Ivern Ball was an amateur writer who created some memorable aphorisms, including:
· Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but we want a different one.
· Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch.
· Nothing makes your sense of humor disappear faster than having someone ask where it is.
· The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.
· Ever notice that people never say ''It's only a game'' when they're winning?
· A good marriage is like a good trade: Each thinks he got the better deal.
· These days, the wages of sin depend on what kind of deal you make with the publisher.
· A politician is a person who can make waves and then make you think he’s the only one who can save the ship.
· Most of us can read the writing on the wall, we just assume it’s addressed to someone else.
“The writing on the wall” is a phrase with biblical origins, coming from another story of Daniel-as-the-Jewish-hero as he interacts with King Belshazzar (Daniel 5). In this tale, the king has thrown an enormous feast to showcase his immense wealth. To show off a little more, he called for some specific items to be brought from his treasury: gold and silver cups taken from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. While he and his guests were drinking from the spoils of Babylonian conquest, a hand appeared out of thin air and wrote a message on the wall, which Daniel was called in to interpret since nobody else could (or would):
“This is the message that was written: Mene, mene, tekel, and Parsin. This is what these words mean: Mene means ‘numbered’ – God has numbered the days of your reign and has brought it to an end. Tekel means ‘weighed’ – you have been weighed on the balances and have not measured up. Parsin means ‘divided’ – your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” – Daniel 5:25-28 NLT
That night, the king was murdered and according to the Book of Daniel, he was succeeded by Darius the Mede. The writing was on the wall and it was addressed to him.
What was the big deal, here? Why were his actions worthy of such a dramatic intervention by God?
The are a couple of things happening here. The first has to be appreciated through the lens of context. Remember that the Daniel stories were circulated and relished for hundreds of years before they finally came together sometime roughly a century before Jesus was born. The entirety of that period of time for the Jews was under the oppressive power of a foreign empire. They were never home in their own dwellings – they were never really theirs to enjoy. They lived under constant threat, and were extremely poor. The opening scene itself was offensive: the leader of the empire that controlled their land and stole their property was now using their former riches to throw a lavish party to which they were not invited where food and wine would flow from the endless resources of the king, while they lived in squalor and went to bed hungry. Wealthy people treating the poor with indignity is a major foul in the Bible as it dehumanizes those who do not have the power to meaningfully object. Recall that in the previous story, Daniel encouraged King Nebuchadnezzar to turn from his wicked ways and show mercy to the poor. The much-misinterpreted story of Sodom and Gomorrah was not a judgment related to homosexuality, but about hostile inhospitality and mistreatment of the poor. Every poor, hungry Jewish person who hears the setting of this story already loathes the king – long before he calls for the silver and gold cups.
This week, many of us will gather together for a Thanksgiving feast, where we will eat to the point of discomfort, throw out a lot of wasted food, and feast on leftovers until Christmas. It is good to be with friends and family to pause and share love with each other and say out loud that we are grateful. As we do, perhaps we can be extra grateful that we have more than enough food to eat, and maybe we can take an extra step and give toward an initiative that feeds those who aren’t so fortunate. CrossWalk has two local initiatives that provide food for those who struggle – you can use this link to do that now.
The feast was bad enough. Then the king added insult to injury by calling for the gold and silver sups used for ceremonial rituals from the Jewish Temple that the Babylonians destroyed when they wiped out Jerusalem. Using these cups was a way to communicate to the world that they were, indeed, the victors, and that their gods were far more powerful than those whose idols were now in the hands of others. Jews didn’t worship images, so they couldn’t do that, exactly. The second best option was to misuse their sacred items as a means of desecration. It was these two things that literally tipped the scales of judgment against the king: mistreatment of sacred people and symbols.
The writing on the wall were all words of accounting. Numbered. Weighed. Divided. Everything about the king was taken into account and viewed on a balance sheet. He was found wanting so badly that his kingdom was liquidated. Bummer for him. What does this have to do with us, though? The writing on the wall was addressed to the king, not to us, right?
I think we all need to read the writing on the wall and wonder if it could be addressed to us. How are we treating the “sacred” around us?
People are sacred. Our Jewish origin story-poem at the beginning of the Bible sets our thinking straight: all human beings are created in the image of God. Sometimes we determine how we treat others with our own accounting system. If we think they are unworthy of respect based on their actions, then we withhold it, and may even treat people in very disrespectful ways that dehumanize them. This is a violation of a core principle in our faith. People are sacred and deserve to be treated as such. This doesn’t mean we’re doormats, but it does mean that there is a higher calling to follow regarding our interaction and treatment of others. How will you treat the people you are with this Thanksgiving as sacred? When you hear stories of other people, how will you choose to use speech and tone that is dignified and not demoralizing or dehumanizing?
How are you doing with sacred objects? I think we struggle a bit with this one. I wonder if those of us who have been brought up in church are numb to sacred objects because they were worshiped in some cases more than what they were pointing toward, which has left us empty and disillusioned with that which was once considered sacred. Some churches try so hard to provide sacred space that they become silent museums instead of centers of life. Communion in some churches is treated with such reverence that it’s a little spooky – I’m confident that’s not the vibe of the original partakers. Sometimes it’s orthodoxy that becomes a holy cow that cannot be touched or challenged. Why did we forget that men and their king put the early creeds together and are therefore necessarily open to ongoing review? Was it because the Church said the creeds were sacred and therefore immune to revision? Perhaps we have made our faith sacred in an untouchable way that has transformed it into an out of touch venture for many? Has faith become less sacred for you because it has been so sani-sanctified in your past?
I am confident that 20+ years into the information age, we are learning that our access to absolutely everything has watered down our sense of the sacred where it really needs to be restored. Pornography is a really easy target, of course. My take is that the sexual revolution was, in part, a revolt against a Puritanical vision of human sexuality and a way overdue liberation of women as well. The freedom to be who we are is wonderful, and the increasing equality is, too. But we have forgotten that we are sacred, and some things are meant to be reserved for limited eyes to maintain that sacred reverence. Simply because a person is willing to put their sacred bodies on display doesn’t make our gazing appropriately sacred. Who are we as people of God? How is our behavior informed along these lines?
Social media is benign. But the freedom it has allowed for us to anonymously say unholy things to our fellow sacred human beings has caused great strife in our world. Our US intelligence tells us that social media has been used to disrupt us as a nation, to pit us against each other. Social media has been weaponized, allowing some to use it to dehumanize and defame entire sacred people groups. How are we holding the line, choosing to treat others as sacred beings in the midst of temptation to do otherwise?
What other sacred “things” can you think of that we have not handled as such?
For most of us, when we realize that the writing on the wall is actually addressed to us, we will not likely experience the same fate as the king. But that is not to say that mishandling the sacred is without consequence. The truth is all of our actions have consequences. When we mishandle the sacred, when we treat the sacred as not worthy of respect, it usually means more death and less life is fostered. It often means people are wounded, relationships are strained, and we experience greater isolation. Our lizard brains in their self-preservation mode may regularly opt for selfish behavior that does not even treat self as sacred. This means we must read the writing on the wall regularly as a means of holding ourselves to account. The call of God runs deep, inviting us to discover our own sacred identity and help others find their own. Investing in such a sacral venture tips the scales in the direction of flourishing life for all, which is truly our deepest dream because it is rooted in the source of life itself. God is at the heart of it, with love emanating forward eternally, wooing us to see new words written and eventually heard: well done, good and faithful servant.
May this Thanksgiving be informed by reading someone else’s mail – King Belshazzar’s to be precise. May the words deepen your Thanksgiving as you consider what and who is sacred, and treat them all with the reverence they deserve.
Notes for Daniel 5 (Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, “The Book of Daniel,” In New Interpreter’s Bible, edited by Leander E. Keck, Vol. I–XII. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994–2004):
· We are reminded of the exile by the gold and silver vessels taken from the Jerusalem Temple by Nebuchadnezzar. This is an important point. The Babylonian policy was to commandeer the religious icons or statues of the gods of the conquered people. In the case of the Jews, since no image of their God could be found in the Temple, the ritual vessels were taken instead.
· Feasting was typically used in biblical narratives, especially post-exilic writings, to portray the abuse of power and privilege by the wealthy, and especially foreign monarchs. Taxes were paid in kind, and such great feasts would be resented just as much as the waste of tax money to fund government programs!
· Whatever these words may represent in terms of a sequence of empires, all scholars agree that they are essentially monetary terms, denoting coins and weights. In fine biblical fashion, the obsessions of the empire (power and monetary gain, tribute payments and accounting) become the symbolic basis for judgment. The judgment takes place not so much in the courtroom as in the bank lobby! The place of judgment and the language used are significant. “Mene” is related to the term for “count,” and “Tekel” is related to “weigh.” “Peres” is an Akkadian loan word meaning “half-mina,” but it is taken also to mean “divide.” Thus the king has been counted and weighed in the balances (audited?), and has been judged at a deficit. In short, the interpretation of these words offered by Daniel 5 sounds like the activities of a countinghouse—weighing, counting, and dividing. This chapter, then, parallels the theme of chapter 4: Just as Nebuchadnezzar suffered the same fate he subjected the exiles to, so also Belshazzar will be audited in the midst of his wasteful, demeaning opulence.
· Finally, Daniel 5 is a call to modern Christians to involve themselves in prophetic delivery of God’s judgment on the gluttony of the hundreds of “Belshazzar’s feasts” that have victimized so many people over the centuries. Perhaps it needs to be said that for many Christians who have been born to the privileges afforded by the dominant culture, such a prophetic task begins by excusing ourselves from Belshazzar’s table!