Homily for November 29th, 2017: Daniel
5:1-6,13-14,16-17, 23-28.
It was quite a
party. The Babylonian King Belshazzar knew how to do these things right. He
brought in all the women from his harem, to be admired by his guests. There
were singers and dancers. The wine flowed like water. When everyone in the hall
had drunk deeply, he ordered the silver and gold vessels which his father, King
Nebuchadnezzar, had plundered from the Jewish Temple at Jerusalem
Then it
happened: a scene out of a Hollywood
blockbuster. High up on the wall, brightly illuminated by a nearby lamp, a hand
started to write three mysterious words on the wall: MENE, TEKEL, and PERES.
Suddenly the great hall was silent, the king and all his guests aghast. “Call
Daniel,” the king ordered in a trembling voice. Daniel was the bright-eyed
Jewish teenager who, we heard two days ago, refused to eat the food sent to him
from the king’s table, because it was not kosher. “If you can tell me what
those words mean,” the king told Daniel, “I’ll give you the highest honors in
my kingdom,” Belshazzar said. “You can keep your gifts, sir, Daniel replied.
“I’ll tell you what the words mean.”
And he did. To
this all powerful man, a ruler not limited by any laws or constitution, Daniel
said: “You’re finished. Not once in your life did you ever worship the only
true god. And you have persecuted those who do worship Him. You’re washed up –
and your kingdom too. The God of Israel has sent this hand to tell you that you
have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.”
This whole
story from the book of Daniel is not history. It is fable – like the fable
about the boy George Washington cutting his father’s new cherry tree with the
axe which some stupid fool had given him – and then confessing the misdeed to
his father, because he couldn’t tell a lie. The fables in Daniel were written
to encourage the Jews, exiled and maltreated in Babylon
He is saying the same to us today.
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