Delivered Differently: Daniel 6:6-18, Luke 23:1-5 - First Sunday in Advent

When you’re raising two or more children, Christmas shopping is a delicate balancing act, because you don’t want one of your children to accuse you of giving their siblings more gifts.

My parents always took great care to spend the same amount on gifts for my sister and me, right down to the dollar. They constantly assured us of this whenever one of us was receiving more individual gifts or an especially large gift.

When it comes to God, it seems as though some of his children receive more blessings than others.

In our first reading for today, God miraculously delivers Daniel from the lion’s den, after he’d been thrown in there for disobeying a royal order NOT to pray to any other god but the king.

I’m sure Jesus knew this story well. He may have even been thinking about it as he was finding himself facing a very similar situation to Daniel, on trial before Pontius Pilate, accused of phony crimes for which he would receive a death sentence. Unlike Daniel, God would not deliver Jesus from death. 

the lights i guess by Kevin Faccenda on flickr. CC BY 2.0

Granted, Jesus knew all along that he would be crucified. Yes, he had prayed for God to remove from him the cup of suffering. But that didn’t change the fact that he was about to suffer hell.

When you see God miraculously delivering someone from extreme hardship or death, and you ask God to do the same, but you don’t get the same result, you’re going to question everything. Is God punishing me? Would I be better if I had more faith? Is God even real? Where’s my miracle?

There’s a African-American Spiritual which asks the question: “Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel, And why not every man?”

Hearing those words, it’s not hard to imagine slaves, toiling on the cotton fields, who’d heard the story of Daniel and the story of God miraculously delivering his people from slavery in Egypt. Surely, they asked God to set them free, only to be back out in the cotton fields, day and day. Meanwhile, their church-going slave masters kept living lives of comfort and ease, blissfully oblivious to the injustice of it all.

Yes, my Lord delivered Daniel. But why not me? Why not us? Why not them?

These enslaved peoples, together with countless believers across the world, and throughout history, have wrestled with this question, which I say is the hardest question a believer will ever ask. Most of them died with their bonds unbroken.

But is that because God had failed them? Is it because they did not have sufficient faith?

Let’s be clear: there cannot be miracles without faith. Without faith, miracles simply do not exist. But faith does not always result in miracles.

Unfortunately, there will be some who live lives of relative ease, while others know nothing but suffering. And it’s not because some were more righteous or faithful than others. Bad things will happen to good people, good things will happen to bad people. It’s not right, it’s not fair, but it’s the way it is.

But that’s our perspective. We see from the perspective of now. God sees from the perspective of eternity.

This world and its troubles will come and go. In the end, every living being will receive God’s deliverance in equal measure, which is to say, the fullest measure.

What that means for you is this: if God does not deliver you from you affliction how you want it and when you want it, God will deliver you in another day and another way.

In the meantime, as pain, poverty, and injustice persist, the crucified Jesus will suffer it with you.

As glorious as it would have been for Jesus to throw off the chains of generations of slaves, the fact that they sang their songs to God while in the fields testified to the amazing grace that kept hopeful. Hope is a miracle. It is the blessed assurance that no matter what is happening to you, to a loved one, or to the world, God will it out for your deliverance. And God will give you little graces each day so that you can keep going, so that you can endure hardships and fight the good fight.

Thanks be to God, there is an answer to the question asked in the spiritual: Yes, my Lord delivered Daniel. Yes, my Lord delivered Jesus. And yes, my Lord will deliver you and every person. And when you stand on the threshold of eternity, you will be able to look back and see everything you went through in life was part of God’s plan to make your deliverance in Christ complete.