Daniel

One of my biggest struggles in faith is knowing what to make of God’s silence, especially in light of the suffering of humanity, in light of my own grieving. Trauma and suffering shake and challenge our fundamental assumptions about the world and about the goodness and justice of God. I know I am not alone in this wrestling. Daniel exists for this very reason, but perhaps that may seem strange since God seems very vocal and involved in the narratives and visions recorded in Daniel.

Many scholars actually believe the Book of Daniel was composed in the 2nd Century, likely the latest date of any OT text. This places the actual writing several centuries after the setting of Daniel’s life and experiences. Daniel lived when God’s chosen people were traumatized and displaced in Babylonian exile. In Babylon, God’s people were ruled by a nation that wished to erase their cultural identity and heritage, to eradicate their people. God’s people knew trauma and suffering. Even after Babylon fell, there came many other kingdoms and rulers who brought further destruction upon God’s people. Over and over the cry of the prophets and people was, “how long” and even “the Lord is like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel” (Lamentations).

Instead of writing about their unthinkable persecution under the cruel King Antiochus Epiphanes, which was far too grim and overwhelming to dwell on, the writer(s) of Daniel used narratives and characters from the past, like the person of Daniel, as thought experiments to explore hard questions like: who is responsible for the way history unfolds, God or humans, or is it even possible to live faithfully to God in an unknown land as despised foreigners?

The question I always want to consider when reading confusing or weird texts in the Bible is: what do we do with texts like these?

The writing in Daniel falls primarily under the apocalyptic genre. So let’s define our vocabulary. An apocalypse is a divine revelation, an uncovering, a mystery that was previously unknown by humans but which is given by God to an individual. An apocalypse is intended to help humans live in light of how things really are instead of how they appear.

The apocalyptic portions of Daniel include visions packed with tons of symbolic imagery (beasts, horns, wind, sea monster, etc) pointing to historical events as if they were prophecies in order to reinterpret them from a theological perspective. But the specific events are not named, so they have the ability to speak to all generations of people experiencing the pain of living under evil empires. These oral tales therefore become a source of hope for all exiled and oppressed people.

So what apocalypse does Daniel uncover? First, let’s revisit the verse printed in our program this week, found in Daniel 2 (Sorry about the typo! School!)…In Daniel’s delivery of God’s interpretation of the King’s bizarre dream, he prophesied these words, which feel like the very hope on which the entire book is built.

"But throughout the history of these kingdoms, the God of heaven will be building a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will this kingdom ever fall under the domination of another. In the end it will crush the other kingdoms and finish them off and come through it all standing strong and eternal." (Daniel 2:44, MSG)

Later, in Chapter 7, Daniel describes a vision of the Ancient of Days and the one like the Son of Man being united in rule, and he declares “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”

This is the uncovering: God is sovereign over all people and kingdoms, even when the world says otherwise. God is sovereign even when it doesn’t look like it to us.

We are not Israelites living in Babylonian captivity, and we do not truly know what it is like to live in fear of violent persecution because of our faith, but I would argue we do, in fact, live within an empire opposed to the way of God, built on power-hungry systems contrary to God’s kingdom.

How did Daniel respond? In light of the weird dreams and visions, the predictions of continued suffering, Daniel was greatly disturbed, which caused him to intercede in prayer for his broken people, “O Master, great and holy God. You never waver in your covenant commitment, never give up on those who love you and do what you say. Yet we have sinned in every way imaginable. We’ve done evil things, rebelled, dodged and taken detours around your clearly marked paths” (Daniel 9:4-5).

I can relate to the despair Daniel felt as he considered the fate of his people and the doom brought on by the rule of egocentric leaders. I know I have called out to God in the aftermath of governmental failures and senseless tragedies: “how long?” and “God, where are you?”!

In Daniel, God’s people were experiencing immense suffering and hopelessness. Had God abandoned them? Would they ever see their people restored?

Similarly, there is so much that happens in our world that leads us to believe that evil and destruction are sovereign, that human powers have the final say, and that perhaps God has abandoned us to our own choices. What do we do with God’s apparent silence? What is our response in light of this apocalypse?

We know what Daniel did. He appealed to God, the one who does not waiver in their commitment to love and repair humanity. The text also says he mourned, but then went on about the king’s business. Life goes on.

God is sovereign even when it doesn’t look like it to us.

There is a pattern to the Bible: God creates, humans cause rupture, the suffering of all creation follows, and then God renews their initiative toward humans. Over and over and over. One OT scholar and theologian, Ellen Davis, says it in this way, “This is the plot line of Israel’s Scriptures and the Christian Bible in both Testaments. The pattern is a hopeful one, as judgment and suffering are always succeeded by a new divine initiative. Moreover, hope becomes braver with each renewal, for the rupture that precedes has made it clearer than before that the relationship between God and humanity is chosen by God against the odds and maintained in the face of continual threat.”

We are the continual threat. Humanity.

Humans were created to be the bridge between heaven and earth. Our lives either image the goodness of our Creator, or they image the chaos of our culture.

The stories of Daniel teach us there is indeed something expected of us, like there was of Daniel and his friends, and that is to live faithfully in communion with our Creator even in the face of suffering and persecution, even during seasons of divine silence. But as good as Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were, the faith of even the most faithful humans in the Bible cannot be our source of hope.

Daniel goes on to say, in his appeal to God, “Compassion is our only hope, the compassion of you, our God” and he beseeches God to have mercy, to “act out of who you are, not out of what we are.”

The hope we live into, no matter the silence, no matter how the world appears, is that God is who God says they are. As God self-proclaims to Moses in Exodus, “Yahweh! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; to the third and fourth generations.”

Did you hear the imbalance there? Between God’s mercy for 1,000 generations and God’s judgment for only 3-4 generations? Like Daniel, we can and should call out to God and pray for our nation and our broken people. Not on the ground of America’s righteousness (or the Church’s), but instead on “the ground of [God’s] great mercies.”

This week brings a lot of anxiety about the future of our country and its leadership. Will there be a peaceful transition of power? Will democracy be upheld? Regardless of who is elected, there is pain and discomfort in our nation’s increased division and hostility, in our broken human leadership, and in all the ways our country and our churches further injustice, not living in obedience to God’s power. Together, as a community of faithful Jesus-followers, we choose to reject our instinctual desire for the power of empire—our hope is not in the power or even permanence of America—instead, our hope is in the grace and mercy of the God who continually chooses to maintain and renew us.

And ultimately, no matter what happens, no matter what appears to be true, God is sovereign. This doesn’t mean things work out perfectly for us. The world is afterall, in the words of theologian Ellen Davis, “a place of wild beauty and great danger.” But God’s sovereignty does mean, one day we know all things will be redeemed and brought into a new creation. That is God’s promise. Israel suffered through generation after generation of exile and captivity, their people and their faith could have understandably been lost. And yet their belief in God was held by a remnant of faithful people, their stories bring hope and faith for every generation since and every generation to come.

And until God’s eternal kingdom is fully realized, Jesus gave us the perfect prayer (which I have slightly modified with Daniel in mind):

Our God in Heaven,
act out of who you are.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
(In our neighborhoods, city, state, and nation as it is in heaven)
Give us what we need for today
And forgive us for the ways we don’t image you,
as we also have forgiven others for the same brokenness,
Protect us from ourselves,
and from evil.

To you belong the eternal rule, glory, and kingship.

Amen.