and by her superior cleverness Hamen the bigot
ends up swinging from the very gallows he built to hand Mordecai.
Mordecai then gets Hamens job as the leading official in the Persian
government. All of the Jews of the world are not only spared,
they end up with greater power and influence than they ever would
have had if wicked Hamen had not hated them so. It is another
great Biblical story of good out of evil, and that is why Esther and
Mordecai wrote letters to all of the Jews, and established the feast of
Purim, and ordered that it be a perpetual holiday for all of history.
Just as Jesus established the Lord's supper as a perpetual
remembrance of His death, that Christians might never forget the
source of their salvation, so the feast of Purim is established that
God's people might never forget that for them history is a comedy.
No matter how dark or miserable it gets, it will have a happy ending.
No matter how much you are forced to weep, tears will not endure,
for the story will end with laughter. Will there be laughter in
heaven? Just as certainly as there will be weeping in hell.
Christopher Fry wrote an article in Vogue back in 1951 in which
he describes the dream a friend shared with him. He dreamed of a
great book with a tragic page and then a comic page. He turned
them with excitement to determine which the last page would be, for
this would reveal if the meaning of life was to be tragic or comic.
The final page contained 100 words and they were uproariously
funny. He awoke laughing. This is the message of Esther and Job,
and the book of Revelation. Comedy and humor are not an escape
from reality, but, rather, an escape into ultimate reality and the
Kingdom of faith. There is salvation in a sense of humor. We are
not talking about saving faith in the sense of being granted eternal
life. Faith in Jesus Christ alone is the only faith that saves like that.
A sense of humor will not save anyone in this sense, but it will, and
has saved millions from the valley of pessimism and discouragement.
Carl Kassulke, the Minnesota Viking star football player, who
was paralyzed by a motor cycle accident, told of his experience in
the University of Minnesota hospital. He was always up to some
prank, but one night he threw a water balloon at one of his
roommates in the middle of the night. The bed was drenched, and
the roommate returned the attack. A near riot broke loose as half
the floor was awakened. It was the greatest water fight he ever had,
and they were all crippled. He writes, "In view of how easy it was to
become depressed about our future- and there were moments of
awful despair-we really needed some silliness in our lives."
Therapy was not enough. They needed the therapy of laughter and
humor to endure the battle. Suffering is serious business, but if you
take it too serious you become a frowning skeptic and a scowling
cynic. Even suffering must be faced with a sense of humor to allow
the healing of God to take place.
Bob Hope, and dozens of other comedians have traveled millions
of miles to bring laughter to men in the armed forces who faced
death constantly. This seems like a strange paradox. Those in the
gravest danger laughing at silly jokes. Is this a sign of man's
depravity to be filled with laughter in the face of man's greatest
enemy? No! It is not. It is, in fact, just the opposite. It is a sign of
mans being made in the image of God. It is proof that that image,
however marred by the fall, was not demolished, but continues to
shine even in fallen mankind.
A sense of humor in this war-torn, sin-scared world is a testimony
to the great Biblical truth that laughter will last forever when all
tears are wiped away. If people are funny, it is because God is the
author of humor, and he has built humor into history so that we
might see His smile and hear His laughter even where He is not even
mentioned. Esther is notorious for having no reference to God
whatever. As we study the book we will see that this is part of the
fun of it all. It is like Walt Disney's invisible man who can do all
sorts of amazing things without anyone seeing him. It becomes all
the more hilarious because he is apparently not there.
Esther seems like a totally secular story. There is nothing
religious about it. There is no worship, no prayer, and no reference
to God, Scripture, or preaching. If fasting was not in the book,
there would not be the slightest hint of anything religious. The
funny thing about it is-God is more active in this book then where
He is often mentioned. It is one of the most spiritual of all the books
of the Bible. And what makes it so unique is, it is fun to study it
because it is filled with humor-the humor of God's providence in
history. It is God's joke book revealing His sense of humor.
Judaism is an earthly religion, and so God's Old Testament
revelation of the humor of history ends with an earthly victory, and
an earthly feast with joy and laugher. In the New Testament Jesus
brings life and immortality to light through the Gospel, and so we as
Christians look at this same truth on a far higher level. We focus on
the great marriage supper of the Lamb as our goal, and basis for
optimism. Let us not forget, however, that we, like the Jews, still
need to live in time. Therefore, we still need to grasp the practical
and positive philosophy of life God gave us through the book of
Esther. The spirit of optimism was in Israel long before Esther, for
it goes with faith. Everyone looked at Goliath and said, he is so big I
can't mess with him. But David said, he is so big I can't miss him.
By faith in God the weak challenge the strong and they win, and the
heart is filled with laughter.
Christians can be a part of the problem instead of part of the
solution if they fail to develop a proper sense of humor. This is what
happened to the Pharisees in the time of Christ. They were godly
and sincerely religious people. They were not a part of the answer,
however, but a part of the problem, because they lacked a sense of
humor. They took themselves too seriously. This type of person
always becomes a legalist. Every T must be crossed just so. Every i
must be dotted just so. They make religion a burden rather than a
blessing like Jesus did. Jesus had fun in living, and He was being
supremely religious and spiritual all the time. Jesus said His
disciples did not fast because life with Him was like a wedding
reception where fasting was not appropriate. It was a fun-filled life
of service with singing and rejoicing, and feasting was appropriate
because so many people were being saved, healed, encouraged and
enriched.
The Pharisees did not like all of this light-heartiness connected
with religion. They saw some rules being broken. Never mind that
the man or woman who had been a cripple or blind for life is now
praising God with hilarious joy. The real issue for them was, are
these things appropriate on the Sabbath? No sense of humor and no
spirit of joy that responds with laughter when evil is overcome and
outwitted by the forces of good ever characterized the Pharisees. All
they cared about was being serious about every technicality of the
law. If you study history you will discover this pattern repeating
itself over and over again. When people cease to laugh, and take
everything too seriously, they do not develop true faith, but instead,
they destroy it.
The Quamram community left us the Dead Sea Scrolls. They
withdrew from life and became super-serious legalist. Laughter
and fun were banished. It is no wonder they became a dead end, and
ceased to exist as a channel God could use in history. Christians
have tried this same route and failed equally. The monasteries
became places of fanatical legalism where life was 100% serious
and solemn. Laughter was not only secular it was sinful. If God had
not raised up such fun-loving saints as Francis of Assissi, there would
have been little of value to come out of the millions of miserable man
hours spent in mindless obedience to man made rituals.
Any time you see a man or movement taking itself so serious it
cannot laugh at itself, you can be assured it has lost a key to balance,
and will likely go to an extreme, and cease to be an effective tool for God.
As a teen-ager I use to love to listen to that great Catholic
preacher on TV-Fulton J. Sheen. He was easy for me to listen to
because he was humorous. He was convinced Jesus came into this
world to teach men about the divine sense of humor. H e wrote these
words about Jesus- "Everything He said, everything He did, could be
summed up in these words: Nothing in this world is to be taken
seriously, nothing except the salvation of the soul. What shall it
profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul."
The Pharisees took everything to seriously, and the result was,
they made religious faith about as much fun as a one sided teeter
totter. The balance life will have ups and downs, for both sorrow
and joy are real and legitimate. The Pharisees lacked balance and
stressed only one side of the reality of life. Kierkegaard, the great
Danish theologian said that Christianity has the most humorous view
of life. Wise are those who see this and make sure that humor
plays a major role in their Christian life.
The cross was Satan's plot to destroy the Son of God. By it he
hoped to eliminate the plan of God to save man. This diabolic
scheme backfired and became instead the door to its fulfillment, and
the cause of his final defeat. The cross is a symbol of joy and
rejoicing because it is a symbol of the victory of good over evil. It is
the ultimate symbol of the humor of history.
If you saw a cartoon where huge tanks were sent out to do battle
with a rabbit, and you saw them coming back defeated, you would
laugh, for it would be ridiculous. The Bible is full of this humor. It is
not only in Esther, but in the New Testament where the combined
powers of Rome and Judaism came together to keep a dead man in
the tomb. The huge rock is sealed, the Roman guards are in place,
and yet the story ends with a dead man escaping. The resurrection
is God's delightful sense of humor at its greatest. It reveals that
history, for the believer is a comedy-a story with a happy ending.
Dante called his greatest work The Divine Comedy because he had a
Biblical view of history, and he knew when God wrapped it all up it
would have a happy ending.
The message of the Bible is clear-never give up, hang in there
however rough the battle, for the victory is certain, and in Christ we
will always have the last laugh. Eugene O'Neill captured this theme
in his play Lazarus Laughed. After His resurrection from the dead
Lazarus says, "I heard the heart of Jesus laughing in my heart-and I
laughed in the laughter of God." He had lost all fear of death,
and the play ends with Lazarus being threatened by the authorities,
but he does not deny his Lord, but instead, he dies a martyrs death,
laughing. That is the way all of God's children could die if they were
fully aware of the humor of history.
