“Come to the Party”

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Glorious are your deeds, O God, and we proclaim them in our own generation and to generations following us. You speak to us in great mysteries and in common daily gifts. Use these simple and common words in this time to unveil the wonderful mystery of You. Speak Lord, your servants are listening. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

Daniel 5.1-11a, 13-20, 22-28, 30. The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

Quite a night for a party, don’t you think? Dark and stormy, I imagine. And what a story, a disembodied hand, and some ghostly writing. The guests shift uncomfortably, some eventually turn back to their drink and conversation. Others continue to stare. What a night, all that’s missing is the costumes and scary music to make this a Halloween party. Imagine being dragged into that scene. No wonder Daniel was surly. “Let your gifts be for yourself, or give your rewards to someone else! Nevertheless, I will read the writing to the king and let him know the interpretation.”

Interpretation is never an easy business, and is all the harder with only a smoking candle and a working knowledge of Aramaic. Semitic Languages, you know. Interpretation is not an easy business. Daniel has been summoned, perhaps already in his jammies, and put in front of all the important people, including the king and queen, and he has to read prophecy. To say he was in a ticklish position is to put it delicately. But I’m not telling you anything new. If you’ve ever raised a teenager, supervised an employee, taught Sunday School, you know, Interpretation is a tricky business.

Nowadays we use the phrase “the handwriting is on the wall” to mean that the interpretation is obvious that the fate of someone is being revealed in no uncertain terms right in front of our eyes. The first time, however, that the handwriting was on the wall, the interpretation thereof was anything but obvious. All the soothsayers, actuaries, pollsters and pundits were called in. And all the soothsayers, actuaries, pollsters and pundits failed. What was their problem? Why couldn’t the enchanters, Chaldeans and the diviners interpret God’s words? Do you suppose they cupped their hands to their ears and leaned up against the sheath that separates this world from the voices of the next, listened intently, and heard nothing? I doubt it. It was their business, and they must have been good at it if the king and queen recognized them as the first to call in.

What if their problem was not that they put their ear up and heard nothing? Not that they came up empty or blank, but that they put their ears up to the great divide, and heard lots of things? The voice of the gods of iron from verse 4, perhaps, jabbering on about the price of weather vanes and doorknobs, and this year’s missiles. Joined in, possibly, by the gods of stone, rambling about the specs on the new marble temple, the rising cost of quarry label, and the threat of a higher minimum wage. Let us not forget the voice of the gods of brass too, musing about the future of centrifical castings, and nautical hardware, and free trade. I think they heard lots of things, voices of the many, many, many gods they praised. It’s not at all hard to imagine what the voices of the gods of gold were saying, is it? I don’t know what you hear, but 2700 years after Daniel, Belshazzar, and the writing on the wall, I hear seductive little whisperings, about a rolex, a paid off MasterCard, a gold Lexus, remodeled kitchen, a secured future. The gods of gold are madly expressive, very loquacious; sometimes it’s hard to shut them up. And the gods of silver, I hear them more loudly, personally. Something about silver certificates, something about fine watches, a different one for various seasons or mood, and family serving pieces worthy of passing on to the next generation. I have no trouble hearing what the gods of silver are on about, indeed, it is hard to shut them up.

Interesting that Daniel had no problem. There is not one iota in this passage that suggests that Daniel was intimidated, or daunted, or confused, or in any way concerned. I have to say as a preacher, as an interpreter of ancient texts, as a reader of dead languages, it is a quality I admire in a prophet; I’m amazed. Daniel is hauled into an overheated party gone bad on the arm of goose stepping guards, and what does he say? “Oh King, Live forever. Let thy humble servant make every effort to serve thee, O great King.” No. “If it pleases the court may I offer…” No. “Before I get started here, may I just say a few words about the ambiguity of the Aramaic Language?” No. “Keep your gifts to yourself, you old so and so, and give them to someone who cares about you or them. I don’t know why I should do anything for this pagan, corrupt administration…but I will. Here’s the interpretation.”

Why do you suppose Daniel had no problem with the interpretation? Why could he hear God’s still quite voice so clearly? Why was Daniel alone of all the wise men of Babylon alone able to read the handwriting on the wall? The clue starts in verse 23. “You have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, and the God in whose power is your very breath, and to whom belong all your ways, you have not honored. So from His presence the hand was sent and this writing was inscribed.” Why was Daniel able to interpret God’s word? Daniel was able to interpret God’s word because he was able to pick out God’s voice from the din of cosmic voices that were confusing and confounding every other ear in the room.

We are beleaguered by voices too. We are bewitched, bothered, and bewildered, so much that it is hard to make out what God might be saying to us. We are busy managing our children and our griefs, our portfolios and our debt, our mortality and our mortgage. What would it look like, what would it take for us to be able to hear?

For us a clue might lie in the squiggly words themselves, Mene Mene, Tekel Upharsin. The literal meaning of the words was obvious to every literate person in the room 2700 years ago. They were 3 common words, used as units of measure, the kind of measuring done on precious metals. Mena, the root word for Mene, was a large unit, and Peres, the root word for Upharsin, was half of that measurement. A Shekel, or Tekel, was one fiftieth of a Mena. So writing Mena, Tekel, Peres on an Armenian wall was like writing ton, pound, half ton, or full carrot, chip, half carrot, or perhaps like writing 2 bits, 4 bits, 6 bits a dollar, but not in that order. I think the closest thing to us would be 100 dollar bill, 2 dollar bill, 50 dollar bill. The meaning of the words was not in doubt, but the interpretation, that tricky business, well.

Mena, the biggest measure, mena, your days are numbered, and they were long. Peres, the half measure, your legacy, all that you have accomplished will be divided in half, in other words technically destroyed. And Tekel, this is the one that I think is interesting, and we should notice. Tekel, Shekel, penny, Tekel. You are weighed, in other words, I have taken your measure, says God, and found that you have lived up to the smallest unit of measure. You have lived up to about 2 percent of what I expected of you. You are small, Belshazzar, God says. You are small and I am saddened, disappointed, and finished with your smallness. God says to Belshazzar through Daniel, it certainly does not sound like good news.

But it is. It’s all a question of interpretation. If you think the preacher has taken you down this rabbit hole to point the finger at you, I don’t blame you. But, I’m telling you, it’s all a question of interpretation. Do you really think that this rich, colorful, wild story is preserved in the cannon so you can feel guilty about how small you are at how much you give? Do you think it is fair to line up your 21^st Century Suburban American life with Belshazzar’s 6^th Century Agro-Urban Armenian Life? Do you think that God secretly in God’s heart, is waiting for a moment, some sermon on a Sunday in November when the Pastor is talking about the gods of silver and gold, read money again, just to let you know how doomed you are? If you do think that, I don’t blame you. So many of us grew up hearing stories from the Bible preached, this one included, just that way. But my friends, once again, it is a question of interpretation. Do you really think that we are meant to identify with Belshazzar?

Much less confident than Daniel, I would like to give you my interpretation, my wager as to what this ancient text means for us. I think that we are neither Daniel, nor Belshazzar in this passage. I think we are the people who stood around at the party, confused. I think that we are the people who get to see the difference between large and small. Between the small king who follows the confusing voices of the many small gods, and the large people who can hear clearly the large voice of the one true God. We are a people who get to see what large looks like, day in and day out, morning in and morning out, Sunday in and Sunday out. We are a people who gets to see what large looks like, and who get many, many chances to respond.

Finally, Daniel heard God’s voice, not because he knew the right God, but because he had been praising that God all his life. How is it that we pick out God’s voice from the din of all the voices in our lives? How is it that we recognize that voice when we hear it? I think we recognize that voice when we hear it because we have been praising it day in and day out. I think we recognize that big booming large voice because it is the same voice that speaks to us in our morning prayers, in our noon day prayers, and in our evening prayers. It’s the same voice that says to you morning noon and night, you are welcome, I’m glad, there there, it’s okay. It’s that voice, the voice you hear every time you offer up a word of praise. It reminds me that really large lives are lives that are made of gratitude. As Fred Craddock says, I have never know a person grateful who was at the same time small or mean or bitter or greedy. Never.

One of my favorite people as a kid was Mr. Martin, a member of the church were Dad was the associate pastor. He was teaching me to play chess, he finished 3^rd in the state of Georgia’s chess tournament in 1960. He and Dad got into a different type of contest. They would try to out-give each other. We would leave a chess teaching session, which was really just an excuse for a visit, and Dad would find tickets to the Braves game in his jacket pocket. We would come over and leave a box of Entemens Raspberry Danish, Mrs. Martin’s favorite, on the kitchen table when they weren’t looking. We’d invite them for dinner, and they would ask, “What can we bring?” “Nothing, not a thing, just bring yourself.” And they would show up with an expensive bottle of wine, not let my parents open it, and leave it. So Dad would get a nicer bottle, and wrap it up, and give it to them on a subsequent visit. And on and on and on.

At Mr. Martin’s funeral, dad remembered their contest, and said, “I never was able to out-give him. Because he got me into that way of thinking, I am a changed person, a better person, a more generous person, a more joyful person. That gift, I will never be able to out-give.” This trophy, this 3^rd place chess trophy for 1960, resides in my father’s basement as a reminder of that gift.

That’s what I think God means for us to hear today. Come to a party, from the God you could never out-give, and read the handwriting on the wall without fear. We are God’s people, children of God, we are the people who get to see what large looks like. Come to the party, leaving all the voices from the small behind. Come, and become a changed person, a better person, more generous and more joyful. Come.