My Morning In High School

I was looking at Dan's blog today and realized that he has been writing about his lesson each week, and since I taught for him this week (he had some excuse about his wife having a baby or something (I'm sure she wasn't still in labor Sunday, so I don't know what his problem is)) I thought I'd chime in with what I studied last week.

First I'd have to say that the high schoolers and junior highers (who weren't on retreat) were great. I think they have paid more attention to me than I did, or else they're great fakers, either way, shout out to them.

This week I talked about Haman, Mordecai, and God, the three characters in Esther 3. Haman was a straight up hard core villan, the like of Saron or whatever the big eye's name is in Lord of the Rings or Voldemort in Harry Potter, only Haman was real. He had a massive ego, he was a racist (which is why the text identifies him as the Agagite (go look that one up!)), he had a mad crazy temper, and he was incredibly deceptive. But the key for Haman was that he had power. In Chapter 3 Xerxes gives him his ring and tells him to do with the Jews whatever he wants (which is to kill them and annihilate them and destroy them, he doesn't really leave any doubt). So this terribly evil person has all the power he could want.

Mordecai seems like he might be the hero in the story, but when you look closer at him you find he also had a huge ego, was very selfish, and was a hypocrite. He wasn't really a bad guy, but not exactly hero material either.

So then we talked about how we all have a little Haman and Mordecai in us. The things that make us different are really just the extent to which we have these negative characteristics in our lives and that most of us don't have much power. But if we are following Christ then the Holy Spirit lives in us and is slowly changing those ugly pieces of us.

I ended giving a few not so subtle clues as to who the real protagonist is in the story. This is already long so I won't go into all of them, I'll just highlight one. Haman is an Amalekite. At the end of the story where the fellas hold Moses' arms up so that God will give Israel victory in Exodus 17, Moses says, "For hands were lifted up to the throne of the LORD. The LORD will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation."

Cue the epic music and the wide lens camera. The story just became an epic with a great villan and an awesome Protagonist.