Sermon Series: The Stories That Shape Us – August 31, 2014

Sermon Series: The Stories That Shape Us – August 31, 2014

August 31, 2014
Luther Memorial Church       Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Bel and the Dragon 1-22 

Grace and peace to you from God who created all things, from Jesus our redeemer and from the Holy Spirit who sustains and comforts us. 

          Today is the final sermon in the series: The Stories That Shape Us.  And today we are considering a story that I’m willing to bet is not as familiar to us as some of our other stories from the series.  The story of Bel and the Dragon is found in the Greek copy of the Book of Daniel, but not in the Hebrew original.  So, some Bibles include this in the Book of Daniel, while others include it in the “extra canonical” or “hidden” Apocryphal books and still other Bibles leave it out all together.

I want to say a word about the Apocryphal books as they relate to the rest of Scripture.  What we know as the canon, or the books of the Bible was actually a fairly fluid group of writings until the year 367 AD when Athanasius provided the first complete list of 66 books.  So, it is good to note that the canon as we know it came about after centuries of reflection and not from a thunderbolt out of the sky.

The Apocryphal books were often found interspersed throughout the Old Testament, though, although they were never in the Hebrew Bible.  Then Martin Luther, in his Bible translation of 1534, removed the apocryphal books from their usual places in the Old Testament, and had them printed at the end of the Old Testament. He stated that they “are not held equal to the Sacred Scriptures and yet are useful and good for reading.” After that, many Protestant Bibles omitted them completely. However, in 1546 the Roman Catholic Council of Trent specifically listed the apocryphal books approved by the Roman Catholic Church as inspired and they are always included in Roman Catholic Bibles and are usually interspersed among the books of the Old Testament.[1]

So, back to Bel and the Dragon and Daniel.  It’s quite possible, according to historians, that this is an historically true story – in other words, it is not a metaphor or a parable, but it actually happened.  We know this partly because Cyrus was actually king after Astyages died and Daniel was an honored companion of King Cyrus.

Still, the story is much like a good mystery or a fable or a children’s book, at least until you get up to the end when King Cyrus puts all of the priests and their wives and children to death.

Now, before we start to scoff and wonder how it is that someone smart enough to be King could be gullible enough to believe in an idol made of clay and bronze, remember that the idol of Bel had seventy priests dedicated to serving and worshiping it.  Seventy.  To put that in perspective, this very active congregation has one.  One.

Every time I read this story I am struck by the fact that those seventy priests AND their wives and children….so HUNDREDS of people, devoted the entirety of their days and nights taking choice food to an inanimate idol.  Choice food:  Flour and 40 sheep and six measures of wine.  Choice food.  Food that could have fed the hungry folks in the kingdom.  Food that they would have had to have collected from the people of the kingdom who had it.  Flour and sheep and wine. And they made a great show of taking the food in….it was a part of their WORSHIP; it was a part of their liturgy.  In with the flour, in with  the sheep, in with  the wine.  Shut the door, seal it with the king’s signet.  And every morning King Cyrus would find that Bel had consumed all of that choice food.  Only of course, it was not Bel, it was those seventy priests and their wives and children going in and out through the trap door and eating and drinking all that they had brought in.

The jig is up, so to speak, when Daniel has his own servants scatter ashes on the floor around Bel, and the next morning the footprints of those seventy priests and their wives and their children reveal their secret comings and goings and feastings.

Now despite those who think this could have been something that actually happened, I do have some practical questions.  How did they consume the sheep and the flour?  Did they make shepherd’s pie out of them?  And what of the mess in there, when they slaughtered the sheep? Or did they lead the sheep out of the trap door and bring them in anew each day as though they were actually 40 different sheep?   And how was it that NO ONE every blurted out this little scheme in front of the King?  C’mon, you know how kids are…”Aw Dad, do we have to go eat around Bel tonight?  I don’t wanna!”

Regardless of the answer to those questions, here’s what we know:  those priests knew that their work on behalf of Bel was empty.  There was nothing true or real about it.  They were perpetuating a scam.  An empty farce of a drama day in and day out.

This week I had two occasions to be out in the community wearing my clerical collar.  Both times, conversation ensued about my vocation and our community of faith.  One woman mistook me for the hospital chaplain when I was visiting Donna after her surgery.  I was in the Starbucks on my way out of Northwest Hospital and the woman approached and asked if I was the chaplain.  She wanted prayers for her mother, who was hospitalized.  I told her I was not the chaplain, but that I would pray for her mother anyway.  And then we talked about where I served.  The other person was a shopkeeper.  Our conversation started when she asked where I served and then exclaimed:  “Oh!  The church with the garden and the fun signs.”  Yep, that’s us.  But then she went on to ask the $64,000 question:  Do you ever doubt that stuff?

After all, isn’t it just as hard to believe that a person whose death by crucifixion was widely witnessed and whose entombment was well recorded was alive again after three days as it is to believe in an idol of clay and bronze that eats mass quantities of food each night?

Do you ever doubt that stuff?       Well, do you?   Do we?

Of course we do.  Doubts are normal for all people and in all matters I think.  The degree to which we doubt probably varies depending on our personalities.  But here’s what I know, when we doubt or wonder about our faith….it is the community of faith, our congregation here, that becomes the safe space for those doubts.  I say this to my Sunday school and confirmation students all the time…ask questions…ask why….and ask again.  Don’t just take what you hear at face value….because that won’t hold up in times of trial.  That won’t hold up in the dark nights when you are lying awake.  But a faith that has endured the test of doubt and continues to live and grow within that space, is a faith that has legs.

What we learn from this wonderful story of Bel and the Dragon, then, is to be certain that what we are doing in serving our God is not for our own good.  We need to be certain that we are not serving others because it makes US feel good or that we aren’t sharing the Gospel because it makes US look smart or that we aren’t existing here in this building at 132nd and Greenwood because it makes US look good to the neighborhood.  In all that we do, let us be certain that what we do points to and bears witness to the God who formed us. The God whose presence in the world is found in 66 books of Scripture and in Apocryphal writings and in poets like Maya Angelou and Emily Dickinson and in artists like Rembrandt and Chihuly and in music by Beethoven and the Beatles.

Here’s something else that interesting about the Biblical canon.  It is not closed.  The Church (big C) has said, in essence, this may not be all that is written that is inspired by God.  There may be more.  There could be more.  And we leave room for that.

And that is our hope and our belief as well.  It is what the women at the empty tomb found to be true and what we yearn for in each day….this is not all there is; this is a foretaste of the feast….for the best is yet to be.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] www.biblica.com