by Gerald McDermott

Jesus celebrated Purim.  We know that because John tells us he went up to Jerusalem for an unnamed feast (just as the book of Esther, which is the story of Purim, never names God) that fell on a Sabbath (John 5:9), and Purim is the only Jewish feast that fell on a Sabbath between 25 and 35 AD.

Purim is the celebration of God’s defeat of the Persians, who were about to annihilate the Jews in what was then the world’s great superpower, ancient Persia.  Interestingly—or better, providentially—Iran is modern-day Persia, and today’s war against Persia is for the purpose of preventing another annihilation of Jews and their state. For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the leaders of today’s Persia are intent on annihilating not only Jews but also Christians.  

A Christian woman who observes Lent (as I do) asked me the other day how we Christians could observe a season of penitence like Lent and a season of joy like Purim at the same time.  The first answer is that they don’t always fall at the same time because the Jewish calendar is lunar, while the Christian calendar is solar.

But I told her the principal reason we can do both is that we follow Jesus the Jew, whose forty days of fasting we remember, and whose celebration of Purim is also worthy of commemoration.  And the purpose of Lenten fasting is to deprive the senses so that we can experience a deeper joy of the Spirit.  

But there is another reason we Christians should observe the joy of Purim.  As Doniel Trenk has observed, Purim teaches us that God controls history, not we.  

“On Yom Kippur, we fast, we pray, we afflict ourselves—and we can still fall prey to the illusion that it is our devotion delivering the verdict.  On Purim, no such illusion is possible.  We drink, we dress up, we have fun.  There is nothing to take credit for. And that is precisely the point.”

So too in this year, when Purim and Lent coincide.  We Christians fast to control our desires, but we must remember that our lives—and human history—are under God’s control.  

As Trenk puts it, “What rushes in to fill that space [when we celebrate God’s control] is joy—the deep, unguarded kind that can only exist where the need to perform does not.”

Indeed, it reminds us of Psalm 2.  The nations are raging against God’s people [is it not the same today?] but “he who is enthroned in heaven laughs” (v. 4)

God laughs because he is in control of history, not the nations who are “plotting” (v. 1) to annihilate God’s people.  God is in control and they are not.

Since God is laughing, so can we.  We can make merry in this season of Purim precisely because we know God is in control.

But how can we rejoice in war?  Especially when some Christians claim that Jesus is against all war and killing?

The Jesus of the gospels suggested he was not a pacifist but believed, as Ecclesiastes puts it, “there is a time for war” (Eccles 3:8). In his parable of the wicked tenants, he said the vineyard owner punished the tenants who had killed his servants and then his son by “put[ting] those wretches to a miserable death” (Matt 21:41). 

By “those wretches” Jesus meant not Jews generally but certain leaders jealous of his popularity among the Jewish people. Matthew tells us in this same story that the Jewish “crowds held [Jesus] to be a prophet” (Matt 21:46).

This is the same Jesus whose robe is dipped in blood and from whose mouth comes a sword that slays the wicked (Rev 19:13, 21). The same Jesus who, according to Jude, “destroyed those who did not believe” among those who came “out of the land of Egypt” (v. 5 ESV). 

This same Jesus endorsed every stroke of the pen (the KJV “tittle” in Matt. 5:18) in the Hebrew Bible where God more than once commanded God’s people to kill those bent on their elimination.

The point is that while Jesus calls us to love our enemies, this love does not contradict the tragic need for nations to defend themselves against those who seek their elimination. 

Jewish tradition has a saying, “Whoever is kind to the cruel will be cruel to the kind.”  If we Christians thought it was wrong to be kind to the Nazis nearly a century ago, we must support today’s war against the new Nazis.  

Gerald McDermott is an Anglican theologian and author ofIsrael Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently about the People and the Land.