Sermon Transcript: August 18, 2024
We continue this morning with our sermon series on Holy Imagination. We have been exploring the very interesting book of Daniel, one of the Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. Daniel’s narrative is filled with miraculous stories, very vivid and striking stories. Next week, we’ll turn to the part of the book where Daniel has visions, which are also interesting and vivid.
But today, we are in Daniel chapter 6 with probably one of the most familiar stories in the book of Daniel—the story of Daniel and the lion’s den. I’ll note that this scripture will come up again later this year; I believe it’s the first reading on the first Sunday of Advent for us. So, I’m not going to squeeze all the juice out of the orange this morning—I’m going to leave some for later in the year. But if you like this passage, come back at the beginning of December, on the first Sunday of Advent. We’ll leave it at that.
One thing I do want to say to help us orient ourselves to Daniel is this: I’ve been talking a lot about the context of Daniel. It’s when the people of Israel are in diaspora, after the Babylonian exile. They’re living in foreign lands, interacting with other people and faith traditions, and trying to hold on to their Jewish identity. In the midst of this, power struggles are going on.
The Book of Daniel is part of a type of literature in the Bible that uses highly symbolic language, a sort of code, to talk about the current political situation without getting into trouble. Right? They can criticize the king because they’re doing it in coded language, so they have plausible deniability. This reminds me of a quote from a scholar named John Dominic Crossan: “It’s not that the ancient people told literal stories, and we are now smart enough to interpret them symbolically, but they told symbolic stories, and we are sometimes now foolish enough to take them literally.”
The story of Daniel and the lion’s den is a highly symbolic story. It’s not meant to be a literal story. But as you listen, I want you to ask yourself: who is the main character in this story?
So, Daniel chapter 6. Let us pray. Overwhelm us with your Spirit, O God, that the words we hear will speak to our hearts as your word, made known to us in Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.
Daniel 6: 6-27
So the presidents and satraps conspired and came to the king and said to him, “O King Darius, live forever! All the presidents of the kingdom, the prefects, and the satraps, the counselors and the governors, are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an interdict that whoever prays to anyone divine or human for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the interdict and sign the document, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.”
Although Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he continued to go to his house, which had windows in its upper room open toward Jerusalem, and to get down on his knees three times a day and pray to his God and praise him, just as he had done previously. Now the conspirators came and found Daniel praying and seeking mercy before his God. Then they approached the king and said concerning the interdict, “O king! Did you not sign an interdict that anyone who prays to anyone divine or human within thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into the den of lions?” The king answered, “This thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.” Then they responded to the king, “Daniel, one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or to the interdict that you have signed, but he prays three times a day.”
When the king heard the charge, he was very much distressed. He was determined to save Daniel, and until the sun went down, he made every effort to rescue him. Then the conspirators came to the king and said to him, “Know, O king, that it is the law of the Medes and Persians that no interdict or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed.” Then the king gave the command, and Daniel was brought and thrown into the den of lions. The king said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you faithfully serve, deliver you!” A stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, so that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no food was brought to him, and sleep fled from him. Then at break of day, the king got up and hurried to the den of lions. When he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out anxiously to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you faithfully serve, been able to deliver you from the lions?” Daniel said to the king, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him, and also before you, O king, I have done no wrong.” Then the king was exceedingly glad and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him because he had trusted in his God. The king gave a command, and those who had accused Daniel were brought and thrown into the den of lions—they, their children, and their wives. Before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces. Then King Darius wrote to all peoples and nations of every language throughout the whole world: “May you have abundant prosperity! I make a decree that in all my royal dominion, people should tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever. His kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion has no end. He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, for he has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.”
For the word of God in scripture, for the word of God among us, for the word of God within us. Thanks be to God.
Well, most of us know the story of Daniel and the lion’s den as a children’s story. It’s odd, isn’t it, what we choose to share with our children? Even when we take out some of the more gratuitous details, the central scene of Daniel in the lion’s den is quite startling. I wouldn’t raise it to the level of traumatic, but I can still picture the scene in the children’s Bible that I must have had on my shelf, drawn in cartoon, of Daniel next to all of those lions.
The takeaway of the story is that if you are faithful to God, God will protect you from danger. Now, I can see how this would be very comforting to a child. But as we grow and experience the world, we learn that maybe this isn’t necessarily true. And I know this because I’m willing to bet that not one of us today would willingly go into a lion’s den or any other type of danger believing that God would save us. Am I wrong, anybody? I don’t even think you guys want to climb that ladder.
So, what do we do with stories like this beyond childhood? Sometimes I think we make them children’s stories because we want to protect ourselves from them. That’s just a theory of mine. But I want to suggest to us today that there is much we can do with this story when we read it through the lens of holy imagination. And what I mean by that is not simply to dismiss things that are out of our realm of experience, but also not to simply put reason aside either. Rather, we should allow the story to stretch our notions of what is believable and unbelievable and to allow new possibilities, even new ideas, to bubble up.
And in the end, I believe that the story of Daniel and the lion’s den is actually about the dangers of a lack of imagination.
Now, I asked you all before I read, who is the central character in the story of Daniel in the lion’s den? Anybody have a thought on that as you were listening? The king. The king, not Daniel, right? And how do we know this? Because when Daniel is in the lion’s den, we don’t get his perspective. We don’t hear how afraid he is, how courageous he is, or how he’s praying. We are with King Darius, who has a sleepless night and is fasting because he’s so worried about Daniel.
King Darius is the central character in the story. He’s the one the author wants us to pay attention to. He’s the one with the dilemma that we are supposed to relate to.
It is King Darius who is stuck in his own edict. Having been tricked into making a pronouncement by these conspirators, he cannot imagine violating his own words or simply saying, “You know what? I’m the king, and I’ve changed my mind, and I’m not throwing Daniel into that pit.” Because he clearly doesn’t want to throw Daniel into the pit. The narration tells us that he tried everything to rescue him. And then, even when he had to throw him in, he said, “Daniel, I’m praying for you.” Then he goes to his room, and he can’t sleep, and he fasts. His heart is not in it, but he’s trapped.
How often do we get trapped in similar situations? Trapped, yes, even by our own words or thoughts, because we cannot imagine, cannot think of, cannot fathom another way.
I’m not good enough. I’m not capable. I’m not worthy. I’m not lovable. This is the only way that this can play out. I have no other option.
Like King Darius, we get trapped by our own words and thoughts and often suffer the consequences.
But it is the lack of imagination of those satraps and presidents and conspirators that’s harmful on an even wider scale. Because they cannot imagine that there is enough for all, they target Daniel because Daniel has what they want. They target Daniel not because he has done them wrong, not because he’s disloyal to the king, but because he’s good at what he does. And they want the position, the status, the influence, the power that he has earned. And the only way they can imagine getting it is by tearing him down. For them to win, Daniel must lose.
We too can get trapped in this kind of scarcity thinking—that in order for us to win, in order for us to benefit, others must lose. And we people of faith, we are not immune to this. In fact, we might be more guilty than most. As Barbara Brown Taylor points out in the quote on our bulletin cover, it is this lack of imagination that we as people of faith are most susceptible to. She writes, “As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.”
When we think we are protecting God, there’s almost nothing that we won’t do to other people. But why do we think God needs protection, especially from us? Is the God we worship so fragile?
Sometimes people come to me clearly angry with God—and for good reason—but they’re afraid to admit it. They’re afraid to say it out loud, and so they keep it in, and it festers, and it eats away at them because they feel like it would be blasphemous to tell God how they really feel and what is really on their minds. You know what I tell people? I say, let it rip. Let it rip. Tell God exactly how upset and angry you are. Because I can guarantee you this—God can handle it. And God will not love you one bit less if you are honest about how you feel. That is not blasphemous. In fact, it may be one of the most faithful things you can do because you are being honest before God.
And what’s more, it will only continue to eat at you and fester if you keep it in. You’re not protecting God; you’re harming yourself. You see, the story of Daniel and the lion’s den warns us of the cycles of blame and judgment that result when we lack imagination—when we assume that God is made in our image and not the other way around.
Friends, and this is the point of this whole series—I don’t think it can be overstated—faith should expand and not contract our thinking. It should open our minds, not close them. As William Sloane Coffin reminds us, “Faith is no substitute for thinking. It should help make good thinking possible.”
We don’t check our brains at the door when we come into church. We fully engage them. We engage the gifts of reason and understanding that God has given to us, but we also engage the gift of imagination. We allow that maybe the world is greater than our experience of the world. Maybe things are bigger than our ability to grasp them.
And so it’s okay to use imagination, to dream, to allow possibilities, because that’s how change always happens. That’s how new things always happen. We say, What if? What if this is true? Or what if this is bigger than we thought? Even scientists do this, right? They start out with a hypothesis—What if this thing is true?—and then they go to try and prove it.
That’s what the gift of holy imagination does for us. It reminds us that God is bigger, God is more loving, God is more merciful than we even dare dream. And so, more is possible than we might at first realize.
So while, just to be clear, I still would not recommend jumping into a lion’s den, I would say that when we get stuck in our own thinking—that we are not enough, or whatever trap we get stuck in—our faith and the gift of imagination can help free us from the dens of our own making.
Amen.
