Pastor Rob Recommends ... (January 21, 2022)

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Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father’s Questions about Christianity

Dr. Gregory A. Boyd and Edward K. Boyd (2008)

 

 

Dr. Gregory Boyd shares a series of letters exchanged between himself, a Christian theologian living in Minnesota, and his retired father, a retired, unbeliever living in Florida. The letters extend over a period of a little over a year. The tone is irenic, but Greg the son is open and clear; he wants his father Ed to become a follower of Christ. The journey is beautiful to observe. Also, Gregory Boyd's outreach to his father challenges any Christ follower who reads the book to do what he has done and reach out to someone they love who is an unbeliever.

Pray Like God Hears You and the Community Matters

 

Pray Like God Hears You (1-5-2020)

            Pray like God hears you and our community matters.

            OK, what’s this about?  It’s the first of Monday of the New Year.  I went for a walk through the neighborhood that’s adjacent to our church’s lot.  We are surrounded by neighbors of varying stories.  The hundreds of people who live within a quarterback’s throw of our property are characterized by diversity: income diversity, racial diversity, political diversity, varying family set-ups, religious diversity, and education diversity. 

            As I walked through the neighborhood and thought about it and prayed for the people who live there, a thought hit me. So, I posed my thought as a question to God.  “Why can’t three or four of these households, people who are currently unchurched, find their way to Jesus at Hillside church in 2021?” 

            We – the Hillside Church family – need to pray like we think God is listening.  We need to commit ourselves to this in 2021.  We can pray about many things, but one item that must be a priority among our many prayers, is a concern for the lost and unchurched of Chapel Hill.  We need to pray that God will show us how to reach the people right around us with the message and love of Jesus. 

            Many of our neighbors are in churches on Sundays.  Many more are not.  Those are the ones we want to reach with Jesus’ love.  God longs for these who are indifferent to faith and worship to turn to Him.  We are His messengers, commissioned to love people and help them find their way to Jesus. 

            This has to be more than a nice newsletter article from the pastor, something easily discarded and forgotten. We have to make prayer one of the centering activities of our lives so that our lives wouldn’t make sense apart from prayer.  For the story of the salvation of 100’s around us and for the story of our own church’s faithfulness to God’s call, we must commit to prayer and witness. 

            As you pray and share your faith, I request that you add a special emphasis for Chapel Hill, and specifically the people who live within 1 mile of our church’s property.  Our town has a reputation for being erudite, snobby, godless, materialistic, and decadent.  The reputation gets overstated as many followers of Jesus do live here.  Yet the grain of truth in the stereotype serves to remind us that Chapel Hill is our mission field.  Our primary mission is to help people meet Jesus and become his disciples.  In 2021, we – the people of Hillside – recommit to full dedication to our mission, one we carry out with hope and joy.

"Sharing the Gospel in our Town" (Acts 17:22-31)

Sunday, May 17, 2020

*This message will be broadcast by Facebook and Instagram Live and posted to Youtube, but will not be preached to a live audience.  We – America, the world – are in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis which is causing people all over the world to avoid gathering in groups of larger than 10, and diligently maintain “social distance.”  It’s an effort to curb the rapid, worldwide spread of the Corona virus which can be deadly.

Watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKYbarhBXaI

            “Can the Gospel hold its own in the sophisticated, intellectual environment of a university town?”[i]  Our church is planted in Chapel Hill, home of the flagship school in North Carolina’s system of public institutions of higher learning.  Our home, Hillside Church’s home, is the home of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.  By faith, we believe we have inherited the commission the resurrected Jesus gave his disciples whom he told, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). 

Chapel Hill, North Carolina is quite far from Jerusalem.  Our home is one of the far ends of the earth.  God has planted us here to speak our testimony that Jesus is Lord, that in him the Kingdom of God has come near, and that all people can receive forgiveness of sins and have life in his name.  Does this message, this good news, hold up especially in a center of erudite learning like Chapel Hill?

Paul preached the Gospel first to Jews and then to Greeks in Thessalonica.  Some heard him and believed in Jesus.  Many others violently opposed his message.  Before harm came to him, the Thessalonian believers hurried him out of town and escorted him to Beroea.  He preached Jesus there and it started well; however, the Thessalonians who were angry with Paul followed him.  They stirred up trouble in Beroea.  The believers again had to hurry Paul out of town. 

He was ushered to Athens, where once again, he preached Jesus and the resurrection.  Athens was a very different city.  By the first century AD, Athens, once the crown jewel of Greece was well past its prime.[ii]  Still, philosophy reigned in the public thought of the citizenry as the city proudly stood on its fading glory.  The Athenians didn’t beat Paul up like his opponents in Thessalonica and Beroea.  They questioned him.  

When Paul preached the resurrection of Jesus, Epicurean and Stoic philosophers became confused.  They thought Jesus was one god and resurrection the name of another.  They did not know the one, Jesus, and they rejected the god ‘Resurrection.’  They called Paul a ‘babbler.’  But, these particular Athenians, like gadflies buzzing around campus, found themselves addicted to hearing new ideas that they might adopt the new or topple it.  Thus, the opening question.  Could the Gospel hold up in this intellectual environment?

At UNC this question about the Gospel’s staying power has been answered in different ways.  For several generations, there has been a street preacher who daily takes up his post in the “pit,” an area on campus surrounded by restaurants and the bookstore.  It’s where students hang out.  The Pit Preacher at UNC scorches passersby with damning threats of hellfire if they don’t repent of their sins and turn to Jesus.  With invectives laced with scripture references and ominous warnings, he uses confrontation as his strategy for leading people to Jesus.

It rarely works.  He’s considered a caricature.  Tar Heels going back many generations joke about the “Pit Preacher.”  One exception is Lon Solomon, founder of McClean Bible church in Northern Virginia, just outside of DC.  At one time, that congregation was one of the largest in America.  Solomon described himself as pot-smoking child of the 70’s who attended UNC, heard the Pit Preacher and accepted Jesus.  He gave up drugs, became a pastor, and was one of America’s most renowned church leaders in the 90’s and early 2000’s.  That example aside, the aggressive rantings of the Pit Preacher usually inspire eye rolls and mockery more than faith. 

Contrast that approach with Paul’s witness in Athens.  Instead of diving in with condemnations, Paul takes in his surroundings.  Fresh off witnessing efforts in Thessalonica and Beroea that nearly brought him bodily harm, Paul approaches the Athenians with a much softer hand.  It’s not that he fears for his own safety.  Paul frequently faced violence with little regard for his own wellbeing.  It’s just that in Athens, he took a different tack because he thought the more ecumenical, intellectual strategy would be effective. 

The bottom line is helping people give their lives over to Jesus.  When you or I bear witness to the Gospel, we have to keep in mind our own personality and style.  We have to be mindful of the needs and temperament of our audience.  And, we have to know our context.  Paul was an intellectual talking to intellectuals in an environment where the exchange of ideas was expected and encouraged. 

In Thessalonica and Beroea, Paul was a Jew among Jews in a Jewish place of worship.  In those cities, with the Jewish audience, he talked about the way Jesus fulfilled the messianic scriptures (17:2, 11-12).  With that approach, some in those cities became Christians after hearing Paul preach.  Other wanted to kill him.

In Athens, the results were similar; some become believers, while others remain scoffers.  Consider his approach.  He begins, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way” (v.22).  Ultimately, he’s going to tear their religion down, but before doing so, he acknowledges their faithful commitment to what they believe.  There’s something respectable about devotion, even misguided devotion and he shows them that he can see and respect that.

Next, he finds a point of connection.  When the Pit Preacher angrily names the sins of people stopping to gawk at him, they aren’t usually convicted by the Holy Spirit.  They are amused or annoyed.  Paul notices one of the statues, one of the idols on display at the Areopagus, the altar dedicated to the “Unknown God.”

Paul tells them he knows this ‘unknown god.’  It is the very God he proclaimed earlier, made manifest in Jesus.  But he doesn’t get to that yet.  Here, he appeals to their reason by discussing natural theology.   The unknown God is the creator of the world and everything in it, every man, woman, and child.  The Athenians can reject Paul’s premise.  But they understand it.  He has made his case on their terms.  Having done so, he expands his argument. 

This unknown god, creator of all that is, cannot possibly be contained by idols or shrines, or anything made by human hands.  On the contrary, this god Paul claims to represent is the one who gives breath and life.  From this claim, Paul moves to the unity among human beings that is grounded in our shared nature.  We are, each one of us, created beings, created by this god Paul knows but is unknown to the Athenians. 

Furthermore, this god has created the world in such a way that all people, of all cultures, will search for him.  We all have a built-in yearning for god.  This “Unknown God” statue is the Athenians’ attempt to find this god of which Paul speaks.  Every person on earth seeks this god.  It is our human nature to seek God, and, says Paul, God can be found.  How?

With a stroke of rhetorical genius, Paul quotes two Greek poets.  Normally Paul would quote Old Testament prophets, but normally Paul is speaking to a Jewish audience.  These Athenian Greeks would stare with blank-faced ignorance if Paul appealed to the Psalms or Isaiah or Deuteronomy.  So, he doesn’t.  He combines lines from Epimenides and Aratus.  “In him we live and move and have our being.  We too are his offspring.” Paul understands these Greek poets differently than his listeners do, but they will, at the very least, appreciate that he has taken time to learn their culture and speak to them in ideas familiar to them.

Thus, Paul stands among a people who build statues of gods, undercuts the practice of using statues to represent gods, and does so in the language and the logic of those who erected the statues in the first place.  Then he calls for a decision.  “God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, [but] now he calls all people everywhere to repent” because judgment is at hand” (17:30-31a).

The time to blindly grope for God through idol worship and philosophical prattle is over.  God has set the day of judgment and commissioned the man who will be the judge.  Remember, he’s already spoken about Jesus.  Greeks believed the soul is immortal but the body dies.  In Jesus, Paul shows the Athenians, that in fact, God has come among us in bodily form, and was killed and rose from the grave. 

Paul’s final point is the one he intends to be remembered.  The resurrection is not the name of a god.  The resurrection is an event that happened after God in human flesh was crucified.  He rose.  The resurrection is the sign that God has defeated both sin and death.  To share in God’s victory and be assured of our own resurrection, we human beings have to repent of our sins and turn in faith to Jesus.  It took a bit of maneuvering to get there, but finally, Paul calls the Athenians to repent of idol worship and idle philosophizing and to instead put their faith in Jesus. 

We are, each one of us, called to stop putting our confidence in things, in systems of thought, in standards of success, in money, and in other worldly expressions of value and power.  We are to turn away from these things and to turn away from our own sins. We are to turn to Jesus, receive forgiveness from him, and live our lives under his lordship.

After we take this step of faith, we next share the Gospel.  In whatever context we find ourselves, we are to love people in Jesus’ name and remove obstacles that block their pathway to faith.  Thinking creatively in the everyday places of our lives, we are to persuasively share Jesus with others. 

Some Athenians came to faith after listening to Paul.  Several more rejected the message and scoffed at Paul and all he had to say.  We are not responsible for how people respond to Jesus.  We are called by God to represent Jesus well and present the good news of salvation in Jesus coherently and patiently.  As it says in 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands an accounting of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

The Gospel most definitely holds up in a university town and wherever we find ourselves.  Trust in Jesus and, with love and grace, warmly share all that you know about him and the salvation he gives, and do it in a way that is gentle, genuine, and inviting.

AMEN

---

[i] Willimon, William H. (1988), Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Acts, John Knox Press (Atlanta), p.142.

[ii] Williams, David J.(1990), New International Bible Commentary: Acts, Paternoster Press (Peabody, MA), p.302. 

Jesus at MacDonald's (John 17:6-19)

Sunday, May 13, 2018

            A booth in a MacDonald’s, 10:00 in the evening; what are you doing there?

            Your friend is there with you, a pretty good friend.  You’ve been there a while, talking in easy, natural conversation. Someone familiar, walks by and you smile and she smiles and your friend smiles.  This passerby sits to join you.  You’re certain you’ve seen this person before, but you think your friend knows her really well.  Your friend thinks you know the woman, this third person.  She, Gretchen, never clears it up, never indicates how she knows either of you.  She just enters the conversation you’ve been having as if she’d always been in it; as if she started it.

            It is a good, deep conversation.  It is not a conversation about God, but somehow, God comes up in the conversation, at first in just a passing way.  But, as the conversation flows like a peaceful river, seamlessly from one topic to the next, God sticks around.  Which person at the table is the one with deep faith, you, your friend, or Gretchen? 

            Here, the last two weeks, in different ways, in this space, preaching the Sunday morning sermon, I made a specific point.  God is Lord in our daily, normal lives.  In what appears to be the most mundane, least spiritual of places, God is there, active, participating.  God is Lord and Master there.  I’ve tried to strongly assert that and now I fear such efforts have become nothing more than white noise.  Oh yeah, the preacher says God is everywhere.  Preachers say that sort of thing.  We leave here and go to our normal places and we don’t expect to see God and we think and speak and act in ways oblivious to God’s presence. 

            So, the booth at MacDonald’s, the cold fries, the melting milkshake, you, your friend, and Gretchen.  Could any place be more normal, everyday, more mundane, and less spiritual? 

            Don’t miss the point!  If you loathe MacDonald, imagine it is Breadman’s or Suton’s or Bruegger’s Bagels, or Café Carolina, or Wendy’s.  If the only place you find yourself at 10:00PM is home in bed, then imagine it is 10 in the morning.  This is real.  You and your friend and Gretchen are together talking.  God is lingering around the edges of the conversation.  Everyone at this table is there because they want to be there.

            You want to be there with this friend.  You’re wondering where you know Gretchen from and how long she will stay.  But she’s not really a bother.  God is wondering if anyone else at the table will open space for Him to have a bigger role in the conversation.  He won’t force his way in.  And he won’t leave. 

            About that time, without warning, Gretchen gets up and heads for the door.  You can’t decide if you’re happy she’s leaving or if you’ll miss when she’s gone.  At the last second, she breaks left, and stops at the drink machine to refill her diet Dr. Pepper.  You look back to your friend.  Gretchen seems to materialize, sitting back down to rejoin you.  At this point you’re so lost, you’re not sure if she wasn’t the first one to sit down.

            Was she the one who went on that profanity laced tirade at the little game, going off on the ump?  Was that her?  In the lull, a serious look falls over your friend’s face.  He wasn’t going to tell you, but now he can’t hold it in.  Wait, was Gretchen at that wedding?  Was she the one who fell in the bushes outside the club after one too many cocktails?   Maybe.

            A tear rolls out of the corner of your friend’s eye.   With shaky voice, he says his wife has cancer and it doesn’t look good.  Before you can react, Gretchen, as if on cue, reaches a tender hand across the table, rests it on your friend’s hand, and says, “I’ll pray for you.”  Are Gretchen’s eyes misty? 

            Surreal. 

            I’ll pray for you.  Prayer is one way, maybe the way, God is openly invited into everyday conversations in everyday places where people are otherwise uncomfortable with God’s participation.  I have never seen someone scornfully reject an offer of prayer.  Even people who have no thoughts about God whatsoever somberly accept prayers.  When someone says words like “cancer” or “death” or “hospital” or “devastating life loss,” and we Christians respond with an offer to pray, most of the time, people accept the offer. 

            Your friend’s report of his wife’s cancer has made a place at the table for God, and Gretchen pulled out the chair to help God sit down.  This is a normal every day place in the comings and goings of your life and mine. 

            Does John 17 help us piece this all together – the scene, God, faith?  It doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see that chapter is a record of Jesus praying out loud for his disciples.  He’s with them at the last supper.  Judas has already gone to fetch the temple police who will arrest Jesus.  He looks to heaven and says, “Father, the hour has come.”

Spoiler alert: he gets caught and crucified. 

Additional spoiler alert: after he dies on the cross, as he said he would, he rises from death.

I believe Jesus actually did pray this prayer with his disciples, for his disciples, as John says he did.  John’s entire gospel is stylized, arranged to get the reader to the point that he or she would believe that Jesus is the Lord, the Son of God, and in believing, the reader would come to faith and have life in Jesus’ name.  John is trying to get you, his reader, to that point.  This chapter, 17, is set right before they head out to the garden where he will be arrested. 

After praying for glory, in verse 6, Jesus says, “I have made your name [the Father’s name] known to those whom you gave me from the world.”  That phrase, the world, is intentionally oppositional in John.  The world, the spaces that exist outside of the sphere of Jesus, is evil precisely because it is outside of the circle of Jesus.  This is because Jesus is the revealer of God.  To be separated from him is to be cut off from the revelation of God.  There are no neutral spaces.  Either one is with Christ and in Christ, or, one is cut off and is in the world, and the world is evil.

The booth at MacDonald’s is in the world. 

From verse 6 on in this chapter, Jesus talks to God about his disciples.  By the time John was read in the church, most of those disciples had died and Jesus had ascended.  John understands this prayer to be for the original 12 disciples as well as the succeeding generations of Jesus-followers who become disciples.  In other words, in John 17, we can understand this to be Jesus praying for us. 

“I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I am asking you to protect them from the evil one,” Jesus prays (v.15).  Jesus wants us sitting in that MacDonald’s booth.  He wants us to be there.  But it is dangerous place.  God is there, but is only heard when He’s invited to the table.  The enemy, the evil one and his dark minions, barge in uninvited.  For some reason, it is much easier for us to listen to their malevolent siren song than to the truth and love and grace God has for us.  Part of it is just what Jesus said: the world is evil.  Temptations abound.  We tend toward sin.  So we have to focus.  We can’t just come up from the baptismal waters and come from church and think, I’m in with God; it’s all good.

It is all good, except evil has not exited stage right.  Even though you might be born again, a new creation in Jesus Christ, in that MacDonald’s you’re another fast food consumer; just like the addict two booths behind you, eating three super-sized fries purchased with money he stole; just like the guy in the rumpled dress shirt a few booths over, on his way from a 14-hour day, eating the same meal he has every night since he left his wife and kids last year.  You’re in the same boat as the rowdy group of teens in the back who can’t stop cussing, lying, or telling dirty jokes.  The MacDonald’s is a den of iniquity, just as the country club is, just as the boardroom is, just as the cocktail lounge is.  And the classroom.  And the grocery story.  It is all the world.

The Gospel of John sets the world against God. 

“And now I am no longer in the world, but they [my disciples] are in the world.  … Holy Father, protect them” (17:11).

Jesus does not say, “Holy Father, get them out of the world.”  He doesn’t say that.  Throughout this gospel, the world is seen as evil, in opposition to Jesus.  He acknowledges that we – his family – live in this place of opposition.  He does not ask God to get us out of here; just the opposite. 

“As you have sent me into the world,” he prays, for us, “As you have sent me … so I have sent them into the world” (17:18).  No, he doesn’t ask God to rescue us; he sends us to this evil place.  Why would Jesus do that?  John 20:21 – “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Why?  The world is evil.  John 20:31 – “[This gospel] is written so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, and through believing we may have life in his name.” 

The prayer for us is to prepare us for the rescue mission ahead of us.  The world is perishing and Jesus sends us to it to help people reach the lifeline – Himself.  We are sent to so many places, including the booth at the McDonald’s. 

It’s you and your good friend.  After hours of talking, he told you he’s devastated because his wife has cancer.  There you are, the four of you: you, your friend, Gretchen, and God huddled around the table.  In this moment, Jesus’ words, “I have sent them into the world,” leap off the page, out of John 17, and into real life – your very real life. 

Is this a burden?  Are we overwhelmed with a sense of evangelistic responsibility?  Is this a task to be feared, or even avoided?  Do we just chalk all this up to some preacher talk to be forgotten before the last notes in the final song are sung? 

The booth at the MacDonald’s; who would ever imagine a raucous, Heavenly celebration might break out because of this subdued, normal conversation?  “I speak these things in the world,” Jesus said, “so that [my own, my people,] may have my joy made complete in them” (17:13).  That’s what Jesus hopes will come out of this conversation in the MacDonald’s, in everyday encounters.

How does the joy of Jesus become complete in our lives?  We already have that joy if we have Him.  His joy is complete as we share him.  How does it happen at MacDonalds?  Gretchen prayed for your friend.  You and your friend welcomed Gretchen to the table.  Or she welcomed you?  Everyone stay engaged and even made a place for God. 

We surrender ourselves to Jesus that he would define us, and once defined, we go into the world; we are sent into the world.  Once there, we are ourselves when we’re with people.  Because He is in us, the see Him when we are ourselves.  Seeing him, truly seeing Jesus, they see how messed up the world is and how much they need that lifeline.  We hand it to them.  We help them know Him.  We help them see how to surrender their lives to Jesus.  And joy is made complete, right there are MacDonald’s. 

Finish up that milkshake.  It’s time to go home.

AMEN

“A Witness for our Day” (Daniel 6)

Sunday, February 11, 2018 

            I open with a question: “Decades from now, what will be written about the public testimony of the American Church in the early 21^st century?”  This question requires some explanation.  Fifty years from now, when the writers of history look back at the years 2000-2020, what will they remember about the church in the United States?  In Chapel Hill, North Carolina? What will be said about the way the church in our day represented God and trusted in God?

            It’s an odd way to think about things.  Imagining people fifty years from now as they remember us: who does that?

            That is what we do when we read Daniel.  We remember how the chosen people of God, ancient Israel, lived out their faith while they were exiled in Babylon and then Persia, when that empire overran Babylon.  We learn about faith by seeing how Daniel stayed true to God even when Persian religious leaders tried to corrupt his faith.  We learn about dedication to God by seeing how Jews in Jerusalem in 164 BC were inspired by reading Daniel and thus stood up to the horrible persecution wrought by Antiochus Epiphanes IV.  

            In the days of Daniel, people of faith, Daniel and his friends, gave witness to the goodness and authority of God before powerful Pagan rulers. In the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jerusalem Jews gave witness to their faith in God by rebelling against the tyrant who declared himself a god.

            In our day, what is our faith saying?  What is our exercise of faith saying about us and what are we saying about the Kingdom of God that, in Jesus, has invaded the present day and has confronted present day governments?   How does our faith speak?  

            Daniel chapters 1-6 are examples of “martyr stories.”  The Greek word ‘martyr’ actually means witness.  We have taken it to mean one who dies for their faith, but in fact, it means witness.  To follow Jesus is to be a witness, one who has seen and received the salvation Jesus gives.  All Christians are witnesses.  Is our witness strong enough that we would live up to the modern day definition of ‘martyr’ if that were called for?  One commentator describes Daniel as a man with “unflinching faith.”  When future generations talk about the way we represented Christ, will they look at us and say, ‘When they were challenged to deny Christ, they stayed true and did not flinch?’”

            By the time we are in Daniel 6, Daniel has survived several tyrant-rulers of Babylon.  In fact, he outlasted the Babylonian empire.  Daniel was among a group of young, talented Jews who were essentially kidnapped when Babylonian forces defeated the Southern kingdom of the Jewish people, Judah, and overthrew the capital, Jerusalem.  They brought the brightest and best of Judah’s young people back to Babylon to indoctrinate them in Babylonian court life. As the ultimate humiliation, they intend to take these young people, Israel’s future, and turn them into loyal Babylonians.  

            It didn’t work.  In spite of multiple death threats and execution attempts, Daniel and his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, stayed true to God.  Now, in chapter 6, Babylon has been replaced by Media-Persia, ruled by Darius.  

As he did under the Babylonian monarch, Daniel thrived under Darius, distinguished himself, and rose in prominence.  He was so impressive, Darius planned to install Daniel as the primary administrator for the entire Persian Empire.  Of course this did not sit well with other administrators, called “satraps” (v.1, 2).  These Persians, Daniel’s political rivals, knew they had no chance of matching Daniel’s wisdom in governing.  However, they held two trump cards.  

First, they understood the connection between Persian law and Darius’s ego.  Under Persian law, no one, not even the king, can go against an established edict.  Once it is written and sealed, it must be observed.  The only way to overcome a hastily enacted law is to enact another that will override the first.  

We see this in the book of Esther.  The anti-Jewish schemer Haman convinces the king to write an edict that will effectively wipe out the Jews.  The feeble minded king allows himself to be manipulated into legalizing genocide.  Once Esther reveals the wicked plot, the only recourse the king has is to write another law that allows the Jews to arm and defend themselves.  Even though he is king, he is powerless to overturn an established law.

The satraps around Darius in Daniel chapter 6 know this.  And they know Darius’s ego will render him short-sighted.  So, they convince him to enact a 30-day law.  For 30 days, no one in the Persian Empire may pray to any god other than Darius himself.  Darius, in his heart of hearts, knows he cannot answer prayer.  He does not have that power.  He knows this.  

But, he think to himself, “This will be cool.  For 30 days, everyone will worship, only me. How awesome!” So he signs it into law.  This is where the satraps play their second trump card.  They know how loyal Daniel is to the God of Israel.  Darius knows it too, but he didn’t consider the consequences of his actions.  He was enamored with the idea of people bowing before him, but he didn’t stop to think of whom the law would affect and how it would affect them.  

The plan devised by the satraps goes perfectly.  As scheduled, Daniel goes to his open window in his upper room, faces Israel, and begins to pray.  They got him!  He’s praying to God, not to Darius.  They run over each other as they sprint to the king’s chamber to report that Daniel has violated the edict.  

And we see just how powerless this king is.  He’s passed a law requiring people to pray to him.  Not only can he not answer anyone’s prayers, he cannot even overturn the law to save the life of one he likes and trusts - Daniel.  He tries!  But the nefarious satraps say, “Know, O king, that it is law of the Medes and Persians that no interdict or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed” (6:15).  He to whom the Persians must pray is a slave to the law he himself established.  Daniel must face the prescribed punishment for violating the law.  He must be thrown into the lion’s den.  

It was an underground cave, with a stone over the opening in the top; a very inhumane existence for the lions.  But we know the ancients did this sort of thing.  Roman, Persians and other ancient peoples would keep what are meant to be wild, free-roaming beasts, lions and other big cats, in captivity.  They kept the beasts hungry, so when a gruesome execution was called for the predators would be eager to devour whatever fell through that hole.  

Because of Darius’s irresponsible edict, Daniel was what went through the opening.  As he was lowered to a certain death, Darius desperately cried out, “May your God whom you faithfully serve deliver you” (6:16).  And the hole was covered with the stone and the king’s wax seal was affixed so that the hole could only be opened at the king’s command.

Then, Darius spent the night violating his own law.  It says he did not eat or sleep all night long.  Everyone in the Persian Empire was mandated by law to pray to this guy. Praying to anyone else led to a date in the lion’s den.  And here is Darius praying to someone else - the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Verse 18 only says that he fasted, but he had just proclaimed, as Daniel was lowered in, that Daniel’s God could save him.  That kind of faith statement leads me to think he spent the night in prayer, asking God to save Daniel from his, Darius’s impulsive foolishness.

Darius was up at daybreak.  He had obeyed the law.  Now he would break the seal, open the hole, and see if his prayers were answered.  “Daniel,” he called, “has your God delivered you” (v20)?

“Daniel then said to the King, ‘O king, live forever!  My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths so they would not hurt me, because I was found blameless.  ... I have not done no wrong” (v.21-22).   God, unlike Darius, is not subject to any law.  Daniel technically did violate the king’s edict by praying to God.  

Sometimes that’s the call of faith.   Church goers get uncomfortable when politics shows up in sermons, but if we seriously engage the stories of the Bible, it is impossible to avoid politics.  In Acts chapter 6, the early church appointed seven of those early Christians to be the first deacons, charged with church administration.  One of them, Stephen, was also a preacher.  

He was working miracles of healing and exorcism, and he taught that Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses.  Enraged synagogue leaders rallied the temple high council of scribes and elders and a gang enacted a people’s arrest.  They dragged Stephen before the council who interrogated him about his preaching.  The entirety of Acts 7 is Stephen’s sermon.  The basic content is a recounting of the Old Testament story that leads to a climax of accusation.  Stephen accuses the temple leaders of executing God’s prophet, but not only a prophet; the Holy One of God, the Son of Man, Jesus.

For Stephen, to stay true to God, meant to openly oppose those who possessed political power - the temple leaders.  To preach the gospel meant to participate in subversive politics.  The same was true for Daniel 500 years earlier and for the Jews under Antiochus 200 years earlier.  

The temple leaders stoned Stephen to death. When we are faithful in the face of oppression and challenge, there is not a guarantee that God will spare our lives.  Sometimes our witness brings suffering.  Look at Stephen who died a horrible death by stoning.  Look at Christians today in North Korean and Iranian prisons.  Why was Daniel miraculously spared?  Why was Stephen and many other executed?  Why are our brothers and sisters in the faith in other countries today persecuted and imprisoned?  Much of the time, only God knows the answer to the “why” questions.

Not always knowing the “why,” we can answer the “what?”  What will future generations remember about how we represented Jesus and spoke the Gospel truth to our generation?

I pray they will remember that we were clear: God and only God is all-powerful.

I pray that they will remember we shared hope: in Jesus Christ, there is life.  All are sinners, but he offers forgiveness and in him, we have a right relationship with God in spite of our sins.  Jesus makes us new, adopted as sons and daughters of God.

I pray they will remember that our faith was fearless, unflinching: we did not put our trust in a political party; we did not give our loyalty to a government or a nation.  We lived as God’s possessions, as disciples of Jesus Christ.  

I pray that they will remember what we said about Jesus and that we demonstrated the love and grace of God, and in remembering our witness, future generations will become Christ followers.

It is a choice.  Faith wasn’t a part of Daniel’s life.  Faith was his life.  Everything in life, for Daniel, happened in light of his relationship with God.  We can choose to have church, faith, prayer be a small part of our lives.  I am not sure what to call those who make that choice.  If we choose a Biblical faith, the faith embodied by Daniel and Stephen and many others, it becomes our everything.  Faith is not a part of our lives.  Faith in the living God is our life and we cannot imagine life without it.   We would rather lose, suffer, and die than abandon faith.

Lent begins this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday.  For our church it will be a time to focus on repentance (turning to God) and unity (our interconnectedness in Christ).  It will also be a time of spiritual discipline.  

I will talk a little bit about this in the Ash Wednesday worship service and in next week’s sermon. I urge you to take up spiritual practices that help you grow in your relationship with Christ.  The reason Daniel was ready to face lions is his spiritual life was forged in daily discipline.  He prayed three time a day, without fail.  He recognized God because he was attuned to God through daily practices.  

God is always with us, in our successes and when we suffer.  We are more ready to see and hear God, and to respond in faith, as we condition ourselves to listen.  As we move into the week ahead, I encourage everyone to be ready to take up spiritual disciplines and to grow in the relationship with God.  You might not have a lions’ den ahead of you, but there will be trials.  God is bigger than the trials and will be there to help you.  So, I encourage you seek him and to speak his Gospel whenever the opportunity arises.

AMEN