When Prayer Puts You In Peril

Daniel 6  Psalm 97: 6-9

You can see it poking between the houses up in Ridgeway Road and then when you cross the so called “weak bridge” leading onto the Cromwell Estate, it’s there bold as brass.

On the railway line out towards Reigate – there it is – not once or twice but three times.

Glimpses of our church spire against the skyline of Redhill.

Once, I guess it stood almost alone – the tallest landmark in the town.

Now it’s nearly crowded out by commercial concerns just like the faith it espouses.

I look for that spire all the time and wonder about the statement it makes in the shadow of the Dome tower block, the AXA building and the car parks.

A little finger of grace doggedly present in the middle of the whirring concerns of life.

What does it mean for you and I to be sitting here beneath that spire on this cold winter’s night?

It could be more dangerous than you think – rather like the events unfolding in the life or Daniel in the chapter we read.

There is a weak king on the throne, there are scheming satraps behind every pillar, there are tough laws being introduced about worship and there is a den of lions waiting for anyone who steps out of line.

This spells trouble for someone like our man and rather than take care of himself he does the most provocative thing you could think of. He prays.

In full view of everyone, deliberately courting controversy, he gets down on his knees and prays, not to the king as directed, but to His God.

Now this is exactly what the troublemakers in the king’s court had been hoping for because this Daniel was becoming an irritating little goody two shoes.

It is Daniel’s prayer which sets him right in the middle of a conflict between two irrevocable sets of laws – those of the Medes and Persians and those of His living God.

There is a pattern to Daniel’s life in this chapter which we would do well to acknowledge.

Because he is a godly man he rises to prominence in a society where his god is neither known nor understood.

His goodness stirs up suspicion and jealousy and the practice of his faith is used as the way to get to him and hopefully bring him down.

Initially all his praying does him little good for his God does not come to his aid at all.

The king wrestles with his conscience but it is all to no avail and Daniel is thrown into the lion’s den as prescribed.

His faith does not give him a short cut out of difficulty, instead it takes him right to the heart of personal suffering, into a danger from which there appears to be no going back.

He is placed inside a sealed tomb as if he was like a man who had been killed on a cross and taken down for burial.

It is only when his life is literally in the jaws of death that God delivers him.

As when Abraham stood worryingly over his son Isaac, ready to slay him.

As when the body of a saviour gave up the ghost.

What follows is a deathly judgement upon those who had plotted Daniel’s death, its true, but everyone else in that kingdom becomes a follower of Daniel’s God.

Now if it hadn’t been for his praying and worshipping being so provocative none of this would have happened.

So what are the mirrors between Daniel’s life and our own?

Like him we are called to be true to God in the middle of the place where we find ourselves each day and these may not always feel like holy places.

We are like spires peeping out between office blocks and flats.

We may instinctively go about our faith in quiet ways and see times of worship as private moments between ourselves and God, recharging batteries – but not really about having an effect upon other people, least of all enraging them.

Yet there is something about authentic prayer and worship which brings into focus a conflict between life lived with God acknowledged and life lived with God unacknowledged.

The same conflict as the binding laws of the Medes and the Persians and those of Daniel’s God.

First and foremost surely our worshipping time is for making an impression in the relationship between ourselves and God – going deeper and feeling stronger.

But there is also a sense in which our worship is a converting ordinance and will have an effect on those who pass by, those who hover on the edge and those who are just simply dismissive.

Next Sunday we hope to have two baptisms of Nigerian children in our Sunday worship

The weekend after that – our church will be open for people to encounter silence, stillness and prayer in new ways.

Within a few weeks we shall be carol singing on Redhill Station and people not part of our regular Sunday attendance will coming to church looking for a bit of Christmas sparkle. The way we sing and the way we pray can either stir things up or can leave people flat.

Our Psalms this evening speaks directly into the Daniel situation

“The heavens proclaim his righteousness and all the peoples behold his glory”

A firm conviction in the goodness of God and a desire to proclaim his glory.

“All worshippers of images are put to shame, for thou O Lord art most high over all the earth and art exalted far above all gods.”

Prayer and worship puts people in their place – it points to a right relationship between God and his people which actually ends up being liberating.

All Daniel did was throw open the doors of his chamber three times a day and pray in thanks to God.

It got Daniel into an awful lot of trouble.

It brought an awful lot of people to faith though.

Our Christian living – like a church spire glimpsed between rooftops and chimneys.

A little finger of faith in a world struggling to find something worth believing in.

Are these spires on the way down or is what goes on beneath them something which can provoke people to a new life and purpose after the fashion of Daniel.

RH  18.11.07