Hope in the Lion's Den
This week’s sacred story comes from Daniel 6:6-27 in a darkly humorous tale of kings making rules to seem powerful only to have them backfire, and the prophet’s refusal to play along finds him locked up with some lions overnight. As we reflect on the theme of Hope, it is messier and more powerful than what you’d find on an embroidered pillow.
Word art by Jim LePage
The Book of Daniel holds one of my absolute favorite stories in scripture and also drives me bonkers as one of the most-cited books by those who claim certainty in deciphering its hyperbolic visions of “the end times.” It’s ironic because Daniel often tells the story of those who think they’ve cracked the code on God, only to have their prideful assurance and thin illusions of being in control become the butt of satirical comedy.
Its namesake, Daniel, is a prophet of Israel, a voice pointing to God behind, beside, and before the people - following in the tradition of Elijah, Jonah, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel. Like others, he is a reliable interpreter of dreams and visions when all others fail. He is a leader among an exiled people, whose God-given gifts have meant gain in political position. King after king find themselves lost and confused and seek Daniel’s counsel. Truth is revealed and in seeming gratitude and celebration, the Kings momentarily decree that the Most High God should be honored and worshipped by all above all. Until the next time THEY want to be worshipped, are refused, and get murderous.
The first time this happens with Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel gets promoted and in turn promotes others - appointing Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon. I fell in love with this Story after reading it aloud for Easter Vigil – a night of telling the story of God through the long thread of scripture until we find ourselves again at resurrection. Apparently learning nothing…the King makes a ridiculously giant golden statue of himself, creates an obscene spectacle out of the whole thing, and commands the people to worship it or be thrown into a blazing fire. It’s so over the top that it screams of trying too hard in a very “emperor has no clothes” mood. The more he lays it on thick, the more ridiculous and hilarious the irony gets. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego don’t buy in and refuse to worship this hollow idol. Even the king’s attempted vengeance is made ridiculous by his own extremes as he cranks the furnace up to an exponentially hotter degree which ends up killing those who brought the three into the fire but as for the intended targets, it leaves the even the clothes on their bodies unsinged. The dark humor of it all! It paints the king as a raging buffoon and the rage-ier he gets, the more ridiculous his claims of power sound as the fall to the ground. Perhaps it’s a laugh to keep from crying situation.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Leaders rise, elevate themselves to the level of God, even as they give lip service and rewards to the Most High God of Daniel, but continually fall when they fail to honor this truth in their hearts. A few verses before our reading, Daniel articulates it plainly, saying, “You have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know; but the God in whose power is your very breath, and to whom belong all your ways, you have not honored.”(Dan 6:23)
The foolish repetition is astounding and the groundhog day cycle of continued stumbling without significant change is obnoxious at best to soul-crushing on our more difficult days. The idea of hope in the midst of such chaos can seem equally silly, or sound hollow, and can even feel like a salt in open wounds.
In some ways, the resilience of hope seems equally ridiculous and foolish. Alongside Daniel’s cryptic visions of angels, thrones of fire, winged lions, bears with 3 tusks, four-headed leopards, and ten-horned beasts with iron teeth…it takes a conscious choice for my modern ears to not throw the whole thing out.
In some ways, Daniel’s story might seem far away like folklore or fantasy. The seemingly extreme apocalyptic visions and explicit martyrdom might feel like a distant reality, yet many are still thrown to the lions for standing firm in their dignity, in their faithfulness to who God created them to be and in the truth that no system, façade, or anything that we create is worthy of our ultimate allegiance or worship. Sometimes it makes the headlines and sometimes it’s in the nearby quiet places of our lives. People are still hurt by the compulsion to control and protect at all costs. Beloved children of God still suffer, still die. Like Daniel and the Crucified Christ, we find ourselves sealed up by the weight of an unmovable stone.
Trust me…my human heart would loooooove to see some vindication in this scenario. But the boldness and courage of Daniel is not a story of human heroes valiantly overcoming religious persecution – real or perceived, even as we strive together toward justice. The Gospel does not make noble the suffering of slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. There’s no sugar-coating the cruelty or pain. If our greatest hope is glory, even the redemptive kind, we simply replace one devouring lion with another (which is exactly what the Persian King of Kings does), and the beat goes on.
But this is a book of apocalyptic literature. Apocalypse does not mean destruction, but “unveiling.” It is about revelation – the revealing of ultimate and enduring things. It draws back the curtain on what lies behind all the performance and puff and thus what endures and grows in the very belly of creation. It exposes the farce and folly of earthly authority trying to grasp at eternal authority, not only for oneself but over and against others – the cycle of using any means necessary to control because that’s the only way. It proclaims that pride, vanity, violence, chaos, exile…not only don’t continue forever but indeed cannot. The trampling of the innocent and systems that trap even those that intended to trap others…will not last nor get the final word. This doesn’t remove all mystery, but makes a way to draw near to it. We will know holy relief. Everlasting liberation is on the way and is arriving soon.
Being a church youth group kid in the late 90s, there was this super popular song in Lutheran circles. A duo of nasally singers had us clapping along as we sang the chorus, “Oh them lions they can eat my body, but they can’t swallow my soul.” Over and over, with a sort of doo-wop baseline in the round… “They keep on trying to crash my party, but they can’t get control no no.”
It’s kinda weird to look back at a room full of teens excitedly bopping up and down to a tune of ancient torture. I didn’t have the words for it then, but the resilient hope those words gave me was not that bodies don’t matter, or are only secondary truths. Nor do I think that Daniel’s ultimate hope is that God will save him from any and all harm and that everything will be just fine. It is so much bigger. I think I’ve only gained the words and understanding for this the more I read and learn from black liberation theology.
It is a hope that even when things are definitely not fine…God is still present, still faithful to the enduring promise that the roaring lions of life, do not get to define us or make ultimate claims about the world. It is the assurance that this truth will continue to unfold no matter what pain or puffed-up power trip tries to stop it.
The season of Advent is about expectation of arrival, it leads us into literally the longest of dark nights, and reveals that it is there that life still emerges. We sit in between the joy of twinkling lights, gingerbread houses, music that lifts the spirit…and lamenting the absence of loved ones, semblances of normality, and even burying yet another murdered black transwomen like our own Asia Foster who we’ll memorialize this Saturday. Hope does not avoid or overcome this messy mix, but enters into it to remind us of what still dwells at the center and will continue. God makes a dwelling among us there. God in whose power is our very breath, and to whom belongs all our ways…can never be ultimately silenced or sealed up. Jesus the Christ, who is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God, embodies a new way of being that makes room for the whole of creation and endures forever. Amen.