than we are to reach the healing that they require and that our mighty God has declared for them.
God is asking us to see fully the injustices, hurts, and pains in the world and be so disturbed by them that we want to stir things up for change and court holy disruption as we seek a just society. God is asking us to shake things up. Bishop Jake Owensby says, “The Kingdom is wherever God’s Love is shaking things up and bringing things to new life.”3 God wants us to live a cross-shaped life and that takes us loving so deeply and passionately that we are shaking things up, stirring the waters and disturbing the things that are not in line with the example that Jesus set for us.
God was disturbed by the state of things and sent God’s only begotten Son to stir things up, to disturb things, to court holy disruption, and to shake up the world. Jesus condemned injustice and called out those who were treating others unjustly. And even with this he continued to value every creature. Jesus is calling us to stand up for the marginalized, the oppressed, the forgotten, those whose dignity and value have been stripped from them.
My siblings in Christ, we are the hands, feet, and heart of God in this world and we are all his ambassadors for healing and peace. We are the foot soldiers of the present day. We are the ones who God is calling to disturb things until they are made right. We are the ones who God is calling to stir the waters and to go up the river and make a change. We are the ones who God is calling to come to the table and make room for all. We are the ones who God is calling to court holy disruption to level the playing field for all.
Oh God, give us a vision of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, your home among mortals on earth. Let us stir things up so that all people and nations will stream to your city where they will find nourishment, healing, and peace. Let your blessing shine upon all the earth to help us disturb, to shake things up and be willing to court holy disruption as Jesus did so we can see a larger vision of your loving care for all creation. And call us to move beyond our comfortable circles, and into unfamiliar places, as we seek to share your dream of a world made new in Christ as we, like the man by the pool, stand up, take up our mats, and walk the pilgrim’s way. Amen.
1. Christine Valters Painter, “An Interview with Christine Valters Painter,” July 7, 2015, Always We Begin Again, https://myawba.blogspot.com/2015/07/guest-post-christine-valters-paintner.html.
2. The prayer can be found at various sources on the internet: Desmond Tutu, “Disturb Us O Lord,” Godspace, March 2, 2012, https://godspacelight.com/2012/03/02/disturb-us-o-lord-a-prayer-by-desmond-tutu-4/. Also: https://unfinishedsymphony.org/2013/02/24/disturb-us-a-prayer-by-archbishop-desmond-tutu/.
3. Jake Owensby, “Show Up and Look Alert,” MinistryMatters, November 13, 2018, https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/8527/show-up-and-look-alert.
DANIEL 3:14–20, 24–29
There is more than one way to tell a story, especially a story as important as the Christian story; this also applies to the stories that make up our sacred stories. Today we explore that plurality in a lectionary of my devising, rather revising—because I think there is danger in only retelling the same stories, no matter how beloved.
Among our sacred trove of stories are two versions of the Daniel story; even more exist outside of the Christian canons. One of those canonical stories was preserved in Hebrew and Aramaic by the descendants of the Judeans who survived the Babylonian exile and created the mother text for the Hebrew Bible and the Protestant version of the story. That is the source of our Second Lesson and Canticle. The other canonical story was preserved in Greek by the descendants of the Judeans who fled to Egypt instead. That is the source of our First Lesson. Together those lessons and canticle are in narrative order telling a more complete story.
The book of Daniel is a text of resistance. It is a cagey, strategic piece of resistance. It is an anti-imperial text disguised as an anti-imperial text. Empires don’t mind their subjects mocking failed and fallen empires. In their egocentrism, they read that calumny as their own praise because they are top dog now. So the cagey authors of Daniel disguised a critique of the lingering and declining Greek Empire in a retroactive critique of the centuries-past Babylonian Empire. And they put that critique on the lips and at the pen of Daniel, a beloved figure whose origins were even older than the Babylonian Empire, or its predecessor Assyrian Empire, or the great dynasties of Egypt, or even the founding of the people of Israel. Daniel was a figure of legend whose stories were told in each generation with new stories added to his canon from time to time.
I invite you to hear the story as subversive as it really is. In the First Lesson, three young people have been taken captive by the empire and forced to assimilate to its culture, made to wear its clothing, eat its food, speak its language, and answer to the names they give them—names which stuck to them even in the stories of their own people. The tentacles of empire reach deep, even into the hearts of people who are working faithfully to decolonialize themselves. It matters that these are young people. In the larger story of Daniel, they are taken as children to be assimilated so that they will love the empire that colonized their people more than they love their own selves. Empires have always underestimated young people, whether it was civil rights protestors, dreamers, or high school gun reform activists.
When our lesson begins, these young people are being enculturated in the worship of the empire and required to pray to the gods of the empire at the cost of their subjugated, colonized lives. One of the lessons of this text is that empire is rapacious and insatiable. They were already speaking the language of empire. They had already had their names changed from Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But it wasn’t enough. The empire wanted more—more of them, more of their souls.
As long as there is a corner of your soul that is free, uncolonized, unconquered, unbought, and unbossed, empire will by any means necessary seek to uproot that liberty and colonize the last vestige of your right mind, heart, and soul. African and Native Americans know this story all too well as do the indigenous peoples of every nation conquered by an empire. In the face of the empire’s ravenous desire for their abject and total submission, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah clung fast to God of their foremothers and fathers and rejected the empire’s religion.
I’m calling this sermon “Strategies of Resistance”—ours, not theirs, because they didn’t really strategize. They just said no. No to the god of empire. No to its worship and veneration. They didn’t negotiate; they didn’t equivocate. Sometimes we just need to say no to the manifestations of empire in our world. No to the slaughter of school children. No to military-grade weaponry in the streets. No to families ripped apart by militarized immigration assault troops. No to bad preaching. No to death-dealing theology. No to violence against women. No to bullying gay and trans teens to death. No to incompetent and corrupt government. No to everything that stands against the life-giving love of God and the liberty it grants. No and hell no.
The empire responded to their rejection of its attempt to colonize their minds, their spirits, their souls, and their ancestral religion with lethal rage. The empire covets good religion. It knows
