September 20 - In the Face of Danger
Deborah Laforet Daniel 6:10-16
September 20, 2020
“In the Face of Danger”
I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a personal story and one that is not easy to tell.
The story takes place while I was in ministry in Saskatchewan. One summer, upon my return from a trip, probably visiting family in Ontario and Michigan, I was catching up on voicemail. One particular message stood out. It was from a person in the church. For privacy reasons, I’m going to call them the Smith family. I was ministering in a very small town, maybe 650 people, and the Smith family was well-known and respected. They were a church family, generous and very involved in the community. The person who called me had some tragic news to share. It had been discovered that the elderly Mr. Smith (the caller’s father) had sexually assaulted his granddaughter when she was a little girl.
This was powerful news and it shocked the whole community. In fact, other stories began to be told of other incidents of abuse of vulnerable people in the community by this person. The elderly Mr. Smith was a charmer and it seems he had allayed suspicion for a long time. His son, upon discovering what had happened to his daughter was angry and determined that this should not remain a family secret. He was more concerned about his daughter than the consequences for his father.
I don’t know how many of you have lived in a small town but most of you will know what it’s like by being part of a family or a church community. This news affected the whole community deeply, including the church I served, as the whole family, at one time or another, had been a part of this church. People had worshipped regularly with this family, volunteered side by side, and were a part of many social events. To their credit, the community and the church, there was no debate as to whether the accusations were true. Everyone sympathized with the younger Mr. Smith and his family and everyone wondered how they had been so wrong about the senior Mr. Smith and how he could have gotten away with his actions for so many years.
A situation arose when the senior Mr. Smith decided to give a donation to the church. The church needed a new furnace and there was a fundraising plan in place. Money was tight, and the new furnace was desperately needed. We’re talking about a Saskatchewan winter.
When Mr. Smith offered to pay for the furnace, his motives were questioned. His son said that this was his dad’s way of ingratiating himself with the church, a bribe to get people to appreciate him and be beholden to him, to get people to look past the accusations that had been made. The senior Mr. Smith said that this wasn’t the case. He was a long time member of the church and he didn’t want to see it suffer. He was only trying to be generous and give back. He was old, near the end of his time, and wanted to give to his church in this way.
So the church community had a decision to make. And I was the leader of this church. It was my role to be the in-between, to talk with both parties, and help guide the congregation in the decision that had to be made.
I talked with the church board, I talked with family, I talked with colleagues, I talked with church leadership in the province, but one of the hardest pieces of work was going to the home of Mr. Smith and talking with him.
Because, you see, I was sexually assaulted as a child. So going to this person’s home was hard. Sitting at a table with someone who had sexually assaulted a little girl and didn’t seem to have much remorse about it, only defensive, was uncomfortable and even a bit traumatic.
Friends, Laura read for us a story that we often teach in our children’s programming. It actually doesn’t come up in our lectionary so we rarely hear it in worship, which is too bad. It’s a powerful story of a bold faith, of someone trapped by circumstances and speaking truth to power. Daniel was a Jewish man living in Babylon, one of the many who had been exiled from his homeland. Because of his intelligence and wisdom, he rose in the ranks and eventually became an advisor to the king. The other advisors though didn’t like Daniel, whether because they were jealous of his wisdom or that he was a foreigner who had become too close to the king, they developed a plot to get rid of him.
They convinced the king to create a law that prohibited anyone from praying to anyone divine or human, except for the king. Now in those days, many worshipped their ruler and saw them as appointed by the gods, so this wasn’t unusual, but the advisors knew that Daniel prayed to a foreign god and only to this god. As soon as the law was put in place, they caught Daniel praying to his god and immediately told the king. Although the king did not want to arrest Daniel, his own law compelled him to do so. The king ordered Daniel to be thrown into the lion’s den.
I think we all have a “lion’s den” story. You heard one of mine. I see these stories as ones of danger, ones where our values are in direct opposition to what we are told is the law or mandatory, or even just what everyone else is doing, ones where we are asked to confront deep seated fears.
The story of Daniel in the lion’s den is one of our miraculous bible stories. Daniel is protected from the hungry lions and lives to tell about it. Not all stories end in such miraculous ways. In fact, our Christian story is not good news because Jesus was saved from the cross or saved from the Romans who put him there, but because he lived anyway. That is the miracle. He faced the lions, he suffered and he died, but he rose again, in spite of the powers who tried to be rid of him.
I survived my encounter with Mr. Smith. In fact, I came through it stronger. I went into therapy (again!), and learned more about myself, and more about sexual predators and the people on whom they prey. I learned about trauma and how beautiful and powerful are those stories of people who come out the other side.
Taking risks, confronting our fears, standing up for our beliefs, standing as allies with others taking risks, confronting their fears, and standing for their beliefs can feel like walking into the lion’s den. You will feel fear. You will second-guess yourself. You will want to flee, but I promise you that it will be life-changing. You will not walk out of that lion’s den the same person. That is the miracle in our story. We will be born again, we will rise up, we will be resurrected into new life. That is the good news.
I will end with the words of the king that reluctantly commanded that Daniel be thrown into that pit of lions, Daniel who faithfully served his king and his god, Daniel who boldly lived his faith in spite of the risks. The king said to Daniel: “May your God, whom you faithfully serve, deliver you!” May it be so. Amen.