Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC May 29, 1988
If anyone here should by chance be interested in a course in fiction writing, I have a suggestion to make. If you would like to learn to write fiction, real fables and tales, do not go to the community college. Do not waste your time at the university. Do not invest in a week at the Sugarloaf Writers' Conference. None of these things are necessary. Instead simply turn to the Sunday newspaper and page over to the classified ads; there find the real estate section. And you will discover a thousand examples of creative writing, I mean creative.
What they describe as a handyman's special I would have to call a shambles. What is pictured as compact and quaint most of us would find cramped and old. And what you and I would say is a jumble of patchwork and add-ons and a mishmash of styles, the real estate folks praise as eclectic, charming, and a period piece.
And so if someone were to advertise this house, what would you think: Three rooms, open windows. House wanted: three rooms, open windows. What would you think?
Well, you might say, those requirements are very modest indeed. Almost any house has at least three rooms and open windows … although, by the way, if you think all windows open, just step back in our choir room and give a push. Mrs. Bishop will love you for it.
House wanted: three rooms, open windows. Almost any house could fulfill those requirements, right? Let's not be too sure. What if the house we are talking about is the house you call your life? What if the home we are thinking about is the habitat of your soul? It strikes me that not all of those houses include three rooms and not all of those homes have open windows. What, I say, about the flesh and bone, heart and mind place where you live your life? You would not purchase for your family bricks and mortar that had fewer than three rooms and had no open windows. But have you done that much for something far more important than your street address? Have you done at least that much for your spiritual home?
If you listened carefully while we heard the story of Daniel a moment ago, you heard three rooms mentioned. Three very different kinds of rooms were listed in this passage; and let’s see if you can remember what whey are. We’ll make this a participatory sermon; what were the three rooms mentioned in this story?
The first room the story of Daniel introduces to us is the throne room, the place where Darius the emperor wielded power, the spot where Daniel and two others called presidents met with the king to determine great affairs of state. In the throne room, where Daniel had supposed he was so much in control, one day his colleagues met with the king and manipulated Darius into passing a strange new rule. “Establish an ordinance, O King; write an unchangeable law, O Darius, which would provide that anyone who makes a prayer to any god other than to you during the next thirty days … let that person be thrown into the den of lions. “
The throne room, where Daniel had reached the apex of his career, where Daniel seemed so much in command and in control; but the throne room is also where Daniel got sandbagged.
Next we discover the upper room, Daniel's own private room. When Daniel learned that such a document had been signed by the king, he went to his upper room and prayed. Was it a hiding place, where they might not find him? Was it a retreat, where he could come to grips with his own soul? Was it a cell, where he could barricade himself against the powers now arrayed against him? Was it a sandbox, where he could go to sulk?
Choose whatever description you will, this we know: that in seasons of distress and grief, Daniel had this upper room, a little private and personal place, bathed in prayer and shaped by the special personality of Daniel.
And then there is another room. The throne room, the upper room, and now the den. Oh, maybe you would not think of a lion's den as a room; and I feel pretty confident you have not yet built one in your home. But that is the third room to which the Bible story introduces us: the den. The place of terrible destruction. The place at which Daniel thought he would have to realize all his worst fears and lose his life. But also the place of escape; what happened in the den connected not only with what happened now in the throne room but also what happened in the upper room. Daniel’s rescue from the lions in their lair ties not only to the throne room but also to the upper room. And don’t forget; by all means don’t forget about those open windows.
You see, you and I do need a throne room in our lives. We do need and want those places where we can have control. Your self-esteem demands that you have something over which you can exercise some measure of authority. Now your house may not have a throne room, but it has the equivalent. It has a front door. At the front door you exercise control, and if it disappears, you feel like Daniel, you feel manipulated, devalued, discarded. At your home, when the salesman comes and keeps on talking, you want to slam that door in his face, because that's your throne, that's the I point at which you have the right of control.
When the religious zealot arrives, full or tracts and pitches, you smile and sweetly tell him you are already a Christian, but inside you seethe a little because somebody is trespassing on the throne room.
If, God forbid, someone should break down your door and enter your house to steal or to do violence, well, people who have had that happen tell me that they feel personally violated, they feel physically dirty, because someone has intruded. The newspaper told of a man who let in a drug dealer one day, and before long his home had been taken over. The throne room has been violated.
You and I like Daniel want and need the throne room in our lives. We need and want to know that we have enough personal power to manage the threshold, not just of the house, but of our lives. You and I like Daniel revel in the personal power that we can gather, we like being in charge of ourselves. In fact, I would say to you, if you don't want to be in charge of yourself, if you'd rather have somebody else be in charge of you, then you are already slipping down the slope toward being less than human. If your life has no throne room, if you do not believe that you are in some reasonable command of your own life, then you are in spiritual trouble.
The day will come, however, when something takes over in that throne room. The day will arrive when something intrudes or someone out maneuvers you and you feel yourself and your life in peril. Too old, too weak, too poor, too unsure.
In part what I am telling you is that you cannot always be on the throne, even if you have a throne room. You cannot always be in command, though you have plenty of ego strength. And like Daniel, the most powerful man in the Kingdom except for Darius, you and I find that all kinds of stuff conspires against us and works to defeat us. And our lives had better have in them an upper room. An upper room. And don’t forget; by all means don’t forget about those open windows.
You’d better not forget about the upper room and its open windows, because, you see, there is still the den. Three rooms and open windows; there is still the den.
Kind of odd, isn't it, that some of us do have a room in the house we call the den? What do we mean by that? Well, I expect if you have one it's the place where you go to escape a little: to watch TV, to play games, to make a mess. It's the place where maybe you can pitch the junk furniture; the stuff it doesn't matter if someone breaks, the place where it's okay if you eat and the crumbs fall on the rug. The den in your house is the place where you go and try to escape. In my sister-in-law's home, one of these multiple split-level things, you just keep on going down, down, down, 'til you can't go any more, and that's the den. That's where they put their teenage daughters, speaking of lions. The den is where you go to escape.
But your life has a den too. Your life and mine have dens, those places we go and those things we do in order to escape our insecurities. But when we try that, we only find they confront us all the more clearly. Some folks have a den called alcohol; it's designed to make them feel up and happy and bubbly, but when the buzz is off the hurt is still there. That's a den. It helps for a while, maybe, but it ends up full of lions.
Some folks have a den called fun. Just spend money on the good time, let the good times roll, it's Miller time. Just invest in escape and as long as we're racing this car, watching this movie, writhing at the go-go club, we can forget our troubles. But when the music stops and the wallet gets thin, guess what, the den is full – not of the mirth of the party but of the roar of the lions that just might devour us.
I enjoy the Bloom County comic strip. You have to be a little strange, I know, to like its irreverence. But, well, now you know. And I particularly identify with the anxiety closet which is opened regularly. Each of the characters in Bloom County has a personal anxiety closet, where an assortment of uglies lurks, and we try to keep them bottled up, but they do come out of that closet every now and again. They do get loose. I like that and identify with that because I know that have a variety of ways to keep the uglies in the closet, and one way is to go into the den. I keep the anxieties in the closet by the den called busy-ness, never stop to think, just keep moving. I keep the monsters in the closet by the den called work, just produce and perform, work, work, work. But you know what? Any escape I can devise ends up with lions in my den!
It's true: I need the den, I need the escape, just for temporary release, but it won't do all by itself. There are raging lions in my den, there are anxieties in my heart, and there are issues unresolved in my life.
But wait: don't forget the open window; above all, don't forget the open windows.
From the inner recesses of his soul Daniel summoned up the power to enter the lions' den and face what seemed like certain death, because in his upper room there were open windows. He lost the throne room, but on his way to the den stopped at the upper room and its open windows, and Daniel survived.
“In his house had Daniel an upper room with windows open toward Jerusalem; and he got down upon his knees three time a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.”
Windows open toward Jerusalem: from his open windows, with an open mind and an open heart, Daniel could draw on the tradition that was his. Jerusalem, the repository of God’s truth, the scene on which the God of Israel had acted a thousand thousand times before. Through his open windows Daniel learned, Daniel saw the record of what God had been about, and drew strength. If out there is Jerusalem, the church, the Bible, the teachings of men and women who know what they're about, then what I have to do is open my window and take it in, drink it in, learn it. And it will help me.
It's not good enough to go into the upper chamber and pray, you see, unless the windows are opened. It's not good enough to worship God unless you have become aware of who He is and what He is about. And I am going to have to say to about half of us this morning, it's not good enough to attend worship, this upper room, unless you open the windows we call Christian education, Sunday School, Bible study, and learn Jerusalem.
Windows open toward Jerusalem: through his open windows Daniel looked out to a community of faith and found the ritual of thrice daily prayer ready at hand and flowing into his life.
The house I lived in as a small child was on one of those 20-foot lots, and so they built almost to the lot line. So did the folks next door, of course, and so we could open our windows and they could open theirs and there was plenty of communication. In fact, you sometimes, especially in the summer, knew more about them than you wanted to. I remember when a neighbor died, and my parents could hear the widow weeping! But with our windows open we were in touch with the community and we knew where the resources were to deal with the issues.
The house of your life has its throne room, that place in which you have maintained a degree of responsibility and control.
The house of your life has its upper room, that place in which you have learned to be quiet with yourself and to understand yourself.
And unless I miss my guess, the house of your life has a den too, where you go to escape, only to find that when you open the closet the lions are still there. But that's all right, that's all right --
As long as in that upper room you have learned to open the windows.
