Daniel's Vision of Hope: An All Saints' Sunday Sermon

I trust that you all had a safe and blessed Halloween and All Saints’ Day – they were, of course, on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Today (the 1st Sunday in November), as the Church allows, we celebrate the feast of All Saints’ again – it is a way to celebrate together our identity and mission. Moreover, on this festival day, we have chosen to have our Holy Eucharist on the front lawn – a witness to our neighbors of who we are in Christ Jesus. Greetings to you all, and welcome to our many guests, family, and friends who join us today for Communion and the meal that shall follow.

As I was reflecting on All Saints’ Day over the last few weeks, Halloween naturally came to mind. And it struck me that Halloween really is a day when we get it right: Strangers come to us – ugly and beautiful, odd and familiar, funny and scary – and we accept them all without question. We welcome them, compliment them, and treat them with kindness, and we give them good things to eat. Perhaps this should be our posture all year long?

As I was preparing for my preaching this morning on one of my favorite feast days, I was rather inexplicably drawn to the first reading. The lesson comes from the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel. Admittedly, I was probably partly drawn because we are on the heels of Halloween – that cultural celebration of all things spooky – and Daniel does introduce us to some scary beasts coming out of the sea. But, more so, I was and am drawn to Daniel’s sense of hope and light in the darkness.

So, let’s do it – let’s look at Daniel! The part of Daniel that we are looking at (that is, DAN 7-8) is apocalyptic prophecy – a big term that we will return to in just a minute. First, however, we must understand a little of the history behind the book. In the narrative (see DAN 1-6), Daniel and his friends are Judean exiles in Babylon, having been taken into exile in the early 6th century BC. Indeed, it seems that they find themselves exiles held by the Babylonians even as the Babylonians are losing their grip on power. So it is that by 539 BC, Babylonian power had waned to the point where the Persians conquered their important cities, reaching a height as the Persians entered Babylon without a fight. The Persian Empire lasted for just over two centuries; that is, until Alexander the Great wrested power from Persia in the 330s BC. Then, after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, a struggle for succession saw the Seleucids in power until the rise of the Romans with Julius Caesar. 

The point of this historical survey is to say that the struggles of succession and power greatly influenced and directed the lives of the people of Judah – they were a people caught in the middle. Indeed, the book of Daniel narrates the story of Daniel and his friends in Babylonian captivity, among the Judeans in the Babylonian court. And, despite being a foreign exile, Daniel had risen to a high position in the royal court. 

The portion we read this morning (assigned for All Saints’ Day) describes the beginning of Daniel’s dream, in which he sees four great beasts arising out of the sea, followed by the dream's interpretation. While Daniel is naturally misapprehensive about the dream, the heavenly being explains that the four beasts represent four empires “that will rise from the earth; but, the heavenly one explains, “the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, forever and ever” (DAN 7:18).

Now, unfortunately (in my humble opinion), we did not hear a vital part of the message in today’s selection. I do think it is vital that we hear it – vital! – such that without it Daniel’s visions are bleak and non-comprehensible. So, listen carefully to two verses that further explain the vision that Daniel had,

“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,[a] coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples 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.” (Daniel 7:13-14)

Did you hear that? Did you hear that: God will send a divine agent – “one like a son of man” – a human figure who will descend from the heavens to reign, at the behest of God, the Ancient One – one like a Son of Man who would establish the kingdom “that will never be destroyed.”

Now, earlier I mentioned that this part of the book of Daniel is an apocalyptic prophecy. As Apocalypticism, the text addresses earthly political matters, particularly as they pertain to the people of Judea, in light of a larger cosmic narrative of which the outcome is already certain! It is the divine narrative written by God with the covenant people in mind. Daniel 7 is set amidst the harsh realities of Babylonian captivity and written amidst the harsh realities of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid king in Judea from 175-164 BC. In other words, the story comes from a time of religious and political corruption and oppression of a brutal, unintelligent, fame-seeking, ego-maniac who had the gall to place a statue of himself in the visage of Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple and who built for himself a magnificent throne room in Jerusalem – all while the residents of Jerusalem and Judea suffered a devastating famine and terrible rule from the merchant oligarchs.

One of the purposes of apocalyptic writings is to make visible a system of imperial domination and hegemony that would have preferred to operate under the cloak of darkness (see Anathea E. Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire). So, as an apocalyptic text, this chapter exposes the true motivation of empire and its rulers. But the true vision of Daniel and the magnificence of the book and its apocalyptic character is that it also presents an opposing vision – a vision of the Ancient One (God) who will hand over the kingdom to the Holy Ones! Daniel cuts right through the attempted obfuscation of empire and reveals the reasonable, faithful vision of God’s world that is victory for the Holy Ones. Daniel is thus able to provide hope for a rather hopeless and powerless people. Their faithfulness and way of life were under attack, but Daniel’s apocalyptic vision brings hope – the people can, indeed, look forward to a day when victory will be theirs – when “the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever, yes - forever!”

What does this mean for us – here and now – on this feast of All Saints?  First, part of the work of All Saints’ Day is to name the reality of death. Uniquely, we celebrate those who have gone before us. We name death as the ultimate hegemony – each one of us will one day die. We mourn it. We try to cheat it. We may fear it. We envision it as a beast rising up out of the sea. The larger truth, however, is that in Christ Jesus, the firstborn of the dead, death has been overcome. The saints — the holy ones — sit as inheritors of God’s kingdom, with death no more a threat. Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Second, we who live in Daniel’s vision recognize that in Christ we are victorious over death; but, not just death, we are also victorious over the death-dealing culture of the world. The saints – the holy ones of God – who live yet on this side of the mortal coil, Daniel’s vision still gives hope for a different future. It also gives confidence to work in God’s name for such a future in the here and now. 

As we celebrate the feast of All Saints in and among this community of saints, among these holy ones all around us, what I want to say is that we can keep the dream alive.

And all of this transcends our instinct to self-protect and, instead, to live and love like Jesus – to welcome and compliment strangers when they come to us – ugly and beautiful, odd and familiar, funny and scary – and to accept them in love and Christ loves us.

Amen.