"Stirred Up" (Haggai 1:12-15)

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEXEakKWBds

Sunday, January 10, 2020

 

            We read the Bible to hear God and relate to God.  It’s not the only way we relate to God.  Throughout the New Testament and throughout church history we see the Holy Spirit speak in dreams and directly to believers’ spirits.  Romans 1 confirms that God speaks through nature.  God can speak through a preacher’s sermon.  There are countless ways to hear God.  The Bible is the one way that is shared by all believers.  We all have the same Bible.  We don’t just read it just to say we read it. We read to hear God and grow in our relationship with God.  Hold onto that word, ‘relationship,’ because that’s the main idea.

            As I read Haggai 1 this past week, two incidents helped me hear God speak to this specific moment in history. First, Tuesday night out elders met.  We feel impatient at home, socially distanced due to spread of the very dangerous Coronavirus.  We want life to open up!  With initial roll out of vaccines, in my mind I jumped ahead of where are.  I began imagining us conducting ministries as we had before the pandemic began.  I imagined us doing that very soon. It is the pastor’s job to lay out for the church a path for achieving that imagined future. 

            We’re just not there yet.  Yes, vaccines are here.  However, with family gatherings around the holidays and colder weather driving more and more folks inside, breathing one another’s air, the number of cases has spiked.  I hear people argue that COVID-19 has been hyped up, and it’s not as bad the media make it out to be, and it’s no worse than a bad strain of the flu.  Cases have risen so sharply in North Carolina; we are running low on ICU in beds.  Just let that sink in; here in North Carolina, we could run out of ICU slots.  Vaccines are here.  One day, COVID-19 will be behind us.  We aren’t there yet, and right now it has gotten worse.

            Our elders did their job Tuesday.  They guided the pastor.  They helped me see the situation as it currently is.  It was sobering for me, but also hopeful.  We are doing good in the middle of the pandemic.  We host the food pantry and blood banks.  We stay connected through streaming worship and Zoom Bible studies.  God has enable us to make financial contributions to other ministries in our area.  God is working through Hillside Church to bless Chapel Hill.

            I am thankful God speaks through our elders.  Reflecting on that meeting, I realize God was speaking to me then.  God spoke through them to me, but also showed me how He is speaking to all of us through the words of scripture.  We need to bring our hearts along when we read Haggai 1.  If we willingly read with our full selves, emotions and all, we will be stirred up by Haggai.

            Speaking of being stirred up … after that Tuesday night meeting came Wednesday.  Refusing to accept the results of an election that have been affirmed by dozens of court decisions, rowdy supporters of Donald Trump gathered on Wednesday on the National Mall in Washington DC.  Riled up by the defiant words of the president himself, they stormed the U.S. capitol.  The videos we all watched on the news over and over of our own congress having to shelter in place because of violent insurrection have horrified us. 

            I had one church member say in a group conversation on Zoom, “I am sure Rob is going to talk about this Sunday.”  After she said that, how could I not?  Another member said she spent the day weeping as she watched the videos and digested the images of chaos and violence and disrespect of our democracy.  How could I not address this?

            What struck me on Friday is how easily the real issue comes to the fore when held alongside what’s happening in Haggai.  As we read last week, Haggai reports God’s frustration that His people were dragging their heels in rebuilding the temple.  Rebuilding the temple would put worship back at the center of Israelite community life.  Worship is the primary context for us to live in relationship with God.  There’s that word again, ‘relationship.’ Humans were created to worship God.  We were made for relationship with God. 

            After hearing Haggai, Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua obeyed the Lord.  These leaders led the people to worship God.  Haggai then writes that the remnant, not an overwhelming mass of people, but the small group who remained followed the governor and high priest’s lead.  They obeyed God. 

            God responded to this overture of worship and reverence from the people with a promise.  “I am with you,” God said.  This is one of the foundational assurances of the Bible.  It’s not a guarantee that all that’s wrong is fixed in the blink of an eye.  It’s the promise that the living God will not abandon us in the face of the storm.  Instead, God stays with us, holding us, even in the darkest hour.

            After that promise of presence, Haggai writes that the Spirit of Lord stirred up Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua and the people.  Stirred by God’s spirit, they got to work.  By the time Haggai’s protégé, the prophet Zechariah was writing his prophecy, the new temple was ready to be dedicated.  Stirred by God, the people did the work they previously thought was too hard. 

            Now, let this improbable temple building work stand side-by-side with what happened at the capital.  We need to be stirred up.  However, who is doing the stirring?  I don’t endorse candidates or political parties.  I know in our church we have Republicans, Democrats, independents, swing voters, and people who hate politics.  If you think you know my politics, you might be surprised. 

On Wednesday, a group of mostly white people, allowed themselves to be stirred up by Donald Trump to the point that they committed an act terrorism and insurrection.  If there is justice, every person who crossed the barricades will be tried and convicted of acts of terror on American soil.  Our senators and representatives, doing their jobs, representing us, were literally terrified by supporters of our president.

            We need to be stirred up, as the people in Haggai were stirred up, but by whom?.  Who motivates us to act?  Who we listen to shows what we do when we’re inspired.

            Campaigning, before he was ever elected, Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women and dragging them around by the vagina, but he used a much crasser term than vagina.  Also, he openly mocked a reporter who has a disability.  How, in the 21^st century, can we tolerate a leader, who mocks people with disabilities?  Tolerate?   We made him president and then followed his lead in making a mockery of our cherished democracy.

When white supremacists held a rally that turned deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Trump insisted there were “good people” among the white supremacists, avowed racists.  He refused to condemn white supremacy.  Later in his presidency, when given the opportunity to do so, he again refused to condemn white supremacy, and he has embraced the endorsement and support of racists. 

He decried nations in Africa as “Shit-hole” countries.  I am sure someone is unhappy to hear a pastor say “shit” in the sermon.  I am equally sure the people offended by me did not utter a word of condemnation when the president said it.  I am quoting him.  I have visited more than one African country and have traveled to the continent 10 times as well meeting scores of Africans here in the U.S.  I don’t know where the president gets the idea that these are shit-hole countries.  Some of the most beautiful, proud, welcoming people I know and count as life-long friends are Africans who follow Jesus with a dedication I pray I could come close to matching.  They’re not shit-holes.  You’re wrong Mr.  President.  I know from experience.

If I said any of the things he said, I’d be fired, and should be.  The mess in Washington on Wednesday happened because too many of us have allowed ourselves to be stirred up this president.  Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua and the people were stirred up the Holy Spirit.

What does it look like when we are stirred up by the Spirit?  Temples get built.  Churches figure out how to do worship and small group and stay as safe as possible in the midst of a dangerous, contagious, worldwide pandemic.  Food pantries and Blood banks, happen at the church.  The church of Jesus Christ is known for doing good and loving people.

I see in our church people stirred up by the Spirit.  We are doing vital ministry while at the same time showing patience and discovering new ways to be God’s church.  Stirred by the Spirit, we call out evil.  What happened at the capital last week, a mob following the whims of a foolish, self-serving, self-promoting president, was evil.  We name it. 

Stirred up by the Spirit, we welcome people of different political stripes and viewpoints.  We come together in the death and resurrection of the one we all love and follow, our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

Stirred up by the Spirit, we stand in confidence, knowing that our God is with us, we are His people, He secures our future, and He holds us in His arms.  No politics, no event, no pandemic can disrupt our relationship with God in Christ.  That defines who we are.

Church, we exist to worship and serve Jesus, and to share his gospel.  We love others, follow him, spread hope, and help people God sends to us find their own way into relationship with him.

AMEN 

"The Gospel for Losers" (Job 40-41)

 

Watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo4GZ-LGCPU&t=1131s

Why?  I found myself asking that question, the "why question," Tuesday as I watched the reporting from polling locations across America.  Why can’t this election be ended simply, quickly, and peacefully?  Why can’t we be united?  Can’t this be easy? 

Rarely is the race for the presidency in America this close.  Leading up to election day there was talk of voter suppression, threats of lawsuits, and great anxiety.  If you’re one of the smart ones, you didn’t even watch.  But for the millions of us who did watch, this election had all we needed to stay miserable.

Supporters of President Trump went to bed feeling good Tuesday night, while those backing his challenger, Joe Biden, may have had trouble sleeping.  On Wednesday, more votes were counted, and it became apparent, that this race had not been decided.  The red and blue maps on the news websites tilted, ever so slightly, toward Biden. The roles of hopefully optimistic or dread were reversed.

I suppose in countries run by dictators where democracy is a myth, they might chuckle at how fragile we Americans are.  For us, 2020 has been a topsy-turvy year. Our election did enough to push both sides to their wits’ end. Why is it like this? 

Why!  Usually, there’s no satisfactory answer to “why.”  So, in the face of the unanswerable, the book of Job is the place to go.  Job was the subject of a wager we cannot fathom.  God dared the Satan, the Accuser, to consider Job’s righteousness.  Satan – a title, not a name – challenged God right back.  Job’s is only good because you have blessed him.  So, God allows Satan to destroy all of Job’s wealth, kill all 10 of Job’s children, and inflict hideous, oozing sores all over Job’s body.  All of it is done so that God can have the satisfaction of seeing Job remain righteous, obedient, and faithful.

At that point, Satan, the Accuser, steps out of the scene, never to return.  When Job and his three friends begin discussing this troubling turn in the course of his life, the issue is no longer God’s pride in Job’s righteousness.  Job and the friends don’t know of the conversations between God and Satan.  As chapter 3 begins, the focus shifts to the debate around unjust suffering.  Why would this happen? 

            Job wanted the pain to end, to go away.  If that could not happen, then he wanted justification.  Convinced that the only reason he agonized as he did was that God caused it or allowed it to happen, Job wanted God to answer for this. 

            Suffering, something each of us have endured, or at some point will endure, stands as the problem.  We want to remove it, but we can’t.  So, we want justice or at least answers.  Job’s friends, using a variety of arguments but always ending at the same spot, claimed without any evidence that his suffering was tied to sins he had committed.  It had to be his fault.  They were his true friends and knew him to be a righteous man who diligently worshiped God and atoned for his sins.  They knew Job, but their theology of retribution insisted that suffering is a punishment from God.  They didn’t have a category for unjust suffering. 

            Job knew he was innocent of the kinds of sins theology typically listed as provocations for such pain.  He knew his claims of innocence were outside the realm of conventional thinking.  Yet he doggedly insisted he was right.  He was innocent.  He wanted answers.  He demanded that God give those answers. 

            Did God give answers?  Do you remember the story of Job, a book unlike anything other in the Bible, a story set outside of normal time?  We don’t know when Job was written.  No mention is made of Israel.  Yet as far removed as this story is, it speaks.  The story of Job is our story.  Terrible things happen and only God can explain it.  In Job, does He do that?  Does God give Job what’s he’s asked for?

            In chapters 3-31, God is utterly silent as Job and his three friends debate his guilt, theology, ethics, and justice.  In chapters 32-37, a younger man, Elihu upbraids Job’s three friends for their failure to convince Job of his sin.  Then, for six chapters, he tries to convince Job using similar arguments.  Through it all, the arguments, Elihu’s monologues, and the waiting, God is silent.

            Finally in chapter 38, the heavens rumble.  The three friends and Elihu exit stage right.  Job, with his open sores oozing puss, sits silent and still to face God alone, as God speaks out of the whirlwind.  The question hangs in the air.  Will God give the Job the answers he has defiantly demanded? Will God tell Job why this has happened?

            No!   God begins, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?  Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me” (38:2-3).  If Job wants to put God on trial, fine!  Job will be the witness who has to testify under God’ interrogation.  Except it doesn’t go like that.  Instead,  God takes Job on a tour through the cosmos and the animal kingdom.

            Job thinks he has asked fundamental questions about the justice of the universe.  God shows Job, not only does he, Job, not know what he’s talking about.  He has no idea what is happening behind the scenes.  God has created this world with intimate, loving care.  We are caught up in the outcome of this past Tuesday’s election, and rightfully so.  Job was obsessed with his pain, loss, and suffering, and even more rightfully so.  God does not diminish our concerns or deep seeded anxieties.  God did not dismiss Job’s pain or longing for resolution.  God did show Job and us that there’s more going on than we know, and he – God – truly does have the world in His hands.

            In chapters 40 and 41, God gives extended discourses on the largest land animal, Behemoth, and the most-feared sea animal, Leviathan.  Both are of a mystical quality.  It is fruitless to try to identify an actual animal with these mythological creatures. Some commentators believe Behemoth indicated an elephant or hippopotamus.  The Hebrew word means “powerful creature.” Power and might. 

Some supporters of Donald Trump like him because he projects power.  He doesn’t do it with flowery eloquence.  He’s brash, abrupt, and loud.  His admirers say he “tells it like it is.”  They raucously shout their support at his rallies and feel that some of that power rubs off on them.  God’s depiction of Behemoth shows that we don’t even know what power is.

God tells Job, “I made [this great animal] just as I made you” (40:15).  We fear the Behemoth as we should, but God can approaches the mighty animal.  This beast of legend is one of God’s great acts of creation (40:19).  We are, not surprisingly, captivated by our times, but God is above time, outside of time, the maker of time, and beyond time – our times, times past, the future.  We can take comfort in seeing that God is the sustainer.  God has the world in his hands.  In the short term, we feel uncertainty, but God does not share our apprehensions.  God has not lost control.  The God who toys with his great creation – behemoth – watches over us knowing everything we are going through.  God is with us. 

If Behemoth calls to mind the terrors of great land animals, Leviathan evokes shudders in the deepest parts of one’s soul.  The ancients feared the oceans, only able to imagine their depths and the wonders and horrors within those depths.  Leviathan is the great sea-serpent lurking, waiting to swallow up men, ships, swimmers, everything.  One writer I read even believes Leviathan is Satan, the great evil mentioned in Revelation 12:9, God’s ancient foe.  Indeed, the description in Job 41:12-24 sounds like a dragon from ancient lore even including the scales and the breathing of fire (41:19-21).  Verse 25: “When [Leviathan] raises itself up the gods are afraid.”

Yes, the gods are afraid, but not the one true God.  With the one true God, Leviathan makes a covenant, to be God’s servant forever (41:4).  Leviathan the mighty, terror to all human beings, is happy to be God’s pet (v.5).  I appreciate the commentator linking Leviathan to the Satan.  It’s an intriguing interpretation, but one I reject.   Leviathan, like Behemoth, exists to humble human beings with its power, ferocity, and mystique.  Yet before God, the Leviathan bows because the animal remembers what we have forgotten.  God is Lord supreme, ruler of all.

Reciting this divine resume to Job, God reminds Job of who he – God is; He also reminds Job of who Job is.  Hopefully upon entering this story, we remember who we are.  The world is God’s.  We are small.  We get anxious, mystified, and disappointed.  We lose.  This week, at different points, we quite possibly all felt like losers!  That’s okay!  The Gospel is for losers. 

God didn’t have to listen to all Job’s complaints or give Job this grand display out of the whirlwind, but God did, out of love for Job.  God loves us just as much.  God knows the fears we carry. 

As we consider our lives and take stock of our feelings, especially as we come out of this post-election haze, consider this.  Consider setting your sights on God.  Look to the stars and see God’s handiwork.  Looks to the animals and the natural word, and see what a caring artist God is.  Look and know that the world has not gotten away from God.  He loves us.  He loves you as an individual.  He is here.  Does he tell us why things are the way they are?  Sometimes.  Sometimes he does he not.  Sometimes, he just says, “I am here.”  And that is enough.

AMEN

 

"A Warning" (Jeremiah 1:9-10; 9:1-16)

 

"A Warning" (Jeremiah 1:9-10; 9:1-16)

Sunday, November 1, 2020

(The Sunday before election day in the race between President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden)

Watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwXuHk9JGbs

 

            How does God feel about politics in America?  Sit with that question.  What is God thinking?  Our North Carolina senate race has been rocked by a sex scandal.  Our governor’s race is a referendum on how we’ve handled the Coronavirus.  And what can we say about the presidential race, so filled with strife, anger, and hatred?

            I heard a word from God.  At least, that’s how it felt.  Not some secret message.  What I heard is there for anyone willing to open the Bible, read Jeremiah, and listen and honestly face what God has put before us. 

            Jeremiah prophesied in the 6^th century BC in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.  God’s people faced annihilation.   A century and a half earlier, the mighty Assyrian empire had all but destroyed the northern kingdom, Israel.  Broadscale intermarrying with people the Syrians relocated diluted the genealogical ties to the original 10 northern tribes of Abraham’s descendants. 

            By Jeremiah’s day, Judah remained as the nation of God’s chosen people.  Babylon had taken Assyria’s place as the world super power and was about to overrun Judah.  Jeremiah prophesied that the end was inevitable.  His words ring ominously in our time, if we will listen.  I don’t think some other nation will overrun the United States as Babylon did to Judah, nor do I think the United States is a chosen nation as Judah was.  America is more like Babylon, a super power imposing its will on everyone else.  But Jeremiah’s words still speak because God is as angry at our self-centered arrogance.  God allows sin to run its course and sin always ends up hurting humankind.  

            Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “I believe the great pastoral reality for the church in the United States is that we are watching the termination of the world we have loved too long and lost – a world of Western, white, male, heterosexual domination, privilege, and certitude.”[i]  Of course there’s nothing particularly good or bad about being white, male, heterosexual or western, but there’s something unjust about a world where all those qualifiers gives a person a slew of unfair advantages.  People of color, women, and others are tired of bowing before white male dominance. 

Brueggemann’s prescription for pastoral response to the changes in America, came in his book about Jeremiah, written in 2006.  Since he wrote that, we’ve had a white woman as a vice presidential candidate, a black man elected president, a white woman was one of the presidential candidates four years ago, and on Tuesday, if you haven’t voted already, one of your vice-presidential choices is a woman who is both African American and Asian American. 

Termination of a world is the way Brueggeman described the reality pastors must address.  Sinking into Jeremiah’s message, we see the issue is much deeper than the race or gender of our leaders.  We are a materialistic society who relegates God to the margins.  We are hedonistic society whose god, as Paul writes in Philippians is our bellies (our craven appetites for excess, sex, and pleasures we often have not earned).  We are an impatient people who want what we want, and we want it now.  We see God as a possession here to serve us, not as the Lord we must obey.  When God allows the consequences that result from our collective sin, pain and darkness far worse than that wrought by the Coronavirus pandemic follow. 

Termination of a world is how Brueggemann put it.  God’s warning in Jeremiah 9 – I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of jackals … a  desolation – is God’s warning to American Christians regardless of who wins on Tuesday.  God’s disgust at how easily we disregard His holiness eclipses the noise of Trump v. Biden. 

Thus paying attention to the real issue, we listen to Jeremiah 1:9-10.  “Now I have put my words in your mouth,” God tells his prophet.  “See, today I appoint you over nations … to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.  Pluck up.  Tear down.  Build.  Plant. 

You’ll hear pastors and religious leaders desperately implore us to pray for this election, the most important one of our lifetimes.  Such rhetoric is nothing more than a cheap fear tactic used to cajole us into praying for victory for the candidate that religious leader supports.  In every election, someone, in a voice dripping with desperation, declares it the most important of our lives. Jeremiah and the other prophets of God did not tie their hope to political leaders. 

The prophets spoke hope, but “their hope was not grounded in their sense that things are going to get better, nor in the notion that things were evolving in a desired direction.  Therefore, they were not … undone with things got worse.”[ii]  We will see things get worse.  Count on it.  However, we need not get rattled.  Our hope is the same as that of the prophets – in the new world given as a gift from God.  We have a clearer picture of it than Jeremiah did because we know God’s promises are fulfilled in Jesus, regardless of who lives in the White House.

Jeremiah’s charge from God: pluck up!  He will be the play-by-play commentator calling the action as the structures, conventions, and institutions of our time are uprooted. 

This is God’s warning.  In Jeremiah 9 God spoke to his chosen people, the ancient descendants of Jacob, those who lived under kings in the line of David.  With the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, and the exile, it appeared the old covenants with Abraham and with David were ended.  God addresses this in Jeremiah 9:12. “’Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through?’  And the Lord says, ‘Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, or walked in accordance with it.’”  God will uproot the ground our society stands on for we have forsaken His ways. 

Pluck up.  Tear down.  Understand that God does not relish the state of things.  Listen in Jeremiah 9:1 as God speaks his sadness. “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!”  Can God love us, and at the same time allow us to fall into destruction?  Have you ever loved an addict, done all you could to help them, and then watched as their life descended into hell anyway, in spite of your love and your attempts to help them find a new course? 

God’s warning is full of God’s deep sadness when He sees us suffer what comes of the sins we commit.  It has to mean something when we say ‘God is love.’ It has to mean something to people in pain, even when they’ve brought that suffering on themselves.  “If the love of God is more than an empty metaphor, then the suffering of God must also be regarded as real.”[iii]

Pluck up.  Tear down.  Societal destruction.  God’s sorrow at our suffering – suffering we’ve brought on ourselves. What else did God tell Jeremiah?

Build. God tells Jeremiah.  Prepare.  Plan.  Remember, Jeremiah was quite certain.  Destruction and exile are coming.  Your life will never be the same.  But, through prayer and study, learning to see with God’s eyes, we get ready for what’s coming, whatever it may be.  Whatever happens next – extended pandemic, backlash from the election results, or some new horror we haven’t anticipated, none it compares with the God who loves us.  That’s why, with confidence, we can say, we meet God even in dark days.  When every warning comes true, we know God is in it, God loves, and is with us.

In chapter 29, Jeremiah tells the exiles, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you … and pray to the Lord on its. Behalf” (29:7).  After Tuesday, we will have the same calling that we had before President Trump was elected.  Again, from Philippians 3:20, “our citizenship is in heaven.”  We vote and try to be good neighbors, but this is all temporary.  We seek the welfare of this city because of the love God showed us as Jesus hung on the cross, dying for our sins.  We build lives here, we glorify God, and we invite our neighbors to put their faith in Him.

The warning ends as all God’s warnings do; with the hope of a new day.  Pluck up.  Tear down. Build.  And finally, plant.  Our culture is not moving farther away from God, or sinning more egregiously.  We are just more open about our rejection of the Lord than ever before.  As many people rejected God in prudish Puritan New England as today, but today, we tattoo our idolatry on our arms. 

As Jesus declared himself sent to the lost (Mk 2:17), so too are we.  Having accepted God’s assessment of the world, having built up lives of faith within the fallen world, we then go to the world as God’s messengers, witnesses, telling the truth.  God is love, Jesus is Lord, and if people turn to him, they will receive forgiveness of sins and new life in his name. 

If you haven’t already, vote.  Handle your relationships with friends and neighbors whose vote is different from yours with grace, and kindness, humility.  We’re followers of Jesus.  Our calling is about helping people become followers of the king.  No matter who the president is, we answer that call.  We love others, follow Jesus, and share the hope of the gospel.

AMEN

---

[i] Brueggemann, W. (2006), Like Fire in the Bones: Listening for the Prophetic Word in Jeremiah, Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p.27.

[ii] Brueggemann, p.182.

[iii] Craigie, Kelly, and Drinkard (1991), Word Bible Commentary: Jeremiah 1-25, Word Books (Dallas), p.145.

And the Kings of the World will enter the City

I imagine a great parade, a procession full of color, music, pageantry, and the greatest of human glory.  Picture the “parade of nations” at the opening of the summer Olympics.  Now envision it on scale 100 times larger.

            “And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  … And the kings of the world will enter the city in all their glory.  And all the nations will bring their glory and honor into the city” (Revelation 21:2, 24b, 26).

            When reading a passages like this one, does it make you pause?  Similar ideas are found in the Psalms and Isaiah.  The great potentates of the world, the emperors and czars and presidents, will come as those paying tribute to one much greater than themselves: God.  Do you ever stop and try to picture it? 

            What is the expression on the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he leads his retinue right alongside Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his entourage? 

Where in this procession of the “kings of the world” is the “king” of the United States?  How close in the line is he to the “king” of North Korea?  Each in their own way has had demigod status attributed to him.  What is the level of confidence and bluster as they walk into the presence of the actual God?

Recently the United State President Donald Trump met with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda.  In their public dialogue, both expressed appreciation for the other.  President Kagame said ”It’s always a great honor to meet the President of the United States, President Donald Trump. And we had good discussions of those two levels –the bilateral relations between Rwanda and the United States. Rwanda has benefitted tremendously from the support of the United State. In many areas where there is (inaudible) support operations we have carried out in different parts of the world, we had the United States, on our side, supporting us.” 

Just a week prior to this meeting, in a session with members of congress, President Trump expressed frustration at the number of immigrants coming to America from poor, Southern hemisphere countries.  Some in the meeting report that he is used an expletive to categorize these nations, mostly populated by dark-skinned people as he juxtaposed them to the more fair-skinned Norwegians as he pined for more of the Norsemen to come to America. 

The whole exchange was fraught with racial overtones and elitism and was one more opportunity for the president’s political rivals to pounce. 

What if we held in our minds these presidents (N. Korea, Iran & Israel, Rwanda & the United States,   pick your country  ) as we read Revelation 21?  What if we held Revelation 21:24 and the procession of kings in mind as we read news stories?  Does the word of God help us remember that presidents and kings and dictators are mere men and women, flawed human beings? In the light of the Kingdom of God, standing beneath the glow of the New Jerusalem, the United States is an impoverished, backward, place. 

However one may feel about our president, followers of Jesus are to pray for him and extend him grace.  This was true from 2000-2008, from 2008-2016, and it is true now. It always has been.  We who are in Christ don’t need to overreact every time the president say something stupid.  We see the glow of the city on the hill.  We’re walking toward it.  

The Lord of History (Daniel 2)

Who has the power? 

I recently read the highly acclaimed novel Purple Hibiscus.  In it, Kambili, a teenaged girl in a wealthy Nigerian family knows that all the power is in the hands of her father, Eugene Achike.  The novel is the story of this quiet, insightful girl discovering her own soul as she navigates the scary world of her oppressive dad’s abuse and benevolence.  He can be either, abusive or benevolent, because he has all the power. 

Look around your life.  At work; at home; out and about, around town; at extended family gatherings; in dealing with public officials; who holds the power in your life?  Are those who hold power heavy handed?  Do you feel pushed?  Do you have the power to push back?  Are the powerful generous?  Do they empower you, or keep you down?  If they keep you down, is there anything you can do? 

What is our understanding of power? 

In the book of Daniel, we find young Jews, forced into exile in Babylon.  They are subject to the whims of the mighty Babylonian king.  Remember, this story happens away from the land of Israel.  The Babylonians, intended to transform these Jewish they had taken into the way of Babylonian nobility.  Among the exiles were four friends, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.  These four were exceptional intellects and fiercely loyal to God.

As we enter the story, imagine the power holders in your life.  When you think ‘power,’ do you envision President Trump?  Does a bully from school who has lorded over you come to mind?  Do you think of your mom or dad, or an authoritative grandparent, someone to whom your entire family defers?  As we step into Daniel keep in your mind, your own sense of who holds the power.   

            It begins,

2 ^1-3 In the second year of his reign, King Nebuchadnezzar started having dreams that disturbed him deeply. He called in all the Babylonian magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and fortunetellers to interpret his dreams for him. When they lined up before the king, he said, “I had a dream that I can’t get out of my mind. I can’t sleep until I know what it means.”

⁴ The fortunetellers, speaking in the Aramaic language, said, “Long live the king! Tell us the dream and we will interpret it.”

^5-6 The king answered the fortunetellers, “This is my decree: If you can’t tell me both the dream itself and its interpretation, I’ll have you ripped to pieces, limb from limb, and your homes torn down. But if you tell me both the dream and its interpretation, I’ll lavish you with gifts and honors. So go to it: Tell me the dream and its interpretation.”

⁷ They answered, “If it please your majesty, tell us the dream. We’ll give the interpretation.”

^8-9 But the king said, “You’re wasting time. You know that if you can’t tell me my dream, you’re doomed. I see right through you—you’re going to make up stories and confuse the issue until I change my mind. Nothing doing! First tell me the dream, then I’ll know that you’re legit with your interpretation.”

^10-11 The fortunetellers said, “Nobody anywhere can do what you ask. And no king, great or small, has ever demanded anything like this from any magician, enchanter, or fortuneteller. What you’re asking is impossible unless some god or goddess should reveal it—and they don’t hang around with people like us.”

            Now, note this!  The fortune tellers may be frauds when it comes to actual spiritual insight, total charlatans; snake-oil salesmen.  However, what they tell the king here is completely true.  There’s no way they could look into his head and know his dreams

^12-13 Their frank admission of their own limitations set the king off. He lost his temper and ordered the whole company of Babylonian wise men killed. When the death warrant was issued, Daniel and his companions were included. They also were marked for execution.

^14-15 When Arioch, chief of the royal guards, was making arrangements for the execution, Daniel wisely took him aside and quietly asked what was going on: “Why this all of a sudden?”

^15-16 After Arioch filled in the background, Daniel went to the king and asked for a little time so that he could interpret the dream.

^17-18 Daniel then went home and told his companions Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah what was going on. He asked them to pray to the God of heaven for mercy in solving this mystery so that the four of them wouldn’t be killed along with the whole company of Babylonian wise men.

            Daniel’s first act was to pray and to invite the community of the faithful to join him in prayer.  When we come up against the power holders in our lives, how much time do we spend worrying and how much time do we spend praying?  You can do both.  We can pray while carrying burdensome worries. And we should.  But how much time do we spend just worrying without even give a bit of attention to the power held by the creator of the universe who, in the Holy Spirit, is with us all the time?  God is real, is present, loves us, wants to help, and is able to help?  Do we trust God or simply surrender to the powers around us that would control us for their purposes, not for our good?

^19-23 That night the answer to the mystery was given to Daniel in a vision. Daniel blessed the God of heaven, saying,

“Blessed be the name of God,
    forever and ever.
He knows all, does all:
    He changes the seasons and guides history,
He raises up kings and also brings them down,
    he provides both intelligence and discernment,
He opens up the depths, tells secrets,
    sees in the dark—light spills out of him!
God of all my ancestors, all thanks! all praise!
    You made me wise and strong.
And now you’ve shown us what we asked for.
    You’ve solved the king’s mystery.”

            We need to know the King’s dream so Daniel can interpret it and avoid a violent, painful death.  But, the writers of Daniel don’t think that’s the most important thing.  Before telling us how Daniel avoids suffering and destruction, they tell us how Daniel praised God.  Praise of God is more important than easing the anxiety of a pagan king.

            Daniel said of God. “He knows all and does all.  He changes the seasons and guides history.”  Anything King Nebuchadnezzar has, he has because God allows it.  That king was evil and did evil things.  God did not cause him to do evil things.  There are evil power holders in the world today and when they say stupid, racist things and do evil things, they are not speaking and acting on God’s will.  But, they are only able to act on the evil in them because God allows it.  In God’s perfect timing, the powers in the world are toppled. 

            At the end of history, the overthrow of evil happens permanently and the Kingdom of God, which began coming in Christ, comes in fully.  Why has this not come to fulfillment yet?  I don’t know God’s timing.  But I believe in God’s wisdom.  In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, Jesus tells a story of wheat growing alongside weeds.  The wheat is the fruit of the Kingdom of God and the weeds are the presence of evil in God’s good world.  Jesus says that for the time being, the evil and the Godly grow side-by-side, but at the last judgment, the wheat will be gathered into God’ “barn,” the New Heaven and New Earth joined in perfect harmony.  

            Until that time, the Lord of history, the true power in the world, our God, is with us in the form of Holy Spirit, guiding us as we live as His people, inviting the lost into his family.  That’s how Daniel navigated the paganism of King Nebuchadnezzar, as an enslaved exile.  He lived as God’s child in an evil environment by keeping his eyes on God, fully trusting in God’s presence and God’s power.

The story picks up in verse 24.

²⁴ Daniel went back to Arioch, who had been put in charge of the execution. He said, “Call off the execution! Take me to the king and I’ll interpret his dream.”

²⁵ Arioch didn’t lose a minute. He ran to the king, bringing Daniel with him, and said, “I’ve found a man from the exiles of Judah who can interpret the king’s dream!”

²⁶ The king asked Daniel (renamed in Babylonian, Belteshazzar), “Are you sure you can do this—tell me the dream I had and interpret it for me?”

Note that at this point, Daniel essentially tells the king the same thing all his magicians and soothsayers said when they failed to know the king’s dream.

^27-28 Daniel answered the king, “No mere human can solve the king’s mystery, I don’t care who it is—no wise man, enchanter, magician, diviner. But there is a God in heaven who solves mysteries, and he has solved this one. He is letting King Nebuchadnezzar in on what is going to happen in the days ahead. This is the dream you had when you were lying on your bed, the vision that filled your mind:

^29-30 “While you were stretched out on your bed, O king, thoughts came to you regarding what is coming in the days ahead. The Revealer of Mysteries showed you what will happen. But the interpretation is given through me, not because I’m any smarter than anyone else in the country, but so that you will know what it means, so that you will understand what you dreamed.

^31-36 “What you saw, O king, was a huge statue standing before you, striking in appearance. And terrifying. The head of the statue was pure gold, the chest and arms were silver, the belly and hips were bronze, the legs were iron, and the feet were an iron-ceramic mixture. While you were looking at this statue, a stone cut out of a mountain by an invisible hand hit the statue, smashing its iron-ceramic feet. Then the whole thing fell to pieces—iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold, smashed to bits. It was like scraps of old newspapers in a vacant lot in a hot dry summer, blown every which way by the wind, scattered to oblivion. But the stone that hit the statue became a huge mountain, dominating the horizon. This was your dream.

^36-40 “And now we’ll interpret it for the king. You, O king, are the most powerful king on earth. The God of heaven has given you everything: rule, power, strength, and glory. He has put you in charge of men and women, wild animals and birds, all over the world—you’re the head ruler, you are the head of gold. But your rule will be taken over by another kingdom, inferior to yours, and that one by a third, a bronze kingdom, but still ruling the whole land, and after that by a fourth kingdom, ironlike in strength. Just as iron smashes things to bits, breaking and pulverizing, it will bust up the previous kingdoms.

^41-43 “But then the feet and toes that ended up as a mixture of ceramic and iron will deteriorate into a mongrel kingdom with some remains of iron in it. Just as the toes of the feet were part ceramic and part iron, it will end up a mixed bag of the breakable and unbreakable. That kingdom won’t bond, won’t hold together any more than iron and clay hold together.

^44-45 “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. It will be like the stone cut from the mountain by the invisible hand that crushed the iron, the bronze, the ceramic, the silver, and the gold.

“The great God has let the king know what will happen in the years to come. This is an accurate telling of the dream, and the interpretation is also accurate.”

^46-47 When Daniel finished, King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face in awe before Daniel. He ordered the offering of sacrifices and burning of incense in Daniel’s honor. He said to Daniel, “Your God is beyond question the God of all gods, the Master of all kings. And he solves all mysteries, I know, because you’ve solved this mystery.”

^48-49 Then the king promoted Daniel to a high position in the kingdom, lavished him with gifts, and made him governor over the entire province of Babylon and the chief in charge of all the Babylonian wise men. At Daniel’s request the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to administrative posts throughout Babylon, while Daniel governed from the royal headquarters.

            Living as a slave, forced to be in Babylon, Daniel rose to the top of the government.  He put all his trust in God as the overseer of all. 

Power has many faces in our time – the president; entertainment figures and business moguls.  In our town, powers appears to lie with the people who are bigwigs at the university or the leaders of the companies where we work.  In our social circles and in our own families, certain people seem to be the ones to whom everyone else defers. 

God is over all and God is with.  God may not elevate us to the top of government or the top of the company, but will elevate us.  God will comfort us, redeem us, and empower us.  As we are the voice of God’s compassion, insisting upon God’s truth, and speaking out in the face of oppressive powers, God walks with us, guiding us forward.  God will be faithful in meeting our needs as he was with Daniel.

“Truly, your God is a revealer of mysteries,” the king told Daniel. 

Daniel agreed saying of God, “He reveals deep and hidden things.” 

What will God the Revealer, reveal in our lives this week?  We find out as we look to Him in all things and in all places.  We don’t think as much about people around us, supposedly powerful people.  We don’t have the space.  Our brains and hearts are full of thought of God, love for God.  We turn to Him and He shows us the way.

AMEN