Awakening
Lent Week 1: Feb 26, 21012 Dan 9
It is dark.
But I kind of like it.
Not that it is good; no, it is cold, it is lonely, it is lifeless and it is light-less.
But it is familiar.
I am used to it.
No matter that I am not free.
I am used to it.
I hear a voice: Come forth! Awaken!! The light shines in the darkness!
A moment of hope – could things actually change? – but then
the darkness again.
The familiar.
Change?
yes, but…
at what cost?
If I leave the darkness, where will I be? I don’t know.
and if I don’t know, how can I know it will be better?
Someone else must do it.
They must bring the light, shine the light, they must dispel the darkness
after all, it was probably someone else’s fault anyway.
What do you mean I must open my eyes?
It is my darkness.
Change takes too much energy.
What do you mean someone else already did it?
Daniel 9
It is (by my best guess at least) 539BC. It is the first year of the reign of Darius the Mede. I don’t expect you to remember, but 3 weeks ago when we opened the book of Daniel, and we found four young Jewish men being carried off into exile, it was 605BC. Do the math – 66 years have passed. Daniel is now an old man; probably 80 or more. 2 During the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, learned from reading the word of the LORD, as revealed to Jeremiah the prophet, that Jerusalem must lie desolate for seventy years.
Another important bit of math - who knew that reading the Bible with understanding meant remembering math? It is getting close to the 70 years. It is probably around year 66 of 70; a few more to go; and Daniel has read the word of the LORD as revealed to Jeremiah.
What did he read? We have those same exact words still today, on your smart phone and through your internet connection and even in that actual physical book.
Jeremiah 25: 8 And now the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says: Because you have not listened to me, 9 I will gather together all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom I have appointed as my deputy. I will bring them all against this land and its people and against the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy you and make you an object of horror and contempt and a ruin forever. 10 I will take away your happy singing and laughter. The joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides will no longer be heard. Your millstones will fall silent, and the lights in your homes will go out. 11 This entire land will become a desolate wasteland. Israel and her neighboring lands will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.
12 Then, after the seventy years of captivity are over, I will punish the king of Babylon and his people for their sins, says the LORD.
Can you imagine how Daniel felt reading that? He has lived it! His entire life has been spent in that period of time that God describes as devoid of happy singing and laughter, no joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides, no mills, no lights, the land a desolate wasteland, serving the king of Babylon for seventy years.
He could get angry. What a waste of his life! After all, why should he have suffered for the fact that the previous generations, the ones in power in Jerusalem before he was born and while he grew as a child, refused to listen to Jeremiah?
Or he could get vindictive. I stopped reading from Jeremiah, but the passage continues and describes some pretty awful things God is going to do to the Babylonians, and we could find Daniel getting pretty excited about seeing them punished. Bring it on, God! Get them! Smite them but good! But Daniel doesn’t do that. Instead, he does a very Lenten thing.
3 So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and fasting. I also wore rough burlap and sprinkled myself with ashes.
Interesting, don’t you think? I decided to jump ahead to Daniel 9 this week; we will come back to the earlier stories, just because there is such an incredible prayer of repentance here that I thought would be a great kick-off to our season of Lent. But I had no idea, until I got into it on Friday, how perfect it is. For lent. For us. We pray that God will guide our journey; this was huge proof to me that He is!
We just came through Ash Wednesday, and here I find Daniel. Not just with an ashen cross on his head; but covered. Immersed. And at prayer. Prayer near the end of exile; prayer knowing, believing, that the end of an extremely difficult and painful part of the story of the people of God was almost done. But it isn’t, yet. I actually laughed out loud when I read, near the end of Daniel’s prayer, his plea that God would smile again on your desolate sanctuary (9:17); just at the humor of God as we meet here in the school, half a block away from our own desolate sanctuary to which we will soon return.
We find Daniel repentant, personally, but more corporately. It is prayed by Daniel, but it is prayed on behalf of God’s people as a whole. He is interceding for the community; God calls us not only to individual repentance, but to corporate repentance. It is the, We have sinned, not just the I have sinned. And that is the tone of Daniel’s prayer.
It is not a prayer we need to study. It is not a prayer we need to dissect, line by line, in an effort to understand it. Rather, it is a prayer we need to pray so that is where we will go with it this morning. I will read it first and comment briefly, just so that we can own the words for ourselves as we speak them together, but the goal is going to be to pray it. Pastor Sue has written it into a litany for us to pray together, after we walk through it for understanding.
Daniel 9
4 I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed:
O Lord, you are a great and awesome God! Daniel begins with a focus on God’s character; who God is; He does not start with himself or the people of Israel. This is always a wise way to begin – to whom are we speaking? the great and awesome God! You always fulfill your covenant and keep your promises of unfailing love to those who love you and obey your commands. God is faithful, and in a covenant relationship with us, grounded in unfailing love (or hesed). 5 But we have sinned and done wrong. We have rebelled against you and scorned your commands and regulations. 6 We have refused to listen to your servants the prophets, who spoke on your authority to our kings and princes and ancestors and to all the people of the land. The honest admission. No attempts to diminish, blame others, blame God. No I sinned but it was because of… There is strong language here: rebelled, scorned, refused to listen.
7 Lord, you are in the right; but as you see, our faces are covered with shame. The distance between us and God is honestly admitted. This is true of all of us, including the people of Judah and Jerusalem and all Israel, scattered near and far, wherever you have driven us because of our disloyalty to you. 8 O LORD, we and our kings, princes, and ancestors are covered with shame because we have sinned against you. It is corporate, inclusive. 9 But the Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him. There is a hope here, rooted in God. 10 We have not obeyed the LORD our God, for we have not followed the instructions he gave us through his servants the prophets. 11 All Israel has disobeyed your instruction and turned away, refusing to listen to your voice.
So now the solemn curses and judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured down on us because of our sin. 12 You have kept your word and done to us and our rulers exactly as you warned. I hear acceptance in these words; not anger at God for punishment but rather a recognition that our sin caused the pain. Never has there been such a disaster as happened in Jerusalem. 13 Every curse written against us in the Law of Moses has come true. Yet we have refused to seek mercy from the LORD our God by turning from our sins and recognizing his truth. 14 Therefore, the LORD has brought upon us the disaster he prepared. The LORD our God was right to do all of these things, for we did not obey him. Can you say that with integrity? That last verse is one of humble acceptance and ownership of the sin and its consequences. The LORD our God was right to do all of these things.
15 O Lord our God, you brought lasting honor to your name by rescuing your people from Egypt in a great display of power. We often gloss quickly past these references to the Exodus, because we don’t feel it as our story. But there is an important principle: we remember what God has done for us in the past – how He rescued and forgave and restored and showed His power. But we have sinned and are full of wickedness. 16 In view of all your faithful mercies, Lord, please turn your furious anger away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain. Now, notice carefully: we are a long way into the prayer. 12 verses in, out of 15 verses total, and this is the first request. Thus far, the prayer has been about who God is contrasted with the sin of His people. And now, on that foundation, comes the plea: please turn your furious anger away. All the neighboring nations mock Jerusalem and your people because of our sins and the sins of our ancestors.
17 O our God, hear your servant’s prayer! Listen as I plead. For your own sake, Lord, smile again on your desolate sanctuary.
18 O my God, lean down and listen to me. Open your eyes and see our despair. See how your city—the city that bears your name—lies in ruins. We make this plea, not because we deserve help, but because of your mercy.
19 O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, listen and act! For your own sake, do not delay, O my God, for your people and your city bear your name.
Striking to me is the basis for the request for mercy: not because we deserve help, but Daniel asks “or your own sake, Lord. Even here, it is about God, about His Kingdom, about restoring His people so that God will be glorified. Of course, they will benefit from an end to slavery in Babylon, and from the return to rebuild Jerusalem, but the heart of the prayer is not for their own comforts, but rather for the Kingdom of God.
Lent 2012
Quite a prayer, don’t you think? We are going to pray it in a moment together.
But just before we do, let me put it in a broader context of our Lenten journey. It is the first Sunday in Lent, our annual journey to the cross and the empty tomb. Winter is ending (honestly; despite the 20cm of snow that fell yesterday). Easter will soon be here. And as I seek to listen to where the Spirit of God is leading us on our Lenten journey, the theme I’m discerning is that of awakening. It fits with Daniel here in chapter 9. He sees on the horizon a return from exile, an awakening after a period of darkness and absence. And it fits with what I think God is inviting us to as well.
Awakening:
Awakening to the true depth of the love of God for us;
Awakening to the power that is offered to us in the indwelling of the Spirit within us;
Awakening to the life abundant; not as an absence of suffering but rather as God’s presence with us through suffering;
Awakening to the ugliness of the sin we toy with, how that brings death, and how we really can be free;
Awakening to what life in the Kingdom of God really looks like.
We will return to our own building next week, though in a reduced capacity. There will be some rejoicing! But more than that, I pray it is a new beginning and not simply a return to how things have been. I pray it is an awakening to what it really means for us to be the people of God together, to manifest the presence of God among us and into our world. To see God’s Kingdom come, and His will be done.
And I think that begins with us following Daniel’s lead. He sees the end of exile coming close, and so he goes to prayer. In repentance, in sackcloth and ashes, in a brutal honesty, in an acceptance of all the punishment God has delivered as a just response to the very real sin of His people. And then Daniel asks for mercy. For God to hear, and forgive. Let us use his words to do the same.
