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I tackled Daniel chapter 9 in our evening gathering this week. And while I have really enjoyed working our way through Daniel together, I found this particualr chapter to be difficult. It deals with Daniel’s prayer of confession and repentance, in response to his understanding that the exile in Babylon was soon to end. I find it difficult because we are told throughout the story that Daniel is blameless and has put his life on the line for his faith nuerous times. What on earth would he need to repent for?!

But it wasn’t just Daniel that needed to repent. We are told that the Jewish nation had wandered from what God had called them to, and the exile was God’s plea to recapture their attention. And as Daniel realised this, he recognised that the repentance required was a communal one, not individual. He was part of the community, so he needed to repent too.

By repentance, I don’t mean a simple “sorry” with no feeling or grief, but a mourning for the broken relationship with God and a determination to turn things around in an ongoing act of devotion to God. This is what Israel needed to do, and to their credit, it is what they did.

I wondered what we, as a community, my need to repent from. I shared the story of a discussion I had with an indigenous Australian pastor about the need for us, despite not being born at the time of the ’stolen generation’ and other injustices, still need to say sorry and work towards reconcilliation as an act of repentance. We could have spoken more about the Micah Challenge and our contribution to world poverty. We could have spoken about the destructive force our lifestyles have on the environment. We could have spoken about our apathy to the slaughter in Rwanda only 15 years ago. The list, sadly, goes on…

Perhaps if I were more honest, I would say that my difficulty in looking at this passage wasn’t in how blameless Daniel was, but in how much I realise I need to confess and repent from . Perhaps that’s exactly how Daniel felt too.