Taking the Day Apart

Daniel 1:1–21 NIV

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god. Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility—young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. 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. Among those who were chosen were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego. 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 this way. Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel, but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.” Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days. At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead. To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds. At the end of the time set by the king to bring them into his service, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.

Habits are built into each one of us more times each day than we would even be able to count. Some habits are simple, other habits can be extremely complex. But almost all habits have some sort of impact on who we are in some way. Hopefully, every one of us has a habit of brushing our teeth every day. It is something we have done so many times that most of us do it automatically without even thinking about what we are doing. Some of us have a habit of regular exercise of some kind. Some of us have the habit of always locking the car door whenever we exit the vehicle. All of these are things that we do over and over again for a reason; and these are habits that impact us in some way. The continual repetition of habits like these makes us people with better teeth that have fewer cavities, more healthy and physically fit, safer about protecting our vehicles.

And not all habits are good. Sometimes we struggle with bad habits as well. Snacking on junk food every day, always fidgeting with a smartphone, sitting several hours each day just watching television. These are habits that impact us and who we are as well if we continually repeat these routines over and over again.

What we do here in church during worship week after week if filled with repeated habits that we keep coming back to again and again. We do this because we know that—just like any other habit—it is the repeated routine of this behavior that creates the impact upon our lives. Brushing my teeth just once a year really doesn’t do much to make my teeth less prone to cavities. Going out for one jog every three months does not make me physically fit. It is the repeated routine that gives impact upon my life.

Worship is no different. Singing a hymn a couple times a year; joining others for prayer once a year; hearing the gospel preached only at Christmas and Easter. That does not have any more impact upon my spiritual life than brushing my teeth once a year keeps away cavities or jogging once a year makes me physically fit. Worship is something in which we repeat certain activities over and over again. Worship, then, is a collection of habits. And habits hold their most effective impact because they are activities we go back to and repeat over and over again.

I mentioned last time that I am borrowing a few ideas from Jamie Smith’s book, You Are What You Love for this series. When Smith talks about these repeated habits that we do over and over again in worship, he refers to them as liturgies. And that is not an unfamiliar church word. Many people think about the routine formulas of a church service as being liturgy. But what Smith does is go on to explore how the liturgical habits of worship inside of a church mirror similarities with certain repeated habits we all do outside of a church. Smith refers to these in his book as cultural liturgies. And suggests that these cultural liturgies which are repeated habits can, in fact, be forms of worship that point to those other places of life which we find competing to be our gods.

Smith spends quite a few pages in his book developing an example of these cultural liturgies that form an alternate space of worship in our ordinary lives. He talks about the shopping mall as a place of worship. And since the author lives right here in Grand Rapids, I imagine he is picturing the exact same malls that we all know right here in town—Woodland or River Town. It has its own temple with narthex, gathering community spaces, and inner sanctums. There are seekers who are not entirely familiar with the layout, so they stop and check for signs that point them in the right direction, and there are the regular worshippers who walk in and know exactly where to go and how to get there. There are retail clerks to serve as the priests to receive and moderate the repeated routines which take place over and over again on behalf of those who have come to partake. According to Smith, the material consumerism which is so prominent in American culture has found its church and liturgy of worship in the shopping mall (or I might add Amazon for all you at-home worshippers).

Think of all the examples that may also fit into this category of cultural liturgy. Nationalism in America has all the signs. We have our hymns of adoration to the country which we love, we have our sacred texts which hold authority over our society, we have our pantheon of saints who have gone before us as examples, we have our graven image of a flag to which we pay honor. Sports may hold another example for us of a cultural liturgy that competes for our worship. The arena, playing court, or field serves as the gathering space for a congregation of passionate and expressive worshippers to pay tribute to that which they truly love.

Now let me be very direct here to pull these observations about worship together. Remember, worship is identified by the repetition of habits that impact who we are. The impact comes from the repetition of the routines, not from the occasional one-off event. So please be assured that stepping inside a shopping mall on one accession does not make you a worshipper of consumerism. Holding yourself as a patriot of our country does not make you a worshipper of nationalism. And showing up for a football game at the Big House once or twice a season does not make you a worshipper of sports. You don’t need red flags going up in your life if you have ever at any time participated in any of these cultural events.

But let me take one of my own examples here; I’ll go first. Some of you know that I enjoy watching the Colorado Rockies baseball team. I can stream games through the MLB network on my TV at home. And I tend to turn on and watch at least part of a game quite often during the week. It is a habit. Colorado Rockies baseball has become a routine that I keep going back to and repeating again and again. I have to admit that is a red flag in my life that I need to be aware of because it is a cultural liturgy that I keep going back to again and again. And so it happens that things come on the calendar to go places or be with people and I think, if we just move that to a different time or if I can just leave a little early then I won’t have to miss the Rockies game. And that is the moment in which I need to catch myself and realize that this baseball thing has become a liturgy of worship. And I need to remind myself to make room for those other events and connections in my life by not allowing Rockies baseball to become a habit that takes priority over everything else. Sometimes I need to intentionally miss a game so I can do something else instead. I need to be careful that I do not allow any of these habitual repeated routines to become cultural liturgies competing for my worship.

All of us—myself included—could use a close look at taking our day apart and examining all the various pieces of a typical day to see where these competing liturgies of worship may be trying to sneak in.

Daniel’s day

Are you ready to see what all of this about worship and cultural liturgies has to do with Daniel? I haven’t said much about the passage yet; let’s get into it.

Quick background to Daniel. Daniel lived in the southern kingdom of Judah after the fall of the norther ten tribes of Israel to Assyria. The southern kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians in three separate attacks. The final attack in 586BC is what decimated the city and destroyed the temple, obliterating what was left of Israel. Daniel and his three friends were actually captured and carried off in the first attack in 605BC, almost twenty years before Jerusalem would be destroyed. So, Daniel is already in service to the Babylonian king long before the complete overthrow and exile of the rest of Judah takes place.

We catch in the story of Daniel chapter 1 that he and his friends are taken because they are selected as possible servants and advisors to the king. When they are carted off to Babylon they begin a three-year boot camp to become indoctrinated to the language, ways, and culture of Babylon. And they are given the full-on five-star treatment. They get to eat the best food and drink the best wine that comes from the king’s own table. For those who complete this three-year training and come out the other end with a high cabinet position in the administration, who do they have to thank for providing their success and ascension to prominence within the Babylonian empire? Well, they thank the king, of course. It was the king who provided all the best of everything for their needs during their years of training. The reason they have found favor and success and wisdom is because the king provided it; the king gave them everything they needed.

For Daniel and his three friends, the king of Babylon established a cultural liturgy of regular ordinary repeated habits and routines that were all designed to gradually point in worship to the king of Babylon. Do you see it?

And what does Daniel do? He asks permission to only take vegetable and water from the kings table, skipping everything else. Why? It has nothing to do with Jewish dietary laws about eating kosher; they have already broken that by eating food that is produced by non-Jewish people. The only Jews prohibited from wine were the Nazerites; and Daniel was not a Nazerite. If it was a moral boundary because the king’s food was given as offering to the idols, the vegetables Daniel ate would have certainly been part of that idol offering as well. Why does Daniel do this? Why is he asking for only vegetables and water instead of the full buffet?

Here is what is happening. In the regular repeated habits and rituals of the day, Daniel picks out one thing—meal time—as the place where he can be reminded that his strength and wisdom and success is NOT given to him by the king of Babylon; it is given to him by God. He takes one of the cultural liturgies bombarded upon him by his Babylonian captors, and he turns it into a liturgy of worship to the LORD.

He doesn’t make a show of it. We read about it in chapter 1, but for all we know it was kept a secret that nobody else knew about. The king certainly is never told about it. The official in charge of Daniel is afraid to let anybody else find out what is going on. This is not about making a show or proving to everybody else what God is doing. This is purely about Daniel setting up a habit and routine that would continually remind him that his strength and wisdom and success comes from the LORD and not from Babylon. Vegetables and water were Daniel’s way of taking apart his day and identifying a place in which a cultural liturgy of Babylon could become a worship liturgy to God.

Cultural liturgies

What about us? Let’s workshop this a little bit this morning. Think through your week and start taking your day apart. Where are our cultural liturgies? Where are the repeated habits and routines that show up sprinkled all throughout your own calendar of events which bend into the category of liturgy? I already gave one of my own examples. I know that I have to keep a check on what following Colorado Rockies games does to the rest of my priorities and habits. I know that I don’t need to go cold turkey and quit watching all baseball altogether. But I also know that whenever I find a habit that other important and worthwhile activities are getting ignored and pushed aside so that I can keep watching Rockies games week after week, then I have created a thing to worship and a liturgy to do it.

Start with this, then. As you take apart your day start listing the activities to which you are drawn over and over again. Make a list of the habits and routines. Students, this is an easy list for you to begin; you can write down school; it is a routine activity you do every day. For some of you it may be something in particular you do as a routine within your job. Maybe you have a routine of always meeting the same people at the same restaurant on the same day. Every single person here should have a list of things to write down as routines and habits you go back to every single week—if not every single day. We all have routines; we all have habits.

Next: look over this list of routines and habits and start asking yourself if there are any cultural liturgies connected to any of your routines. If you were here last week, we listed three expressions that take place in our actions of worship; do you remember what those three expressions are? Adoration, veneration, and identification. In worship we express adoration: awe, wonder, amazement, admiration to that which we worship. In worship we express veneration: honor, respect, submission, authority to that which we worship. And in worship we express identification: belonging, relationship, community to that which we worship.

Alright then, look at your list of routines and habits. Are there any routines which run into the category of liturgy? Are any of your habits and routines things through which you express adoration in any sort of form? Are any of your habits and routines things through which you express veneration in any sort of form? Are any of your habits and routines things through which you express identification in any sort of form?

Not every single one of our habits and routines carry cultural liturgies that border upon worship. I have a routine of brushing my teeth every day, but that does not mean I worship a toothbrush. There is no adoration or veneration or identification going on in my routine of brushing teeth. But if I were a season ticket holder to Spartan football and I pushed everything else aside to spend every single home game at Spartan stadium covered in green and white body paint and my favorite Michigan State jersey, it seems like I am making pretty definite statements of identification in that routine; I am expressing pretty definite statements of adoration in that routine. Alright, I better circle and underline and flag that particular routine as something I do that bleeds over into areas of cultural liturgy which can easily pull my worship towards things other than, and alongside of, worshipping the LORD.

If you spend enough time working on this list, sooner or later every one of us finds a handful of routines among the many habits of our days that can flag as distractions competing for our worship.

My daily liturgy

We have spent a bit of time here today working through habits and routines of our days. Hopefully you are giving some thought here to what it is you spend time going back to week after week. Let’s wrap it up for today by pulling down anything from our list of regular routines that helps us worship God. Daniel found a way to do exactly that, even in the midst of a culture that was designed to push him towards just the opposite. Even in the years of being saturated by Babylonian liturgy, God showed up and Daniel found a daily liturgy to focus his worship to the LORD.

There are three places in the passage we read from Daniel 1 where God shows up. It might not be obvious or what we expect. It might not automatically strike us as ways for which we would instinctively turn and worship God for what he is doing; but he does show up; God is acting in this story.

It is God who gives Nebuchadnezzar the victory over the king of Judah. That might not be what we would want or expect God to do; but Daniel attributes control of those actions to God. Second, it is God who gives favor to the official overseeing Daniel and his friends so that they may change their menu to vegetables and water. It was not Daniel’s persuasive sales pitch, but it is God who controls that activity. And third, it is God who gives strength and wisdom and understanding to Daniel and his friends during the three years of training they receive to serve in the king’s administration. They were not given this strength by the king who shared his best food with them; they were given this strength by God.

Even in a time when all of life seemed to be falling apart and drifting away from God, Daniel and his friends find a way to adjust their habits and routines to worship and acknowledge that God shows up, even in the everyday and ordinary. God still does that today. God still shows up in every one of our lives today. God is still actively present in the world of his people today. he is still there in the ordinary everyday routines and habits we go about in the six days when we leave this place until we come back again.

Where do your habits and routines leave room for this to be seen? Where do our regular habits open space to acknowledge and worship the spaces where God continues to show up in our lives today? If you struggle and fail to see where God might be showing up in your life; it is not because God is absent, but perhaps it just might be because our daily liturgies have been pointing in the wrong directions. Take a closer look at your day; see all the places where God is already there; and consider how a response of worship can place God as a focus of all our days—not just Sunday.