Transforming the World: The Den of Lions

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The book of Daniel can be seen as a “how-to manual” for how God’s people are to engage with the larger culture around them. We have seen now three separate kings serve as symbols of the broken values of the world. We began with the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, followed by his son Belshazzar. Today’s king is Darius the Mede, as we see the beginning of a transition from the Babylonian Empire to the Medes and Persians. Between these three, we have a pretty good sense of what the author of Daniel thinks about the values of these Empires:

• We have seen a commitment to violence, watching kings burn people alive, tear people limb from limb, and today throw them into a pit filled with lions.

• We have seen the hierarchy of political power; again and again there is language of the most powerful person, and the second most powerful person, and the third most powerful person. And we have seen those jostling to improve their status and place in this power structure.

• That one is related to another: the need to please others. In that power game, kings are continually trying to impress their subjects and underlings, needing their approval. Scholars often point to the weakness of Darius’ leadership that allows these lesser bureaucrats to manipulate him.

• We have seen these pictures of hubris, of kings who demand that others worship them, those who are denounced by God as arrogant and self-centered, leading to their downfall. Arrogance is a hallmark of Empire.

• We have seen that arrogance lead to a kind of wild hedonism…the king is shocked when Daniel and his friends don’t want their lavish food and drink; the king threw an out-of-control party with a thousand drunken politicians; in today’s chapter it says that the king is used to “entertainment” every night. A lust for all kinds of passions mark the culture.

• Including lust for money and possessions…we have seen overwhelming greed, with kings that value things over people: purple robes and gold chains and gold statues.

The author of Daniel paints these leaders as foolish, bumbling, and short-sighted. But there is also a universal nature to these things. After I put together the list, I noticed the similarity to what has been called the Seven Deadly Vices: wrath and envy and gluttony and lust and greed. And it doesn’t take much imagination for us to still see these same values today, does it? Violence, political power, people-pleasing, arrogance, hedonism, greed? Sound familiar?

The book of Daniel puts these bumbling fools of Empire alongside of its true heroes: those without political greatness, but possessing true greatness. Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego demonstrate how God’s people are to respond to the brokenness of the culture around them. Again, it is a “resistance how-to manual” to teach another generation how to respond when surrounded by these same values.

I want to draw a contemporary parallel here to what is probably the most important theological work on this topic in the last 75 years. In 1951, a theologian by the name of H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a little book titled Christ and Culture. He and his brother Reinhold, who were actually born up the interstate in Wright City, Missouri, are considered two of the most important theologians of their generation. They helped provide the theological language about how the United States, and specifically Christians, ought to respond to the rise of Nazism and Hitler. After the war was ended, H. Richard wrote Christ and Culture and clearly was influenced by those events. If anyone was ready to talk about how Christians should respond to the broken values we see in the world, it was him. In his book, Niebuhr lines out several unhelpful responses to this question of how Christians should engage with the world around them:

• For example, he names the problems of the model that he calls “Christ Of Culture.” In this model, Christians don’t question or push back against the values of the culture around them, but totally buy into them. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the danger of Christian nationalism, and I tried to make the point that we have to careful of both conservative Christian nationalism AND progressive Christian nationalism. Anytime we say “Jesus belongs to my political party,” we are committing the sins of the “Christ Of Culture” model. When we baptize violence and greed and hedonism and arrogance as things that Jesus would endorse, we worship our culture and not Jesus. Daniel and his peers avoided this one big-time, rejecting the worship practices and dietary practices and values of the Empire that surrounded them.

• Niebuhr also pushes back against what he calls “Christ Against Culture.” This is one that I have to most careful of. A couple of weeks ago, I had a saint of the church remind me “there really are a lot of good things about our country, aren’t there?” It was a helpful reminder that the “Against” game can lose perspective if we aren’t careful. In the rush to push back against swallowing culture hook, line and sinker, there are some Christians who blindly reject it in all forms. We don’t want to just be known for what we are against. Likewise, Daniel and his peers avoided this one: they continued to live in and amongst the culture that surrounded them, like the prophet Jeremiah had reminded them at the beginning of the Exile to “pray for the welfare of the city” where they lived.

• A third option is what Niebuhr called “Christ Above Culture.” This is similar to the first, but it is more like a political or institutional takeover in order to legislate the laws of Jesus. The phrase “theocracy” comes to mind. Of course, the problem with this is that more often than not, the same tools and values of Empire are used in order to enact this political takeover. In order to politically coerce the way of Jesus, one must abandon the ways of Jesus. Daniel and his friends were not resistance fighters or Zealots or part of the violent Israelite revolt that took place in later years; their resistance was not a political or military one, but something else.

• Fourthly, Niebuhr warns of what he calls “Christ and Culture in Paradox.” This view suggests a black and white view of humanity and God, that anything that humans do is fully depraved and totally unredeemable. All human work is depraved. All culture is depraved. And there is nothing that we can do about it. Again, this is not what we see in the book of Daniel.

 

Daniel doesn’t resist from behind a soldier’s sword, or a king’s scepter, or even a monk’s cowl in retreat from the world. Daniel resists…on his knees. Do you notice how many times it talks about Daniel praying in this text? Three times a day, he faces the lost land of promise in Jerusalem and prays to God. When these lower bureaucrats are jealous and try to get Daniel in trouble, they know that they can take advantage of the fact that he prays. They know he is a committed pray-er, and they know that if the king demands that he pray to another god, he will beyond question break that edict. By reputation, by practice, by personality, Daniel is a person of prayer. Key to his resistance is his life of prayer.

Last week, we talked about this way of resistance under the leadership of Kay Northcutt’s description of paideuterion, or the school of faith. We talked about three courses in this school:

1. Listen with the Ear of the Heart

2. Beholding or Cultivating Attentiveness

3. Building toward a Sacramental Life

I would argue that these are all connected to the life of prayer. As are the next three that she suggests:

4. Seeking to See as God Sees. This is the process of moving from knowing that God loves us, to believing and acting out of that love. Her language reminds me of learning a new language. When we learn a different language, we read a sentence or a sign in that language, and then work to translate it in our heads to our own language. But eventually, we learn it well enough that we begin to think in that language. It is said that when we dream in a different language, that is when we really know it. Can we live out of the prayer life deeply enough that we can see as God sees? Read the world as God reads the world? No translation through our Empire eyes needed?

5. Attending to Vocational Formation. In the language of capitalism, we have a hard time with vocation. What we usually mean is “how we make money.” Which makes it hard when we retire or lose our jobs. But Christian vocation, Northcutt reminds us, is how we use our gifts and our time wisely for the work of God. She writes about “an elusive, unyielding pull toward God, toward vocational consciousness, and to the needs of the world.” When we see as God sees, we see how our talents and the world’s needs meet. Even if we don’t make any money doing it.

6. Waking Us Up. She invites us to move from what she calls the “taken-for-grantedness” of life, when the ordinary remains ordinary, to an understanding that we are co-authors of our lives. Together God wakes us up to live into the vocation and the calling and the attentiveness and the beholding and the seeing and the listening so that we and God write this story together. Awake and emboldened, we have new eyes to see and new ears to hear.

 

I don’t think that Daniel was a fool. Perhaps he didn’t understand what was happening at first with these manipulating and violent bureaucrats, but I imagine there came a moment when he realized exactly what they were doing. He woke up and saw the world around him for what it was. And he knew that he could survive this encounter by giving up his worship, abandoning his life of prayer. But instead, feeling the arrogant eyes on him, he walked up to the upper room anyway. Just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who said, “our God may not save us, but we are going to worship him, anyway.” I believe that Daniel had a similar thought, “Though I may not survive it, I will choose to see the world the way that God sees it, anyway. I will act out of the gifts and the calling and the vocation that God has given me, anyway.” I think he walked up to that upper room, and with those violent eyes on him, facing home to Jerusalem with the memory of its rubble where a beautiful Temple once stood. He knew the power and violence of Empire enough to know that God’s people were not always protected from it. Seeing with clear eyes and open hands to serve, he dropped to his knees. Though it meant a death sentence, Daniel prayed.

And what happened next? Let’s let the choir tell us…

(Anthem)

“Trust and never doubt. Jesus will surely bring you out. He never failed me yet.”

The Hebrew word for trust is hemin. And as the choir reminds us, the story of Daniel is one of trust: the story of a man who trusted God enough to pray, even when it endangered his life. But do you know what else that trust did? Even more amazing than God shutting the mouths of the hungry lions? Daniel’s trust and his commitment to his God, even in the face of certain death, changed the heart of the king himself. All night long, he tossed and turned and…dare I call it “prayed” for Daniel’s safety. And in the dark of morning, he rushed to the pit to find out what happened and as soon as he heard Daniel’s voice, he dropped to his knees in prayer and worship of God. God saved Daniel from the lions, but the biggest miracle in the whole thing might be that God saved Darius from himself. He’s not quite there yet, even by the end of the chapter, but I think we see the beginning of his transformation.

The fifth option in Niebuhr’s book is that when we do this work, when we are faithful, when we open our eyes and ears and see the world and ourselves and God in new ways, it changes the world. His last option is perhaps the most radical: Christ Transforming Culture. When we do this stuff. When we join Daniel in the upper room in prayer. When we open our hearts to the work of God in the world. When we resist the powers of this world…on our knees…it changes the world. It doesn’t happen quickly, and there will be a lot of fiery furnaces and pits of lions in the meanwhile. But like Daniel, I think we can watch the world around us begin to change, until we can all sing in one voice: “He never failed me yet!”