Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Today is the final Sunday in the church year and also in our diverse series on receiving the Kingdom of God. Two weeks or so ago we spoke about Judgment Day in our look at a passage from Isaiah, so I have taken a different approach today when looking at our reading from Daniel so as not to repeat myself.
One of the great spiritual heroes is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor who failed to obey Hitler and was killed by the Nazis in the last days of WW2 in an act of pure spite that gained nothing for them.
In a letter written from his Nazi prison cell, Bonhoeffer says, ’God [in the person of Christ] is the beyond in the midst of our lives. (Letters and Papers from Prison. April 30, 1944).
The ‘beyond in the midst of our lives’ is an intriguing way to conceive of God incarnate - the one we confess to be fully God and truly human and ascended to the right hand of God the Father, yet with us always, even to the end of the age.
This one is ‘the beyond’ – truly God – yet in the midst of our lives – truly present.
I was reminded of Bonhoeffer as I was thinking about today’s reading from Daniel and his vision. This vision gives witness to the “Ancient One,” the one we would call, as Jesus did, God the Father, and also to the one who comes on the “clouds of heaven,” receiving from the Ancient One everlasting dominion, glory, and kingship.
The human one, or the Son of Man, as Jesus describes himself.
Now this is very easy to miss, but in this vision Jesus hasn’t reverted to Spirit, but is the human one. For eternity, Jesus is the Son of God, for sure, but for eternity he will always be the Son of Man too.
God fully incarnated. Fully human. Just like us in every way except he did not sin.
Today is the day of Christ the King and as always, when we think about the nature of God revealed in any way at all, including as our Lord and our King, we’re confronted with the reality that God is always revealed in a way we would least expect it.
And nowhere is this more obvious than in the passion, suffering and death of the Human One, Jesus, on the cross at a place called ‘The Skull.’
Daniel envisions the coronation of this human as occurring before the throne of the Ancient One with all peoples, nations and languages coming to serve him.
Now this is a vision that makes sense to our ideas of what the coronation of the King of Kings, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, should look like.
We’d expect to see all peoples, nations and languages coming to serve him. It’s majestic. There are ten thousand times ten thousand peoples attending him.
This is a vision not unlike one from some centuries later recorded by John in our Revelation reading. The Alpha and Omega, the Almighty One is there with a kingdom of priests (that is, us!), serving God his Father, coming with the clouds. So it is to be. Amen and Amen!
But I skipped over a bit! Yes, like in Daniel, he is coming with the clouds, witnessed by every eye, only, John adds that included in this group are “even those who pierced him.”
This Christ, this Lord, this faithful witness, this firstborn from the dead is the Almighty One, the ruler over all the kings of the earth. But he is also the God of the cross - the beyond in the midst of our lives.
In V.5 of today’s Revelation reading, “faithful witness” literally means “faithful martyr”, in the Greek. But how can a God be a martyr? How can a creator die at the hands of his creatures?
It makes no sense! And yet, here it is; this King of Kings crowned in glory and majesty is returning as the fully human pierced one.
God crowned King in a body that defies our imagination, not perfect in form, but as the crucified one. Still bearing the wounds of his suffering, yet coming on the clouds.
He is returning as the one who was dead, but is now the firstborn of the dead, alive again, alive forever, and in him, we too are made alive forever.
Remember when Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room the day of his resurrection? He showed them his pierced hands and side? Still pierced after his resurrection. They are there for eternity.
Just as the amazing love God has for us is for all eternity, in this pierced one, in form forever marked by the cross that defines this undefinable love.
So, from a superficial reading of today’s passages from the visions of Daniel and John, we might think, having such a majestic and all-powerful God, that life would be easy as a subject of such a sovereign one.
That, as those under such powerful protection, we might in this life be protected from threats, from dangers, from hardships, from disasters, from anything that is dark and deadly.
But that’s never been the nature of God’s relationship to the world, or to God’s people. God has not been, the great magician. Instead, God is the beyond in the midst of our lives.
And so the prophets say things like; “You will pass through the fires, but will not be burned.” “You will pass through the waters, but they will not overwhelm you.”
Never does it say: the fires will never come, and the waters will never rage. Today’s Psalm (93:4) says, sure, the Lord has put on his glory like a robe and girded himself with strength, but the Psalmist is honest about the realities of life.
“The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice: the floods lift up their pounding.”
Yet, in spite of the reality that life includes having to face such difficulties, the psalmist concludes with the confidence that right in our midst, our King is “mightier than the sound of many waters, than the mighty waters or the breakers of the sea: the Lord on high is mighty.”
God is not a puppet master, if he were we would have no free will, we would be unable to function as a human being. We would not have been made in the image of God. God is far bigger, better, and more powerful than that.
In Revelation chapter 1, the Lord God, the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ, is revealed as the Alpha and the Omega – Alpha being the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and Omega being the last.
In other words, our Lord Jesus is the beginning, the source of all being. And the Lord is also the ending, the one in whom all things find their fullness and completion. That will be us on that day beyond; finally complete in the fullness of our humanity.
Which brings me back to my thoughts on Bonhoeffer’s phrase, God is not just the beginning and the end, but God is also the middle, where we are right now. God is and was and is to come.
God is! Which is really at the heart of the incarnation and what we will be preparing for in Advent and celebrate at Christmas.? Yes, God was, and God is to come, but, even now, God is in the midst of our lives whatever we may be experiencing.
God is in the midst of whatever fills us with fear! God is in the midst of our daily struggles! God is in the midst of our victories! God is in the midst of our joys! God is in the midst of our thanksgivings! God is in the midst of our sorrows! God is in the midst of all of human life, and so, what do we have to fear?
God in Christ, who is our King, is the beyond in the midst of our lives. Praise the Lord! Let me pray ...