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.

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

Who Names You? (Daniel 1)

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 6^th 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 21^st 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

---

[i] I got these quotes off the Goodreads site - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/names

A Song for the Road (Psalm 23)

Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 22, 2017

            The 23^rd Psalm is commonly read at the funerals.  It might be the passage I have read more than any other in funeral and memorial services.  This makes sense.  It is an incredibly comforting poem and when people are grieving, they need comfort. 

            Psalm 23 is such a favorite that artists have used it as a part of their photos and paintings.  There is a serene nature scene; maybe a field of wildflowers; or the waves at twilight, when all the colors are soft, relaxing.  The words of the Psalm are gently superimposed over the idyllic picture, which is then framed and carefully arranged on the mantel.  An aura of calm falls over the room.

            There’s something quite beautiful about this.  Every time a guest in your homes pauses to take in that picture, they are reading scripture. 

            However, I think Psalm 23 has more power than as a comfort or as a decoration.  Those uses are fine, but it might time to get Psalm 23 off the mantel piece.  It has something to say to people when they are away from home; when they are on the move in the world.  It is time to turn to Psalm 23 in places other than the funeral parlor because it really speaks to people who are alive and facing life as it is in the world in which we live. 

            To say, “Life is a journey,” sounds cliché, but for followers of Jesus the journey is much more than a saying that goes on coffee mugs.  We have a mandate to spread out over the earth.  This mission is from God and dates back to the time of Noah.  Right after the flood and Noah and his family came off the ark onto dry ground, God promised to never again destroy the world in this way.  The next thing God says after this promise is “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1).  In order to fill the earth, we have to travel to every part of it and make our mark there.

            This mandate to spread over the earth is repeated by Jesus when he meets with his disciples after the resurrection.  The command to Noah was an act of re-creation.  Jesus inaugurates new creation.  He tells the disciples and this message is conveyed from them through the centuries of the church to us.  This is from Jesus to us.  “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

            Following Christ, we have a sense that we are headed somewhere and our movement has purpose.  This is true for people who spend their entire lives in the same small town as well as for people who live many different places in their lifetime.  Jesus declares we will be his witnesses.  We will give our testimony about who we know Jesus to be – Savior, Lord, Comforter, Guide, Leader.  We will share this testimony “as we go,” as we move through life.  This is for all Christians. 

            Psalm 23 is a word of encouragement for us as we go.  Note the promises and declarations and what these word imply.

            Because the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  Who says, “I shall not want?”  Or, “all my needs will be met;” who takes the creative initiative to put that phrase in a song about God?  That singer has a fear that his needs might not be met.  He has to look to God and declare his confidence in God’s provision.  Maybe you are in a life situation where your job provides the paycheck that provides the food, the shelter and clothing, the insurance – all of life’s needs.  But you also have needs only God can meet.  This is as true for the affluent as it is for those who struggle.  Do you believe will those specific needs?  Can God be trusted?  That’s the song’s declaration.  Because God guides me, all my needs will be met.[i] 

            The Lord is my shepherd.  I am terrified that I will be filled with emptiness, an unsatisfied hunger, but no, I rebuke that terror.  The Lord is my Shepherd.  I shall not want.

            He makes me lie down in green pastures.  I look around me, at my life, at the world.  I see dead places.  Aleppo, Syria; a humanitarian hunger crisis in South Sudan; reduction of help for the poor as policies change in our own government.  We see barrenness.  No!  God sees all God’s children.  He sees us and gives us rest in lush, green pastures. 

He leads me beside still waters and restores my soul.  Why do I need my soul restored?  Because I get so weary.  My own failures weigh on me.  My worries settle heavy on my shoulders and I stoop.  No.  God is with me and leads me to refreshing waters, lifting my burden off me.  God leads me on right paths.

Who sings this song people know so well, these words we hang on the wall in picture frames?  People who fear the looming darkness; people who feel the shadow of death as it swallows the light of life. 

We – followers of Jesus – encounter all these things: uncertainty, worry, threats, failures.  Following Jesus does not remove us from the life’s toughest obstacles and grayest days and longest nights.  We experience these depths, but when we are in Christ, we do not go through these trials alone.  The declaration of this Psalm is that the promise of God’s presence can be believed and will help us.  God can be trusted.  God is, as Jesus says in the Great Commission, with us always, everywhere, for our good.

            In the middle of the Psalm, the singer switches from praise about God, to praise to God.  “The Lord is my shepherd.  He leads me beside still waters.”  And then in verse 5, it is “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”  No longer does the singer talk about God, but rather to God.

            What’s more, notice what else is present in the midst of this Psalm of comfort.  The enemy!  If I didn’t talk about the Psalm, if I wasn’t setting this up, but just mentioned Psalm 23 among a group of seasoned church goers; and then, after mentioning it, asked what feelings the mention of the Psalm evoked, what might these lifelong Christians say?  “Psalm 23.”  What comes to mind?  Peaceful.  Comfort.  Well-being.  Rest. 

            Now, picture your enemy.  Who is in your mind’s eye?  A neighbor with whom you’ve had a property dispute?  It’s sad when that’s who comes to mind when we think of enemies, but it is true.  Some of our most consistently negative interactions are with neighbors; or family members; maybe an overbearing boss.  Maybe, your opponent is someone prejudiced against you.  It could be that “enemy” represents someone who tries to bully you.  I have even seen situtions where members of a church were opposed to each other.  When I say, ‘enemy,’ do you see someone related to you?

            Some people might say, ‘extremists,’ or ‘terrorists.’  I don’t think that’s realistic.  Do you realize how slim is the likelihood you’ll ever encounter a violent terrorist?  It’s highly, highly unlikely.  If I say, “picture your enemy,” and you have in mind a terrorist you saw on the news last night, then you’re dodging the question.  With whom do you have direct conflict?  Who do you believe has intentionally made your life hard?  When you picture that person, you don’t think, ‘peaceful.’  Comfort.  Well-being.  Rest.  You think, ‘I need to be on my guard.  My adversary is near.  It is not safe.’

            The Psalmist sings of a table, a meal, a banquet.  The feast can only come in a place and time of safety and yet in this song, our cherished 23^rd Psalm, the festive dinner is in the presence of our enemies.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. How can this be?  When God is present, the situation changes! 

            The light of our savior spills over erasing the shadows that threaten.  We are in want?  No, our shepherd provides.  The storm clouds rumble?  No, our Lord leads us beside calm waters and green pastures.  The darkness opens its bottomless chasm?  No, our God gives light and walks with us and we are on safe ground.  Our enemy is here!  To arms!  No.  Our Savior sets the table.  Not, ‘to arms,’ but rather, to supper!  And when we know our God through His coming – through Jesus, crucified and resurrected – then we see our enemy transformed.  We see ourselves transformed.  He who was the enemy has a new heart as do we.  That relationship, which was a battleground, now, in Christ, is part of the new creation.

            We can only enter life hoping for radical transformation when we live by faith and live in complete trust in God and dependence on God.  We commit to a life in which we are dependent and we trust that God will provide what we need.  God will make sure our bodily needs are met.  God will be the one who gives our lives meaning.  God, and not some other thing, will be our source of joy.  We believe we will have happiness because we trust that God is here and God is good and that is enough.

            Walter Brueggemann hits this point forcefully.  He’s writing about the relationship ancient Israel had with her land.  Israel only came into the land when God performed wonders to force Egypt to free the Israelite slaves.  Then God opened the Red Sea.  Then God gave the wandering Israelites the ability to take the land.

            Centuries later, Israel had forgotten God and God allowed the people to fall into exile in Babylon.  However, that would not last.  God would bring His people back to the land.  This time it happened when God touched the heart of the Persian monarch and he permitted the people to return. 

In both Egyptian slavery and Babylonian exile, the people desperately wanted to return to the land, but that could only happen by an act of God.  We can only hope God will act if we trust God.  Many of the people then and now stopped doing that.  Brueggemann writes, “God’s people always want to settle for something short of promises, because promises being fulfilled remind Israel how vulnerable it is, how exposed it is, and how precarious it all is.  Promiseless existence is safer.  The Bible knows promises are always kept in the midst of threats.”[ii]

When we take Psalm 23 off the mantel and out of the frame and see it as a song of promise then we find ourselves in the exact position of ancient Israel.  We are vulnerable to heartbreak.  We can lose our faith if life gets too hard.  We are exposed to evil because sin has run amuck in the world.  Our lives are precarious and it seems awfully risky to bank on the idea that 2000 years ago a Jewish peasant really was God in the flesh, defeated death by dying, and brings hope because he rose from death and promised we will too.  Furthermore, he promised that he would be with us in the form of an ever-present Spirit that opens the way for each one of us to have a personal relationship with God. 

That’s all crazy.  That’s what ungirds our life, gives us hope, inspires our songs, and fills us with happiness and joy?  Seriously?  Yes, because it is true.  Israel was on a pilgrimage to the land and we are on a pilgrimage too.  In this season of Lent, in worship we journey toward the cross.  This is a journey of worship.  We walk with Jesus to his destiny and our salvation.

In our life beyond Lent, we are sent out to bear witness, and we’re sent everywhere.  Every place we go, every grocery story, friend’s kitchen table, bar stool, plane ride, unfamiliar hotel, and distant shore is for us the “ends of the earth.”  In these places we tell the story of the ages.  Jesus is Lord.  His coming is the coming of the Kingdom of God. And, people have life in his name, abundant life.  But even in this scattering to Jerusalem, to all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth where we give our testimony, even in this “going out” we have a destination. 

We are headed to dwell in the house of the Lord our whole life long.  In resurrection, our lives have no end. 

As we move toward this destination, we hit bumps in the road.  Our feet get snagged.  We lose our way.  But when it gets hard, when we think we can’t go on, when we lose confidence in our own stories, and when we are ready to completely give up, God is with us.  This song, Psalm 23 is a reminder that God goes before us, God walks with us, and God holds us in His hands.  When things on the journey get tough, Psalm 23 is our song for the road. 

AMEN

---

[i] The observations in these paragraphs come from Craig Broyles (1999), New International Bible Commentary: Psalms, vol. 11 Hendrikson Publishers (Peabody, MA), p.123.

[ii] Walter Brueggemann (1977), The Land, Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.68.