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.

            Darius didn’t ask to be put in this spot; it was, after all, the other presidents and satraps who asked for this law that nobody could pray to anybody but the king. Of course, if Darius were a bit smarter he might have realized why it was that they were asking for such a law. If he knew a bit more history he may have known about the recent case of Nebuchadnezzar with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 3) where a similar law led to three Jews being cast into a fire before being miraculously saved by their god. It feels like we’ve been here before, like Daniel’s story is a common motif during the exile. It didn’t matter if it were Babylon or Persia who was ruling over the land that had been promised to the Jewish people. Both were full of rulers who did not value religious devotion in the slightest and who did not think on the value of religion except to the extent it could be used for political gain. Darius is not evil; he’s just a man of simple interests—namely, keeping his power by keeping the politicians happy.

            So it is that he ends up sentencing one of his favorites, Daniel, to death in the lion’s den. He orders him cast in, goes to bed, and waits… and waits... and waits.

            This, my friends, is Advent. A season of waiting. But unlike Darius we know what’s coming, and that’s to our profound disadvantage, on the one hand, because it’s very easy for us to lose the importance of the season. It’s easy for us to coast through Christmas without ever stopping to wonder about what it is that might be coming. This is our disadvantage, but we also have a tremendous advantage. Since we know what is coming, since we—unlike Darius—know that there is good news of great joy awaiting us in the morning, we can meet the parts of our lives that are so unknown with an equally profound sense of wonder.

            Life is not always easy. Life will not always work out as we would like. Sometimes life is just bad, just wrong, just evil, and it’s nobody’s fault—not even explicitly our own—and we wait, not knowing if things will ever be right again.

            Advent is a time to reflect on those things, those things that are not assured, up against the promises of God that are. We are never promised a long life with security. We aren’t promised that the lions won’t eat us. We don’t know what will happen next—be it wonderfully good or horribly bad. We sit, like Darius, waiting, dreading what may come.

            Yet, every so often, morning brings us a wonder beyond all wonders. Darius awoke, ran to the den, and found something more than he even could have hoped. He found Daniel alive, yes, but more than that, he found a God who was more powerful than the king. This is what we are after in Advent, waiting on the right kind of Savior, learning that we are not the Saviors ourselves.

            This is where it gets a little tricky, because we can read the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den as a promise that God will save us from every lion. This might be comforting, but we also know it’s not always true. Sometimes the lions do eat us. Sometimes terrible things happen and saying “It’s going to be OK” rings hollow. To say that God will always save us from the lions is simply untrue. But it’s also not very comforting to say that God might save us from the lions or might not. It’s not a whole lot of comfort to imagine God watching us in our most life-or-death moments and spinning the wheel of misfortune to answer whether we come out alive or get eaten up.

            No, we need something else. We need a God who does more than save us from lions, because we know that doesn’t always happen. We need a God who saves us from the thing that always happens. We need God to save us from death—not just from the jaws of lions but also from the slow and certain decay of time. Advent is about waiting on that promise, because most days it seems like the lions win. Advent is a time-between. It’s Darius’ long night. It’s ours. Because some night we will sit in the lion’s den—or we will know someone else down there—and we will be asked in a thousand ways what it is that we trust. What promise is strong enough to get us through the night?

            We wait. For a baby of all things. Babies embody all the things that the lions’ den brings into question. They are fearfully and wonderfully made, vulnerable, far-from-guaranteed, and they’re also the best of all things. In short, we enter the lion’s den most especially when it comes to our children. It’s one thing to imagine ourselves in that nest; it’s another when it is our children. Children we can’t always protect; children that are anything but guaranteed. So it is why we need this baby most of all. We need more than a word that the lions won’t strike; we need saving. Mercifully, we have it coming even if believing it is hard.

            So we wait

For a promise that is real;

For a thing worth waiting for.

For a baby,

Yes, for a baby.

The morning after a long night.

Ours.