Sunday, October 8, 2006

I decided to go off-lectionary for a bit and spend some time exploring the great stories of the Hebrew Scriptures. So the text for this sermon is Daniel 6.
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The story of Daniel's adventure in the Lion's Den is standard fare in Sunday School. If you grew up in church, you might have watched the tale reenacted with puppets, or made a lion out of construction paper, or heard one of the many Children's versions read during Story Hour. The story is popular beyond the church, as well. A brief version of it is included in the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, a reference book of American culture. The story of the man who was miraculously protected from hungry lions makes for an exciting lesson about a faithful man's deliverance from death.

But let's go deeper.

I want for us to really understand what's going on here, and so a little refresher on the history of the Israelites is in order. For a short time, the Israelites had one united and sovereign Kingdom, ruled by David and his descendents. But the Northern part of the Kingdom broke away, and the divided house soon collapsed. The Northern Kingdom went first, but the Southern Kingdom of Judea was eventually destroyed by the conquests of the Babylonians. That's when the Babylonian Exile began. Thousands of Judeans were deported to Babylon. Daniel was a member of the Jewish community in exile. The Babylonians were smart; they didn't force able-minded people into positions of manual labor. A man like Daniel, with an excellent spirit, could achieve a measure of success in the foreign land. When we first encountered Daniel, he was not some low-level assistant. He was one of three administrators with a lot of responsibility for the Babylonian Kingdom. His supervisor was none other than King Darius himself, and the King clearly liked and trusted Daniel. A major promotion was in the works for our Israelite hero. He stood to follow in the footsteps of his ancestor Joseph, who held a position of authority in Egypt.

The other administrators didn't like Daniel. They had no reason and every reason to grumble about his leadership. There he was, a foreigner whose homeland had been defeated by Babylonian forces. Exile wasn't supposed to mean a fast track to the top for Daniel, and yet he had distinguished himself so highly that he was about to become their boss. They wanted to take him down on principle. But it turned out he was a little too good for their rotten scheme. His character was honorable, his record immaculate. So they played the religion card. "We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God."

They hammered out the perfect plan of attack: flatter the King by drafting a law prohibiting prayers to any other authority—divine or human—for thirty days. And then camp out under Daniel's window and wait for the evidence to fall into their waiting arms.

One of the most important details of the story comes next. "Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before."

Daniel and his people had lost their homeland, their temple, and the basic freedom to live and work where they pleased. But Daniel's faith would not be tethered by any ruler. His soul would not be managed by any edict. The conspiracy against Daniel threatened to enslave his spirit, but Daniel's spirit was as fierce as a lion. The narrator of this story is clear as can be: Daniel knew full well of the new law prohibiting his daily prayers, and he prayed anyway. What's more, he didn't lock his piety away behind the relative safety of a cellar door. Daniel disobeyed the law openly, kneeling before his open window to pray to the God of Israel.

To me, this is every bit as awe-inspiring as the lock-jawed lions.

Prayer, for Daniel, was as natural as breath. Three times a day, without fail, he fell to his knees and offered himself to his Lord. A prayer attributed to Daniel is preserved in the second chapter of the book bearing his name: "Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him." Through prayer, Daniel knew God. Prayer connected him to the Living Source of Life. And through prayer, Daniel knew himself. Raising his voice in praise to the God of his Ancestors—the God of our Ancestors— gave him an unwavering sense of identity, even in a foreign land. No matter how high he rose in the ranks of Babylon's leadership, three times a day he turned toward Jerusalem: heart, mind, and body.

With the royal decree limiting prayer only to the King, Daniel's praying took on another shape in his life. Prayer became a form of resistance, a public sign of his obedience to a greater law. Prayer became a form of civil disobedience. Daniel rejected not only the idolatry of the edict, but even the temptation to simply take the truth underground for thirty days.

Daniel's bravery – not in the lion's den, but on his knees before the open window— became a hero to Mahatma Gandhi early in his vocation as a pioneer of nonviolent resistance. Daniel was Gandhi's model of resistance to unjust legislation. When he was working on behalf of the Indians suffering from oppression in South Africa, Gandhi counseled his brethren to "sit with their doors flung wide open and tell those gentlemen that whatever laws they passed were not for them unless those laws were from God."

There are always consequences to civil disobedience. Anyone who publicly breaks a law faces the penalties of the law, even if the law is wrong. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood that when he and his fellow civil rights activists disobeyed the segregation laws, they were inviting imprisonment, hatred, and abuse. They expected to land squarely within the fangs of racist Americans. They used that predictable retaliation, hoping that the sight of innocent suffering would transform the hardened hearts of their oppressors.

Darius didn't even want to follow his foolish edict, but the law was the law. King and Kingdom would lose all integrity if he didn't consistently enforce the laws of the land. And so Daniel was thrust into the lion's den with nothing to protect him but the God to whom he had prayed a million times before.

Which was all he needed.

What happened to Daniel in the lion's den was a joyful triumph for people of faith. God saved his servant. Daniel's deliverance from death is one of the greatest, most vividly imaginable stories in all of our Holy Scriptures. It gives hope to the hopeless and proclaims that God will make a way where there is no way. The blameless hero was nearly killed on account of his devotion, yet his devotion to the Most High God summoned an angel to seal the jaws of his predators.

In the lions' den we learn that the rules and regulations of the world are not the final authority over God's children. Corrupt laws are turned to ash, death itself is left empty-handed, and even the most foolish King makes a wise decree: revere the God of Daniel.

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I found a book in our church library called Alone with God. It was written in 1917 by a woman named Matilda Erickson. It's the sort of book you could glance at once and immediately dismiss; surely, a volume so old and yellowed doesn't have anything too enlightening within its tattered covers. But listen to what Matilda had to say about Daniel. "When prime minister of Babylon, [Daniel] found it possible to meet God alone three times each day. All that the men asked of Daniel was that he stop praying for thirty days—just thirty days. Many Christians have stopped praying much longer than that, when the only lions in the way were carelessness and spiritual laziness."

Daniel isn't a hero because he was saved from the lions. That was God's doing, God's power revealed. Daniel is a hero because he threw open his window and prayed. His best bravery was spent on his knees. He defied Babylon, and our God stood with him in that defiance to establish life where Babylonian law sentenced death.

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It has been said that the Bible comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. In the gospels, Jesus teaches that his followers must lose their lives for his sake in order to live. The part about everlasting life is comforting, but the dying for it can be a bit unnerving. We love that Daniel's faith in God saved from death in the lions' lair… but don't linger too much on the fact that his faith in God landed him there in the first place.

Daniel's story teaches us what it means to be truly faithful. God does not challenge us to be privately pious, concealing our devotion from polite company. God dares us to take our faith public, living out the commands of our God – even when that means irritating the culture or breaking the law. God longs for us to choose the lion's den with Him rather than the palace without him [paraphrase from Matilda Erickson].

Ancient Babylon thirsted for a witness like that of Daniel's. And so does our own time and place. Our witness to the goodness of God is a prayer that must be prayed and a window that must be opened. This tired world needs to encounter the God we know through Jesus Christ, and the only ones capable of giving voice to his glory are the ones who know him.

We will face lions, but none more dangerous than a life emptied of God. Like Daniel, we will be delivered. Like Daniel, we will be saved.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

According to the Message, this is what happened in the house in Capernaum: “He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, "Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.” Now, the New Revised Standard Version is a translation. I trust that Mark’s original text probably says something closer to its language of Jesus taking a child and putting it among the Disciples. Yet Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase captures the tenderness we believe that Jesus would have demonstrated toward a small child. He cradles and embraces the little one. This is the language of love. The first lesson children are taught in Sunday school is that Jesus loves the little children, and this scripture bears witness to that love.

It can be hard to hear the fullness of this gospel text about power and greatness, humility and servanthood, discipleship and childhood, and what it really means to welcome God. Our own culture and context can deafen us to the Bible. We live in a culture that values children. We have an educational system that provides schooling to rich and poor children alike. And though laws are often broken, the mere fact that children are legally protected from abuse, neglect, and labor is significant. In ancient times, children were socially on par with slaves. They were completely powerless. Even today, children are endangered in certain cultures. So while we hear Jesus’ call to welcome children in light of our culture that, as a whole, agrees that children are to be cherished and protected, we might miss how off-key this lesson sounded to the Disciples’ ears. This is yet another example illustrating the upside-down, topsy-turvy Kingdom of God, where a servant is the greatest and one can welcome God by welcoming a child.

So as Disciples, our lesson is that we are to take the risks of servanthood. “Greatness is achieved in Jesus's eyes, not just by the fact that we serve others, not just by the fact that we pour out our time and our talent for the sake of others, greatness in the eyes of Jesus is found in the willingness of his disciples to receive, to accept, and indeed to really welcome those they would normally consider un-receivable, unacceptable, and unwelcome.” Including a child.

As wonderful and necessary that lesson is, it isn’t the one I’m called to preach today. In my study this week, I practiced a prayerful way of reading the Bible that was taught by St. Ignatius, one of the great guides of Christian spirituality. The Ignatian method of bible reading encourages Christians to put one of God’s greatest gifts to use—our imaginations.

“Generally, Ignatian prayer works best with narrative material in which actual characters live a story of faith. The idea is to place yourself into the text as a careful observer -- a fly on the wall. Ignatius commended the use of the five senses in such meditation. You taste, hear, see, smell and feel your way through the passage. Occasionally you become one of the characters, seeing the story unfold from his or her viewpoint. Most of all, the aim is to help you perceive the narrative from the viewpoint of Jesus so that you may more fully participate in his mind, heart, and work.”

While the Ignatian method doesn’t replace traditional bible study, it is a wonderful way to interact with the living word of God.

So I imagined my way into the gospel text. So much to see, so much to relate to. I started by acknowledging how very tired the whole group must have been, walking so many miles to fulfill their mission. I felt the Disciples’ fear and bewilderment when Jesus again preached that he would be killed and after three days rise again. I overheard the bickering about which Disciple would be greatest—and I recognized their shame and heard their silence when Jesus wondered what they were arguing about. It’s easy for me to relate to the Disciples in the Gospel of Mark, for he is the evangelist who is most brutally honest about their many blunders.

But just as I thought my practice of the Ignatian Method would lead me to remain with the disciples and see the whole story through their searching eyes, Jesus draws the child into the circle. And as I contemplated the simple beauty of the Son of God cradling a little child in his arms, I realized that I wanted, and needed, to be the child. I squeezed my eyes shut and summoned every drop of my imagination into becoming the object of Jesus’ lesson, the little one whom he embraced.

Most of the folks who gather for worship are grown-up Christians. We’re supposed to be learning the lessons the Disciples had to learn, because we are part of the communion of saints before us who spent their lives trying to faithfully follow Christ. And so I am not surprised that every commentary and sermon I read about this passage interpreted it in light of what it calls the Disciples to do to do.

Its lesson is important and startling. Welcome a child, serve the powerless, and you welcome and serve not only Christ but the One who sent him. We need to be challenged to understand what this really means. I have a friend who is both a pastor and a mother, and she is using this opportunity to remind her congregation that they can’t just welcome her kids when they are on their best behavior; if they really want to welcome her kids they have to welcome, in her words, “crumbs in the pews and poop and all kids of unwelcoming things.” Jesus isn’t calling his followers to welcome Precious Moments figurines of children; he cradles before them a living and breathing child who needs care.

We are the Disciples learning how to truly welcome, but we are that child, too, hungry for love and acceptance, needing to know that no matter how small we are, we are great in the eyes of God. Our journey with Jesus starts when we realize, with all the simplicity of a child, that Jesus really does love us. Just as Jesus cradled and embraced that little one in Galilee, he welcomes each and every one of us to rest in his arms.

It is all too easy to teach a child the opposite. I remember the burning feeling I had when I was yelled at in my childhood church for running in the sanctuary during the midweek ministry program. I was sternly told that I was in the house of the Lord. The sanctuary no longer felt safe; the Father’s mansion suddenly didn’t seem to have room for me. No one but Jesus could have drawn me out of my shame. No one but Jesus could erase the harsh words that separated me from feeling like I was welcome in the sanctuary. No one but Jesus.

Fred Craddock tells a story. “Used to have a kid down home who’d believe anything you’d tell him. You could say, “The schoolhouse burned down. We’re not having school tomorrow.”

“Oh boy!” He’d believe it.

“They’re giving away free watermelons down at the town hall.”

“Really? Free watermelons?” He’d go running off.

“Did you know the president of the United States is coming to our town tomorrow?”

“He is? Really? Whoopee!” He just believed everything.

I remember once there was an evangelist who came to our town, and he said to that kid, “God loves you and cares for you and comes to you in Jesus Christ.” And do you know, that kid believed it? He actually believed it.”

I hope that you believe it, too.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Jesus and his Disciples are making their way to a new territory, a new set of villages in which to teach and heal and bear witness to the goodness of God. And as they journey to Caesarea Philippi, the unfamiliar landscape draws forth a new set of questions. Jesus asks what the people are saying about him. The Disciples certainly would have been keeping up with the public perception of their prophet, and so they are quick to answer what they have heard. That this man from Nazareth is something special goes without saying, and so people have speculated that he might be an incarnation of John the Baptist, or Elijah, or perhaps a prophet sent by God to proclaim a new word for the Israelites.

Jesus' question is more than a straw poll. Knowing what other people say about Jesus can be helpful as we prepare ourselves to answer the second of Jesus' questions. One of my first assignments in seminary was to analyze and compare how the reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther understood who Jesus is and what his life and death means for humanity.

It was an exhausting paper to research, full of nitpicky details and fine distinctions. It felt like calculating how many angels dance on the head of a pin. And yet, when I timidly met my strict German professor for a conference about the paper, we ended up talking at length about my own understanding of who Jesus was and is. I was surprised to realize how much learning about the church's traditional interpretations of Jesus Christ informed my own confession of faith.

On the road to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus pushed the Disciples to answer for themselves just who they thought they were following. Whether he was blessed by unique wisdom or courage, Peter alone responded, and his answer was correct: their rabbi was no ordinary man, but the Messiah.

Peter thought he knew what it meant to stand in the presence of the Messiah. He believed that Israel's hope for a restored earthly kingdom was fulfilled in Jesus. After centuries of slavery and exile, turmoil and oppression, the Israelites would finally emerge from under the iron thumb of their most recent enemies and be sovereign over their promised land again. Jesus would be the victorious King, born from the house of David. All of these expectations swirled in Peter's head as he proudly proclaimed Jesus' true identity.

The Disciples’ high hopes were dashed, as Jesus took Peter's spark of understanding as an invitation to go deeper into the real meaning of Messiah. The Disciples had seen a lot since Jesus called them out of their fishing boats. They had seen Jesus scatter Demons, vanquish leprosy, chill fevers. They had seen loaves and fish split into five thousand servings, and paralysis give way to movement. They had heard the astounding authority in Jesus' words. They had seen more than enough to believe that Jesus was the Christ, worthy of their trust and adoration.

Yet nothing prepared them for this new teaching. What is this about suffering and rejection? What is this about death? I wonder if Peter even heard the part about rising again after three days, so appalled was he at the thought of his beloved master denied by their brethren.

We hear this teaching in much the same way as the Disciples. We did not gather today expecting the doom and drear of Lent. This is the time of the Christian year in which we simply hear the stories about Jesus. We're supposed to be growing in our Discipleship of the risen Lord by rehearsing the gospel accounts of miracles and parables. And yet in the midst of our journey with Jesus, suddenly we find ourselves on another road altogether. We thought we were going to Caesarea Philippi, but it turns out the path leads to Calvary.
Jesus wants his Disciples to understand who he really is.

And if the finger is pointed in our direction, if we take on the boldness of Peter and proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah, do we know what that means? The life and death and life of Jesus will reveal an utterly unexpected Messiah, and an utterly unexpected God. For Jesus is not an exception in the life of God, a momentary lapse of divine power. Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, the sharpest reflection of the heart of our Creator. The fierce tribal god of battles and retribution turns out to be a falsehood. The cheerful and shiny god of smashing success is just another idol. Jesus reveals that the God who lit the stars and stirred the seas, the true God, is loving and compassionate. His faithfulness to his people renders him completely vulnerable, and so through Christ we learn that the One who created us is the One who suffers with us, and for us. And though we might believe that the opposite of power is vulnerability, the Messiah lives and dies to show us that the greatest expression of power is the vulnerability of sacrificial love.

To claim Jesus as the Messiah demands that we recognize the breadth and the depth, the joy and the sorrow, of who Jesus is and what he brought about. Why did the Disciples bother to leave their nets behind and follow this strange teacher throughout the hills and plains of Galilee? And, for that matter, why do we bother to follow him in this time and in this place?

This week I encountered one pastor’s answer to this question that took my breath away and had me drawing stars in the margins of the page. Why do we follow? “Because Jesus told Nathanael, the Samaritan woman and others the truth about themselves. Because he fulfilled the longing of Israel. Because he brought healing and forgiveness that embodied the new regime of which he spoke. Because he practiced and pictured the character and possibility of all people, and breathed purpose and destiny into all creation.

Because he opened out an everlasting communion with the Father that made the Romans, the conventional powers and authorities, all the destructive and craven impulses of the world, even death itself, seem paltry and pitiful. He formed around himself a community, and gave them the practices and the gifts to be his body through pain and joy. His were the words and deeds of eternal life, and there have been none to match them before or since.”

Peter’s lack of understanding frustrated Jesus, and if we join Peter in denying the fullness of who Jesus is, we will frustrate our Lord just as surely. Jesus spoke harshly to Peter not because he didn’t love this bold yet flawed Disciple. Jesus knew how crucial it was for those closest to him, those who had heard and responded to his call on their lives, to know the truth about their leader and the mission he shared with them. No one can say that Jesus didn’t warn his followers that proclaiming the gospel could result in suffering and death.

Just as Jesus could not evade the cruelty of the cross, neither could his followers. "If any want to become my disciples, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me." This is not a battle cry for martyrdom; this is an honest evaluation of the cost of discipleship.

Peter thought he was on the road to Caesarea Philippi with a man whose reputation echoed that of Elijah and John the Baptist. He found out he was following the Messiah on a path to Calvary, and for the life of him, he could not discern any good news in this detour. Yet what we overhear in this challenging passage is a story about a disciple ever so slowly realizing that he is in the presence of the only one who can lead him home.

In this geography of discipleship, Jesus is the leader. We must either follow or get out of the way. If we cannot accept the God whom Jesus reveals, if we cannot abide that our Savior should be anything other than an untainted idol of success, we will be rebuked and told to get back. The journey will continue without us. But if we look at this incredible map and see the way, the truth, and the life, we will be given the grace and the strength to take up our cross and follow him to the lowest hell and the highest heaven.

At this intersection, who do you say that He is?