Notes for a sermon on Daniel 1 on how to critically engage with our culture at work so we can live for God

FAITH IN THE FRONTLINE ….. KNOW YOUR BOTTOM LINE Daniel 1

INTRODUCTION

I am not really a football fan but I thought it was interesting this week that after losing 2:0 away from home in the Champions League, Celtic put in a fantastic performance and won 3:0 at home.

Playing at home seems to give teams a big advantage,
Probably because when you play at home you have a supportive atmosphere and everything is familiar, you fit in there.

However when teams play away from home they face an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile environment which is probably why they don’t perform so well.

Now the reason that Celtic’s home win interested me is that at the moment we are thinking as a community about our Front Line
about those places where as followers of Jesus
where we spend most of our time.

For many of us here, a substantial part of our front line will be our work place.
Most of us spend about 40 hours a week at work and some times much longer.

Now even about 30 years ago our culture felt for us as Christians a bit like Celtic playing at Parkhead, living in Scotland we had a bit of a home advantage.

Even though most people weren’t christians most of the values in our culture were largely in line with our values as Christians.

That culture was called Christendom, it was a culture in which the church had a privileged place and most of the laws reflected the values and morality of Christianity

Now in 2013 people are talking about Scotland not having a Christendom culture but a post Christendom culture and what that means in a nutshell for us as Christians is that living in Scotland is increasingly feeling like we are sports team playing away from home, we no longer live in a supportive culture and in fact some times it feels a bit like it must feel like for Celtic playing at Ibrox.

CONFLICTS WITH CULTURE
Over the past year there have been a whole series of high profile cases which have hit the headlines where Christians have found their work place has become a hostile environment to be a Christ follower because their values and beliefs have brought them into conflict with the values and policies of their employers

in 2007 a Coptic Christian Nadia Eweida was disciplined and then sacked by BA for wearing a cross on her uniform despite other adherents of other religions being allowed to wear symbols connected to their faith.

Gary McFarlane was a marriage counsellor with Relate who despite having been a counsellor for many years was sacked because he refused to give sex advice to gay couples.

In April this year two Catholic midwives Concepta Wood and Mary Doogan ended up in the High Court. They had worked at the southern general in Glasgow for over 20 years but then the hospital changed their policy and patients who were having abortions were cared for on the labour ward where the two catholic midwives worked and they were required to care for them and also supervise and organise the work of other nurses who were involved in carrying out the abortions. The midwives had always been exempted before from being involved in abortions because of their beliefs but now the policy was changed and they were disciplined for refusing to be involved in abortions

There have been lots and lots of other examples which have made it into the news where Christians have come into conflict with their employers because of their faith.

I suspect that many of us for whom our work places are a big part of our front line would have our own stories about how our beliefs and values are bringing us into situations of tension and some times conflict with our work colleagues and employers.

Maybe some times employers ask us to do things we feel are dishonest, like not tell the truth about delivery dates or covering some thing up.

I know some Christians who came into conflict with their employers over equality training where they felt they were being forced to deny what they believed about sexuality and marriage

As our culture moves further and further away from its Christians roots
, we as Christians living in what we described as this Post Christian culture
are going to find ourselves more and more
in tension and conflict with the our employers and fellow workers.

Our work place is going to feel increasingly like an away game for a football team so this is a big issue for us as we think about living for the Kingdom of God in our frontline.

THE KEY QUESTION
How are we to respond as Christians to an increasingly non Christian work place and the potential tensions and conflicts its brings?

Two attempted answers

AMISH ATTITUDE

The Amish have nothing to do with what they see as the “world” So they live in separate communities and they work for themselves or for other Amish and as far as possible they won’t work for people who they don’t consider as true believers.

They believe that the beliefs of Christians and the values of the Kingdom of God are so different that any Christians working for a non Christian organisation or person will inevitably betray Christ.

CHAMELEON COMPROMISE

There is another attitude that I have noticed among Christians when it comes to this whole area which I’ll call the chameleon compromise. Chameleons of course can change colour to fit in with their background so they don’t stand out.

That’s what many Christians do at work, they leave Christian values and beliefs at church and at their work they just act, think and speak like everyone else who aren’r citizens of the Kingdom of God.

I can remember a Christian business man telling me if he lived by the values of the Kingdom of God he would go out of business so he had work in the same way all the other companies did, in other words, like a Chameleon he changed to fit in, not by changing his colours but by compromising his Christian faith.

NEITHER OF THESE OPTIONS ARE VIABLE FOR US IF WE WANT TO FOLLOW JESUS BECAUSE JESUS GAVE US THIS COMMAND WE CAN’T AVOID

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden Matthew 5:13-16

Jesus says we are to exert a transforming influence, be salt and light, not among ourselves but in the world, in the culture which has largely rejected God

to do that we have to have two things

CONTRAST (Salt & Light) & CONTACT (of the earth & of the world)

AMISH ATTITUDE = All CONTRAST but no CONTACT
CHAMELEON COMPROMISE = All CONTACT but no CONTRAST

We need a third way, a way which has both contrast & contact

If we are going to learn to live for the Kingdom of God in our front line we need to find a way of doing it which doesn’t involve withdrawing from the world or becoming just like it.

INSPIRATION
I think there is another option and we find it maybe place surprising place. In the story of Daniel.

Now when I was in Sunday School we used to sing a song that said

Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known.

We were taught that Daniel was a man who wouldn’t make any compromises with the pagan world he had to live in and so neither should we.

In fact as a little experiment I looked at some sermon titles on Daniel on Sermon Central. Here are some of the ones which give you a flavour of how Daniel is being preached

NO COMPROMISE
NO SURRENDER
REFUSING TO COMPROMISE
NEVER GIVE AN INCH

The problem is with all of those is that when we actually read this story of Daniel living for God on his front line carefully what we find is a lot more complicated that NO COMPROMISE. The story is much more nuanced than that.

DANIEL …… definitely lost home field advantage … taken from Jerusalem and taken to Babylon. If any where was a hostile environment for God’s people it was Babylon. They had destroyed the Temple!

Yet Daniel

DIDN’T adopt the

AMISH ATTITUDE
OR
CHAMELEON COMPROMISE

Instead he is an example of CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT

which meant he lived a life of CONTRAST & CONTRACT

Daniel critically engaged with the culture around, He

DIDNT ACCEPT EVERYTHING
DIDN’T REJECT EVERYTHING

HE CONSIDERED EVERYTHING IN THE LIGHT OF HIS FAITH

He thought about each issue and whether he could do what he was being asked to do as a follower of the true God

After he considered some issues he was willing to COMPROMISE on some of them

Was willing to compromise with his new pagan employers and do some things that he was probably personally uncomfortable and would have preferred not to do

HE COMPROMISED ON:

Pagan Education: “He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service.

Pagan Name: “The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.”

grey areas …. Areas which although uncomfortable for us as believers don’t mean we have betrayed our faith.

Daniel didn’t take a stand on everything he was uncomfortable with

MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF DANIEL …. HE

KNEW HIS BOTTOM LINE

AT HIS

FRONT LINE

There were issues where Daniel was willing to compromise but there were also issues on which Daniel would not compromise on. There were his bottom lines, his lines in the sand, the issues he wouldn’t give an inch on.

“But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself in this way”

KINGS FOOD …. accepting it meant he would “defile” himself

We can’t be sure why the food was more of an issue than the education or name

Suggestions ….

KOSHER? …. What about the wine then?

Sacrificed to idols?
Or
Covenant with the King?

Probably eating the King’s food was some how displacing God as the ultimate authority over his life and involving Daniel in worshipping other God. That’s what Daniel couldn’t do because he knew there was only one KING OF KINGS and he wasn’t the King of Babylonia and there was only one true God He was none of the Gods of the Babylonians

As you read on in the story it becomes clear Daniel had a great understanding of the greatness of His God

‘Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
wisdom and power are his.
21 He changes times and seasons;
he deposes kings and raises up others.
Chp 2

That meant that Daniel knew that despite who was paying his wages he actually worked for God and he wouldn’t do anything that contradicted what God had commanded and he wouldn’t allow anyone or anything to take God’s place as the supreme authority in his life

“If within us,
we find nothing over us
we will succumb to
whatever is around us”
PT Forsyth

If we don’t like Daniel settle the issue of who we serve, who is over us, and get it clear in mind that our ultimate loyalty is owed to our God not our employer, we will “succumb to whatever is around us”

Col 3:23 “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,”

FOR DANIEL THERE WERE

GREY AREAS …. Where you could compromise and not be “defiled”

BLACK AND WHITE AREAS …. Where you could not compromise without being “defiled”

FOR US IN OUR “FRONT LINES”

We need to decide what areas of our work are our

GREY AREAS ….. we can compromise despite being uncomfortable
BLACK AND WHITE AREAS … we can’t compromise

DECIDE WHERE OUR BOTTOM LINES ARE<

BOTTOM LINE ….area where you can’t compromise without defacing yourself

MIDWIVES in GLASGOW …. compromised in that they were willing to work in the same department as abortions took place

But their bottom line was. …. Supervising staff who were helping carry them out or organise the procedure

so how do we do it?

DEVELOPING YOUR BOTTOM LINE

Decide who really is “over you”
Know God’s Word
Be Sensitive to God’s Spirit
Be Connected to God’s People