Sermon: Daniel 7-8 August 11, 2019

Daniel is different from other prophetic books—

less messenger and more fortune teller,

predicting future events based on the visions from God.

In the first half, Daniel interpreted dreams of the king;

now he is having the dreams himself,

and we’ve jumped ahead about 500 years.

The visions point to a time when four kingdoms will rise,

then be overthrown: Babylonia, Media, Persia, and Greece—

but then God will enter history and establish God’s kingdom forever. 

This is what makes Daniel apocalyptic literature,

stories about the end times:

the world as we know it will be completely destroyed,

and God will usher in a new reality through

“spectacular divine intervention”.

Why is apocalyptic literature in the Bible so confusing,

and so intriguing? 

It seems to be a secret code, describing events we can’t decipher.

I mean, life is pretty good for us, white, middle-class Christians

living in the US--we don’t need our reality replaced.  

But our context is not the only reality.

I can barely imagine a life that is so horrible that anything would be

better, longing for whatever “better” God must have in mind.

But I can see in Daniel how one might long for a different reality—

living away from home,

not knowing if you would live or die day by day,

or what capricious decree might have you thrown into the lion’s den

or a fiery furnace.

That’s the power of apocalyptic—

the promise that God will redeem all the pain, the suffering,

the injustice, the crap that is the world you’re living in now,

turn the tables, make it all better.

This hope has sustained people of faith for millennia:

in Exodus, in the battles of the kings, in the prophets,

in Mary’s Magnificat, her vision that God will turn the world right-side-up,

and in Jesus, crucified and resurrected for that better world,

that new thing God is doing.

This hope that God can rescue us is ancient, and we cling to it,

especially in time of need.

Daniel sees the fall of the kingdoms that oppress God’s people,

and the rise of God’s perfect and good kingdom,

everything as it should be in the kingdom of God.

Daniel’s people, just a couple centuries before Jesus,

long for hope and promise,

some sign of life to come even if they aren’t here to see it.

These visions are not about “going to heaven”,

but about God making THIS world right.

Last Sunday I woke in a hotel room in Dayton, Ohio,

and learned that only a few hours earlier there had been a mass

shooting, blocks from where I had eaten dinner the night before.

A young white man carried an assault rifle downtown

and opened fire outside a night club, killing 9 people, injuring 27.  

It was the 250^th mass shooting in America in 2019,

only 215 days into the year—more than one per day.

#249 had happened in El Paso, Texas, the day before.

I feel terrible when I read these stories in the news, day after day.

But waking up only 1 mile from where it had just happened

had a different effect.

I went to worship, because it was Sunday.

I found an ELCA – RIC church nearby, and hoped for the best.

I was extremely disappointed.

The guest preacher did not mention the shooting in the welcome,

the announcements, or the sermon.

They did not create any space to grieve, to lament, to mourn

that just outside their upper-class neighborhood bubble,

some of their young adults had been murdered,

and others scarred in body, mind, and soul.

I sat between my friends and wept as we sang,

“Lord, use our voices, Lord, use our hands,

Lord, use our lives, they are yours; we are an offering.

All that we have, all that we are, all that we hope to be,

we give to you, we give to you.”

For too many people in our country, life is so dangerous that they hope

for another—Daniel makes sense to them in a way it does not to us. 

Too many parents grieve the death of a child because of gun violence,

on the battlefields of war and the battlefields of downtown streets,

and Wal-Marts, and public schools.

The places we live together are becoming places we die together.

Yet I stand firm in my belief that God has something better in mind for us, 

that good people who sit in Lutheran pews want to grieve and mourn the deaths of these children,

and then put flesh on our hope to actualize change in our country.

Thoughts and prayers are only a first step—

in which direction do we place our other foot

on the journey of justice and hope?

How do we who have seen a vision from God,

who live in relative comfort and safety,

who know deep and holy love through friends and family—

how do we embody that holiness so that others can know it, too? 

How do we create spaces for grief and mourning,

for remembering victims?

Spaces for imagination, vision, and action

to live differently in this world?

 Spaces for holding perpetrators, government, and voters

accountable for their destruction?

As people of faith we are invited to holy imagination,

to receive visions from God about a better world,

and to be the presence of God in this world.

The way “better” happens is through our lives, lived in faith,

which is risky, following God’s way in this world, which is risky.

Last week I heard this powerful story:

a pastor took a sabbatical to work in Calcutta with Mother Theresa. 

At the end of his time there, she served him communion,

pressing the bread into his hand:

“This is the body of Christ, for you.”

After worship she took him out to the streets,

wandering up one and down another,

until they came upon a man who was lying in the street, dying.

She motioned to the pastor, who picked him up,

and she said, “This is the body of Christ, for you.”

It is time for us to see God’s vision of a better world in our time and place, 

to see the broken bodies on our streets as Christ’s own body.

It is time for apocalypse, which means uncovering or revealing,

this new thing God is doing.

God is the source of our hope that things can be better,

that the God who created us for life desires that we live.

That is the best form of apocalypse:

believing that the goodness and fullness of God’s promise of life is already here,

and changing the way we live to show what it looks like,

to make it real, to put flesh on the dream

and live as beloved people of God.