Just Hope: King Darius' Long Night (Revisited)

Daniel 6:6-27

I’m going to start this morning with two asides. First, every once in awhile I need to preach a message that is directly in contrast with what I just said in the children’s sermon. This is one of those times. I don’t like to do this often because it feels like I’m saying kids can’t understand and most of the time kids CAN understand. It’s just in this case, I think we need both messages. Kids need to hear that God loves them and cares for them and watches over them. Adults want to hear that, too. But part of growing up is putting aside a childish faith, even as we strive after a child-like faith. This means acknowledging a broken world of sin where the lions often seem to win. This is the angle from which I’m going to approach today’s message. So, basically, some of you will prefer the children’s message, which is fair enough.

            Secondly, I’ve preached on this story once before. I’ve been here long enough that now we’re going back through the lectionary for a second time, reading the same stories from four years ago. So, naturally, I go back and see what I preached on four years ago, and, on a Thanksgiving week like this, it was awfully tempting to see how much you remember from a sermon four years ago titled, “Just Hope: King Darius’ Long Night.” I don’t doubt it has been frequent bedtime reading for you all ever since. Thus, I present to you: “Just Hope: King Darius’ Long Night (Revisited).”

            OK, let’s get to business.

King Darius has a problem. He likes Daniel. Daniel was his personal dream interpreter, which was for Daniel, as it had been for Joseph once upon a time, a lucrative career that got him into the royal house. Daniel is well-liked, but he is also Jewish. This was not such a popular thing to be in ancient Persia, especially with Daniel in a political role that the other presidents and satraps were looking to undermine. This is a story that reminds us that religious motivations have been used as a cover for political ambitions across the wide span of history.

Grace is Strange, Unfair, and Offensive

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Luke 18:9-14

A sermon for Harvest Festival

I want to talk to you today about grace, because harvests are about grace… because all of this is about grace… because anything we can be thankful for comes to us by grace. We say that grace is “unmerited love” or a “free gift”, which is a start but not enough. So then we do what Jesus did: We tell parables about grace. Grace is like the lost sheep. The shepherd leaves the other ninety-nine unattended, risking their safety, for the sake of the one. Grace is strange. Grace is like the son who returns home after leaving the family and squandering his inheritance. Grace is unfair. Grace is like the worker who works the last five minutes of the day and receives the same wages as the one who was hard at work 9-5. Grace is offensive. Grace is for the tax collector, who knows he’s a sinner, and the Pharisee, who thinks he is righteous. Grace is: Strange, Unfair, and Offensive.

            Yet, grace is how God interacts with us. Jeremiah gives us a new covenant centered on grace. Jeremiah tells us that this promise—unlike the ones made with Abraham and Moses, which depended so much on how the tribes of Israel would respond—no! This new covenant is written on the hearts of the people; that they will be God’s people, God will be there God—that’s that! Grace is God saying, “You are mine, like it or not.” Grace does not revel in freedom and liberty but takes it from us, nanner-nanner boo-boo.

            And there’s the problem! We like freedom and liberty, but grace takes them away from us. Why?

I want to turn for a moment to a story from Luke’s Gospel of the Pharisee and the tax collector (or the publican, as some of you have heard him called) (18:9-14). It’s not the most well-known of parables so I’ll briefly run through it. Jesus tells us about a man, a Pharisee, who prays in a certain way. He says, “God I thank you that I am not like others are, greedy, unjust, adulterers—and I thank you especially that I am not like this tax collector.” Then Jesus tells us about that tax collector to whom the Pharisee is referring, who prays a different way. He says, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” That’s the parable. Jesus explains it like this. He says, “I tell you, this man (the tax collector) went to his house justified rather than the other: for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

            I want to talk about the new covenant through the lens of that parable for two reasons: 1. It shows us what grace really is, and 2. It should remind us why we have a harvest festival in the first place. It is by the grace of God that we gather today; not our own merits, not our hard work, not because we deserve it.

Think that you might be wrong: On listening and healing

Isaiah 6:1-13

“The holy seed is its stump.” Nobody knows what that last verse of Isaiah 6 means. Nobody. The commentaries, the online lectionary aides, Bible inserts and footnotes. Everybody says the same thing, “Meaning uncertain.” I mean, people have guesses. Of course people have guesses, but this is one of those phrases that just doesn’t seem to translate and, since ancient Hebrew is a dead language apart from what we have written of it, this is one of those meanings lost to history.

Of course, it should surprise none of you that I love this, because it’s deep and confusing and mysterious. I love that there are words and phrases that remain uncertain. I love that even the most legalistic Bible-reader cannot say for certain what everything means. I love this because it seems holy to me to have an ounce of humility about our faith. Jesus did say, “Blessed are the humble.”

I also love that this verse sits here at the end of chapter 6 when Isaiah’s message is about listening but not comprehending, looking but not understanding. The poetry here is beautiful—not only will you listen but not comprehend, you’ll do so right now. “The holy seed is its stump.” What on earth does that mean?

There’s also a part of me that must confess that I like that God tells people they won’t understand. I find people who are sure they know everything boring. Don’t you? Why would I have a discussion with you? You already know everything! I much prefer people who are always in wonder. They feel more honest to me, anyway. They also seem less fearful, less defensive. Those who have it all figured out feel dull, and I wonder if they aren’t already under the condemnation Isaiah speaks. I mean, how truly sad to live a life unwilling to listen and learn! It feels like its own punishment. That’s the first punishment God lays upon his people who have gone astray: He makes their minds dull; he stops them from using their senses—their eyes and ears. They don’t experience the wonder of God’s majesty, because they close their eyes and shut their ears.

Jesus quotes this passage in the Gospels. In fact, we read it at our Men’s Bible study on Tuesday morning, which was a complete coincidence and/or God-thing. Jesus was telling the disciples that the purpose of the parables is this: “That they may listen but never understand, look but not perceive” (Mt 13:14). Jesus revels in the mysteries of God’s kingdom. When people come to him and ask, “What is the kingdom like?” He responds, “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” This is not clarity; it’s mysterious. It’s the kind of thing that takes reflection. It’s gray; not black or white.

Jonah, the very worst elected person

Jonah chapters 1, 3, 4

            We need Jonah. Oh, how we need Jonah. This, this is the good news we need.

            Jonah was a terrible preacher, a god-awful prophet. He’s so awful that, looking at the book as a whole, it’s probably satire. It’s probably meant to be funny, because—like with most satire—the situation is so extravagantly backwards that it feels like there’s no way this could be serious. Jonah receives a word from God: Go to Nineveh. So he goes… to Tarshish; literally the other side of the known world. If he could have crossed the Atlantic Ocean that’s what he would have done.. Other prophets try to get out of their commitment—see Moses and the burning bush—but nobody goes to quite the lengths of Jonah to run away from what God was asking of him. So, it’s no surprise when God sends a storm and threatens the ship in which Jonah is fleeing. The sailors convert in a heartbeat—this is one of the funnier aspects of the Jonah story: No prophet has nearly as much success as Jonah in getting converts. He hardly has to try; in fact, he DOESN’T TRY. He literally does not seem to care. And here is God working through his hard head.

            You see, I’m pretty sure Jonah is satire, but—with most good satire—it’s also very true. God DOES work through our hard heads and often the faster we run away the more God pulls us back. When Jonah finally gets to the Assyrians in Nineveh it’s with great contempt in his heart. He hates the Assyrians. He believes they deserved to die for their heathen ways. They were people who, in the words of Jonah, “did not know their right hand from their left.”

Into this mix, finally, walks Jonah, dripping in whale vomit, and he preaches a momentous five word sermon that is long on judgment and without any promise: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The Hebrew verb for “overthrow” is haphak, which could mean that the city will be overthrown or that it will turn and repent. What Jonah seems to intend for ill, God means for good.

Jonah’s message might be the worst sermon in history. He completely misses the important part; the part where he tells them on whose authority this message comes—the prophetic introduction that always begins these kinds of sermons where the prophet says, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel” or something along those lines. Jonah makes it sound as if the message is just his idea and he doesn’t really offer any alternative. This is not turn or burn; it’s more like “Burn, suckaaaaazzzzz!” Or, put another way, you have forty days to get your affairs before God’s mighty smiting. Sorry, chaps.

And, yet, to the ears of the Assyrians this was a prophecy of their repentance. Absurdly enough, they listen and obey without a second thought. The king even goes to the extravagantly unnecessary step of putting sackclothes on the people AND the animals of the city. I can imagine walking around the giant city of Nineveh with its one hundred and twenty thousand people along with goats and sheep all wearing potato bags.

Jonah has more success than any other prophet in the history of the world, and he didn’t even want it. In fact, when he sees the “success” he is having he starts pouting. He retreats to a hilltop to watch, begging God to do the people in anyway!

            Not only is he a terrible preacher; he’s pretty much the worst person. Let’s be honest—and I don’t say this lightly—Jonah sucks.