Refusing to Bow

Gluttony and Haman

Vices & Villains, Part Seven

Final Week

July 27, 2025

David Collins

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Our final sin today is gluttony, but don’t worry…we’re not gonna be talking about how much ice cream we eat. I know where the line is. Politics is one thing, but dessert is sacred.

Seriously though if you do ever want to talk to me or Megan about our tendency as people to sometimes eat because we're sad and be sad because we eat, we are here for you or we can help connect you with someone more qualified than we are to talk about all the reasons that we raid the fridge sometimes what we probably should do is pray or go for a walk. If that's help you need we're happy to talk with you and pray with you.

But gluttony as a deadly sin goes so much deeper and further than our snack drawers.

As a personal vice, it isn’t really about what’s in our fridge. It’s about what’s missing in us. That sense that no matter how much we take in, whether it’s food, or stuff, or attention…it’s never enough. We try to fill a spiritual emptiness with material things. And it hasn’t worked yet, but maybe just one more will do the trick.

But that’s not the only thing that people can be gluttons for.

Some people are gluttons for praise and recognition. They just can't get enough of it. Too much is never enough!

Some people are gluttons for power. Not leadership or responsibility, but power and control. The kind of power that can't stand to be questioned or challenged or even inconvenienced.

And some people are gluttons for cruelty. They just can't get enough of making others suffer and feel small. These are people who don't just want to win… they want someone else to lose badly.

Gluttony is a hunger that only grows the more that it's fed.

And there’s a man in scripture who embodies that hunger perfectly. A man who had wealth, status, and privilege… and still couldn’t be satisfied. A man who demanded honor from everyone around him…and when one person refused to bow, he lost his mind.

His name is Haman. He’s our final villain, and he might be the most pathetic person in the whole Bible. I don’t know. It’s quite a competition. We meet him the book of Esther in the Old Testament. Esther isn’t a book we get to a lot, so here’s a quick summary.

The Book of Esther

The Book of Esther takes place during the Persian Empire, which if you remember your Bible history, this is after the exile in Babylon, which ended when the Persian empire conquered the Babylonian one. So some Jews have been able to return home to Israel, but most were still everywhere. It's called the diaspora.

So there's a king named Ahasuerus, who loves to party and during one of his parties he gets really drunk and he orders his wife, Queen Vashti to come and show everyone at his party how beautiful she is. And there’s kind of an implication in the story that he wants her to be wearing the crown, and that’s all. Naturally, she refuses, and the king loses it. He was not only drunk, but drunk with power, and all of his advisors tell him that not only is this an affront to the king, but to men everywhere. When they hear about this, all their wives will start disobeying them and then where will society be? Those guys would be fit right into the man-o-sphere we’ve got today. They’d probably have their own podcast.

Next we learn that this king is going to hold a beauty pageant to pick his next wife, but it’s a compulsory one. All the attractive young women are gathered into the king’s palace and given makeovers. That’s when we meet Mordecai. Mordecia was a Jew who was carried into exile and made a place for himself in the king’s service, along with his orphaned cousin, Esther, whom he adopted as his own daughter. Esther got scooped up with all the other young women. Mordecai told her to keep her religious identity a secret, and she did. Then the king chose her as his new wife and queen.

That’s when we meet Haman. Haman is a glutton for power and recognition, for all the reasons that people give into gluttony in the first place. He is insecure, so craves control. He’s fragile, so he lashes out. He’s hollow inside, so he can’t get enough applause.

Haman ends up getting a huge promotion, because the scum always rises to the top of the buckets like that. And along with his new title, the king threw in an order that everyone had to bow down to him. But Mordecai, being a faithful Jew, knows that acts like bowing really mean something, and that even a king’s decree can’t make someone worthy of reverence. So he won’t bow.

And Haman’s reaction is exactly what you’d expect, if you’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting someone like him. It wasn’t enough to kill Mordecai for his disrespect. He wants to wipe Mordecai’s whole people off the face of the earth for his daring to follow a law he believes is more important than a tyrant’s decree. So he whispers in the King’s ear, who may not have been paying very close attention, and gets him set a date for a purge day when all the Jews will be killed and their goods will be plundered.

When the decree goes public, all the Jews tear their clothes and lament. Mordecai tells Esther that she needs to do something about it, but she’s afraid because there’s another decree that says that anyone who goes to the king without being summoned will be put to death, unless the king holds out his golden scepter to them, and she hasn’t been invited to an audience in a month. So Mordecai tells her the line you’ve probably heard from this book even if you didn’t know it was,

For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Esther 4:14 

Esther asked him to get all of their people to fast and pray for her for three days, and then she drops this great line in,

“After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” Esther 4:16

It works! The king is more than happy to see Esther, and she uses her time with him to invite the king and Haman to a banquet, and at the end of that banquet, he asks her what she really wants and she says that all she wants is for him and his pal Haman to come to another banquet the next day.

Haman walks home on air…until he sees Mordecai, who doesn’t bow or nod. He doesn’t even look afraid of him! So Haman scampers home and calls all of his friends together with him and his wife, and tells them how good he has it, but that none of it seems to matter because Mordecai doesn’t bow.

Yet all this does me no good so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.” Esther 5:13

So his wife and friends tell him to have a pole made and set up right outside the palace and after the banquet tomorrow, he can have the king hang Mordecai on it while they all drink and laugh and slap each other on the back. So he does.

(There’s also an interlude where the king can’t sleep and so has the royal records read and discovers that Mordecai once saved his life and Haman ends up having to lead a parade for this man he hates, but it’s more like foreshadowing for what’s about to happen.)

The next day, Haman goes back for the second feast with the King and Queen Esther. And the king asks her again what she wants. You can have anything, he says, up to half of my kingdom! And she says, "All I want is my life, and the lives of my people."

For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. Esther 7:4

The king asks her who did this? Who tried to kill you and your people? And

Esther said, “A foe and an enemy, this wicked Haman!” Esther 7:6 

And so the king has him hung on the very pole that Haman had built for Mordecai, the man who wouldn’t bow.

It’s a great story, isn't it? Lots of drama and intrigue. Plus the bad guy gets what he deserves, which is the best part of any story, right?

But its also very troubling. And it holds up a mirror to lots of things about our nation right now. So let’s look at it again, especially the three main characters of Esther, Mordecai and Haman.

Esther Right Now

Esther gets the best lines in the whole book, but before that? She stays silent. Not just for a little while, but for years. She hides who she is and dines with the king who threw away his last wife for saying no.

She’s not fearless. She’s surviving. She’s doing what so many people have had to do under systems like that. Stay small, and quiet in order to stay safe. At least for a while. And when she finally does speak up, it’s not because she feels ready. It’s because the moment demands it. Then somehow, through fasting and prayer, she finds her voice. And it works!

But many today aren’t having that same experience.

This week in Kentucky, people marched in support of their friend, Imam Ayman Soliman, a chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, who is a legal refugee from Egypt, who was kidnapped by ICE, and is being threatened with deportation back to Egypt where he will likely be killed by the government there. Several people of the people who marched in protest, albeit without a permit, were attacked by local police, (the newspaper just said that the protest "turned violent" without saying how, but the video showed it all) and two chaplains, the man’s colleagues who marched as well, were fired by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for being there.

That’s just one example. But you all already knew that it doesn’t always go as well as it did for Esther.

Mordecai Right Now

And what about Mordecai? He took a principled position and refused to bow to an evil man. That’s brave. But his stand put everyone at risk. It didn’t just threaten him. It triggered a decree to annihilate his people.

Courage is messy. Resistance doesn’t always come with clean hands or perfect outcomes. Sometimes doing what’s right makes things worse before they get better. For all his faith and boldness, Mordecai is still operating inside a system that doesn’t care who he is or what he believes. He defies Haman, which is cool, but he starts a fight that he can’t finish.

Thats the trouble with so much of what we’re facing today. There are people standing up, and putting themselves on the line, but the systems we’re up against are massive. The forces of evil are well-funded, well-organized, and completely indifferent to who gets hurt.

So maybe we tell ourselves, “I’ll just bow this once. I can always stand next time.” We make compromises we swore we never would just to stay safe or stay liked. And sometimes that feels necessary.

But every time we bow to what we know is wrong, it gets harder to stand later. The longer we wait, the more the lines blur. The more the stakes rise. And the next chance to stand may not come at all.

Haman Right Now

And then there’s Haman. The man with power, but no peace. He’s got the title, the wealth, the king’s ear, but one man won’t bow, and it ruins everything.

That’s how gluttony works. It doesn’t matter how much you have if you don’t have love. Haman’s hunger for recognition turns into a planned genocide. And the terrifying, but shouldn’t-surprise-us-thing about it is, the system just lets him have it.

It’s the same vice we see today...the same gluttony that tries to fix an inner emptiness with outer control.

Where do we see that today? Maybe it’s the person who hears Spanish being spoken and erupts later to their friends, “If you’re going to live in this country, learn the language!”

But it’s not really about language. It’s about fear and insecurity. It’s about needing the world around you to make up for what’s missing inside. That’s how gluttony works. It takes the ache of not feeling safe or seen or important, and tries to silence everyone who reminds you of it.

And while Haman tried to go straight to genocide, today’s Hamans exploit that resentment in others to gain power and money along with the violence.

They give no bid contracts to their buddies to build “detention” camps, and build themselves a private army, all the while hoping that their fans continue to hate poor immigrants more than they hate rich men who abuse girls in private jets and on private islands.

And we might wonder, where is God in all of this?

Where is God when the powerful do whatever they want and violence is legal, organized and efficient?

Where is God when courage costs everything and evil gets a blank check?

It’s a fair question. And it’s the question at the heart of the book of Esther.

Did you know that God’s name never shows up in this book?

Not once.

There are no miracles, and no prophets. Just people. People who are scared, and angry. People who are trying to figure out what faithfulness looks like when God stays silent.

And the incredible message of Esther is that the heroes just do what’s right, and that’s enough. They don’t know ahead of time that it will work. In fact, they acknowledge that it might not. But they do what’s right anyway. Because if they don’t do it, who will?

They don’t wait for a sign. They don’t have a guarantee. They just act. Esther fasts. Mordecai speaks. The people mourn and pray and show up for each other. And somehow, that becomes enough.

Somehow, in a story with no mention of God, the presence of God shows up everywhere! In their choices and their risks, in their refusal to let evil have the last word.

That’s grace.

Not a magic fix, but a stubborn strength that moves through regular people doing the best they can.

You can be like Esther.

You can speak the hard truth, even when it puts you at risk.

You can use the power you have...not just to protect yourself, but to protect others.

You can stop waiting to feel brave and just do the brave thing.

You can be honest about your fear.

You can admit that you’re not ready and still show up.

You can ask others to pray with you… not because you think it will change the outcome, but because you need the strength to do what needs to be done.

You can fast. You can pause.

You can take the time to listen for God, even when God feels far away.

Even when you already know what you have to do.

You can be like Esther. Not certain. Not fearless. But faithful.

And you can be like Mordecai.

You can care for someone vulnerable, like he did for Esther, raising her as his own when she had no one else.

You can give good advice to those who can actually do something with it.

You can help an Esther get where she needs to be, not just for her, but for all of us.

We need good people in important places and we need to support the ones who are already there.

You might be one of those people. You can stay faithful in complicated places, and do what you can from within a broken system.

You can challenge someone you care about to be brave. Not to pressure them, but because you believe in who they are.

And most importantly right now, you can refuse to bow.

Refuse to Bow

Even when it’s the law. Even when it feels like everyone else already has.

Even when your knees shake and your voice does too…you can stay on your feet.

That’s what they’re counting on, you know. That you’ll see the crowd bowing and think, “I guess that’s just what we do now.”

That you’ll keep your head down and stay in line. That you’ll trade your integrity for a little comfort and hope nobody notices.

But not you.

You’ve got something deeper in you. You’ve got a line you won’t cross.

You know who you are. You know what’s right. And when the moment comes, you’ll stand. Even if you’re the only one.

So when you feel that pressure to bow...because it’s easier, or safer, or “just how things are”...

you look them in the eye…

and you don’t.

Don’t bow.

Not now.

Not ever.

And we will be right along side you, also not bowing. This church right here.

Don’t you want to be part of a community that just won’t bow to the Hamans in our world?

A church that doesn’t flinch. That doesn’t cave. That doesn’t go quiet when the pressure’s on.

A place where we’ve got each other’s backs. Where we say the hard things, do the right things, and stand our ground, even when it costs us?

Because we won’t bow to fear.

We won’t bow to hate.

We won’t bow down to power that demands silence or cruelty or compromise.

We’ll stand together.

And we won’t just resist the bad…we stand for the good. We show up for justice. We fight for our neighbors. We pray like it matters and we act like we believe it.

That’s the kind of church we can be.

That’s who we are.

And that’s where we will find God.

God’s absence in Esther says so much more about God to me than any miracle ever could.

No thunder. No voice from the sky. No parting seas. Just regular people stepping up and taking risks because it’s the right thing to do.

They didn’t need a burning bush and neither do we.

We already know. We know what’s right. We know what love does.

We don’t need anyone’s permission to be brave. We don’t need a sign to do good.

We just need to move.

To speak.

To stand.

So whatever you’re facing, whatever pressure is trying to make you bow...

remember who you are.

Remember who we are.

And stand.