Sunday, January 7, 2018
Who gets to say who you are? Who has the right and the power and the
opportunity to write your story? Who dares to define you?
“Names are not always what they seem.” That’s Mark Twain.
And here’s William Shakespeare. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet.”[i]
It was the 6th century BC. The mighty Babylonian empire conquered the
people of God, the kingdom of Judah. The
magnificent temple King Solomon had built centuries before was toppled, left a
pile of ruin. The Judean King was
captured and forced to watch as his sons were murdered. Then, so that the death of his children would
be the last thing he ever saw, the Babylonians put his eyes out. This king was shackled, now a blind slave,
and forced to walk the nearly 700 miles to Babylon.
All who stood before Babylon were fear-struck by her
might. You bow before Babylon or you are
obliterated.
But it was not enough to destroy all that was left of
Jewish sovereignty, the northern kingdom Israel having fallen to Assyria
centuries earlier. Before destroying the
temple, the book of Daniel tells us all the gold cups and plates and fixtures
were stripped and hauled back to Babylon.
In Solomon’s temple, these pieces were holy objects, designed to model
the wilderness tabernacle used by Moses to worship God. In this eyes of Babylon, this was a
conqueror’s booty.
But it was not enough to kill the king’s sons, mutilate
the king’s face, rob Jehovah’s temple of all its priceless worth, and then
destroy it completely. No, to complete
the humiliation, Babylon would take the best and the brightest of Israel’s
people and turn them into Babylonians; Chaldeans. Daniel 1:3 says, “The king commanded his
palace master Ashpenaz to bring some of the Israelites of the royal family and
of the nobility, young men without physical defect and handsome, versed in
every branch of wisdom, endowed with knowledge and insight, and competent to
serve in the king’s palace” (v.3-4).
With the cities of Judah razed, the religion of Judah
crushed, and the young leaders, the future of the Jewish people taken, the
victory was complete. These young Jews
would have the Judaism, the love of Jehovah, scrubbed out of them. They would forget Abraham and Moses, David
and Solomon. For three years, they would
go through an intense education that would transform them. They would learn the ways of Babylonian
nobility and, presumably, they would assimilate, even coming to love
Babylon. They would become the very
people who had killed their culture.
Imagine the United States getting overrun, totally
crushed in a war. We would be so
thoroughly defeated, we’d forget what it was to be American. Then our new masters, those who humiliated
us, would take from us those in the top of the class at West Point and the
Naval Academy in Annapolis, as well Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and MIT. Israel, with the fall of Judah in 586BC, lost
everything.
Included among that crop of talented young nobility taken
off to Babylon were four friends, highly religious young men, people completely
committed to their faith in God. Their
names were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Upon arrival in their new home, they were
required to adjust to the new way of things.
It began with their names. You
will no longer be Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Those names are dead just like Israel is
dead. You are now Belteshazzar,
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Daniel
1:7 says the palace master, the voice of Babylonian power, for all intents and
purposes, the voice of god for these young men, gave them other names. The unmaking of their souls began when he
re-named them.
Who gets
to say who you are? Who has the right
and the power and the opportunity to write your story? Who dares to define you?
Verse 8
says, “Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the royal rations
of food and wine.” We aren’t entirely
clear as to what was in the royal Babylonian diet, but whatever it was, Daniel
felt that to accept it was to go too far.
He could accept a new name, but not being unmade. Something about this food was not kosher and
Daniel would not turn his back on the traditions of his ancestors. If God told Moses a certain food was not
clean, Daniel wasn’t going to eat it.
And
truly, more than being about food, this struggle was about identity. Even in a foreign land, knowing the temple
had been destroyed, Daniel was set on staying faithful to God no matter the
cost. And then, God becomes an active
player in the story, in the most subtle of ways. “Now God allowed Daniel to receive favor and
compassion from the palace master,” verse 9 says. Though we cannot see God, and in fact many
Jews felt that when the temple fell, it was a sign that God had given his
people up, in fact, God was there the whole time. God was there the whole time. Even in our struggles, God is by our
side.
God
influenced the situation as these young men dug in their heels and insisted
upon staying faithful to him. The palace
master was scared. Most bullies
are. He held power over those young
Jewish nobles who had been taken, who he was assigned to train in the ways of
Babylonian nobility, but if he failed, his head would literally be on the
chopping block. I want to help you Daniel, he said, but if this goes wrong, I am dead.
We see an uneasy collusion between a Babylonian underling and one of
the prize Jewish recruits.
Daniel,
joined by Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, young men as stubbornly committed to
God as himself, struck up a deal. For two weeks, those four would eat nothing
but raw vegetables and drink only water.
The other Jewish conscripts literally ate like kings – meals only those
in the Babylonian royalty could afford.
Rich meats and cheeses, wine and milk, delicious breads – they were
eating large. Daniel said his God would
fortify him and so, the palace guard allowed his gambit. For two weeks, the four God-followers ate
only vegetables.
Have you
heard of the “Daniel diet?” A few years ago, Saddleback church wrote a book
about this, and other Christian nutritionists also wrote about it. Essentially it was 21st century
American Christians trying to eat the foods Daniel and his companions ate for
the purpose of losing weight and focusing on God to help their spiritual
morale. They wanted encouragement from
prayer instead getting it from ice cream Sundays. I remember being quite skeptical of the whole
idea at the time.
I read
up on it recently and found that there is much about the modern concept of the
“Daniel diet,” that is positive. It
basically encourages prayer and healthy eating.
These are good things.
However,
aside from the benefit of living in closer relationship to God, the modern
concept of the “Daniel diet” misses the point of the story in Daniel chapter
1. Verse 15 says, “At the end of 10 days
is observed that [Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah] appeared better and
fatter than all the young men who had been eating the royal rations. By “fatter” I think the Bible means these
four were fuller and healthier. Eating
vegetables alongside others who eat richer foods might help you lost weight,
but Daniel’s goal wasn’t to lose weight.
He wanted to honor God. The
palace master’s goal was to fatten up these young, talented Jews.
That the
raw vegetable diet produced the results that did was an act of God. This was miraculous, a direct but subtle
divine intervention into the story.
Daniel could not know God would intercede in this way. He did not know what God was going to do, if
anything. Daniel and his friends knew
how they needed to act to be faithful.
They did that trusting God, not knowing what would be next.
God
blessed them beyond expectation. Verse
19 tells us that when they were presented before King Nebuchadnezzar, none of
the other Jewish conscripts could compare with these four. “In every manner of wisdom and understanding
concerning which the king inquired of them, he found them 10 times better than
all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom” (v.20). Daniel did not just outshine his peers. He rose in stature above the experts of
Babylon because God blessed him. He
lived in God’s blessing when he and his friends were faithful.
They
were still exiles in a foreign land.
They still lived under the hand of Babylonian overlords who called them
by their new, other names. But they
never ceased belonging to God. For all
that happened, they held onto their belief that God was the true power in the
world, the true Lord of history. God
determined the circumstance. The
circumstance did not determine what they believed to be true about God.
When, in
your life, have others tried to give you other names and to shape your
identity?
When I
went through army infantry basic training, drill sergeants tried to tell me I
was a killing machine who hated my enemies.
This was 1989 and the Iron Curtain had fallen, so they were uncertain as
to who our enemies were, but still, they created an image of enemy, and then
told me I hated them. God told me to
love my neighbor, love my enemies, and pray for those who persecuted me.
Peers in
ministry have, at times in my career, tried to tell me what a pastor should
be. Sometimes their definition didn’t
fit what I thought God was telling me a pastor should be. Would I change how I preached and led the
church in order to gain acclaim and maybe even some favors from others? Who named me and defined me? What words and qualities name and define
you?
In Mark
1:23, in the synagogue on the Sabbath, Jesus confronts a demon possessed
man. “What have you to do with us, Jesus
of Nazareth? … I know who you are, the
Holy One of God,” the demons blurt out of the possessed man’s mouth. Jesus immediately silenced those demons. He referred to himself as “Son of Man.” He was not yet ready to publicly walk under
the moniker “Holy One of God.” He was
holy, but it wasn’t time to announce that yet, and the demons didn’t get to
alter the story. God was and is the
teller of the story: Jesus’ story, Daniel’s story, and yours and mine.
In God’s
telling, you and I are named. You are
called “beloved.” You are “chosen.” You are reckoned as “invited” and “welcomed”
by God. You and I are named. We called “son” or “daughter” by God. No matter where we are, no matter what
situation we are in, this is true. We
are children of God, God is with us, and is involved in the struggles we
face.
In your
life, people will want to name you.
“Customer;” you give them your money.
“Follower;” you give them your allegiance. “Sucker;” you fall for their schemes. “Life giver;” you take on yourself their
dysfunction. In countless ways, the
world around you will strive to make you, to shape your identity.
We live
in the world, but not as pieces of clay to be shaped by the world. We are clay in God’s hands. In the world, we shine God’s light and speak
God’s truth as messengers of the gospel.
The world cannot name us because God already has. We step from this place into the world, not
with a defensive posture keeping the world at bay, but with arms and hearts of
love. We step with stubborn commitment
to the God who loves us. Only He gets to name us. We step out proclaiming, living in his grace.
AMEN
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