. . . What do you think about me?

I thought about that saying from a mug the other morning. I started reading Esther, a booklet in the Old Testament. Rather than start at the beginning, I jumped into the middle, and read this:

When Haman entered, the king asked him, “What should be done for the man the king delights to honor?”

Now Haman thought to himself, “Who is there that the king would rather honor than me?”

You don’t have to know the whole story to recognize that Haman has enormous self-confidence. At a time when a king can execute you for saying the wrong thing, it seem a big leap to me to assume that the king is always thinking positively of you.

But most of us understand exactly how Haman felt.

We work hard. We curry favor. We try to please. And when a person we admire looks at us to ask counsel, we feel pretty excited. We start to think we matter.

Haman was happy to answer the king’s question. He laid out an elaborate plan, complete with a parade and a town crier. And then discovered that it was his mortal enemy the king “delighted to honor.”  And Haman wasn’t in the parade. He was to be the town crier.

And he did. Cry, that is. And then said the wrong thing and was executed by the king.

It would be easy to draw a moral from this story. But I’d rather just remember Jesus sitting at a party with a bunch of religious leaders. They were all looking for the best seats, sitting at the head table. They wanted to be noticed. Their actions quoted Haman.

And Jesus said, “It’s more embarrassing to be moved down the list than moved up.”

Remember that at weekend feasts.