Life in the Lion’s Den (1st Sunday of Advent; Daniel 6:6-27; November 27, 2016)

Life in the Lion’s Den

1st Sunday of Advent
Daniel 6:6-27
November 27, 2016

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

The story of "Daniel in the Lion's Den" is a long-time favorite. My children's Bible had a telling of the story. An elderly Daniel stood in prayer, hands clasped fervently seemingly unaware of the pride of lions lurking at his feet. The lions looked sulky as if they really wanted to eat Daniel but were held back by some higher power. This was the point of the story as I read it: God protected Daniel because he prayed to God. I, too, could count on God's protection as long as I was a good boy, which somehow involved obeying my parents, respecting adults, being nice to my sisters, and picking up my toys, as well as praying.

In this way the story was domesticated, made safe for consumption even by children under six, a G-rated release of an R-rated original. There is even a ® Precious Moments version in which a cute (of course!), childish Daniel prays while surrounded by over-grown house cats who look more cuddly than ravenous.

It never occurred to me that the text intended anything but a literal lion's den until I began to prepare for this sermon. In this case, I have found, a literal reading of this story leads to a weaker and less relevant story than a figurative one. After all, there just aren't that many fully-equipped lion's dens around. And, the whining of some not withstanding, there is no persecution of Christians in our country. Being greeted with "Happy Holidays" at the grocery store doesn't count as persecution, nor does having to put two grooms on top of a wedding cake.

This story offers more than a "precious moment." We find out what that is by paying close attention. Note, first of all, that this is not a story about faith. It is a story about practice. What has been forbidden is prayer to a god or human being besides King Darius, and not the silent kind of prayer we are familiar with, either. No, the prayers that were forbidden were out loud prayers at set times during the day. Posture counted: Daniel knelt. Even the direction was important: Daniel prayed facing Jerusalem.

As an aside: Muslims did not invent the practice of facing a certain direction while praying. Here it is in Daniel, a book about Jews in Babylon. It was true among Christians in ancient and medieval Europe as well. Christian churches were built facing the east in what was thought to be the direction of Jerusalem. Now, of course, we build churches any old which way. That leaves us with the odd arrangement that this [pointing to the west] is liturgical east, so that liturgical north is that direction, south in that, and west is behind you. For the liturgically sensitive, entering a Christian sanctuary can be literally disorienting. That is, it causes us to lose track of where the east, or orient, is.

The point here is that Daniel was not persecuted for his beliefs. He was persecuted for his practice. He was free to believe whatever he pleased as long as his practice conformed to the law. This much we can glean simply by paying close attention to the text. We'll need a little help from scholars at this point.

The image of a pit of lions occurs in other places in ancient Near Eastern literature. Kings sometimes kept captive lions. They used to release them for controlled hunts. Lions were a royal animal. Hunting lions showed the royalty of a king.

The other use of the image of lion pit was not literal. It referred specifically to the vicious political in-fighting and intrigue of a royal court. Political in-fighting and intrigue are front and center in our story. Several courtiers have conspired to have Daniel put to death. They put together an argument that is harmless on the surface, simply a matter of enforcing, for a limited period, a mandatory gesture of piety, a sort of pledge of allegiance to Darius who rules by the grace of the gods and who is given divine honors. Who could oppose that sort of pious patriotism? But this seemingly harmless proposal--that won favor with the other courtiers and even with the King--has a poisonous purpose. This law--written with a formula that makes it impossible to repeal--will kill Daniel. What better image than being thrown into a lion's pit to describe Daniel's situation? He has been thrown into a pit of lions simply by being present at court. So the story presents us with a lion's pit inside a lion's pit.

How will an exiled Jew whose God is held in no honor, whose practices run against the grain, fare in such circumstances? Can Daniel be who he is and do as his identity demands and still survive let alone prosper in the court of the Persian king? Or, to frame the question as its readers found it: Can we survive as Jews, obedient to Jewish law, while living in a non-Jewish regime? Will our situation require of us that we become Jews in name only, stripped of all the practices that make us who we are, or will we be crushed by the regime in which we live?

What Daniel shows is that his integrity, while it attracted the hatred of some, actually offers some advantage. It gives him an inner strength: he knows who he is and he knows what God wants of him. It gains him the admiration of the king, as useful thing in itself. And, it lets him face down his enemies, human and animal, figurative and literal. It is Daniel's enemies who fall into the trap that they have set. Daniel emerges unscathed. He even wins a place for his God. Darius decrees that Yahweh be honored throughout the empire.

What Daniel has to tell us is that it is possible not only to survive but to thrive in a hostile regime and be faithful as God's people. We do not have to adapt ourselves to the values and practices of our culture.

Make no mistake: there are aspects of our world that are like a pit of lions. Our culture has convinced itself that through the power of the great god Market universal selfishness can be transmuted into the prosperity of all. It isn’t true, but competition has gained ground on cooperation as the presumed right way to live. Within this ethic those who cannot compete have no claim on anyone else.

You know the story, I’m sure. Two friends were sitting around a campfire when a bear came growling its way into their campsite. One friend started lacing up his shoes. The other said, “Why are you tying your shoes? You can’t outrun a bear!”

“I don’t have to outrun the bear,” the first friend said, as he stood up. “I only have to outrun you!”

Our culture leans toward this way of living with each other as if this were a serious ethic and not just a bad joke.

Then add the -isms that people use as pretexts for claiming the right to the first and best shares and you have a situation in which the simple act of wearing hijab brings threats and even assaults. America-born children of undocumented Latino parents are taunted by classmates and suffer the anxiety of going to school not knowing if their parents will still be there when they come home. In the last few months our culture has grown measurably more hostile to anyone who is not a straight, white, English-speaking, at least nominally Christian, American-born citizen. For anyone outside the magic circle, it is more and more like a pit of lions.

The question that this story was written to answer is: Can the people of God survive if we do as we know we must? Can we offer hospitality to strangers? Can we give protection to the threatened (even when the threat comes from our own government)? Can we feed and clothe all the poor, not just the so-called deserving? Can we stand up to power in the Church, in business, in politics? Can we speak God’s truth even when it’s awkward? Can we call out racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, and Islamophobia, even at the family Thanksgiving table?

And Daniel’s answer is, “Yes, we can. Yes, we can, if we will do what we need to do in order to be who we are. Yes, we can be who are called to be. Yes, we can do what we are called to do. Yes, we can be God’s people anywhere. Yes, we can be God’s people right here.”

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