Who Really is Sovereign? A Sermon on Daniel 6:1-28

I was down to preach today on Daniel in the lions’ den and learnt a lot of new things about the story. As you will discern, I wanted also to address the controversy surrounding Jarel Robinson-Brown’s recent Tweet about the ‘cult of White British Nationalism’. Jarel and I have never met in person (you can blame the pandemic for that) but we do sit on a group together. I wanted to add my voice publicly to his chorus of supporters, even while trying to communicate something about resisting empire to the people with whom I worship.

Daniel 6:1-28; John 19:1-16a

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine, Jarel, posted a now-infamous Tweet calling out British imperialism. The Tweet was condemned and Jarel denounced in no uncertain terms. Fair enough, we might think; people disagree with each other all the time, and Twitter is hardly the place to conduct a rational debate about the legacy of the British Empire. But Jarel is Black, Jarel is gay, and Jarel is an ordinand in the Church of England. The responses to Jarel’s Tweet inevitably included racial abuse, homophobic abuse, and criticism of his position within the Church. Someone even set up an online petition demanding that the Diocese of London, where Jarel is based, ‘remove [him] from his post’. The Diocese of London assures us that pastoral support is in place for Jarel and condemns the racial and homophobic abuse Jarel presumably continues to receive. But the initial diocesan response to the Twitter storm, at least its public one, appeared to side more with Jarel’s accusers than with their ordinand.

Why am I saying all this? On one level, I do so because it happens to be current news: Jarel is a Black, gay Christian, a member and minister of the Church of England, who expressed a view on how nostalgia for the British Empire continues to impact our society today, and there are certain segments of society who don’t like Black men, who don’t like gay men, who don’t like Christians or the Church of England, and who don’t like their cultural memories disturbed. On another level, I’m saying all this because today happens to be Racial Justice Sunday: what better time is there to look at an increasingly high-profile example of racism, one that incriminates the Church of England, at least to some degree? Many will disagree with me, I’m sure, but Jarel, as a Church of England ordinand, called out parts of British society for idolatry: idolatry not rooted in the ‘kind and generous soul’ of a respected centenarian, not at all; but idolatry rooted in memory of a man highjacked to perpetuate a particular idea of British supremacy: a ‘Make Britain Great Again’ sort of idolatry. Through a single Tweet, Jarel, a Church of England ordinand—a Black, gay Church of England ordinand, the sort of person some people don’t like—through a single Tweet, Jarel exposed the nationalistic idolatry at the heart of so much Britishness.

Just like anyone else, Jarel has a right to Tweet controversial messages. But as a Church of England ordinand, Jarel also has a right to Tweet a message calling out idolatry where he sees it. Any Christian—not just those in formal ministry, but any Christian—should call out idolatry in some way, surely. So there are questions about why the Diocese of London put Jarel on the naughty step. Christians are often required by their faith in Jesus Christ to do and say things wider society just cannot accept. Jarel’s Tweet has not only exposed the nationalistic idolatry at the heart of so much Britishness, but has perhaps also exposed where there is still institutional racism, homophobia, and a desire to collude with state power in the Church of England.

To be fair to the lions, not all of them were fierce.

All this is too much, Terry: let’s just get on with Daniel 6. That’s a nice, heart-warming tale about how God rescues an innocent man from a pride of hungry lions. That’s a story about how God steps in to defend the defenceless and rescue the persecuted. That’s the sort of thing we like to hear about: none of this ‘real world’ stuff about politics and historical legacies you’ve been going on about. Well, okay: if what you need to hear today is that God calls us to defend the defenceless in such general terms, then please do hear that message and take that to heart. But you probably won’t find the rest of what I’m going to say all that interesting or helpful. You see, Daniel 6 is a particularly political passage and helps us understand the inner workings of empire and how we, as Christians, can resist these. What I’m going to do over the next few minutes is to attempt to open up a space for us to reflect on how we as Christians can resist, at least in some small way, the imperialistic and nationalistic ideas that have shaped us all.

Okay . . . where to begin? As I read through Daniel 6, I noted all the usual things about the presidents and the satraps tricking King Darius the Mede into making a law to entrap Daniel; about Daniel’s persistence in prayer despite the new law that forbade everyone from praying to anyone other than the king; about the angel God sent to save Daniel ‘from the power of the lions’ (6:28). Exciting stuff, for sure. But then it hit me: Why on earth would Darius the Mede agree to establish such a strange law? Remember what the law was—verse seven: ‘whoever prays to anyone, divine or human, for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into a den of lions.’ As I say, why on earth would Darius the Mede agree to this law? Was he really so vain that he thought his subjects throughout the Medo-Persian Empire should abandon all their gods, including, for Jews, the living God who long ago brought them out of Egypt? Was Darius arrogant enough to think everyone should devote themselves to him, a mere man, alone? Extraordinary!

So let’s dig deeper. First, let’s consider the motives of the presidents and satraps. By the way, in case you’re wondering, a satrap was a kind of government official, and so instead of talking about ‘presidents’ and ‘satraps’, I’m just going to call them ‘officials’ from now on. So what were the officials’ motives for their actions? Daniel had gained a reputation as, perhaps, a man of great faith in the God of the Jews, as well as a man of integrity and high competence in fulfilling his duties within the imperial hierarchy. King Darius was so impressed that he planned to promote Daniel to second-in-command of the whole Medo-Persian Empire. Naturally, the other officials weren’t overly impressed by this move. They didn’t want to have Daniel in such a high position, that much is clear; but why not? Daniel 6 doesn’t tell us explicitly, but it does offer us some clues. Perhaps Daniel’s life of integrity and professional competence was an issue: the officials found ‘no grounds for complaint or any corruption . . . [or] negligence’ (6:4) in Daniel’s conduct, and perhaps this showed them up as ineffectual and dishonest bureaucrats.

This would have been a good enough reason to get rid of Daniel. But there’s a hint of racism, too, in verse thirteen: Daniel is described as ‘one of the exiles from Judah’. This is, of course, true: Daniel was an exile from Judah. But why do the officials draw attention to this? It might simply be a matter-of-fact description, like Darius himself was called ‘Darius the Mede’. But is it possible the officials are insinuating that Daniel’s Jewish identity should somehow disqualify him from becoming the king’s second-in-command? Or is it possible that the officials are suggesting the opposite, that Daniel’s identity as a Jew is actually the main reason why Darius plans to honour Daniel, that Darius is practising a form of positive discrimination? Who knows for sure?—but the possibilities are there. Pulling all this together, we can speculate that the officials don’t want Daniel promoted because he, a Jew, shows them up. By his life of integrity rooted in his faithfulness to the God of the Jews, Daniel calls out the officials’ ethnic prejudices and professional envy.

Here’s another question: Why do the officials try to get rid of Daniel in the way they do? Why establish a new law for the whole Medo-Persian Empire just to trap one man? In short, the officials are trying to show by any means possible that Daniel, an ethnic Jew who worships a strange foreign god, does not look out for the empire’s best interests. The officials plan to show that this Jew intends to undermine the empire and make a fool out of King Darius in the process. Getting rid of Daniel was a matter of national security: we don’t want an immigrant, especially one of those Jews, bringing down our great empire from the inside, do we? And so the officials sought to discredit Daniel in the only way they had open to them: target his religious beliefs.

It seems that Daniel’s practice was to pray to God three times a day; presumably at least some of the officials knew this, otherwise I don’t see why the law they asked Darius to establish focused on prayer. Why not simply ask the king to kill all the Jews? Perhaps that would have been too extreme, although we know from the book of Esther and even from living memory that the Jewish people are all too often the victims of genocidal policies. The officials wanted only to target Daniel and, because he had a habit of prayer, they supposed that they could prove Daniel’s disloyalty to the empire by making his prayers appear subversive to the common good. By demanding a law that required all prayers to be directed to King Darius, the officials made it legal for everyone, including Daniel, to pledge allegiance solely to the flag of the Medo-Persian Empire. And Darius had no problem with this, and no idea, it seems, that it would entrap his favoured official, Daniel.

All this brings me back to why King Darius would agree to such a law. Was he vain? Perhaps. Naïve? Most definitely. Did Darius believe receiving prayer was part of his duties as a representative of Ahura Mazdā, the chief god in the Persian religion? Quite possibly. But I think it’s also fair to say that Darius fell afoul of the sixth-century-bc equivalent of a Twitter storm. The nrsv translation we use doesn’t convey it well, but verses six, eleven, and fourteen suggest that the officials hounded the king and ganged up on him. The officials bombarded Darius with so many comments that perhaps the king simply caved in to the pressure in order to shut them up, but without thinking through the possible consequences of his actions. Darius made a decision under extreme duress, a decision we see he came to regret.

There is much more we could say here—Daniel 6 is so much more than a Sunday school story—but I need to begin wrapping things up by looking at what Daniel is doing throughout this chapter. While the politics of empire dance chaotically around him, Daniel himself is a picture of serenity. Even knowing about the king’s new law, Daniel continues to practise his faith in the living God of the Jewish people, the same God who brought his ancestors out of Egypt. And Daniel practises his faith by praying to the living God three times a day. We can suppose Daniel is praying on behalf of his people as well as for the wider empire, asking God for forgiveness and deliverance. This sounds incredibly pious, I’m sure; but notice, and notice well, that in light of a new law that makes prayer possible only under certain circumstances, Daniel’s habit of praying three times a day to the living God of the Jews is an act of resistance, an act of rebellion, against the law of the Medes and the Persians. Instead of praying to the king, the most powerful man in the empire, as required by the new law, Daniel prays to God. This is ultimately an act of resistance, of rebellion, because by praying in this way, Daniel is turning deliberately to the only true power for help and compassion and strength—and it ain’t the king!

So what else can we say? Throughout the book of Daniel so far, we’ve encountered again and again the idea that God is sovereign, that God is the supreme ruler over all things. I dare say each of us hears this differently. It’s easy to affirm the idea of a sovereign God if you’re the ones in charge: the way things are is the way God wants them to be. But it’s also easy to affirm the idea of a sovereign God if you’re not the ones in charge: the way things are is not the way God wants things to be, and so God in his sovereignty will change everything for the better. In some way, then, we can all claim the sovereign God is on our side, but the reality is so much more complicated than this. In Daniel’s case, he is arguably part of the ruling elite—after all, the king was going to make him, an ethnic minority, his second-in-command—but even though he is part of the ruling elite, we can see that Daniel’s position is precarious: his ethnicity and religion will always count against him, and he is always one finger-snap away from falling foul of discriminatory government policies. This is the way empire works.

But let me say again that Daniel knows where and in whom true power lies: it does not lie in Darius, the king of the Medo-Persian Empire, any more than it lay in Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, the kings of Babylon. Daniel is able to resist the empire which demands total loyalty because he finds his identity in the living God of the Jews. And his unwavering insistence on praying to this God demonstrates this.

I’ll leave you to work out what all this means for you; my task as a preacher today is simply to open space for you to work out how to resist empire in your own situations. For Daniel, resisting empire meant continuing to pray to God, even though doing so put his life in jeopardy; for my friend Jarel, resisting empire meant calling out what so many see as the ‘cult of White British Nationalism’; for us, it could mean identifying where and how the Church of England colludes institutionally with such nationalism, and explaining why it shouldn’t; and it could mean intentionally working to recognise and undo where and how we collude with it ourselves.

The way we practise our faith is our response to what the living God has done for us in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth; the same Jesus who, in our Gospel reading today, stood before the representatives of empire and affirmed the living God as the one true sovereign over all earthly powers and empires. It is for us to work out, through prayer and reading the Bible, individually and with others, how God is asking us to stand against the empires that demand our total loyalty. And so I conclude with two simple questions: Who really is sovereign: human institutions, leaders, and powers . . . or God? And if it is God who really is sovereign, what will we do or say—what will you do or say—in the power of God’s Holy Spirit, to counter the corruption and inhumanity of empire and demonstrate instead, like Daniel, our faith in the living God?