Sermon for the 17th of November - Second Sunday before Advent

War, violence, torture, famine, disease, abuse, corruption… sounds familiar? This is the news now… and also far back in history at the time of the prophet Daniel in the 6th century BC – if he even existed. Anyway, whether he did or didn’t, whoever wrote his Book certainly presents us with a vividly exotic view of the turbulent worlds of Chaldea and Babylon.

Have you ever read the Book of Daniel? If not, I suggest you do. It is full of strangeness, a magical mystery tour through a world of dreams, astrology, divination and miracles, where exotically named kings, such as Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, are disturbed by ‘night visions’ and have to call on Daniel to interpret their meaning.

These kings are the playboys of the eastern world. Obscenely rich and powerful who live life in the lap of luxury, drinking and feasting (which might account for at least some of their strange dreams), conquering nations around them, making false idols of gold and believing that they, themselves, should be worshipped as gods. They literally don’t see the writing on the wall or, even if they do see it, they can’t believe that it is referring to them. Sounds familiar?

But all this high living doesn’t go down well with Daniel who was, by the way, captured in Jerusalem and shipped off to Babylon. He does not like their foreign ways, their strange gods, all that rich food and wine; he refuses to eat the roast meat or drink alcohol and instead asks for vegetables and water. He’s a vegan tea-totaller, which is perhaps is why he has such clear vision. With the result that he is able to interpret the dreams, first of King Nebuchadnezzar, and then of his son Belshazzar. But this gift is not just due to his own powers, as he acknowledges, when he thanks God who ‘revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness and the light dwelleth with him’ (2:22).

Nebuchadnezzar is so impressed by Daniel’s revelations that he falls on his face and worships him and makes him ruler over Babylon, but still Daniel is not seduced. It is then that we meet three of Daniel’s fellow countrymen whose names and story we love – Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They are thrown into the fiery furnace because they refuse to bow down to the gold statue the king has had made and commanded everyone to worship. Here is the deeply mysterious passage when the king goes to look into the furnace to see how the incineration is proceeding and sees not three men in there but four. He says that ‘the form of the fourth is like the Son of God’. When the three men walk out of the fiery furnace unsinged there is no sign of the fourth who has mysteriously vanished. Shortly afterwards,  the king becomes unhinged and is found on all fours, eating grass, his body ‘wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws’.

I told you the Book of Daniel is weird…

Next up is Nebuchadnezzar’s son Belshazzar, he of the famous feast where he and his wives drink wine from gold cups looted from the temple in Jerusalem. He could not understand the strange writing on the wall and, even when Daniel translates it saying that the king has been weighed in the balance and found wanting –he still doesn’t get it. That very night Belshazzar is slain and King Darius takes his place and passes a decree that he alone is to be worshipped as a god. Daniel, of course, refuses to do so which is why, eventually, he is cast into the lions’ den from which he emerges unscathed.

Darius accedes to the power of Daniel’s god and so does not go mad or get murdered and Daniel continues to have visions. These are of an apocalyptic nature and of the Ancient of Days, in his snow-white garment and his hair like wool seated on his fiery flaming throne with wheels of burning fire.

They culminate in a vison of the Son of Man, the Messiah. Daniel is touched by the Archangel Gabriel and protected by the great Archangel Michael, who fought and defeated the rebel angels, led by Lucifer, and threw them all done to earth which might explain why we are in such a state… which, finally, brings us back to tonight’s reading. Daniel tells us that ‘Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise…’ Daniel lived in turbulent times, we live in turbulent times but, like him, we can have faith that, in the end good, will prevail… even in the end times.