It’s Saturday again. Which means it is almost Sunday again. Seems to happen regularly. Like, you know, every week. Just rolls around again. It’s like didn’t we just have one of these? I was still looking back on the last one, what was good, what was not as good, what could have been better, when here it is again. Looming on the horizon like a storm about the blow through. It’s Saturday again. Which means it is almost Sunday again. Again.
You need to understand, for a preacher there is both an “oh boy!” about that and an equally powerful “oh no!” There is a wonderful anticipation of the gathering of the community to do what it is we are in existence to do - worship God, oh boy! At the same time there is the weight of responsibility and performance, a justifying of one’s existence as the leader, the proclaimer on a weekly basis, prove your worth kind of feel to it. Oh no!
I remember speaking with some of my musician friends at choir school some years ago, they were talking about the energy and effort it took to compose an original piece to sing or to play. And I said, I have to do that every week. They said they never thought about it that way. Maybe it isn’t a work of art, certainly some weeks it isn’t. But the weight is there, opportunity is there, pressure is there to produce something of value, something that makes folks not think they wasted a morning by showing up when there were so many other things they could have been doing.
Not that the sermon is what it is all about. A tiny piece, to be honest, that’s my job. A moment in a full morning of gathering and praising and confessing and sharing and submitting and listening and growing. A brief, often forgettable moment, where I invite them to reflect, to experience something of the grace of God, something of the challenge of God, something of the discipline of God. A weekly rehearsal of faith, that’s what it’s all about. Basing the value of the morning on a sermon, or an anthem, or a hymn selection, would be like judging the value of a marathon on whether you tied your shoes right. Whether your participant’s number was upside down or not. Surely it’s about the running, isn’t it?
Daniel 6:1-5 NRS It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom one hundred twenty satraps, stationed throughout the whole kingdom, 2 and over them three presidents, including Daniel; to these the satraps gave account, so that the king might suffer no loss. 3 Soon Daniel distinguished himself above all the other presidents and satraps because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king planned to appoint him over the whole kingdom. 4 So the presidents and the satraps tried to find grounds for complaint against Daniel in connection with the kingdom. But they could find no grounds for complaint or any corruption, because he was faithful, and no negligence or corruption could be found in him. 5 The men said, "We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God."
We know Daniel as the guy who survived a night with hungry lions without a scratch. We know Daniel as the friend of the three who got tossed into a fiery furnace and somehow walked out without a scorch. But we don’t know Daniel, do we?, as the disciplined exile who kept the faith in difficult circumstances, even at the risk of his life.
Our passage today says that Daniel distinguished himself above all the other leaders, because an “excellent spirit” was in him. An excellent spirit? Ruach. That’s the word. He distinguished himself because he could breathe better? Or because he had help? Or maybe something of both.
In chapter one of Daniel, we find the first challenge facing him and his friends. He is chosen for leadership, but he needs to pass a test, he needs to be cultivated. He was head hunted, but he had to submit to a training exercise. He was put in a boot camp of sorts, and executive boot camp to see if he had the right stuff. To see if he could fit in, be made fit for royalty. And one of the components of the camp was that they ate well. Or well according to their standards. Royal food it says, like he was being fattened up for his cushy job or something. The problem was the royal food did not fit the menu that God had given God’s people way back in the wilderness. The Babylonian diet was not kosher. Daniel would have had to betray his God to eat from it. Now, we might think he would have staged a protest, refused to cooperate, stood his ground and called himself a martyr for the cause, a victim of religious discrimination and called the press and the other candidates to come and stand in solidarity with him. But he didn’t. He didn’t make a big show of it, actually. He simply struck a deal. He said let me and my friends try our diet for thirty days and the rest of the executives in training try their diet and lets see who comes out better for it. In other words he spoke their language. He didn’t say this is all about me and my God and my faith and my rights. He used terms they could understand. He fit into their mind set, their system. And he beat their system with his own obedience to his God.
So, now, years later, under a new king, here he is again. Being tested. But now he is known. There is a spirit, an excellent spirit in him. There is just something about Daniel, they grumble. There is something powerful, something noticeable, something that makes him stand out from everyone else. Doesn’t mean everyone likes him. Our last few verses and then the rest of the story is one of executive jealousy and devious plots and duped leaders and it all ends up in a den of starving lions, ready to tear into their next meal. But the opponents have to resort to underhanded means because of something about Daniel. Did you catch it? They don’t complain about the spirit in him, excellent or not. Because that is the result, not the cause. This presence, whether self-generated or divinely implanted in Daniel (and really, how would these guys know either way?) was not the problem. The problem was more basic than that. Take a look: “they could find no grounds for complaint or any corruption, because he was faithful, and no negligence or corruption could be found in him.”
He was faithful. That was their complaint against him. That was the sign that they couldn’t win against him in a fair fight. He was faithful. By which they didn’t mean that he believed the right things. Or even the wrong things they didn’t believe in. They weren’t concerned about his beliefs. They were concerned about his behaviors. They were concerned about his maddening consistency. They were concerned about his frustrating attention to detail. Most of all they were concerned about they way he treated everyone as equals, as somehow precious in the eyes of his god, even those who were clearly his superiors, even those, like themselves, to whom he should be bowing. But somehow, even this most offensive of traits, was carried off with humility and friendliness so that even the kings, Darius who succeeded Belshazzar and his father Nebuchadnezzar before him, seemed to see in Daniel something to trust, something to follow, something, though it felt wrong to say so, something to love.
That what made them so angry. That’s what made them want to destroy him, to remove him from office. Not any arrogance, not the imposition of his beliefs on them, but the fact that his faithfulness, his discipline and his consistency made him a favorite, made him loved by leaders and servants alike. That was the excellent spirit that they saw in him.
Daniel tells us that the Spirit comes as the result of attention to detail. The Spirit fills us when we consistently open ourselves through practiced behavior, through ritual acts, through obedience to the call of God. Wesley spoke of Christian disciplines as finding our way to God. Acts of piety - like worship and bible study and prayer and meditation - coupled with acts of charity - like visiting the sick and giving to the poor and feeding the hungry - shape our spirits to reflect God’s Spirit in our very being. Actually, Wesley didn’t talk so much about disciplines, he called them “means of grace” - the way of encountering the grace of God, through the presence of the Spirit.
When runners talk about running, they talk about a moment when they feel like the weariness they were feeling is wiped away by a new burst of energy, the breathing they were laboring to maintain suddenly becomes easier and they feel like they could run forever. It’s called catching your second wind. There is science behind it, oxygen levels counteract the build up of lactic acid in the muscles and there is a lessening of pain and strain on those muscles, and endorphins are released to counter the weariness. That’s why breathing right is so important for runners. But there is also theology behind it. We expend the effort of a disciplined faith, straining to love the unlovable - which is often ourselves - pretty sure it is beyond our abilities, only to find our faith growing as we surrender our selves. Able to do far more than we think or imagine, says Paul, because we catch a second wind of the Spirit. It’s Saturday again. Sunday again. Thanks be to God.
Shalom,
Derek
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