ONE NIGHT WITH THE KING

Four Stars - Profound

 

The biblical tale of Esther is one of romance, intrigue, vengeance and love.  It is as modern as a reality show with a king choosing his queen from many gathered candidates. It is as brutal as the morning news with genocidal hatred and war.  It speaks of God’s providence, demonstrates human courage and describes a way to live in a violent world that maintains our dignity and our faith.  It is a tale told millennia ago to help us know how to live in this new millennium.

Based on the novel Hadassah: One Night with the King by Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen, Michael Sajbel directs “One Night with the King” in an epic style that communicates the power of the Persian King Xerxes (Luke Goss) and the realm he governed from Egypt to India.

The stage is set by unflinchingly explaining that the tale begins hundreds of years before when Saul, King of Israel, had not obeyed God in His requirement given through Samuel the prophet (Peter O’Toole) that a baby-sacrificing culture be completely destroyed, but that he had allowed their queen to live and give birth to descendants who are given her hatred and vengeance for the Jews.  This hatred is embodied in Haman (James Callis), whose life’s purpose is to wipe out the Jewish people.

Having been captured and taken from their homeland, the Jewish people in Xerxes’ kingdom have been allowed to make a life for themselves.  Though not allowed to be landowners, they became merchants and physicians and scribes and teachers as the blessing of God exhibits itself in their wealth.  Keeping their identity through their faithful practice of their religion, they do not have the deeper spiritual hatred shown by Haman and his kind, but they are the objects of envy for their wealth and distrusted for their differences.

Into this tenuous and chosen culture is born a young woman whose parents are killed.  Using the ancient form of a complex swastika, Haman’s kin had been systematically terrorizing the Jews and had killed Hadassah’s parents when she was a child.  Taken into her uncle Mordecai’s (John Rhys-Davies) home, Hadassah is taught to read the ancient text and believe in the great “I AM,” the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

She grows to be a beautiful, intelligent woman, full of knowledge and innocence, and it is no wonder that when Xerxes searches for a queen that he would choose Hadassah.  But he did not realize that she was a Jew, because Mordecai had asked her to change her name to Esther and pass as a Persian.

Though the outcome of Esther’s story is well known, we won’t tell what happened when she became Queen and Haman hatched his heinous plan of hatred against the Jews.  However, it demonstrates what faith and courage can do in the face of great evil and it also demonstrates the saving power of God.

Though Jewish and Christian believers will gain far more from this story because of our understanding of how it fits within the history of God’s people, every person can understand that life is not as simple or as safe as we desire.  Knowing what it is like to have people hate us as Americans and want to attack and kill us indiscriminantly, this tale reminds us that there is always a larger purpose at work, far greater than the vengeance or hatred of those who have made themselves our enemies.  It is our faith, based on a knowledge of how God has acted faithfully in the past and a Savior that can see us through these days.

 

Discussion:

 

1. When we were attacked on 9/11, what do you understand to be the reason for this attack:  envy?  vengeance? power?  politics?  religion?  Have we as a nation done anything to deserve such hatred?  Is there a Saul in our history who has used or taken advantage or destroyed those who attacked us?

 

2. The protection that God provided over His people most often came through an agent of His care.  Have you ever been protected by an agent of God?  Have you ever been an agent of God protecting someone else?

 

3.  The hatred that Haman expressed seems to be “larger than life.”  Like the Nazi hatred for the Jewish people that caused them to murder them by the millions, this hatred seems to come from a demonic place with generational prejudice and indoctrination.  Do you see anything like that happening today?

 

4. The salvation of God often comes at the last minute, as it does in this tale.  Why do you believe this is so?  How have you experienced it in your life?