In my preaching and teaching from I Corinthians, I’m skipping ahead to chapter 2, because in its opening verses we learn something about Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian Christians. And because it contains a mystery, which is this: We read the letters and stories of Paul the Apostle and think of him as being confident, bold, sometimes even brash. With a job description like his, he had to be. So, why did he begin his missionary effort in Corinth, as he described it, “in weakness and fear, with much trembling?” And if first impressions are everything, as we often say, then how did a church get started if he came across to the Corinthians with so much “weakness and fear, and with much trembling?” Paul and the Corinthian Christians could agree that he had not put his best foot forward when coming to them. And yet Corinth was where the most fruitful results happened in his team’s ministry in Greece, so much so that he and his friends stayed there a year and a half, we read in Acts 17. How did that happen?

To make sense of that, we’ll have to back up a bit. The story begins with Paul and his fellow missionaries and friends, Silas, Timothy and maybe Luke, somewhere in eastern Turkey, trying to gain an audience, to preach the gospel, and start churches. But over and over, we read in Acts 16, they were strangely thwarted. They didn’t feel God opening up doors for them. Then Paul had a dream in which he saw a man from Greece, a day or two’s journey across the Aegean Sea, beckoning them to “come help us over here.”

From Turkey they booked passage east, and once in Greece, the doors opened up to evangelize and plant churches, beginning in Philippi. From there they worked their way through several cities toward a city so important, so strategic, that it was the cultural, political and religious capital of Greece: Athens, the city of philosophers, scholars, great art and literature. Get a positive hearing in Athens, win a few key people, plant a church there, and the rest of Greece would be low hanging fruit, ripe for the picking, wouldn’t you think?

After preaching in a synagogue and in some other public venues, Paul got an invitation that must have taken his breath away: to speak before the philosophers on the Aereopagus, a public forum on a hilltop shrine, named after Aries, the Greek God of War. His audience would be the highest, most senior leaders and teachers of the various schools of Greek philosophy and religion.

Paul seems to have appreciated and respected that. He appreciated his audience too and spoke to them in the most respectful way. He began with where they were at. He spoke of how, while walking about among all the shrines, temples and statues of all their many gods and goddesses, he saw a shrine to the unknown God. Tour guides can take us to that very spot today; archaeologists know exactly where it was. This “unknown God” was credited with even stopping a plague in the centuries before Paul.

Paul said, “I will proclaim that unknown God to you…. he made the world and everything in….but he does not live in temples built by hand…he himself gives all people life and breath and everything else….from one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth;…God did this so that people would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” Paul even quoted one of their best-known poets to say, “’For in him we live and move and have our being….and ‘We are his offspring.’ …In the past God overlooked our ignorance [of him], but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” At that point, some of them sneered, while others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” In other words, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

End of sermon, end of story in Athens. A few in the city believed, including one man from among the philosophers there. But if Paul had hoped to capture the strategic heights of Greek society, Greek thought and Greek culture, well, as Paul told the Corinthian Christians, he even seems to have come away from Athens shaken, weakened, disturbed and disappointed. Perhaps, disappointed with himself.

Which has left many people wondering why, especially if Paul did such a good job of talking with the philosophers on their terms, in their language. I think it had to do with the cross. Or the lack thereof. The closest Paul got to telling the Athenian wise men about Jesus was only by touching on his resurrection from the dead. He never even got around to naming Jesus or explaining how and why he died in the first place. He went straight to the resurrection, which certainly was God the Father’s undeniable stamp of approval on Jesus and his ministry. But resurrection was obviously not something those philosophers respected or cared much about. Perhaps some of them belonged to one of those schools of philosophy that saw matter and the body as inferior and even evil, from which you wanted to escape, not to live in forever. Or maybe they already had all they wanted in this life.

Besides, if Paul had gotten around to saying how it was that Jesus needed to be resurrected to begin with, those philosophers may have trundled him out of there all the more quickly and forcefully. A crucified leader, teacher, savior and deity? Did you say, Crucified? As in whipped, stripped bare and nailed to a wooden stake, under the sun, to be jeered at, mocked, and to die slowly and shamefully of shock, thirst and asphyxiation? If an Athenian citizen or philosopher got out of hand and was sentenced to death, it would be quickly, and with dignity befitting his status, like Socrates taking poison. But the cross was for slaves, the poor, prisoners, pirates, the rabble, traitors and others foolish enough to challenge their masters, their overlords and their lowly place in society. Twenty centuries later, they’d call that a lynching. Its hard enough to ask us to believe that the unknown God whom you claim to represent would allow his spokesman to undergo such humiliation in every sense of the word, socially, politically and physically. Ask us to trust and identify with someone who was crucified, that’s like asking us to identify with the rabble, the slaves, the poor, the bandits, brigands and rebels, even if this man was innocent and did nothing of their sort. The cross implies that, while we were going about the daily duty of keeping law and order in the empire, we murdered God! Why, to identify with a crucified God is to call into question the whole basis of Imperial Rome, even our very loyalty to it, and our citizenship in it.

Not only does the cross confront us with the brutal reality of human sacrifice in every culture, the very helplessness of the man nailed up to it implies our own helplessness. You mean our Judge had to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves? You mean to say that there is a debt of sin so big that we cannot pay it, but that someone else paid it for us? What does that say for all our efforts to figure everything out by ourselves? Or to be good and righteous and wise by our own wisdom and efforts?

Did Paul know that such ridicule and rejection might be likely responses to the very words, “cross” and “crucified?” And if so, is that why he mentioned the resurrection first, before he got to the cross? Even though they come in reverse order? We’ll never know. But the next stop, after his mixed results in Athens, was Corinth. And there, as he told the Corinthian Christians, “I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God,” like he had in Athens, to his audience of philosophers. Instead, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ… and him crucified.” No more good news/bad news routine, with the good news first, to soften the blow of the bad news. No diplomatic niceties to soften the appearance of anything confrontational, offensive, disturbing, scandalous or even potentially treasonous. Let’s cut to the chase and tell it like it is. The creator and savior and lover of the world was crucified by the world. Even by the very world that those philosophers represented, justified and upheld.

No wonder Paul could say, in verse 3, “I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.” Why the fear and trembling? Was it because Paul was still working out what had happened in Athens, and the powerful and painful lesson he might have learned on the Hill of Aries? Or could it also be because Corinth was a Roman colony, the closest thing to Rome itself that you would find on the Greek peninsula? As loyal Roman subjects, they might also find the story of a crucified savior an affront, something that implicated them for all of the powers, pride and privileges they derived from Roman law and order. You might get a cold shoulder in Athens, but in a Roman colony, you could get a real cross, not just a verbal one. Similar things nearly happened other times Paul preached. In fact, members of the Corinthian synagogue tried to get the Roman officials to imprison Paul for his preaching.

But in Corinth, Paul obviously framed the message so that no one came away ignorant of the cross. And it worked. It helped that Paul found something of a church already there, in the form of Priscilla and Aquila, a Jewish Christian couple from Rome. It helped that the rest of his team, Silas, Timothy and maybe Luke, showed up later to help and lend moral support. So when the gospel went public, beyond the Jewish community in Corinth, the results of the bold, provocative preaching of the cross kept Paul’s missionary team busy much longer than in any other Greek city, for a year and a half, we read. Corinth, not Athens, became the nerve center of the church in Greece. And it remained so for many hundreds of years to follow. Go figure.

Paul credits this startling, counter-intuitive result to the Holy Spirit, and not to any wise or persuasive words on his part. That’s why you see the Spirit represented on the altar today in the form of a dove. Whenever we reach the end of our rope, the end of our own powers of persuasion and control, let’s take off our shoes, because we’re on holy ground, the sacred place where God’s Spirit does what we cannot do. The vehicle, the entry point, for the power of the Holy Spirit, was, and still is, the bold and provocative message of the cross: that on the cross, through the Crucified One, God did for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

I reminded us last week of how scales fell from Paul’s eyes several days after his blinding encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus,, and his sight was restored. Could it be that, on the road from Athens to Corinth, Paul had another experience of scales falling from his eyes, one not so forceful nor dramatic as the first, not so much a conversion as a course correction? But still sobering and soul-shaking, nonetheless? If so, that would certainly match my experience, and probably that of every Christian: that our conversion to Christ is the beginning of a commitment to a life of ongoing conversion, where we keep coming back, at deeper and deeper levels, to where it all started, back to the cross, there to let go and let die another false hope, another illusion, another false identity. And though I was not there with Paul on the road to Corinth, I wonder if, had the Lord Jesus appeared to him the way he had on the Damascus Road, he might not have said something like this:

“Its good, Paul, that you showed respect to those philosophers in Athens and made the effort to speak their language, in more ways than one. I’m pleased that you recognized and affirmed what they had of God, and that you used those things we have in common as your starting point. But let me ask you this, my beloved brother, Paul: How much did you have riding on their respect and appreciation for you? Was it so important to you that you and your message impress and entice them that you downplayed the cross, and all that it implies? Did you forget that the cross, and the question mark it implies over and against all worldly wisdom, titles and powers, just cannot help but be offensive to all who are seeking to justify themselves, to all who trust in their own goodness, rightness and wisdom? Did you forget that the cross cannot help but be an offense, a stumbling block and a dividing line? Did you forget that, when confronted by the cross, people must necessarily divide themselves according to whether they are trying to please God or to please the world, according to whether they are seeking to justify Christ to society, or to make society more just to Christ, according to whether they wish to be remade in my image, or to remake me into their image? My servant must seek to honor all people, as you did in Athens, and to offend no one. But my servant must not shrink from any truth that others might find offensive.”

This is not only true in regards to evangelism. It also applies to the life of the church. Several years later, when Paul learned about conflicts and competition among the various factions and house churches of Corinth, the place to send their attention, to straighten them out, was back to square one, where their relationship began, to the cross, precisely because of the leveling effect of its scandal and humiliation. And that before the cross had become prettified, and pasteurized, and rendered meaningless by its domestication to the powers that be, before the Emperor Constantine, in the 4^th Century, had his soldiers paint it on their shields before going into battle, before Crusaders and Conquistadors much later followed it into battle to subjugate Muslims and Mayan Indians, long before we today began getting glossy, colorful newspaper ads hawking diamond-studded, gold-plated crosses for Christmas or Valentines’ Day. When the last of the fabrics on our altar cross have fallen, you’ll see nothing so triumphant nor sanitized.

(move to the cross)

No, to get these Corinthian Christians to stop competing and mistreating each other, Paul felt it necessary, in the first two chapters of his letter, to turn their attention back to where it all began, back to the rude and rugged cross, in the face of which all boasts and comparisons must go silent, at the foot of which all ground is level, and where the wealthy philosopher king of Athens is rendered just as silent as the unlettered slave of Corinth, so that together they might tremble in holy fear just, as Paul had. A vision of the cross, he hoped, would cure them of the very scales that may have begun to cloud his own vision at Athens: even the tiniest need to be respected, appreciated or justified by society, any tendency to justify our faithfulness to God by its results in the world, any temptation to repackage the Crucified One into something others will accept without having to repent and convert. In this season of Lent, can we let go of all that….(pull off next layer)

..and embrace instead the awesome love that did for us on that cross what we could never do for ourselves? Better weakness, fear and trembling before the Cross and The Crucified One, than to fear and tremble before the world and its judgments.

I Corinthians 1: 1Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,  2To the church of God in Corinth, (a) to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, (b) together © with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:  3Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— 6because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. 7Therefore you do not lack (d) any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God, who has (e) called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. 10I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”  13Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? 14I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15so no one can say that you were baptized into my name.

It must have been an awesome sermon. That, or the Spirit did a mighty work of grace. By the time the preacher finished his message, the normally staid, proud, uptight and status-conscious congregation was cut to the heart. Tears rolled down their faces as the message struck home: that everything rests upon the grace and the goodness of God, and not their own merits; that compared to God’s mercy and faithfulness, we have no right to compare ourselves with each other, nor to look down on anyone else.

First one, then another, among the congregants began to cry out, “I am nothing; I have nothing, that was not given to me by grace!” People knelt at their pews, or came up to the altar to confess the sin of their constant absorption with status, their sense of superiority, their obsession over other people whom they worshiped and imitated in the business and celebrity magazines, or whom they hated or feared or put down.

Just then a man passed by one of the doors of the sanctuary. He was in that church building more often than any of the worshipers, or even the pastor. But he never attended worship. He was the church janitor. Because of his poverty and his lower social class, he didn’t feel comfortable worshiping with the very people he served. But the leveling spirit of repentance was contagious, and he found himself drawn inside. Struck by the same Spirit of “grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved,” he too knelt at the altar and began crying out, “I am nothing! I have nothing that was not given me by God’s grace!”

In the pews two rows back, one man, down on his knees weeping, prodded another man next to him, pointed at the janitor, and said, “Look who suddenly considers himself as much a nothing as we are! What gives him the nerve?”

There we see how subtle and stubborn is the most original of all sins: pride. Its that stubborn and subtle compulsion to justify ourselves by comparing and contrasting ourselves with each other. You hear it in that phrase, often offered after receiving criticism, “Well, at least I don’t…..(pick your pet peeve) like….(pick your favorite enemy).” I wonder if that wasn’t what Adam and Eve got from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: 20-20 vision of their own good and a 20-20 vision for each other’s evil. You see it in the way they covered themselves with fig leaves, and in the way Adam said to God, “That woman, that you gave me, she gave me the fruit…..” and of course, I took a taste. Just to be nice.

This compulsion to justify ourselves by comparing and contrasting ourselves to other people afflicted the Corinthian Church, as we see in verses 12 and 13. There Paul writes: “One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ The people named just now were not divided against each other, but the people who followed them were. The Corinthian Christians were using these different names and persons as separate boxes into which to segregate, compare and classify themselves. That always leads to the need to have enemies and inferiors, so that we feel better about ourselves by contrast. People may wear these self-appointed titles and their levels of worth and honor like the crown you see on the altar, next to the cross.

This need to make sense of the world, by contrast and separation, begins in childhood. That’s the first and easiest way children know how to understand themselves, and the world, and to find some security in it: by rigid and simplistic divisions and distinctions. Sometime around 3 or 4 years of age its common for children to say in the most rigid terms, “Girls this….boys that.” Some girls at that age will want to wear the same pretty, frilly dress every day, all week. You try to raise your boys to be peaceful, non-violent, and still they may pick up every stick around and play like its a sword or a machine gun. Because those are the gender roles and distinctions they get from the world. Hopefully they’ll grow up to see how much more they are alike than different, even while respecting their differences as men and women. Hopefully they’ll develop a greater sense of freedom as they mature.

But not if they watch too many Superbowl commercials.

When we try to justify ourselves by comparing and contrasting ourselves against each other, its like weighing ourselves on a scale that never resets to zero. Or measuring things with a tape measurer that won’t retract. Or hiking through the woods, off trail, with a compass that won’t point in any direction, let alone north. Our measurements will get meaningless, and of course we’ll get lost.

If that’s where we get stuck, then we’ll stay childish in every way except one: the power by which to carry out our judgments and comparisons against each other. War is always based on the knowledge of good and evil: the knowledge only of our own good, and the knowledge only of “their” evil. Whoever “they” are. Children may play war, but adults have the power to make real war against the people they fear and consider inferior. In the First Church of Corinth, you could say that the spiritual equivalent of war had come to them.

As we grow up, however, we hopefully learn a more mature way of making sense of the universe and finding our place in it. In fact, that’s where Paul starts his letter to the Corinthians. Before he gives a diagnosis of their problem—those Corinthians have a divisive, judging spirit—he prescribes the solution: know who you really, truly are. Know your true identity, in God. Its an identity that does more to unite you than it does to divide. In those first verses I find at least four things—four common markers of identity that Paul wants them to remember. They apply to all churches, in all times and places, including us.

First of all, they are in verse 1, “the church of God in Corinth,” even though they were composed of many house churches. So, even though they, as members and congregations, come in different sizes, shapes, languages and cultures, they are to remember, together, that they are Christ’s one and only church in Corinth. Today, what this says for “I am of Menno, of Luther, of Wesley, of Rome, of England,” I can’t say in one sermon, except to remind us that we and all our neighbor churches also comprise, together, “the church of God in Minneapolis.” That’s why I attend a local weekly pastor’s prayer group. So hold every current distinction lightly. They won’t be forever.

Secondly, they—and we– are, “sanctified by Christ Jesus and called to be holy.” Therefore, we are not sanctified or made holy by any goodness of our own. We are sanctified and called to be holy by the goodness of Jesus Christ. Now, sanctified” means the same as “called to be holy.” Its not a statement of where anyone has arrived, as though some of the Corinthian Christians are walking about with holy halos around their heads while birds alight on their shoulders, they are so perfect and so far beyond temptation. I haven’t met anyone like that yet, certainly not in the mirror. Rather, its a statement of how God sees us and where God is leading us: “sanctified” simply means we have been set apart and dedicated to God’s service, to God’s honor, like the bowls, the cups and the dishes in Israel’s ancient temple. Once dedicated to God’s service, they couldn’t be loaned out for common uses: like chariot delivery pizza.

Our third statement of identity is that we are not only the church of Corinth, or the church of Minneapolis. Paul says we are the church of God, set apart for God, “together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours” in verse 2. In other words, we’re part of something much bigger than the local scene. There are bonds of the Spirit tying us into a holy communion with saints all around the world this morning. Our loyalty to them must be as strong as our loyalty to our neighborhood, even moreso than to our country, for they too are key to our identity.

The fourth thing Paul tells the Corinthians about themselves is that they are a gifted people.” Not just “gifted persons,” individually, one by one, but, in verse 7 a gifted group. In fact, so gifted, Paul says, that, “you do not lack any spiritual gift,” any God-given power for ministry and witness. But he means you plural, together, “you all,” as a group, and not you singular, any one man or woman. In every church there is only one person who has all the spiritual gifts that Paul will talk about in this letter. But don’t look around for him or her, don’t look up here, we can’t see this all-gifted person, except when we see us gathered, in worship, love or prayer. He’s the Lord Jesus, and he distributes his gifts for ministry throughout his church, and throughout his churches, in such ways that everyone needs each other’s gifts in order to best use their own.

There’s a kind of West African folk tale that captures this sense of communal, interdependent giftedness, like the one about the father of four children with special powers who went hunting one day and never returned. A week passed, a month passed, even a year, before, finally, the youngest child asked, “Where’s Dad?” So her three older, specially-gifted siblings went off to find him. The oldest sister had the gift of reading tracks no matter how old they were. She tracked her father down to to a distant clearing, where all they found were his bones. Around those bones she read the tracks of a lion. The second oldest, a son, had the gift of sewing together anything he liked out of grass. So he pulled up some grass and wove a complete human body around the bones: the spitting image of his father. The third, another son, had the gift of blowing life into anything he wished, so he blew the breath of life back into his father’s likeness, and home came Dad, alive, with his three oldest children. Such stories end by asking, “So, who was most responsible for bringing father back home?” There’s enough value in everyone’s contribution to keep the discussion going all night. Don’t forget to include the baby daughter who posed the question everyone else was ignoring. Such stories, to me, are like parables of the church. Everyone is gifted, but everyone needs each other’s gifts in order to use their own to the fullest.

Once we’ve got those identity markers down, what point is there in making ourselves feel better by comparing ourselves to others? Wouldn’t we feel pretty good already? Aren’t those identities awesome enough that we can just get on with being ourselves, without constantly worrying if someone is ahead of us, or worrying that someone won’t stay beneath us and behind us? Again, among other things, we are: 1) the church of God, 2) part of the worldwide, universal church, 3) set apart and called to be holy to God and God’s purposes, and4) gifted with complementary, mutually helpful gifts……together.

Twenty-one centuries later, that’s still who we are in Christ. Don’t forget it, but not because we are facing the intensity of divisive forces and factions like what the Corinthian churches faced. If anything, this is a remarkably united and gracious church for all the variety of cultures, class and generations among us. But we have our differences here too. And that’s a good sign. Because it means that we take our calling in Christ seriously. And that God is gifting us in many different ways to carry out his mission in the world. For that we must be united. But unity is a journey, not a destination. Unity is not the absence of differences but how we view differences and deal with them. If we understand who we really are, by the grace of God, because of Jesus Christ, then differences don’t have to be scary. Many of them we can see them as mutually enriching.

This last week, while Becky and I were in Mexico, I attended an Ash Wednesday service. At that church in Zihuatenejo, I saw that their theme statement for the season of Lent was, “Repent and Believe the Gospel,” a simple declaration from the earliest, simplest preaching of Jesus. The Lenten season theme we’ll be following, with many churches across our conference and denomination, is “Holding On and Letting Go.” That’s just like the theme of our Mexican brothers and sisters: “Repent and Believe the Gospel,” but in reverse order. “Letting Go” means repenting: repenting and releasing anything that is holding us back from Christian maturity, even, anything that is holding us back from Christian faith. “Holding on,” is another way of saying “Believing the gospel.”

If we’re looking for anything to let go of this Lenten season, we can settle for the usual things, like chocolate or dessert or meat or some other indulgence. If those things have such a grip on us that they’re holding us back, then let’s help each other break free of them this season. But I decided to start this year’s preaching focus on I Corinthians during Lent because, in the first few chapters of I Corinthians, Paul points our attention to some subtle, spiritual, but no less pressing things we might need to look for and unload if we find them on us. And not just for Lent, but for keeps. Just as Paul had to have the scales fall from his eyes after his encounter with Christ, on the day of his baptism, so do we Christians often need to let scales fall from our eyes as they accumulate.

The scales I’m thinking about this morning, which Paul identifies in this chapter, are the false identities that build up and blind us, They are the false identities that build up every time we seek to justify ourselves by comparing and contrasting ourselves against others, by that reflex to seek worth and security first and always in our distinctions, divisions and differences. Differences are real. They deserve respect. Some of them cannot be reconciled, but only managed. But we must not let them become idols on which we hang our worth and identity.

(TO THE CROSS)

For there is something so big, so major, so game-changing, that it calls into question all the trophies and badges and hierarchies by which we seek to divide and distinguish ourselves over and against others: the cross of Jesus. It may look like a miniscule -t- but think of it as a giant question mark from heaven, that calls into question all the judgments and assessments and evaluations of worth and status among people, all the criteria of who’s up and who’s down, what’s wise and what’s foolish, what’s eternal and what’s temporary. Its a sign that shows us the depths and the extent to which God will go to unite us with himself and each other. On that cross died not only the Savior of the World, but also all the ways and the excuses by which we seek to justify ourselves, all the comparisons we make to distinguish and divide ourselves from each other.

(PULL OFF FIRST CLOTH)

As I hope to show in the next few weeks, its by looking to the cross that all such scales begin to fall from our eyes.

I Corinthians 12: 12: The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

With the city of Port au Prince, Haiti, reduced to rubble by last month’s earthquake, many experts in various aid and relief agencies feared that the city would descend into some sort of Mad Max, everyone-for-themselves chaos and competition. In some times and places that was indeed the case. It wasn’t long before TV news programs did indeed feature mobs of young men with machetes and guns running about the streets, extorting what little they could from survivors and relief agencies.

But dig a little deeper into the newspaper and the internet and you also find amazing and inspiring stories of cooperation, mutual aid, sharing and sacrifice among even the most desperate of Haitian earthquake survivors. One of which involves a pizza restaurant in Port-Au Prince, called (and I’m not making this up) Munchees. Before the earthquake, most residents of Port-au-Prince would never have eaten a Munchees pizza. Munchees was too expensive for most of them.

But after the earthquake, the management of Munchees realized that, without electricity and only so much fuel for their backup generators, all their pizza ingredients would only rot. So they used their remaining food and fuel to start feeding free pizzas to survivors on the streets until it was all gone. Realizing they had a good thing going, people organized themselves and cooperated to keep scrounging up whatever gasoline they could to keep the generators going, and whatever food they could find to keep the pizzas coming. Unless the electricity is back on, Munchees may still be giving out free food, even as I speak, as long as others keep coming up with fuel and odds and ends like canned food, still intact, from the rubble.

And that’s not the only amazing, surprising type of cooperation we see going on in Haiti. There have also been inspiring examples of cooperation among many of the relief and aid agencies coming into the country. Perhaps the most surprising is that which has developed between U.S. Army medics and Cuban doctors, sharing supplies, space and expertise.

There we see one of the active principles of the world, a force for drawing things and people together in cooperation, interdependence and union. We see it in the way we have gathered this morning; you see it when people greet each other with hugs or handshakes. Even when taking leave of each other, people will hug as if to say, “Even when we’re apart, we’re together.” The basic steps of a two-partner dance, or a two-line contra dance, are together—apart—together–apart. But even the apart steps are done together. We each come into the world through the forceful desire of union. And even though birthing is spoken of as a parting from the womb, as in “post-partum,” it is yet true that, as the Malian proverb says, “other people’s hands carry us into this world, and other people’s hands will carry us out.”

This unifying force at work in our world, like at our conception or birth, or lining up outside the ruins of Munchee’s pizza, is more than a force. It has walked our world as a person: Jesus of Nazareth. He is present with us still through His Holy Spirit. We experience this person as love, and He expresses himself through us as love.

But Oh, how often we miss the workings of love, because we are more adept at seeing the other force and reality of life, the force that separates, divides, distinguishes and differentiates. Analyze the Greek name for Satan, the Evil One, and it translates as “dia-Bolos,” “Dia” for “Through” as in “through the window,” and “Bolos” for “throw,” as in “throw it out the window.” The devil is the “through– thrower,” like someone with an irresistible compulsion to throw rocks through windows, to break and to separate what should stay whole and together.

But the act of distinction and separation is not all bad. Though tigers and donkeys both have four legs and two ears, smart farmers have long known better than to hook one of them to a plow or a cart. The art of dissecting and analyzing everything down to its littlest parts have given us great powers in science, engineering and medicine. For nearly anything that ails us, we can find a specialist who can help us fix our livers, our gall bladders or any one of our glands. But its also getting harder to find the generalists who can tell us how we are doing, in total, in our bodies, our relationships or our communities. Our skills of dissection and distinction are so advanced, we don’t value or reward generalists the way we do specialists. And that tendency to separate and isolate things can also make us very lonely and fearful.

By contrast, many people in many different cultures start their thinking in terms of We, Us, and everything all together, before they start looking at separate, single things. The Dakota Indian word for harmony translates as “All my relations.” The Jula word that Becky and I learned in West Africa for bees translates to “honey children” in English. The word, “children” tells us how bees relate to each other. The other word “honey,” tells us what it is they work together to make, and one thing they contribute to us. Its a way of defining things in relationship to the wider whole, rather than in distinction and isolation. The cooperation we see then in the rubble of Port-Au-Prince, outside the ruins of Munchee’s Pizza should not surprise us. It wasn’t all Mad Max, law of the jungle, and everyone for himself before the earthquake hit, so it should not surprise us that it wouldn’t be afterward.

That’s where Paul is trying to move his Corinthian disciples in today’s Bible passage: toward a vision for the whole, rather than just the parts in isolation. If Paul were a doctor, he would be a generalist making a diagnosis of the state of the whole local body of Christ, and giving a prescription for the health of the whole, not just its separate parts. Or if he were a scientist, he’d be an ecologist, one who studies the connections and harmonies between different living things, rather than a scientist who only specializes in, let’s say, the hairs on bees’ knees.

From the drama you heard, you hopefully get an idea of what was going on, and going wrong, in the Corinthian house churches, that caused someone there to write Paul—probably the house church leader Chloe—and which caused Paul to write back. In the months to come, in the proposed annual theme and Bible focus of I Corinthians 12: 13, “By One Spirit Into One Body,” we’ll learn about some of the people and the factions in the fractious church of ancient Corinth. Some church growth specialists might look at the situation there and ask, “What did you expect, besides conflict and competition?”

One strength of the Corinthian church was also its weakness. There was no one church of Corinth. There were house churches. Perhaps a dozen or more. That was good for intimate and interdependent connections among the members of each small and localized house church. But it could also lend to segregation, between rich and poor house churches, or Jewish or Gentile ones. They could be self-selecting for ethnicity, language or class. Then there was the issue of slavery. How can they live in union and harmony when society is always treating them as separate and unequal?

On top of that, Corinth was a wealthy, cosmopolitan, commercially prosperous and important port city in Greece, and yet also a roman colony. All the more likelihood of the kind of education and world view that looks for differences and distinctions among people, and which constantly analyzes and categorizes things by what they are not, down to the littlest detail. We who have analyzed and split everything down to the level of the atom are true sons and daughters of Greece and Rome in that respect.

By the time we get to the twelfth chapter of I Corinthians, Paul has built up his case for seeing the whole of the church, the underlying unity that holds everything together to its supreme expression when he says: “we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.” So, beneath all their differences and distinctions, at least three things hold these quibbling, quarrelsome churches and Christians together: The Holy Spirit, their baptism, and their identity as the Body of Christ. Take a time out, Paul says in effect, from obsessing over your differences and distinctions and look instead to the factors that unite you, that you share in common, again: your baptism, God’s Spirit within you and among you, and your common identity as the body of Christ. Now that you have specialized in splitting the fine hairs of distinctions and definitions among you, now become ecologists of the body of Christ, seeing how the component parts you have so carefully identified work together for the sake of the bigger whole, that you have missed.

Learning to see the whole, rather than just the parts, will involve something like getting used to a new pair of glasses. Before your eyes get used to the new lenses, you may have to go through a brief period of dizziness and disorientation, trusting that the eye doctor got the prescription right, before it becomes evident that she did. Once you get to that point, you can put on your old glasses, only to find out how much they missed. That new vision is even like an x-ray vision that looks at the separate peaks of a mountain range, and sees the connecting bedrock beneath them.

Underneath the differences of culture, outlook, opinion and spiritual gifts among the members of any church—and not just the corinthian house churches—are again the Holy Spirit, our baptism, and our common identity as the body of Christ. Let’s look first at how baptism united them, and us: For one thing, it started out as a Jewish ritual, the last rite of purification for converts, from one’s gentile past before being Jewish. By the time we get to First Century Corinth, its something common to both Jewish and Gentile Christians. Both Jewish and Gentile Christians understood that being baptized in public was like burning one’s bridges to their past, to start a new life together. In the act of baptism, both Jewish and Gentile believers made the same profession of faith–”Jesus is Lord”– and the same baptismal vows. So, wherever they came from, they all made, by baptism, a vow to move in the same direction from then on, and together.

That was only possible because of the work of the Holy Spirit, by whom it was ever even possible to truly confess with saving faith, “Jesus is Lord.” And though the Corinthian Christians would display varying spiritual gifts, even those were given by one and the same Holy Spirit, to serve the common good and the unity of the church.

Now when we talk about unity among a group of people, don’t we usually think of unity as simply meaning that we’ll submerge our differences so that we can submit to a common purpose and achieve it together? And usually just for as long as it takes to achieve that common purpose? All those separate, specialized analysts from different fields of science coming together made it possible for humans to walk on the moon, for example. So when we speak of unity we’re often still starting from an assumption of difference, distance and separation, that must somehow come together.

But that’s not how bodies work. Fingers, toes, livers and brains don’t search each other out and say, “Hey, let’s make a body together.” Our bodies start as one zygote, a fertilized egg, and then begin presenting different parts, like fingers, toes and a brain. In that sense is the human body a unity, or even, a unit: one thing with multiple expressions. Paul says, “And so it is with Christ.” Christ is the starting point, and he finds multiple expressions through the members he adds to his body, the worldwide church. We, the many members with different cultures, outlooks, gifts and ministries, are different expressions of the One Christ, through His One Holy Spirit.

That’s the way in which Paul uses the word, “one.” As in “one body, one Spirit, one baptism.” Where the Corinthian Christians see mostly differences and distinctions, Paul also sees One and the same Spirit at work in different persons and different expressions, inasmuch as they belong, by baptism, to Christ’s body. Paul’s vision for one-ness sees not just how we are different, but for how we are similar, even, for how we are the same; for how we connect and overlap, not only for how individual persons relate to each other, but for what thing from one person is in another, and vice versa. Not only for where we touch, but for where we overlap. Such vision would see the sum of all those contributions, the one big total result of the one same Spirit working through different people with different gifts.

In our time and culture, we tend to be like the fractious Corinthian Christians, in that our strengths and talents for distinction and analysis are so strong that they may be a weakness. We run the risk of having 20-100 vision, having strength in the eye that sees separate parts, while being nearly blind in the eye that sees the whole. We need 20-20 vision for both eyes. Paul had a radical change of vision when he met Jesus, first being blinded, then by having scales fall from his eyes. In the Bible teaching focus that I propose for this year, from I Corinthians, we will follow the Apostle Paul as he peels away the scales from the Corinthians’ eyes so they can see the whole, the realities and possibilities of unity and connection. Down will come the scales of pride, prejudice and power which reinforce our illusions of being separate, isolated and all-sufficient selves. Because that alone is the way of loneliness, fear and bondage to sin. When both eyes are working well, we can follow God and be all that he made us to be, individually and together.

As important as the media is the message of the film. Several reviewers and writers have weighed in on sites more well-known than this one about the message of Avatar, especially whether or not its a gospel of sorts for pantheism (the belief that the sum of all things is God, or divine, and that all things are essentially divine) and earth goddess worship (Check out Russ Douthat, columnist for the New York Times).  I come away convinced thatAvatar indeed  has a strong pantheistic streak, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a significant religious factor in America. But pantheism is already so mainstream today, I confess to no loss of sleep over its message in the movie. In fact, the anti-colonialistic, anti-militaristic, anti-exploitation message of the movie is something I can appreciate to the point that it outweighs any objection over the pantheism and nature worship of the film. Ironically however, the anti-militarism message was conveyed with violent, military special effects that are all the more impactful and disturbing for being  3D. The solution to militarism in the movie is essentially military. Movie viewers today may be getting accustomed to increasingly graphic violent special effects, to the point of getting inured and desensitized to the very violence that Avatar decries. Indeed, we come to expect it, and might not take anything seriously that does not at least match the graphic and overwhelming nature of the last bombing and blood-letting we saw on the screen. That disturbs me.

Though, as a Christian, I do not identify with the pantheism and planetary goddess worship of Avatar, I can look beyond that and identify with the deeper hungers that such a stark juxtaposition of New Age pantheism and modern, commercial, capitalistic exploitation dramatizes. All right, its more than a juxtaposition; it may be a caricature conflict of the extremes in both tendencies. But I see beyond the plot devices a hunger for union and communion that contemporary commercial culture and technology do not address. If anything, they exacerbate this hunger. We miss the Garden of Eden, our Paradise Lost, where we were at one with ourselves, each other, and Creation. The wound of our exile remains as a memory of the race, one which haunts our dreams, our stories and our pursuits. Names like “unobtanium” and “Pandora” bear allusions to stories of our fall from innocence and paradise. When talking about the message of the movie, we could start with that point of commonality with our New Age and neopagan neighbors.

But Western Christendom, especially since the Renaissance, has tended to formulate the Christian faith and the hope of salvation in such ways as to leave Creation entirely out of the picture. So we scratch our heads in embarassment or confusion over images from the Psalms and the Prophets about how “the sea shall shout for joy” and “the trees of the field shall clap their hands,” or how “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8:21).”  Instead of wringing our hands or furrowing our brows over how pantheism is going mainstream (so that even McDonalds’ is tied in promotionally with Avatar--go figure), we might ask ourselves what it is about a full-orbed biblical faith that we have forgotten and neglected, and that neo-paganism is picking up in our stead. Like the fact that we are part of Creation, yes, the capstone to it, priests standing at the point where spirit meets matter, but children of earth nonetheless. The strong and stubborn streak of Gnostic dualism running through Western Christendom (the sense that spirit is opposed to matter, and that matter is evil, suspect or inferior) makes western Christians typically uncomfortable with their material, physical nature, as though salvation involved escaping from Creation, rather than redeeming it. It may be churchly, but its not biblical.

Neither Mother Goddess worship, nor the military prowess of the Na’vi (the inhabitants of Pandora) have gotten us back to the Garden, or there would be no hunger nor audience for such a film as Avatar. Ironically, Avatar succeeds technically and visually for the very reasons that we are feel such hunger for, and disconnect with, Creation: the increasingly powerful and all-encompassing digital and technological world we are creating and inhabiting. Ironically, Avatar has used the tools of our artificial world to lament and remind us of our estrangement from the natural one.

Though we don’t have floating mountains or giant flying dragons to ride, we don’t have to travel to other planets to experience wonders as breath-taking as are viewed on Pandora–excuse me, at the Cineplex.  Even on this cold, grey, snowy afternoon in Minnesota there are wonders within us, among us and around us that should take our breath away, if we weren’t so preoccupied with getting, wanting, earning and doing. The cold, grey snowy afternoon is one of them. Wonder and love are our tickets to the harmony and union with God, creation and each other that we lost and long for, our route back toward our Paradise Lost. If we don’t rediscover such biblical treasures, we shouldn’t wonder that our non-Christian friends and neighbors look for them in the worship of nature and ancestors, even digital 3D nature and ancestors. So go for a walk in the snow, or when it melts, stick your hands in the dirt; they’re spiritual matters.

Mathew Swora

So, parents, you’re just about ready to go to work, or out with your spouse for a date while waiting for the baby-sitter, when all of a sudden, your child says, “I don’t feel so good,” and the next thing you know, you’re cleaning up, putting a sick child to bed, and calling the boss or the baby-sitter to cancel all plans. Or students and recent graduates, maybe you’ve experienced something like what a friend of ours has recently: just when he’s starting his new job and preparing for a major test in his field, for his professional license, a friend of the family dies, and the funeral is just days before the licensing exam. And its on the West Coast, two flights there each way. He’s been a straight A student all his life, but with this curve ball suddenly thrown at him, he’ll be grateful just to pass the licensing exam. Which he will. Just maybe not with another A.

As frustrating or scary as those complications can be, they’re all small potatoes compared to the need, and the cry for help, coming from Haiti this week. The year 2010 may be remembered as the year in which some of the best-laid plans did not get off the ground because of the time and resources committed to our friends in Haiti. And that is as it should be. May their need bring out the best and most noble in us.

If you’ve ever faced any such surprise interruptions of your best-laid plans, you know the truth of what John Lennon said, that “life is what happens while we’re making other plans.” Or as a corollary of Murphy’s Law puts it: “The most important things in life are all scheduled at the exact same time.” Sometimes the most important things in life are not even on the schedule.

At such times its easy to despair and to think that we’ll never get any traction on our precious plans; that life will always be an uninterrupted series of interruptions that must be interrupted if we are ever to get anything done. But experience has shown me that, in the days and years that follow many such surprises and last-minute, unforeseeable interruptions, I may not even remember what those waylaid plans and projects were. Or if I do, I am glad for having remembered and done what was most important instead. In fact, there are few better barometers of my true spiritual state than how graciously I respond to the unexpected cry for help from one direction, while I was heading in another.

For such interruptions to our best-laid plans can serve to remind us who is God and who is not, who lives within the realm of time and who created time. They force us to ask ourselves, what are our most important priorities, and who matters most to us? In fact, in every moment of our lives, more often than we admit, we are already choosing what is most important from among many options. In that sense, it is always “such a time as this.”

That was how Mordecai told Queen Esther to view the unforeseen crisis of huge dimensions and monstrous character that had suddenly and surprisingly imposed itself upon her best-laid plans and schedule: it was “such a time as this.” That is how she was to consider all the steps and stages of her history that had brought her to that critical moment, as having prepared and positioned her to deal with the crisis in her life. It came as a surprise to her, but not to the God who had led her there and prepared her for “such a time as this.”

We’re not told what was in Esther’s day planner or her weekly schedule when she was suddenly and shockingly confronted with the imperial plans to liquidate her people, the Jews. I’d like to think it was something along the lines of advocating for racial and economic justice, for environmental stewardship, or for public education, such as what some previous American first ladies have done, like Eleanor Roosevelt. But that all became a moot point for Esther when she learned about plans being hatched for this earlier round of “The Final Solution,” in the same spirit and toward the same end as what Adolf Hitler tried to do.

That was also how Martin Luther King, Jr., experienced the call to lead the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, in 1955. It was just the second year of his first pastorate, when he was already busy serving Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, his family, and with leadership positions on several community organizations, such as the local inter-church pastoral alliance and the Montgomery Improvement Association. That was an inter-racial alliance to improve conditions and race relations in the city. We often look at all this leadership Dr. King took on so quickly and say, “Wasn’t he an on-fire, motivated, minister?” He certainly was. But after my 17 years in ministry, I wonder if it also was because, in local ministerial associations, the old hands are often quite willing to let the newcomers take on as much responsibility as they want. The old-timers have learned to pace themselves if they’re going to survive. Let the newcomers learn the same way they did just how scary busy they can get if they don’t know how to say No sometimes.

Just how scary and busy things could get was brought home to King when Mrs. Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested on a city bus for not giving up her seat to a white man. Groups like the Montgomery Improvement Association were just waiting for something like Rosa’s case to press the case for civil rights in the city. And the Montgomery Improvement Association was logically the group to lead it. In the year that followed, the MIA led the successful boycott that ended racial segregation on the city buses.

But Dr. King seemed reluctant at first to lead the charge. He was a fast learner, so perhaps he was already growing aware of the limits of his time and energy. You might almost say that the black community of Montgomery led him into the boycott cause as much as he led the community. Perhaps it was the response of all the attendees at a meeting, the night after Mrs. Parks’ arrest, in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, when King took his turn at the microphone and said, “There comes a time when people grow tired of being trodden under by the iron feet of oppression.” Something about those words brought the audience to their feet, cheering, clapping, weeping, yelling amen! In those simple words King gave voice to the feelings and the stories of his listeners. The audience’s response may have done as much to motivate King as he had done to motivate them. Like Esther, he recognized that then and there was “such a time as this.” The rest is history.

As for Esther, I can understand if she ever wondered where she might go to get a new uncle. Orphaned at an early age, she was raised by her uncle, Mordecai. Even when she rose to prominence in the king’s harem and became queen, her uncle kept telling her not to let on that she was Jewish. Only when it could get her killed did Mordecai then urge her to identify her faith and her people (Gee—thanks Uncle Mordecai!). After all that time of silence, this seemed hardly the right time to stand up and be counted among the king’s targets. But time was running out before the genocidal edict was to be put in place. Even in the palace she would not be immune to the coming imperial pogrom.

To get an idea of how much courage and faith Esther needed “in such a time as this,” consider why she was queen in the first place. She was chosen to replace a previous queen, Queen Vashti, who resisted her husband’s demand that she put on a personal public beauty show, something like a Bronze Age photo op. Her good looks were supposed to make the king look better. It was more about him than about her. She had enough self-respect though to not want to be treated like a trophy. But “What will happen to men around the empire if their wives hear that the queen got away with such insubordination?” the royal counselors ask. So she was divorced and sacked from office.

Esther became the new queen through a beauty contest. That’s all we need to know to understand why that empire went down the tubes. What Esther, the new queen, must do, to seek the king’s audience, and then to advocate for her people’s survival, and, if that weren’t gutsy enough, to declare herself one of them, far surpasses even Queen Vashti’s act of self-respect and of courage and conscience. But that is why she was queen: for “such a time as this.”

Brothers and sisters, we too live “in such a time as this.” In fact, for God’s people, it is always, “such a time as this.” We live in the time when God’s kingdom has come, with Jesus, while we wait for God’s kingdom to come, in its fullness, again with Jesus. As God’s mission to the world goes forward, as human needs cry out for our attention, it is a time of danger and of opportunity. A time to choose among competing choices. A time to remember and to claim our highest, holiest priorities. A time to do the little we can do at the moment, rather than to wait forever for a chance to do many things that are beyond our power and responsibility. A time to take risks and pay the cost, and embrace the cross for the sake of love. A time to reply to the call for help from unexpected directions, while we were heading in another. A time to trust that God is not caught off guard, even when we are. Even, a time to trust that God has already positioned and prepared us precisely “for such a time as this.” Because we never know if “such a time as this” will come again tomorrow. We aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. God gives us right now and forever, but we can’t presume upon later and tomorrow. Yes, with all the possibilities and problems that dog us every moment, it often seems like there’s never a good time to do the right thing. But its always the right time to do a good thing.

No, that does not mean that there are no limits to what can be asked of us. Only God can be on, 24/7 for everyone, everywhere. Yes, there are times to turn off the telephone and the pager, to get away from email, twitter and facebook, to lock the door or get out of the house, and seek rest, solace or solitude. Or to concentrate on that one most important relationship, with God or another person. But even that is to recognize that we have come to a critical moment, to “such a time as this,” when the uninterrupted stream of other pressing needs and demands must be interrupted, to attend to that highest, holiest priority.

Maybe that’s how we should define the historic Mennonite value of simplicity. Instead of seeing it as just a dress code for simple, black and white clothing, which a few of us grew up with, or instead of defining it by what we don’t own by way of flashy cars or the latest technology, as the Amish and some Old Order Mennonites do, we can see simplicity in terms of our few highest priorities among our many options and limits. As people of God’s peace, we can be at peace with our human limits and can let God be God. And as people of God, we find freedom in the fact that we can only do a few things well, with great love, so we don’t need to try and do it all, with little love and much anxiety and agitation. Because our priorities are clear: to seek first the kingdom of God and God’s justice. Anything else, among all the competing demands and choices calling to us, we can let go and leave to God, because it is always “such a time as this.”

Daniel 7:7 “After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast—terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns. 8 “While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth that spoke boastfully.  9 “As I looked, “thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze. 10 A river of fire was flowing,   coming out from before him. Thousands upon thousands attended him;  ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.The court was seated, and the books were opened.  11 “Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire. 12 (The other beasts had been stripped of their authority, but were allowed to live for a period of time.) 13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. 15 “I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me. 16 I approached one of those standing there and asked him the true meaning of all this.  ”So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things: 17 ‘The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the earth. 18 But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever.’

For most of us, this may be the first sermon you’ll have heard on on these beasts and talking horns and visions of a fiery throne in Daniel 7. But I had a relative, now deceased, who could probably have quoted this Bible passage to us by memory. She belonged to a sect that specialized in piecing together Bible prophecies to the point that their conjectures about the future were pretty much their gospel.

When I was in high school, the monthly magazine of this sect told my relative that Jesus for sure was coming in 1975. And only those who were members of this sect would live through it. So she really put the pressure on us, constantly, by letter, telephone call or in person, to convert and join her church in order to be ready for Christ’s return. Obviously 1975 came and went and things remained the same. Or did I miss something? I still don’t know how that denomination’s leaders explained that one. But my relative backed off on her non-stop arm-twisting and ear-bending after that. Today you can still tell when people of this sect have been to your door by the colorful glossy brochures they leave on your door knob, with pictures of lions, bears, leopards, dragons and talking horns.

And to their credit, they got these images from the book of Daniel, even chapter 7. Daniel saw four ravenous, frightening beasts, one with talking horns; obvious pictures of global politics and powers. But for all their end-time speculation around these images, what many people overlook is that these images tell us at least as much about Daniel’s story, and Daniel’s time, as they do about ours. There were beasts prowling about the earth then in the form of violent, idolatrous empires and emperors, claiming and doing all sorts of violent and blasphemous things. They’re still prowling about and roaring today. I think I see them in the form of, Oh, let’s say, the growing global pornography industry. Or the global arms and warfare industry. We and our Mexican brothers and sisters are dealing with monstrous, man-eating drug cartels. Our Somali friends and neighbors fled the front line of global holy war to come here.

These things seem at first to have to do with money and politics. But Daniel’s dream pulls back the curtain to reveal that behind them are monstrous moral and spiritual trends and forces. And they bedevil all our attempts to do good. We learn to split the atom for power and we get nuclear weapons. We invent the internal combustion engine and we also get global warming and wars over oil. We invent the internet and we also get scams, spam and pornography. We organize our communities for roads, parks and public education, and we also get empire. Does anybody still doubt the existence of spiritual and moral monsters, like what Daniel saw?

But if we try to arrange these symbols like pieces of a puzzle to figure out what’s happening next week, we’ve missed the main point. The main point of Daniel 7 is not the monsters in the darkness, but the light up ahead, through the darkness, in the thicket of the forest.

That light is another one of the gifts given to God’s people, Israel and us, from Israel’s 70 years in Babylon. If we, like those Hebrew exiles, want to “seek the peace of the city to which God has called us,”–and that verse from Jeremiah’s prophecy has been our banner verse this past year—we need those gifts that Israel received, and which sustained her. Last week I spoke on one of those gifts, the promise of eternal life. This day I shall speak about that second gift, that I call the light in the forest, that we see through the tangle and and the thicket, in the long dark night of the world.

These images of beasts and light come from Daniel’s description of a dream. It starts out as a nightmare. Its a nightmare in his sleep about the waking nightmare that the world is living through still. Its a nightmare like that common technique you see in some scary movies. Flipping through the TV channels to catch the Sunday afternoon game I have several times run across segments of movies in which the screen is dark, except for the main character’s worried face. I always wonder how, if its so dark, we can see his face. He’s walking through the woods, in the dark, guided by a glimmer of light up ahead, one which keeps fading in and out whenever a tree or a branch momentarily blocks the light. In addition to the scuffing noise he’s making in the leaves as he stumbles through the forest, you start to hear other noises in the woods as well. He stops and for a few seconds you can hear other footsteps in the leaves, or a twig snapping. Then the light up ahead is momentarily blocked by the shape of something big passing by. By which time the music is getting more screechy. He’s not alone in these woods and its anyone’s guess whether or not he’ll make it in time to the safety of the light and the shelter that it represents At which point I always wimp out and switch the channel. If you’ve seen the movie, don’t tell me what happens next.

Just like we can switch the channel, we can usually wake ourselves out of a nightmare. But Daniel’s not just having a nightmare. It changes to a dream in which he gets to the light. Or rather, the light gets to him. The light turns out to be a person, God, and then, “The Son of Man.” And that’s all we need to know from Daniel 7: The final score of history, like the dream, is Monsters zero, Son of Man ten thousands upon millions, in terms of his grateful, glorified subjects. In contrast to the blasphemous beasts of Daniel 7, its the Son of Man who wins the planet and the universe.

Who is this “Son of Man?” That’s actually the most important question we’ll ever have to answer. Its the one which we heard Jesus presenting to Peter along the road in Caesarea Phillipi earlier in this service of worship: “Who do people say ‘the Son of Man’ is?” After Peter ran through the short list of the prophets or John the Baptist back from the dead, Jesus asked him, “Who do you say that I am?” In that pair of questions, Jesus identifies himself as Daniel’s “Son of Man.”

Peter answered Jesus’ question and confessed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus confirmed Peter’s insight by saying, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but rather, my Father in heaven.” But then Jesus warned Peter not to get too clap-happy and triumphalistic, because there would be much suffering and rejection for him to endure from the monsters of his day before, “the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.” The Son of Man wins, not by out-monster-ing the monsters with their own violence and terror, but by suffering love and patient faithfulness to God.

Peter called Jesus, “the Son of God.” And Jesus added to Peter’s statement the title he often gave himself, “the Son of Man.” Don’t get too worked up about what that might say about how much Jesus is divine and how much he is human, as though “Son of God” applied to his divinity and “Son of Man” applied to his humanity. That would be an important issue to work out later. But for the moment, then and there in Caesarea Philippi, near where Galilee met Syria, where Jews and Gentiles rubbed elbows and pagan idols and temples stood next to Jewish synagogues, and Rome was the undisputed monster—I mean, master– probably the fourth beast in Daniel’s nightmare, Jesus was serving notice that he is that person they read about in Daniel chapter 7, the “Son of Man.” The One who said, “I am the light of the world,” is claiming to be the light which Daniel saw in his dream, the light in the dark through the monster-infested forest.

And what a light. Daniel is given something like another movie technique, a flash forward in time, in his dream. In that flash forward we see that the light through the thicket is more than a light, its a glowing, fiery image of God, on his glowing, fiery throne, seated for that great day of accounting and vindication for all who sought refuge in him. But even there, in the presence of blazing, blinding light and fire, the beasts and monsters and talking horns are challenging God with the most blasphemous and boastful claims to victory, they’re so crazy, loony full of themselves. But the monsters are decisively defeated, and cast onto the trash pile of history. Instead, The Son of Man– or The Human One–takes his rightful place of honor and rule, forever.

We are told in verse 18 that this Son of Man figure also represents all the saints of God who remain faithful to God through their time of stumbling through the darkness of the thicket where beasts and monsters prowl. In this sudden substitution of a humble human for a boastful talking horn, we see the complete reversal of the temptation in the Garden of Eden, when because they listened to a snake in the grass and grasped for godhood, the first humans fell from their place of honor and rule. With the victory of this “Son of Man,” humanity is restored to its place of honor and rule in creation.

So, this Son of Man is a person, and he also represents all the faithful who seek refuge in God. By Jesus’ time, Jews were calling this “Son of Man” figure, “The Messiah.” That just means, “The Anointed One,” or king. Every king in Israel was inaugurated by anointing with oil. We use the Greek word, “Christ” for that.

This, again is that other gift that came to Israel, and us, during her difficult years of exile. She lost her own kings and kingdom only to be promised a global, cosmic and eternal king, and a global, cosmic and eternal kingdom. Israel was overwhelmed and nearly annihilated by worldly kingdoms of vast, global power and size, only to emerge from Exile with the promise of a global and everlasting kingdom of God. Israel was the prey and plaything of beastly, monstrous emperors, and she foresaw a glorified, restored and exalted humanity. That restoration is what Jesus had in mind when he preached, “the kingdom of God is at hand.” Either they were crazy, or they were right.

If they were right, as I believe they were, then this is a gift to the world as well. Among other things, it means that time is going somewhere, that God has the last word on history, and that God’s last word is “the Son of Man,” the Human One, a restored and glorified human—and a restored and glorified humanity. If Daniel’s vision was right, then humanity wins, compassion wins, so do we, and the angel with the flaming sword at the gate of the garden lets us back in while keeping the monsters out. In a way, that’s what history comes down to: a fight between arrogant, violent monsters, and our humanity, represented by the Human One, the Son of Man. The nightmare of man-eating beasts gives way to Daniel’s glorious dream.

Each of us has a piece of that dream, for example, in the fight to ban cluster bombs and land mines, or to humanize our punitive immigration system, or lack of system. That was brought home to me with extra force this week as someone in this neighborhood told me about his dehumanizing treatment in a federal detention center, while he was seeking asylum here. Maybe its in our partnership with those who are working to raise this neighborhood and community from one known for its many needs and problems to one known for its many gifts and delights. Or in our efforts to reach across the barriers between the church and the gospel and communities closed to the church and the gospel. Or in the care, time and attention many people here give to the nurture of our youth and children. At times we experience the fight not only out there, against persecution, indifference to God, injustice and oppression, but within ourselves, against the ravenous beasts of our own nature. For me, my piece of the dream is the church, and all its saints and friends and partners growing in Christlike character and relationships, growing in partnership and participation in the growth of God’s kingdom, here in the Phillips Neighborhood, and around the world. My piece of the dream is seeing everyone grow in godliness and giftedness, leveraging my ministry and leadership to encourage and equip everyone’s ministry and leadership.

Whatever our piece of Daniel’s dream, we are encouraged to hold onto it and to pray and labor for it, because we know who wins: “To him [The Son of Man] was given a kingdom, an everlasting dominion.” The honors go to us, too, not because we’re more powerful than the beasts, but because of the One who takes our place, our humanity, and who takes on the battle for us. Of course I’m talking about Jesus.

I wouldn’t be talking about Jesus if he had not claimed that very title, from this very passage, for himself. We may read Daniel looking for inspiration and encouragement for our lives of resistance to the beasts and monsters around us. And within us. That’s how Daniel’s dream spoke to his fellow Hebrews and encouraged them, in the last centuries before Jesus. But Jesus read Daniel and saw the script for his life and ministry: He is the Son of Man, the Human One, who represents us to God, and God to us. He is God’ s man on earth, and our man in heaven. He is God before us, and us before God. Through his triumph over the boastful beasts and monsters, we triumph as well.

The ultimate gift then of Israel’s years of Exile is Jesus, “The Son of Man.” And with this Son of Man comes our new humanity, a restored, a glorious, and triumphant humanity. Keep your eyes on that light which Daniel saw in the darkness of exile. Hold onto your piece of that dream and pursue it, and we’ll make it through the thicket of the world’s long dark night.

“At that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince who stands for the children of your people, and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time your people shall be delivered, every one who shall be found written in the book. And multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine as the brightness of the heavens, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” Daniel 12: 1-3

“Awake…arise….shine.”

The junior youth faith exploration class helped me prepare today’s message. Two weeks ago our material broached the subject of eternal life, so class began with them listing their questions about post-resurrection existence. You’ll hear their questions in just a few minutes.

But first, I must acknowledge that I have been told not to preach such a sermon as this, about the next life. Not by anyone here, Thank God. But I am told, and have read, that people today mostly just want to hear about how God and the Christian faith might improve this life, and this world, here and now. And they do help much in this life, I believe. So preach about peace, about wisdom, about motivation and organization for achieving your God-given potential here and now, I read. And those are all good things. But when it comes to eternal life, or the next life, or our accountability to God for our lives, well, that implies one of the subjects we typically want most to avoid: death. As the saying goes, “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.” Including me, I confess.

If that weren’t enough, doing a sermon series on Old Testament literature would make it even harder to find something to say about heaven, eternal life and the resurrection. Because for most of the Old Testament, there’s nothing about any of those subjects. You might tease out the hint of eternal life from some of the Psalms, like Psalm 73: 24, “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward will receive me into glory.” Or Psalm 23: “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Isaiah also gives us a promise, just before the Exile, that “God will swallow up death in victory, and wipe the tears from all faces.” But understanding those words to mean our personal eternal lives becomes most possible looking backwards, from Jesus’ resurrection, not so much before. For most of Israel’s history, her saints risked death or faced it for their God, their faith and their people believing that God and his people would be eternal, but they were less sure about their own personal immortality.

Until, that is, Daniel’s vision recorded in chapter 12 of his book. Here we read the earliest, clearest promise of resurrection and life eternal for God’s saints in the whole Bible. I don’t know at what point in his life Daniel received this vision and assurance. If he received it near the end of his life, then how amazing it is that he had risked death in the lion’s death for his God and his people without the assurance of any part of himself surviving afterward.

Maybe it was because Daniel and others like him had risked death that he was granted this assurance of eternal life. Maybe this promise and assurance was a gift of Israel’s dire and difficult years of exile, a gift for which she was prepared by 70 years of faithfulness in pagan Babylon. Maybe Israel had to die to the nationhood she had under kings like David and Solomon, before she could hear about the immortality of her saints. Maybe Israel had to be confronted with the brutal reality of the pagan imperialism with which she had long flirted, in which most subjects lived and labored and died like mere drones in a bee hive, before she could hear something that implied the priceless and infinite worth of each individual before God. So for this week and next, I will preach on some of the gifts that came to the world and the church out of Israel’s time of Exile, or because of Israel’s heroic resistance and resilience during this time when she lost so much.

This promise of eternal life is so unmistakably clear in Daniel 12 that by the time of Jesus, those Jews who accepted Daniel as part of their sacred and inspired writings believed in a resurrection, life after death, and the divine assessment of all lives, while those who didn’t accept Daniel as sacred scripture did not believe in life after death or a divine judgment. Jesus was among those Jews who accepted Daniel. He even quoted or alluded to Daniel quite a few times. In a clear reference to the passage we just heard, Jesus spoke of the last judgment and said, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Mt. 13: 24).” Not only were resurrection and eternal life central to his teaching and preaching on the kingdom of God, he demonstrated them by walking out of his grave, very much alive.

Still, we preachers sometimes counsel each other to stick to more immediate and practical concerns. Yet the more I think about it, the more I think that eternal life is a very immediate and practical concern. May we all live long, happy and healthy lives to the age of 100. But even so, eternal life is closer than we think. People may sometimes criticize us for being “so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good,” and I can see how they may be right. But I see in Jesus someone who was of such earthly good precisely because he was so heavenly-minded. His miracles and ministry were breakthroughs of the future into the present.

The Apostle Paul said that if we only have hope in this world, we are of all people most to be pitied. So let’s just eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. One can preach and teach all they like on matters of wisdom, peace, justice and virtue in this life, but if death always has the last laugh, its hard not to think that its all pointless. Death is the most unjust of the injustices we face, and the most oppressive of all our oppressors. The fear of death is the most effective tool in the arsenal of dictators and despots. Its how they keep the poor poor and the oppressed oppressed. Thus death is the “last enemy to be put under Christ’s feet.” His resurrection is God’s guarantee that he has as good as won the battle with death. If we can see beyond the humiliation and oppression of death and affirm the eternal and priceless worth of each person, that’s got to make a difference in how we view everyone we encounter, and how we live here and now. That’s one reason for the historic Anabaptist peace position: you read early Anabaptist writers and not only do they say that peace and non-violence are better for this world than the alternatives, their hope of a better resurrection to a better life is what gave them courage and comfort to preach the gospel, to arrange their lives around God’s justice, and to face their enemies non-violently, lovingly and courageously.

But eternity is not in ourselves. The Psalms don’t say that we are everlasting, but that “the steadfast love of God is everlasting.” Anyone whom God loves lives as long as God continues to love him or her, which is forever. As for judgment, its up to us whether we experience such everlasting love as heavenly or hellish, depending upon if we want such love and how we value it. That’s how I understand judgment: out of God’s respect for us, we get what we most deeply, truly want. As John the Gospel writer put it, “This is the judgment: light has come into the world and people preferred darkness.”

More than that, I cannot say. Any attempts to describe everlasting life have to use words for things familiar to us here and now. All the biblical images for everlasting life, of a city in John’s Revelation, or of a temple, only give us symbols and shadows of something better than those things. So I can’t answer fully all the following questions that the junior youth faith exploration class put to me a few Sundays ago, when we had a class on this same subject. But here they are:

• What will we do for all eternity?
• Will we see all the other people who are in heaven? And who will we be with? Our family and church, or more?
• Will there be animals in heaven, and if so, will we be able to communicate with them?
• What will we look like? Will we recognize people familiar to ourselves, or everyone? Or will we need name tags?
• Can we see people on earth who haven’t died yet?

Oh boy. I won’t do like Sylvia Browne, the self-proclaimed psychic and regular on daytime TV talk shows, and claim to answer all those questions about heaven. But I think they reveal some important and universal things about ourselves: that we care about people and relationships, and yet we feel some painful estrangement and separation in this life, and that we are looking for harmony, even union, with God, others and creation. That also implies some justice in this life and the next. We don’t want the estrangement, oppression and suffering of this life to continue nor to triumph.

So I’ll venture a few ideas in response to the reasonable questions of our youth:

As for what will we do in the next life, don’t worry about getting bored after several hundred thousand years. God is timeless and time-free. Could it be that we will be timeless and time-free too? If so, we may literally not have time to get bored. Furthermore, we’ll be with God, who is infinite. Why wouldn’t getting to know God also be infinitely exciting and delightful? The same can be said for everyone else here: infinitely interesting and delightful to get to know in their realest, most intimate selves. We’re also told that we will rule the world with Christ. Rule in the same servanthood sense of Christ. The world is an infinite universe. No way to get bored there, either.

As for being with other people and seeing them, how would eternal life be a restoration and reunion otherwise? All the biblical images include people, not just persons. There’s nothing in the New Jerusalem for anyone who prefers isolation to community, injustice to justice, war to peace, feuds to forgiveness, or revenge to reconciliation. All the more reason to live in justice, love and forgiveness now.

As for how we’ll recognize each other: on that mount of Transfiguration, when the disciples saw Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah, they knew who they were. They didn’t ask, they weren’t introduced, Moses and Elijah weren’t even wearing name tags; they just seem to have recognized Moses and Elijah in their eternal persons. As the words of the old hymn put it, “We shall know each other better when the mist has rolled away.”

As for animals in heaven, and being able to talk with them, I’d really like that to be the case. Many times in the Bible we read about how God loves all of his creation, and delights in his animals especially. The Bible speaks of redemption in terms of liberation for all of creation, not just for us humans. “Let the mountains rejoice and the trees clap their hands,” we read again and again. If anything, I suspect that our relationship with creation will be restored to God’s original intent. So if you have ever felt like your pet dog or your pet cat was a true companion and a source of delight and joy, or if you delighted in the power and partnership of a horse, then perhaps that was something quite spiritual, a foretaste of the coming restoration and renewal of all creation and its intended harmony. I just hope that all of the fish I have caught over the years are forgiving.

As for whether or not the saints now with God can see what is going on among us here and now, part of me looks at the state of the world and says, “I kind of hope not. The fare on the evening news, or the TV Reality shows would only spoil it for them.” From what I read in Daniel 12, I get the impression that their bodies at least are awaiting resurrection. From elsewhere in the New Testament, I get the sense that their souls or spirits are safely resting in God until the day comes when all of God’s saints, body and soul, will “rise and shine” like the sun. For them to rest and delight in God, all they need to contemplate is God. As Paul told his Corinthian disciples, “We would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5: 8).” You go through ancient European graveyards and one word you often see on tombstones before the 18^th Century is “Resurgam,” Latin for, “I shall arise.” I think they had it right: the resurrection that Daniel foresaw will happen in the same moment for all of us, and it will be a reunion of the soul with the body, a resurrection body like that of the resurrected Jesus.

What that resurrection body shall be like I’m at a loss to say. The class wanted to know at what age our resurrected bodies will be. I’d like my 30-year-old body back, when my pants were four sizes smaller. But that’s assuming again that we’ll be living in time the same way we do now. We cannot venture far onto this topic before we must confess with the Apostle Paul, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has it entered the human mind, all that God has prepared for those who love him (I Cor. 2:9).”

No, let’s come back to the present and lay hold of what this promise meant to Daniel and his fellow Israelites in exile, who had lost a war and a country, but who triumphed by surviving, a people who had lost their nationhood but not their identity, who had lost the respect of other mortals, but not the love and faithfulness of God, who had even lost their temple, only to catch a glimpse of how God would dwell with them forever, not only as a nation, but as persons.

I’ve got to believe that Daniel’s glimpse of the glory to come says the same thing for us, twenty-five centuries later, because of all the ways that Jesus and the apostles build upon this very vision. Especially since we, too, live as an exile people awaiting reunion in that city which God is building. What Daniel saw, in that vision of all mortals rising from the dust for a final accounting, tells us that we each matter, dearly and deeply, to God; that our choices and decisions matter, for eternity; that each person we see is of infinite and eternal value to God, including the person we see in the mirror; that no evil, injustice or oppression has the last word over us, not even the injustice and oppression of death. “So let us not weary in doing good, because in due time we shall reap what we sow.” In effect, life wins. So does God. And so do we. Amen.

(pause)

In a moment we shall sing a hymn that was sung during most of the memorial services over which I presided when I pastored in Kansas, with the words of the recurring refrain, “O seek that beautiful stream.” That’s from a biblical image for eternal life: a stream that never stops flowing, free, clear and refreshing. I think it was requested so often by Kansas Mennonites precisely because such streams are few and far between there, and all the more prized. Also, the generation that was passing had learned the song in the original German during their childhood, and had come to treasure it all the more, for all the memorial services they had attended. I hope I make it through the hymn, because singing it feels like one of those thin places, between time and timelessness, where you feel how much you are already invested in the next world, the resurrection life, because of the beloved friends and family members you have entrusted to the hope of everlasting reunion. Remember, whenever that is, its sooner than we think.

(Note: Since the individual’s hope of eternal life remains unclear throughout much of the Old Testament until the last visions of Daniel’s long life, I don’t know how much the hope of resurrection was a factor in Daniel’s willingness to face lions and death at this point in his life. Was his courage more about his people’s survival than his own? Or was it more about the vindication of his God than of himself? Since I don’t know the answer to those questions (someone else may be able to set me straight), I have left that consideration out of what follows: an imaginative attempt –I hope– to put myself into Daniel’s sandals during his long night in the lions’ den.)

My earliest childhood memory is of my Father holding me, rocking me, stroking my head and telling me that everything was all right, that I was safe, and that I could stop screaming. “But what about the lion at the window?” I asked. “There’s no lion,” he replied. “You’ve just had a bad dream.” And that’s when I first heard and learned the meaning of the word “nightmare.” I wish this night were but a dream.

Funny, but before having that nightmare, I had never seen a lion before. I must have heard about lions in songs, folk tales or a Bible story, like the one in which David fought a lion, in his youth, or in which Sampson killed one for sport. As a father, I have comforted all my children, during their early childhood, when they too awakened, screaming from similar nightmares about lions. They’ve never seen one either. I suspect that the fear of lions is something God gives us in our mother’s womb, so that we know better than to go looking for them.

It was only a few years later that I finally saw lions, though still not real ones. A lion was depicted on some of the banners of the Babylonian army while soldiers rampaged through the streets of my home city, Jerusalem, killing, chasing, or capturing every person they found, and burning or knocking down every building that stood, including our precious temple. After my father hid me in an empty water jar, I never saw him, my mother, nor my brother again. I presume that they died in the sack of the city. Sixty years later, I still know neither where nor how they died. I survived simply because the soldiers who discovered me thought I was of the right age to make a good slave.

But the imperial administration of Babylon had different ideas. A slave I became, all right, but to the Imperial Court, to become an advisor. I suppose they originally wanted some token Hebrew mascots to fill out some quota for public relations with all the minorities in the Babylonian Empire. But between myself and my fellow Hebrew adoptees, the royal court got more than it bargained for. `Having heard the letter from Jeremiah to the effect that we exiles were to seek the peace of this city to which God had sent us, we were willing to be good and trustworthy civil servants. But the royal Babylonian court had this incurable tendency to conflate their gods with their kings and queens, and to demand of their subjects the faith and worship that only belong to GOD MOST HIGH. That got us Hebrews in trouble several times.

It must be something in the Tigris from which they drink, because now the Medo-Persian alliance that has taken over the empire has done the same thing: they’ve declared Darius the mede a god. I blame the courtesans, opportunists and professional yes-man who hang all over the court like leeches, who stroke the king’s ego, for their own interests and agendas, of course. Sometimes I think they run the empire more than does the king, and I fear they shall run it over a cliff. I also blame the weakness of human nature which, when presented with such power as what Darius has, falls to the temptations of god-hood like a rotten mango in a windstorm. So of course he couldn’t resist their suggestion that he be worshiped as a God. I am the first one to be hustled off to the lion’s den for worshiping a forbidden God.

Which is the way I wanted it. Not that I went out intentionally seeking death. Death came seeking me, and offered me a fool’s bargain for—for what? A few more years, at most? Its not the way my children and grandchildren want it, however. but I believe that I will serve them better in faithfulness unto death, than by buying a few more years of life by compromise and cowardice. If their mother and grandmother, Rachel, were still alive, she would have joined me in prayer and in this lion’s den. Better now that a harmless old man like me be the first test case of this blasphemy and buffoonery than someone younger, and with more to lose. Better by far that the first victim be a high profile public person like me, to make this a high profile, public case. Whether I live or die, my being here in this den will expose the iron teeth behind the empire’s sweet smile. In life or death, the Imperial administration shall again get more than it bargained for with its Hebrew servants.

And now I finally see lions. Up close, through the moonlight through the bars above. They’re both more frightening and more beautiful than what I had imagined. Perfectly proportioned, but for terrifying, pursuing and killing. I get glimpses in the moonlight of their eyes—golden, glowing reflections, like some jewel–yet which strike me as cold, alien and calculating. When they yawn or roar I see their teeth, like daggers, or I glimpse the flash of claws, like iron nails. Their roaring sends a chill spiraling up my spine. Their breath is terrible, like something long dead and rotten on a hot day in the market. It is not mine to ask why my God would make such beautiful, yet dreadful creatures, except to say that surely he did not make them to serve the arrogance and pride of mortal men and their empires. If anything, He may have made lions so as to humble us.

From the call of the crier somewhere on the palace walls I know it is past the 4^th watch of the night. The time remaining among these restless beasts is about as long as the time I have already spent. I was fully prepared to die when they opened the gate and lowered me down into this den. My legs quivered and my knees knocked, while my heart kept rising into my throat. The same feeling comes back whenever one of the lions roars, or passes by me, or looks at me, or when two of them start playing and wrestling with each other, giving me glimpses of their power and skill.

I had prayed to God that either he protect me and spare me while in this den, or that he give me the courage to face death in a way that would honor Him and advance his cause. I confess, I was more prepared for death than for life. I am surprised to be yet whole and breathing, without even a scratch. Should things change and these beasts decide that dinner comes late and I am the main course, I will count the few moments of pain and terror as nothing compared to all the joys of my long and meaningful life.

But as the hours go on and I recite the prayers and the psalms of the night-time vigils, I feel another presence here with me, like that of a lion, only more powerful than these beasts, and infinitely more warm, wise and gracious. And like my human father so long ago, He is holding me, comforting me, re-assuring me that this nightmare too shall vanish with the morning light, and that his truth, and I, shall be vindicated. I don’t have to survive for that to happen. Nothing in this dark and smelly den can take away from me what I hold most dear and have labored for all my life: my testimony to my forbidden God. And yet I am gaining hope that I shall survive to see the sunrise, when, as King David said in the Psalm, “I shall look in triumph upon my enemies.” God reassures me with the prophet’s words to Eli: “Whoever honors me will I honor.”

There is another way in which I am not alone in this den of beasts: All of Israel, God’s people, are here with me, in that I can feel the sustaining, comforting effect of their prayers for me, like Moses praying for the Israelites when they battled the Amalekites (Ex. 17). As long as his hands were raised to the Lord in prayer, his people prevailed. There must be other saints, other watchmen and women up with me this night, awaiting the dawn, holding me up prayerfully in their hands before God. So far, I seem to be prevailing, peacefully, and patiently.

All Israel is here with me in another sense: when have we not been surrounded by threatening beasts? When have we not been sustained and protected by a gracious and fearsome God more powerful and dreadful than ourselves and our foes? Unless we had removed ourselves from his protective embrace? My story tonight is my people’s story since Abraham and Sarah.

All Israel is also here with me in the sense that I represent them in this den of testing; I have taken their place, so that hopefully they need not come to this place. And should they ever come here or to another den of darkness, for trial and testing, they will know that someone else overcame their fear and thus triumphed, in life or in death.

Whether tomorrow they celebrate my deliverance, or bury my bones, this is what I pray that my people remember from this trial: that if we cling to God, God clings to us, anywhere our testimony takes us; and that our forbidden God is powerful enough to deliver us from any situation, and worthy of our praise and loyalty even when He doesn’t immediately deliver us, because He is powerful enough to use even our deaths and defeats to our good. Because our testimony for God, and our life with God, are more valuable than survival itself. With that assurance I turn my attention back to the prayers of the night time vigils and pray the words of the Psalm of David, with any of my people who are yet up with me during this watch of the night: “O Lord, how long will you look on? Rescue my life from their ravages,  my precious life from these lions. Then will I give you thanks in the great assembly;  among throngs of people I will praise you. (Ps. 35: 17-18).”

You could say, “But I have the right of way,” as loudly and firmly as you like, but those could be your last words, like other famous last words, such as, “Let’s stay on the water a little bit more to see if the fish really do bite like crazy when a storm’s rolling in.” Being correct would be cold comfort if you insist on your right of way and collide with those three quarters of a ton of big old bull buffalo that just stepped into the road running through Yellowstone National Park, or if you get too close and he decides to collide with you. He doesn’t know the traffic laws. Nor does he understand how insurance works; he just knows that someone in the herd must be the first to step into the road, so that those noisy metal beasts with the rolling rubber feet will come to a stop, and allow the rest of his herd to cross.

Then out of those shiny metal beasts come those two-legged creatures with flashing cameras, cell phones and video cameras. He turns his shaggy head both directions and casts a baleful, defiant eye at the cars and the tourists, as though he’s thinking, “Yeah, make my day and come a little closer.” But he’s already had plenty of fights with other threats to his herd, like wolves and grizzly bears, and he has the scars to show it. He stands his ground in the middle of the road while out of the meadows and the woods come dozens of cows, calves and some younger bulls, some of them his sons, some of them potential rivals. One of them may one day replace him as the leader, father and protector of the herd. They are crossing the road looking for water or better pasture, and his risky behavior—just stepping onto the road first– makes crossing the road less risky for them. When the last of the cows and the littlest of the calves have crossed the road, then off he slowly ambles after his herd. “Did you see that?” ask the moms and dads and littlest children. “Yeah,” say some of the other kids, barely looking up from texting their friends or playing games on their I-Phones. Such a bold buffalo crossing is a daily occurrence somewhere in Yellowstone National Park.

In today’s Bible passage, God’s people faced a dangerous crossing, and an old bull has stepped out into traffic to take the risk and give them cover. Fifty years into Israel’s Exile, Babylon is under new management: an alliance of Medes and Persians has conquered Babylon and now rules the land to which the Jews were taken. But spiritually, things are no different. They’re at it again, trying to make gods out of mortal men. Whenever that happens, Daniel and his Jewish friends know the drill: love and respect all mortals equally and indiscriminately, from the king to the lowliest commoner; but worship and trust only God absolutely, whatever the cost, and God will vindicate himself and you, whether in life or death. But in previous instances of resistance to idolatry and blasphemy, they went about their faithfulness and worship without much fuss or publicity, until their enemies caught them at it. Otherwise, they didn’t go out to provoke a public confrontation over their faith.

But in this instance, the old bull, Daniel, steps out into the road, so to speak. For that’s what he is, after fifty years in Babylon, an old bull with leadership responsibilities for his nation and his people. Since Daniel was already a boy when the Exile started, I’d put him at about 60 years plus, which seems younger to me every year.

To stop the traffic, so to speak, Daniel opens the window of his prayer room so that people can see him praying three times a day, illegally, to a god other than the king. Did you know that prayer could be an act of nonviolent direct action and protest? It is whenever idolatry rules the land.

Now, what if Daniel had not provoked this showdown with his public prayers? What if he had said to himself, “Its up to me not to offend anyone and provoke a conflict, so I’ll keep doing my prayers in private, only more so?”

Remember, the jealous, manipulative and unscrupulous people who are out gunning for Daniel and his title, who have manipulated the king into signing this idolatrous decree, that all prayers and worship are to go only to himself for thirty days, show all the characteristics of predators and bullies. Like all bullies and predators, they prefer their victims cheap and easy. What if their first victims, to be fed to the lions, were not Daniel but the young, the weak, the elderly, young parents, children, those wavering in their faith, who may have renounced their faith at the first smell of lion breath, while Daniel continued to live in privilege and security, protected by his proximity to the king? What good then to himself would have been his long life and his leadership among God’s people? How could he even live with himself if others went first into the lions’ den because of him? More than five hundred years before the cross of Calvary, we see in Daniel a foreshadowing of Jesus, who said, “I lay down my life willingly; it is not taken from me.”

I am reminded here of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. They were leading a coordinated campaign of sit-ins and pray-ins, marches and other peaceful efforts to overturn their legalized, segregated, second-class citizenship. But the police chief, Bull Connor, engineered enough court injunctions to make every conceivable Constitutional avenue of free speech and free assembly illegal.

Dr. King and other leaders of the campaign met secretly in a hotel room to discuss their options. There was much debate and hand-wringing over the possibility that, if they went ahead with a march that had already been declared, many young people would not finish high school without a criminal record. And any who had already been arrested before could be put away for years if they get arrested again. Do they call it off, or do they go ahead at that terrible price?

Finally, Dr. King said, “I’m going to my room to pray.” Once in prayer, a strange peace and a sense of purpose settled over him. He emerged a little later a changed man, literally. He had traded in his dapper suit and tie for denim jeans and a casual shirt. “These are my goin’-to-jail clothes,” said Dr. King. He led the next planned street march, and was promptly arrested. Again. And while he was writing his Letter From a Birmingham Jail in solitary confinement, or even because he was in solitary confinement, thousands of Birmingham’s black citizens, and many white friends, young and old and all ages in between, found renewed courage to continue the marches, even in the face of police dogs, fire hoses and billy clubs.

Which brings me to a point I wish to make about leadership. I feel proud and privileged around the kind of leadership our members exhibit in the commissions of this church, in ministries to the wider community, leadership in inter-Mennonite agencies like the local relief sale and Ten Thousand Villages, leadership in the conference (like with Gebremichael Heramo) and even in the wider denomination (like with Kim Friesen).

Both Dr. King and the prophet Daniel show us that the first task of leadership is to be and to do that which we would encourage in others. Our most effective tool of leadership is our example, by going where we would lead, even when there are risks. Especially when there are risks. Leadership like what Daniel and Dr. King exhibited, is first about living the truth, then telling the truth, and then taking the heat for doing both.

But to lead in that way requires courage. And that is what I wish to focus on most this morning: courage. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the mastery of fear. Christian faith is all about courage, more than it is about certainty or figuring everything out. Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian, defined Christian faith as “the courage to accept that we are accepted.” Accepting that we are accepted takes courage in a world that is always telling us, “You’re worth less than him or her or them; you’re too much of this, too little of that.” That’s why leadership requires much time in prayer and attention to the spiritual life, the reason why I have a spiritual director. So that we lead and live out of the assurance of our acceptance with God, and not out of any fear of others.

Courage is not anything we can master once and for all, and then hang up on the shelf like a trophy. Every stage of our lives requires that we find and show anew the courage to face the challenges, risks and responsibilities that come with that stage, before we can move on to the next one. Daniel, at the age of 60 or more, acted more boldly and provocatively than he did in his previous run-ins with imperial injustice and idolatry. But this is a different life stage, when he has public responsibilities toward his country and his people. So he acts in a way that is public and provocative.

Which makes me wonder: Do we have this whole life cycle thing backwards? Don’t we usually think that youth is the major time for bold, risky behavior, while the later years of life are for conserving and consolidating all that we have gained, by being careful, conventional and constrained? But in the life of Daniel, we see the opposite: just when we might expect him to say, “I’ve taken my risks, I’ve rallied to the cause so many times already, I’m tired—let someone else take the lead and the heat this time,” the elder has stepped forth to risk life and limb for the young, the weak and the impressionable. Its as though the general has come out of the trenches to draw enemy fire, so that the younger troops can live to fight another day. After all, this particular attack was about Daniel.

Or consider the case of the retirement age grandmothers and great-grandmothers who lately have been showing up at military recruitment centers around the country, saying, “Send me to Iraq or Afghanistan; I’ll go in the place of those dear young people who should be home with their parents or their children, or their spouses, who should be starting their marriages, their families, their college educations or their careers; I’ve lived my life—let them live theirs.” I can’t help thinking that maybe they should induct them and send them. Not with weapons or in uniform, but just to bring the gifts of their love, their experiences and their wisdom to the common struggle to be human. After all, President Carter’s mother, Lillian Carter, joined the Peace Corps and served in India for two years, at the age of 68.

There are so many mission and service teams, here and abroad, staffed by people who are eager, driven, energetic, well-intentioned, quite sure of themselves… and usually young. Some of them crash and burn, frustrated by the inevitable gap between their aspirations and their aggravations, the aggravations of facing overwhelming needs with underwhelming resources, and sometimes the aggravations and tribulations of getting along with other workers who are equally as eager, driven, motivated, well-intentioned, sure of themselves…. and young. Sometimes they can use a grandfatherly or grandmotherly figure who can tell them, “Slow down; you’ve got time; you’ll get the hang of it; you don’t have to know it all now, nor to do it all now; don’t take yourself so seriously; you’re not indispensable; take a nap; take care of yourself; and trust God.” That’s one reason why we have a mentoring program in this church.

Whatever our age or stage in life, then, the kingdom of God has a place, a task and a challenge for us, all of which require courage. The very last task, the one which may require of us the most courage, will be to let it all go as we die, and to confide the fruits of our labors, our loves and our leadership to the gracious hands of God. Before then, we may retire from our careers. But we can never retire our courage.

As for the young, when I read wisdom literature in the Bible, I see that the young are doubly and triply enjoined to watch their steps and to apply themselves to learning wisdom, prudence and the fear of God. Says the first chapter of Proverbs: “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.” As an elder King Solomon said to the youth of his day, in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them.’”

In other words, youth is not just for experimenting, pushing the envelope and testing our limits. Yes, youth, do that service assignment, or do that semester of study and service abroad, yes, even try and see if whitewater kayaking or rock climbing are for you. Its easier now than it will be in sixty years. But youth is also for laying the groundwork and foundation for wisdom in later ages and stages of life. So, as Proverbs chapter 2 says, “Turn your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.” Like Daniel did, in his youth.

That also requires courage, especially when everyone around us is saying, “Revolt and rebel! Boundaries are just for breaking!” Especially in the commercial youth culture of today. But if we start early, facing the challenges, risks and responsibilities of youth with courage and a heart seeking wisdom, we’ll have more resources and strength with which to face the challenges of all the ages and stages that follow. The courage with which Daniel stepped onto the road for the sake of his people and his God did not suddenly come in the mail one day with his first social security check. It had been growing and developing through all the previous stages of his life, in the life-long pursuit of wisdom.

So, again, Christian life begins, continues and ends with courage. Christian faith is a stance of courage, “the courage to accept that we are accepted” by God. Every age and stage of life requires courage, the courage to to avoid worthless risks, and the courage to take necessary risks, like Daniel did, and the wisdom to know the difference between them. For that, it pays to start early, and keep it up, all through life, to the very end. Like Daniel did.

I. Recognize the Craziness around us: a craziness of god-like thinking and wanting.

What would have happened if the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had returned to France from exile, not just once, as he did to fight the Battle of Waterloo, only to lose and get sent back to exile, but again, to try a third time for the throne he had already lost twice? That was the point of a delightful movie, made over fifteen years ago, called, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In it, a switch is made on the island of Elba, where Napoleon lived his last years in exile, so that a Napoleon look-alike stays on under British imprisonment. Meanwhile, the real Napoleon has been smuggled onto a ship, bound for France. There, some spies and agents await him, ready to declare him emperor and try, one more time, to help him conquer and rule Europe again.

But things go awry. For one thing, the Napoleon look-alike so enjoys the pampered life of luxury under British control that he conveniently neglects to declare himself for the impostor he is. And his captors are none the wiser. So the real former emperor of France has to live like a poor man and a beggar under the name of Eugene Lenormand, waiting for a declaration from the Island of Elba: “I am not the emperor—he is among you.” But it never comes. In fact, the impostor so much enjoys his life of Riley that he dies in that role, probably of too much wine and rich foods. From then on, all his efforts to declare himself the real Napoleon are met with laughter and scorn. “They just took away the last person who thought he was Napoleon! Take a number and stand in line!”

Among the peasants and the poor of inner-city Paris, Napoleon meets a boy and his mother, a grieving, recently-bereaved widow. She falls in love with him, and he with her. But when he keeps insisting that he is the Emperor Napoleon, and that soon, she shall be Empress of France and all Europe, she thinks he’s having crazy spells. She weeps and pleads with him to come to his senses and accept all the simple joys and pleasures of life already available to them, and not to risk it for some loony-tunes scheme for overthrowing the government.

But Napoleon remains un-dissuaded until one night a wrong turn lands him inside the walls of the grounds of a hospital and asylum for delusional and hallucinating patients. Especially for a certain kind of delusional and hallucinating patient. All of them are walking around with their hands inside their coats, with hats turned sideways on their heads, claiming to be Napoleon, Emperor of France and conquerer of Europe. Seeing such craziness, the former Emperor can’t help but wonder, “Which one of us is crazy, and who is sane?”

And that gets him to wondering: Is my quest for empire crazy? And the human cost of sending thousands of young men off to kill, conquer and die for my pride and ambition, what is that, if not crazy? Or that they would obey my orders to do so, at the cost of their lives, their loves, their homes and their humanity? Or that, having failed twice already, and at such terrible human toll, I should try it again? Especially when I already have enough to make me happy: a woman I love, who loves me, and her son, who looks up to me like a father, unlike the son I had by the empress Josephine? That’s the choice before the emperor: not so much if he would be king, but how he will be king, where will he be king, and over what kind of realm. Will he try again to rule a vast, un-manageable and corrupt realm taken by force, and ruled by fear, or a simple, sacred, peaceable and manageable realm of hearth and home where a queen and a prince already have given him their loyalty, out of love, which is already his for the pleasure of his love and loyalty in return?

I won’t tell you how Napoleon decides. But we know how King Nebuchadnezzar decided, for he could have turned in his crown and his scepter any day of the year. But he didn’t. According to today’s text, it was in fact taken from him for a time.

Archaeologists and historians have no independent record that I am aware of to the effect that, for seven years, Nebuchadnezzar was absent from his throne while he wandered the hillsides eating grass like a cow. But its not the kind of thing that the Babylonians would have wanted to post on their official imperial monuments. The unity and durability of their empire depended upon the emperor being seen as perfect, infallible, even as a god.

On the other hand, from what little I know of Babylonian religion, I wonder if his spell of madness may have impressed the priests and the magicians, astrologers and sorcerers in his court, who would have seen him crawling around on all fours and grunting, and thought, “Cool! He is indeed touched by heaven, a true son of the gods.” It would be entirely possible, within the magical, mystical pagan mind of much of the world even today, that people would believe that they could—and did—change places and shapes with animals, rocks, trees and other creations. If they had enough magical, mystical power to do so, of course. It happened all the time in their myths, magic and legends. Kind of like the man who told his doctor, “I keep feeling like I’m really a dog.” The doctor asked him, “How long has that been going on?” To which the patient answered: “Oh, a long time, doctor. Ever since I was a puppy.”

But the Jewish Bible says that Nebuchadnezzar only thought he was a beast. And so he acted like one. True to the human condition, it was when Nebuchadnezzar believed most that he was a god, that he became the most bestial and animal. And thereby the story also says what was unspeakable, dangerous and subversive in its time to say: that anyone with so much unlimited power and who cultivated and enjoyed the worship of others was in danger of going stark raving crazy. Because absolute power can corrupt more than our morals. Or that to give such power and worship to another human being, or to claim them for oneself, was already stark raving crazy. It might also be saying to Daniel’s friends, and to future generations of God’s people, that now that the impressive grandeur and glory of Babylon the Great is getting old and you’re starting to see how it has feet of clay, and that, in its success and excess it is sowing the seeds of its own coming decay and destruction, even while people worship it and their leaders, if you see through all that, you’re not the crazy ones. If you have started to wonder if this non-stop imperial compulsion to always either expand or die is crazy, or if the tendency to overreach and conquer more territory than it can control, defend and maintain is crazy, and to always stir up trouble on its margins to destabilize its neighbors and thus make enemies out of needed allies is crazy and self-defeating, then, no, you’re not alone. You can trust your God-given perceptions. Don’t give in to the worship of the emperor, his empire, and his gods going on around you. Its all crazy. And their days are numbered.

When Nebuchadnezzar got down on all fours and began eating grass, maybe it was not so much that God made him crazy. Rather, maybe God simply lifted the veil on the craziness of believing that our own powers match those of God; that we are entirely self-made people who alone are responsible for all the good things we have and have done. There’s even some irony in the fact that the king whose symbol and mascot was a four-footed animal– the lion– came to look like a lion, with a shaggy mane and long claws, but was reduced to acting and eating like a cow.

This is not just an ancient thing. In our recent economic turmoil, we have suffered from some of the same crazyness: banks, businesses and brokerage firms that got too big to fail, but which almost did fail after they went for wealth and rewards that were too good to be true. Or for nations to try policing the world and build other nations while their own bridges fall and their schools fail is also Nebuchadnezzar-like crazy-ness.

And its not just a political or a business thing. The one dark side of our wonderful new computerized technological world is that the more we can conceivably do, the more we are often expected to do. Or the more we may feel ourselves obligated to do. For example, how many of us grew up printing our own photos? Now we can, and its good fun if you have the time, the skill and the pieces of technology that communicate with each other. If not, it can be an exercise in sheer frustration, and a waste of time. The other morning I pushed the print button on my computer and nothing happened at my personal printer. It still hasn’t happened, and I’m not sure why. Its too complex for me. In my befuddlement I remembered how “printing” used to be something I did with a big fat number two pencil on a Big Chief tablet on a slanted wooden desk during second grade. And I started to miss those days.

New versions and advances in technology are being hawked to us all the time, on the self-evident virtue that they are new and improved. But will they really free up time for more important things, or will they eat up our time, take us away from God, creation and each other? If we suspect that that may be the case, it doesn’t mean that we’re crazy. And should the newest, latest thing break down, we see the other side of the coin: the more we can do, the more we are expected to do, until we can’t, for reasons beyond our control. And then we’re left more helpless than we were back in the days of number two pencils and Big Chief tablets. I call this compulsion to do as much as we can, because we conceivably can, “obligation inflation.”

Speaking of “obligation inflation,” yesterday we started that nine week non-stop season of holiday observances that someone called, “HalloNewThankMas.” I especially love the Advent and Thanksgiving parts. But it seems that there’s barely time to catch one’s breath after one big bash before the next one starts heating up. And if last year we sent 125 Christmas cards and attended 3 holiday parties and spent $600, then obligation inflation means that this year the pressure is on to send 145 cards, attend 4 holiday parties and single-handedly try to rescue the economy.

In the face of all this crazy-making obligation inflation, it might us help to survive and find our way if we remember that we serve a God who has been known to say No, a timeless God who even rested on the seventh day of creation. To survive and stay sane we must learn to recognize the craziness of imperial thinking and its attendant obligation inflation, and to hear instead the still, small voice of God reminding us that he is God and we are human, as Daniel did, and to trust our gut instincts, whenever we need to say, “That’s too much, that’s too far, or even, that’s just plain crazy.” That’s my first point this morning: learn to recognize the craziness of this imperial mindset that disdains our human limits and which constantly reaches for god-hood, whatever the cost. Sometimes, the most godly thing to say is “No” or “Enough.”

II That we regularly push the reset buttons on our sanity through prayer and worship.

And whenever we do recognize the craziness around us and taking root within us, then we need to push our sanity reset buttons. Which leads me to my second point: that we regularly reset our sanity buttons through prayer and worship; that we even think of prayer and worship as how we re-set our sanity buttons. People sometimes tell me, “My reset button is going for a walk in the woods, or a run, or listening to good music.” Which is great. Keep it up. But Christian prayer and worship have this element and this purpose that running, waling, yoga or good music may lack: they challenge the most supreme craziness, the hardest one to recognize and remove– the craziness of Nebuchadnezzar, believing ourselves to be entirely self-made people, no, make that, self-made gods.

For me, its not enough to challenge this craziness and push the reset button just once a week in worship, though that helps. Every day, every morning when I pray, there’s something settling and cleansing about lifting the eyes of my soul, up from all the undone and sometimes undo-able things clamoring for immediate attention, lifting them heavenward, to see and to remember who is God, and who is not.

Especially this week. It has been an especially busy week for me, and not just me alone. When my head starts buzzing with such busyness, I have found solace again and again in the words of the Psalm, “and then my soul remembered God (Psalm 77: 3).”

That’s when sanity returned to Nebuchadnezzar. “I raised my eyes toward heaven,” he said, “and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.” Indeed, that was sanity, remembering who God is and that we are not God. That’s the second step of Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step programs: “I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” Believing that there is a power greater than ourselves IS sanity, as well as one of the first steps to it. When we do that, then the surprising thing is that we find out just how really truly remarkable we already are, how high and wondrous it already is just to simply be human.

III LIVE LIKE TRUE ROYALTY, IN SUBMISSION TO GOD

And that leads me to my third point: that we find our true glory in submission to God. Glorify God through prayer and worship, yes, but also through our simple human loves and labors, within our simple human limits. Just being human was already plenty for King Nebuchadnezzar to marvel at and rejoice over, without getting all full of himself. And so there is plenty for us to marvel at, even within the limits of our human knowledge and powers. Just to grow a garden, just to love and be loved, just to be able to talk, read, sing, laugh, love, tell jokes and stories, to be human, that’s pretty powerful stuff already.

If anything, I would say that maybe King Nebuchadnezzar’s problem was that he didn’t look high enough, that he wasn’t bold and daring enough, that maybe he was actually too limited, (dare I say, too humble?) in his boasting and his rejoicing. For he was only looking at worldly, temporary cities and towers and powers and walls and wonders and battlements and monuments. He was only looking to himself, and to his own powers and potential, when his heart rose up in boastful exaltation. He was rejoicing in great and glamorous things, all right, but great and glorious only in comparison with other human kings and empires. How puny.

In our propensity toward Mennonite humility and simplicity, which I encourage in this day of runaway arrogance and complexity, let us also remember that we are given, by God’s Word, a right and even an invitation to boast and to revel. But not in ourselves, nor in our works. “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord,” said the Apostle Paul.

Don’t settle for making comparisons based on the world and on people, like Nebuchadnezzar comparing himself with human kingdoms around him and before him. He was a big fish, all right. But only when compared to all the other minnows, in a very little pond. Let God and his eternal kingdom be the gold standard by which we measure ourselves and all things. While that might keep us humble and simple—how far we fall short of the glory of God—it will also give us every right and reason to rejoice and to revel. Again, not in ourselves, but in God and his love for us.

If anything, then, we are too timid. Jesus was not timid when he stood before Pilate, bound and beaten, and Pilate asked him, “Are you a king?” I can just hear the irony and surprise in his voice. Are you, this seemingly helpless and defeated man, betrayed and abandoned by his friends, humiliated by his enemies, rejected by his peers, probably already bruised, with one eye closed, by the beating he had taken by the mob and the henchmen of the Sanhedrin, are you the King of the Jews?

Jesus did not deny, but affirmed, “Yes—it is as you say….but my kingdom is not of this world.” That is either the stunning truth, or it is madness and presumption beyond the scale of Napoleon or Nebuchadnezzar. And if that is not wild enough, Jesus taught his disciples, ordinary, poor, suffering, oppressed and troubled men and women, to pray and to read the Bible as though they were kings and royalty too. Whenever we pray Jesus’ prayer and call God, “Father,” that comes right out of the Psalms for the enthronement of Israel’s kings and queens. “Today you are my Son; this day have I begotten you (Psalm 2). “Son of God” is a term of royalty from the Psalms. Jesus, “Son of God,” teaches us to pray like sons and daughters of God: kings and queens.

In which case, either Jesus is crazy, or he is right: that all who receive him become royalty and join him on his heavenly throne. We become kings and queens not over ever-expanding and warring empires, but royalty over our own realms of the soul, royalty in relation to God, not the world, royalty in our own hearths and homes, in our lives and our loves, not royalty who fight other royalty for dignity, territory, and glory, but royalty who bring out the royalty and dignity and glory in everyone else.

The proofs and signs of our royalty and our majesty are not the great works we do with little love, like King Nebuchadnezzar building the most impressive city on earth, by conquest and killing. Instead, our royalty is displayed in all the little things we can do with great love. Compared to God-given royal powers and titles like that, Nebuchadnezzar was humble and timid to a fault. To just settle for the title of some self-proclaimed semi-divine king of the greatest kingdom in the world of the time, when he already was a human being, a child of God and could have been royalty in the kingdom of God, now that is stark raving loony.

Nebuchadnezzar’s sad story of a crazy stupid choice—to consider himself a god for all the things he had done– tells us three things: 1) to recognize and be on guard against such craziness in the world around us, so that it doesn’t get into us; 2) and when it does, because it does, to reset our sanity buttons on a regular basis, especially by prayer and worship of the God who is God; and 3) find our true glory and honor where it really lies—in the One who made us and redeems us, and in the way he made us: human beings, the ultimate wonder of the universe, children of earth and heaven’s King, joint heirs with Jesus the Son, seated with him on his throne, saved and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. What titles could match that? What more could we possibly want that would be less than all that? Why, that would be…. crazy!