Faithful in Babylon | Assimilation?

Well, hey, if we haven't met, haven't had the chance to meet,

my name is Josh. I, I have the the great joy of

serving as pastor here at the Garden Church.

And I'm glad to be with you today.

It's good to see you. What a what a fun weekend in

Boston. Christina, Phil, excited for you

guys tomorrow as you guys take over the Boston Marathon.

Best of luck. We'll be rooting for you.

It's Celtic's got a playoff game going on, man.

There's a lot of fun things happening this weekend, right?

And, and and you're here with us and I hope that that this, this

moment and this space this morning will be a gift to you as

well. If if you're just checking out

the garden or newer here, come grab me or anybody with a

lanyard afterwards, love to meet you, get to know you, answer any

questions you have. Just help get you connected to

to this, this beautiful community that is really bound

together across all of our differences by a a a shared

commitment to be shaped by and share the love of Jesus with

others. So well, I, I am I'm stoked to

be diving into our sermon this morning.

Our sermon we're, we're picking up where Mandy left off last

week with Part 2 of the series Faithful in Babylon.

And this, this series, as we know most of us are, you know,

we're familiar with Daniel in the Lion's Dead.

Maybe you heard about that story.

But as we discovered last week, Daniel isn't just a story with

safari animals and miracles. OK?

Daniel is a story about how God's people live faithfully in

exile. Now, exile probably is not

something that you think about deeply.

Maybe you do, I don't know. It's not a an idea or a concept

that for me is been something that I've I've considered or

wrestled or sat with, but but it is a huge theme throughout

Scripture. Exile was a defining feature of

the experience of the people of God.

This experience that we talked about last week of being

displaced, of being carried into captivity and the

disorientation, the disillusionment, even even the

deconstruction that comes with that as you see your your home

and your culture and, and so many of these things that have

shaped your identity recede into the distance, waking up in a

foreign place. I hope you haven't had that

specific experience. If you have, I'm sorry.

That's terrible. That shouldn't happen to anyone.

But there is another piece to exile, which I think is easier

to miss because it's a little bit more subtle.

And I think many of us may relate to and benefit from a bit

more deeply. And that is this.

It's, it's that there's not only a, an experience of, of

displacement that's part of exile, but there's also this

experience of living in a cultural system with values that

are at best foreign and at worst actively hostile to your faith,

to your identity, to your way of life.

And, and, and this is precisely where Daniel found himself here

in Daniel chapter one in verse four of our text this morning,

we meet this guy with a difficult to pronounce name,

Ashpinaz. He's described here as the chief

of the court officials and the king gives him a, a task

essentially of indoctrination and assimilation.

Aspinaz's job is to take these new captives, these these people

that Babylon has decided are good raw material, right?

They're young, they're they're they're of high status or

they're highly educated. They seem smart, they seem

valuable, but they're, they're still maybe not too set in their

way. So we can take them, we can mold

them, we can refashion them according to our purposes.

And that's exactly what Ashkenaz sets out to do in, in Babylon.

There we find to learn a new language, they're to learn a new

literature. They're assigned this daily

amount of food, this specific diet of, of, of bread and wine

from the King's table. Most of the people in the land

have been discarded or killed. But these few, they're the, the

lucky ones who get to be repurposed, redeveloped into

something else in Babylon. They'll serve the king after

they complete their indoctrination process over the

course of this three years. And, and this process we find

begins with new names. In verse 7, we see that Ashpinaz

renames Daniel as Beltashazzar, Hananiah as Shadrach, Meshach as

Meshach, and Azariah as Abednego.

Now, here's the thing about exile that I want you to notice

this morning. See, exile is not just a problem

of of seizing bodies. It's also a process of deforming

souls. This is exile, an indoctrination

process to help you become like Babylon.

Now, let me be careful and clear here because I I think anytime

we talk, start talking about conversations around cultural

hostility, some people get really excited and other people

bristle like crazy, right? Because we live in the world of

culture wars. And so I want to be clear about

what I'm talking about. And in fact, I'll, I'll name

which side of the spectrum I'm on when I hear Christians

complaining about persecution often I'm like, but really like

the fact that the Coles lady said happy holidays to you

instead of Merry Christmas is not exactly a salt on your soul,

right? Like Starbucks doesn't have to

like have the right kind of cups.

It's, it's not all a plot to destroy us.

OK, but as much as we can see a name and, and, and resist these

kinds of things, we, we recognize at some level that

that this kind of, of cultural persecution narrative that is

out there can in fact, like minimize the very real threats

and challenges faced by many people globally.

I, I know people this morning who are on their way to church

and, and, and doing so at risk of imprisonment, right?

Because of the culture and the policies and the politics of the

place where they live. They're meeting in, in, in homes

secretly, privately. And meanwhile, we've got flags

and banners outside to help you navigate the parking lot, right?

This is not our experience and I, I hope that it never will be

our experience. In many ways, we live in a place

with incredible freedom. And yet, and this is the

important part, everything in our culture is not designed to

move you towards the Kingdom of God, right?

We are, we are swimming in a river with a swift current that

is pulling and and moving in a different direction.

And, and this is significant because at at times it's easy to

to notice that the, the ways in which we imagine.

Like if I, I remember growing up and thinking about, you know, if

I were to ever to, to experience that moment, like the marderers

and heroes, heroes of the faith who had to came to this point

where somebody said, will you deny your faith or will you, you

know, be at the stake or something horrible?

And they stood steadfast for their faith.

Like it's, it's easy to see when the, the cultural attention is

so extreme, so overt, so direct, right.

And I believe that many of us, if we were faced with that kind

of a confrontation, we would have the courage to say, no, I,

I stand on my faith. I believe I will not renounce

it. But the problem with Babylon is

that the temptation is often not quite so overt.

It's actually much more subtle, right?

It comes in sideways. It doesn't ask us for this one

moment of renunciation or courage.

Instead, it asks us in 1000 small ways to accommodate, to

assimilate, to just take a small step here, to take a small step

there, right to to to be a little bit more like the people

around us, for status, for significance.

Everybody else is doing it. It's not like defy, deny your

faith and abandoned Jesus. It's just go along to get along.

And day after day we're we're confronted with these small ways

where the current is moving in a particular direction towards a

kind of formation. And and if we go along to get

along, 1 seemingly small choice so often can lead to another

patterns become habits which form character over time.

Our identity is reshaped by Babylon in the by Babylon in

these small and simple ways. And this is much of what Daniel

was actually up against. Yes, he had the radical

displacement, but he also had the food, the diet, the daily

routines, the exposure to a different kind of literature.

And and so Daniel is a case study for us in some ways about

what it means to resist, what it means to push back on the

deforming currents that seek to alter our souls and reshape our

identities. Philosopher James KA Smith, in

his book Desiring the Kingdom, makes an interesting claim.

He says that, that everything has a liturgy.

Now some of you know this word liturgy because we use it around

the garden quite a bit, but it's a it's a weird churchy term.

No, no, no shade if you are not familiar, but you were probably

given a document. You have a paper that says

liturgy at the top of it, at least I think it does, right.

And, and, and liturgy is this churchy word.

It, it technically means work of the people, but it, it might be

easy to think of it just kind of almost like an agenda, right?

It's kind of what happens. It's like you come in and

somebody's up here and they do a call to worship, and then

there's some songs and we say hey to each other.

And then there's this guy up here talking, right?

We have this. We know what to expect, right?

There's this, there's this order and this liturgy.

We're familiar with this idea in the context at least of of a

Sunday worship gathering. But Smith makes an interesting

claim. He says liturgies don't just

happen on Sunday mornings. They're actually everywhere,

everywhere. He says that these counter

liturgies happen even in places where you wouldn't expect it.

One of the places that Smith goes on to explore is the

shopping mall. The shopping mall.

Now, you might not think of a shopping mall as a place of

worship, right? But he actually describes it as

a a cathedral of desire, a cathedral of desire.

And here's basically the argument that he makes.

He says liturgies are are rituals.

They're rites. They're things that we do to

move us from a diagnosis of a problem to a preferred future,

right? To from from from a problem like

a sin to a gospel of good news, a vision for the future.

We have these liturgies that move us from one to the other.

And, and he goes on to explain that that these rituals, these

practices happen all over the place.

Every time we buy a new shoe, a new pair of shoes or a car,

right? Marketing is is pummeling us

with these messages over and over again.

You're not good enough, you're not beautiful enough, you're not

stylish enough, you're not enough.

But there's a fix. Fear not, we have the solution

right here. Look at this beautiful poster,

this beautiful clip. Those people, they're so happy,

right? They're, they're so awesome.

They seem connected, They seem joyful and, and those people

like, look at the product that they have the car that they

drive, the jacket that they're wearing, you know, the, the,

the, the necklace or the shoes. You could be just like them.

All you have to do is swipe your card.

And so we we look, we behold it cultivates a longing in US and

we we know what the what the ritual is, right?

Browse, consider, maybe find a discount, swipe our card, take

the new thing home so that we can, we can be that person of

worth and value. And and these kind of liturgies

are, are present throughout our culture.

Most of us don't even who goes to the mall anymore, right?

I think this book is a little bit dated, but there are so many

expressions of this. There's the gospel of

achievement, right? You are not valuable unless you

have status. So you can bootstrap your worth.

Good news, you can bootstrap your worth.

If you'll commit to the grind, just hustle, go for it, work

overtime, push. And so we overwork, we optimize,

we compare, we repeat, we measure our life in outputs and

tell ourselves that rest is for the weak.

This is the liturgy of achievement.

We've got the gospel of self-care out there.

I'm going to step on some toes here, right?

The diagnosis says the world is a grind.

Oh my gosh, isn't it overwhelming out there?

It's exhausting people. And the good news is you deserve

to be pampered. Oh my gosh, you deserve it.

So, so withdraw from anything uncomfortable, cut off anyone

who challenges you. Indulge right Spa, we can go for

it. This is the solution that you've

been longing for in order to deal with the grind that you

experience. We've got the gospel of

self-expression. Like the problem out there is

all these other people trying to define you, trying to put labels

on you. Your true identity is inside.

You just have to practice some self-awareness, look at look at,

discover who you are and then express that out in the world,

right? As long as you're being true to

yourself and and expressing what's true to you, that's a

win. The ritual is self-awareness,

vulnerability, treating every commitment as negotiable if it

doesn't feel authentic, right? Naming our stuff without

actually filtering or recognizing whether it's good,

as though all parts of us are equal, right?

We have so many false gospels that live in our lives and our

world. And the problem is, is that so

often we miss them because they're running under the

surface. See, they don't come out and

straight up tell you, will you believe this lie?

They just say, hey, here's a ritual to practice.

Swipe your card, work a little harder, hustle a little more.

And it's so easy to get sucked in because we look around and we

see everybody else doing it. This is Daniel's situation.

He's standing here before Ashkenaz and everybody else is

eating the food, trying on the new fits.

See, it's not just a a stick. It's not just like, don't do

this and you'll be punished or thrown away in the dungeon.

Daniel's from this backwater province, right?

That this place that has just gotten destroyed and wrecked

and, and torn down. And here he is in the center of

the world, the home of Imperial Splendor Hanging Gardens.

It's like Instagrammable out here.

He's got the best food in all the Kingdom, like 5 stars.

This is this is fantastic. There's a carrot that invites

him to just go along, to reshape his identity to become this new

person. And This is why Daniel is so

compelling to me, because he stands out and presumably a lot

of people don't like, I think a lot of people in this story seem

like they go with the prescription that's handed to

them. Daniel and his small group of

friends are different. They are a minority because they

choose not to accommodate and assimilate.

Presumably the formation regime of Ashkenaz worked on a whole

bunch of people. But Daniel in verse 8 chooses a

different path. He resolves, the text tells us

he resolves. And I think this is is so

interesting. If you look at the text here, it

says Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal

food and wine. And this verse that we see here

in verse 8 happens immediately after the renaming, which we see

in verse six and seven. See, Daniel was just given a new

name. He was just said, you're not

Daniel anymore. You're Belteshazzar.

And then in verse 8, right at the beginning, it says, but

Daniel, not Beltashazzar. See, Daniel stays rooted because

Daniel knows who he is. He has an identity that precedes

empire. Even as a young man, even as the

whole world is pulling in a different direction, even as

he's offered this carrot, this vision of the good life, Daniel

is able to stay rooted and to resist because he knows, knows

whose he is and whom he belongs to.

I think this is beautiful that it starts with his name.

See, so much of the time we think about like, who, who we're

supposed to be in the world, Like following is something we

have to to create, to manufacture.

But your name is something you receive, right?

And Daniel's name is given to him as a marker of his identity,

a marker of his culture. And, and here he says, I'm going

to, I'm going to hold on to this identity which I have been

given. It would be so easy here for him

to abandon this, to go along, but he is able to resist.

And this is the gospel, friends, that that God names us before

empire can claim us, right? We don't manufacture resolve out

of nowhere. It comes from a rootedness, a

connection to our identity which we have received in Christ.

This is what Daniel is aware of. He holds onto not simply by

being stubborn or brave, but remembering A truer word.

See, culture is constantly trying to sell you identities to

latch onto, right? Senior product manager, tenured

professor, You're a mom or a veteran or an entrepreneur,

you're young or you're old. You're a licensed clinical

social worker. You fill in the blank.

There's a, a million of them. And, and look, I'm not saying

you're not those things. It, it's not bad to be those

things, although some of the scripts are more damaging,

aren't they? They're more painful.

Maybe the, the, the story that that you're being sold is that

you're a screw up or a failure, right?

That, that you're too much or not enough, that you're too

loud, too broken, too far gone, that you couldn't make it work

or keep it together, that you're unwanted or invisible.

We're constantly being told these stories and these

messages, and it's so easy, so tempting, particularly when much

of society around us is reinforcing them, to take them

on, to take them as our own. But Daniel understands that

before any other identities that he is a beloved child of God,

that who he is, is someone that he has received because of the

word that God has spoken over him.

Daniel's resolve is not the root.

It is a fruit that comes first from his belonging, A belonging

that had been practiced and cultivated even in his youth by

all of these traditions of his faith, including eating kosher

right. He knew that for him, this

wasn't just about gluten free or some kind of dietary preference.

It, it wasn't, it wasn't something that he was on some

kind of a diet fad or, or situation about.

It wasn't about an intolerance that he had.

This was a marker of his familial and ethnic identity, of

his spiritual identity as somebody who is part of this,

this family defined by the law of Moses, somebody who is a

follower of Jesus who had been called out and selected.

And so Daniel is aware of that. And and when the invitation

comes to to eat this plate of pork, right, the seafood diet

that's put in front of him, he says, hey, that is inconsistent

with my identity. I can't do it.

But I love how Daniel pushes back here because it's often

different than I think how we might imagine, right?

Because we talked a little bit about these two tracks earlier,

right? Culture warrior on the other

hand, or chameleon on the other, like we think to resist means to

to defy, to denounce, to flip over the table and say I'm not

eating this garbage. It smells bad.

That's not my thing. Daniel doesn't do that right.

He has a a a different way that he moves in this space.

Daniel recognizes that that there are options as he

negotiates a space that is not his.

He's not over here as some of the Christian nationalists are

fighting for control of the culture, trying to insist that

his diet is the way that all of the Babylonians must eat.

But he does come in and he he asks for an accommodation.

He says, hey, like for, for me, this doesn't work.

This, this would be a defilement.

This would mess with my identity.

Would you be willing to try something out?

Can we negotiate this? Can we find a middle ground?

Right There is a place for resistance.

We're going to see that, OK, there is a place for for a a

strong and firm defiance of what we're told.

But there's also a place to tactfully say, hey, can we find

a way through this? See, Daniel is interesting here

in the the sense that we see in the the following chapters that

the Babylonians actually are calling him Belthashazzar, his

given name. He's rising through the ranks of

Babylonian society. He's practicing what Jeremiah

talks about when it's speaking to the Exiles about being

willing to, to settle in, to, to, to grow vines, to take care

of the place, to, to live in it and steward it.

Because this is where God has put you.

So Daniel doesn't see everything as an enemy to fight.

He's not throwing punches against shadows, right?

He's not set on an automatic of resistant culture war, but

neither is he a chameleon who falls into the trap where he

just goes along to get along, right?

He's able to discern which pieces of the prevailing mode of

functioning what, what scripts are at play, what pieces of what

is being handed to me by my family, by my culture, by my

job, right? Which pieces of this are are

holy and good or or maybe just fine, right?

I don't, I don't. And everything doesn't have to

have a Christian label for it to be OK for me to find value in

it, for me to understand and engage with it.

But I will have discernment. And so Daniel shows up here with

the discernment to to be attentive to, to be aware of the

ways in which the Babylonian regime would turn him into one

of them. And he walks in the opposite

direction. He's not a warrior.

He is not a chameleon. And friends, I think this is so

important for us. You know, I don't know where you

fall on this spectrum. I, I suspect that some of us

are, are more on the side of like reactivity and guardedness,

right? Some of us maybe are more on the

side of like, it's chill, what are you worried about?

But we need a great deal of discernment.

We need discernment to be able to understand where we engage

and where we need to chart a different course because these

scripts are in our culture, they're running.

If you are not experiencing tension right, then it's a

pretty good signal that you have slid too far this way, right?

If there's nothing in you that is like, I don't think I can go

along. I need to, I need to parent

different from my neighbors. I need to budget different from

my neighbors. I need to vacation different

from my neighbors. I need to to talk and to show up

to work different from my neighbors.

There should be distinction for a people that is set apart by

God and for others who are not followers of Jesus.

Not just for distinction's sake, but because the cultural

currents of our society will take us to a place that is very

different than the Kingdom of God.

If we want to be people who are shaped by Jesus love, who follow

faithfully in a regime that is attempting to form us, sometimes

intentionally, explicitly, sometimes implicitly, people

just don't care. They don't understand.

Like, why would you get up on Sunday morning and go to church?

You could be sleeping in right now.

You could be a brunch, you could be catching up on Netflix,

right? It doesn't make any sense to a

lot of people, right? Why?

Why would you parent in this way, right?

Why would you? Why would you not have sex with

this person? Right?

We're in these cultural conversations where very often

what it means to be a follower of Jesus is disorienting to

people. It doesn't make sense.

They may tell you you're an idiot, or they may just kind of

look at you like that's strange. But to be a follower of Jesus,

to be somebody who is formed in the current of Babylon, it means

intentionality and discernment to walk in a different way, a

process of counter formation. And this is what Daniel clings

to. He says, Hey, I'm going to stick

to my diet. It might be, you know, and it's

it's beautiful to see what happens here in the text, right?

He asks, he says, Hey, can I basically just have veggies and

water? And the guy's like, no way.

You're going to end up scrawny. You're going to be pale.

I'm going to get killed because like you don't look as good as

the other guys. I'm supposed to be at training

over here. And Daniel's like, hey, can we

run a, can we run a pilot? And he does.

And what happens at the end of the day, Daniel and his friends

who go against the grain stand out not for their weakness, not

for how bad they perform, but for what is actually good, what

is actually holy, what is beautiful about them.

Even the people who don't share their value system can look at

them and say, whoa, now, I don't know which part of that is like

the broccoli and the spinach. I don't know if this is like a

Popeye's diet and he's over here inventing keto or something like

that, or, or if this is more just like the favor and blessing

of God. But I want to say when, like

when we go against the grain, when we like practice a Sabbath,

even when things are crazy, when we get up and start our, our

mornings with a time of prayer instead of social media, right?

When we abstain from certain things or, or engage in certain

things, right? It it does form us in a way that

may be nonsensical to neighbors, But then they end up looking at

us and they're like, man, he doesn't seem as anxious.

She doesn't seem as overwhelmed. Like there's a joy, like their

life isn't necessarily easy, but there's a joy there.

What's going on, friends? This is the kind of anti

formation that Daniel practices and points us to rooted an

identity and then walking out a kind of liturgy that shapes his

soul towards the Kingdom. Friends, all of us need to do

this and and your liturgy probably should look different

from mine because different false gospels will hook you in

different ways than the ones hooked me.

I'll tell you one of mine. Let's have a little pastor

confession time up here this morning, man, I'm I'm tempted by

the gospel of achievementism, right?

The the Gospel that that promises that like the the way

to significant status worth is on the other ends of

accomplishment, of being impressive, of being

credentialed, of being a leader, of posturing and positioning in

certain ways. It'll get a hook in my soul so

easily. And then I start, I start

practicing the liturgy, I speed up, I overwork.

I'm like immediately into the workflow.

My I can't be present. I'm thinking about it.

I'm pushing, I'm grinding, I'm hustling, I'm telling people how

busy I am so they think I'm really important, right?

I'm, I'm name dropping a little bit here and there to, to show

off to people like that. I know people.

And then I'm cool like that. I'm telling you so you can call

me on it. OK?

This is, this is a false gospel that seeks to distort my soul

that is everywhere in Boston, right?

And if I'm to resist it, I need to practice a counter formation.

That means Sabbath. It means sitting in the presence

of Jesus in silence. It means just fasting from the

need to to name drop or to perform in order to impress

somebody else, right? Not, not trying to be smarter

than everybody in the room or more accomplished than ever,

just being present with what is. And that that kind of

intentional formation is necessary for every one of us

here. Like your thing may be different

than mine. Your your false gospel may be

different than mine. But the current is pulling you

in a direction that will not bring your soul towards the

Kingdom of God. If you want to be like Jesus,

then we have to learn from Daniel what it means to resist,

what it means to practice a different way.

So as we close this morning, I want to invite you to consider

what does this look like for you this morning?

Where do you notice that the tug or the pull or the drift of the

current? Where does it show up for you?

Like where you find yourself on autopilot, on automatic?

Maybe you're just being compulsively helpful for your

status and significance. Maybe your move is to not allow

yourself to be seen right? So you just keep yourself

invulnerable or perform like maybe for you it's a, it's a

distraction, right? You're just constantly numbing

yourself in one way or another. These are all liturgies.

They promise you goodness, they promise you a good life.

They promise you an end. But they are false.

And the end thereof is destruction, a hollowness, an

emptiness. We experience it, but very often

we just keep running without awareness because we don't have

the discernment of Daniel. Friends, this morning, I want to

invite you to use this next, this next segment of our

gathering. There's going to be some worship

music. There'll be these rugs up here

at the front if you want to journal or reflect or pray.

I'll be up here if you want to talk to somebody.

But I want to just invite you to use this time as yours.

Like where do you notice the tug for you?

What does that, what does that look like in your life?

Where is maybe things a little too familiar and something in

your conscience, something from the Spirit of God says, hey,

that's not it, that's not it. How do you need to perhaps root

into your identity more deeply? Like this is what we do every

week at the garden. It's why I hope many of you are

here this morning, to be reminded of who you are, to be

reminded of whose you are to, to come back to that identity, to

reground in what Jesus has done and who we are because of him.

I need that. But I also want to tell you, the

90 minutes once a week isn't going to cut it.

The current is moving quickly, right?

We spend hours a day on our smartphones, 10s of hours every

week, consumed by culture and situations that are happening in

the office. The currents are everywhere and

you can be aware of it and still pulled by it.

Unless we choose to discern and then choose a different liturgy

which roots us in who we are and whose we are.

Jesus, I pray that you would meet us this morning, that your

spirit would be active in these next moments of our gathering,

that you would speak to people, that you would highlight the

specific areas that that you want people to attend to.

And, and God, we just also want to pray against shame.

God, the the point here is not for people to notice something

that's off and then be consumed with how bad they are.

God, we want to be more faithful to your Kingdom.

We want to be formed by you. We want to be people who know

our identity and worth and can show up freely and powerfully

and courageously from your love and for the sake of love.

Because even in the midst of Babylon, we know who we are.

So God, I pray that you would speak, that you would highlight,

that you invite, that we would be responsive to, and that you

would make us a people who are faithful in every season we pray

in Jesus name.