Winged Beasts And Dragons

Daniel 12:1-4

What are we to do with the book of Daniel? It's so weird. It talks about all these beasts that will attack Israel: winged lions and bears and dragons, and winged leopards. What are we to do with that? Then there's this huge battle: and some prince named Michael who will save the righteous. And the names of the righteous will be in some Book. Just what are we to do with Daniel?

Usually we choose one of two options: either we take Daniel too seriously or not seriously enough. We look for a one to one correspondence between our world and Daniel's vision—so—Saddam Hussain becomes the dragon and so forth. By equating the two times—we try to scare people into behaving.

Or we say—"It's all just metaphor," and we don't take it seriously enough. We brush it off and dismiss apocalyptic thinking.

Let's see how to find a third way—a way of appropriating this vision for our place and time. First, to understand Daniel's vision, we need a sense of his context. In 167 BC the Jerusalem Temple—the Holy of Holies—was desecrated by the Seleucid King, Antiochus Ephanes. The King threw out all the Rabbis and the priests, and then he had sacrifices to Zeus on the Temple altar.

For Daniel and for the Jews, the center of the world was lost. Daniel looked at his world and saw only chaos and confusion. Then he looked again and had a vision of redemption of God breaking into history delivering the faithful.

Now, we are much too sophisticated to talk in terms of winged beasts and dragons. But let's don't fool ourselves—we too gravitate toward an apocalyptic vision. We talk about the destruction of families and the loss of a moral center. We talk about how bad the schools are and how corrupt our politicians have become. Sometimes it feels as if our temples have been taken over and desecrated.

So, as weird as Daniel's picture is—there is a connection between his world and ours. We also long for God to break into history and bring in God's realm of Justice and Peace. I know, I'm a cradle Episcopalian, and we don't talk too much about THE SECOND COMING or the Rapture or the end time.

I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, and I used to see those signs that read: "Where will you be at Judgment Day?" I confess I didn't even know what the options were—maybe the beach or San Francisco? But we need to overcome our Episcopalian aversion to apocalyptic speech. Although such speech is often used as a fear tactic—Change your behavior while there's still time. At its heart the future gives us hope. If we take Jesus seriously, then we have to take apocalyptic thought seriously. Certainly Jesus had no trouble with Daniel. Jesus talked over and over about the kingdom coming. He told men and women to be prepared

And the early Church expected Jesus to come again in any moment. The second coming was immanent—the early Christians expected Christ to come again in glory to usher in a time of fulfillment—to bring in God's kingdom. We repeat that hope Sunday after Sunday—We say the mystery of faith is Christ has died, Christ is risen—Christ will come again. We long for Christ to come again because we live in hope. Yes, we are called to help those who suffer. Yes, we are called to alleviate poverty and injustice. But, somewhere in our hearts we know that we cannot change the world. Only God can do that. So if we do not long for God to break in—then we accept the world the way it is. I wonder if that acceptance contributes to our society's cynicism; I wonder if our hopes are so small because we have lost sight of the goal—we do not believe that our history is leading anywhere. To be situated in the world is to know that life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We came from God—we live in the pattern of death and resurrection—and all of creation will be gathered into God at the end. We need that sense of ending as a focus for our hope. Without it we can only believe in our efforts, and our vision becomes very small.

The disciples and the early Christians were people of expectation. Remember what St. Paul says in today's reading? DO NOT ABANDON THAT CONFIDENCE OF YOURS. That confidence is not in ourselves—not in our politicians—not in our world. That confidence is that in God's good time God will make the world right. Julian of Norwich—the English mystic—had a vision of Jesus speaking to her and he simply said: "All shall be well and all matter of things shall be well."

Once we know that Christ will come again, then we can work for justice and peace in confidence because it all doesn't depend on us. So—what are we to do with Daniel?

First—realize that all times are the times of Daniel—it always feels as if the temple is falling apart.

Second—be confident in God and hope. Finally—remember that the future is part of the present—people of expectation aren't just looking for Christ to come again. They experience his presence here and now. When Jesus preaches about the end time, he doesn't say "Hunker down and wait." He doesn't tell his followers to build some kind of fallout shelter. He tells his followers to BE ALERT—a better translation would be TO GAIN ONE'S SIGHT. To gain one's sight is to see that our names are written in the book. And that who we are is not defined by where we have been but where we are going. We always read the past in terms of where we are. We see our history as leading up to the present. But Daniel and Jesus invites us to see the past and the present in terms of our ultimate future.

When I was in that first stage of adolescence—the one where you break everything you touch, your body has turned you into an alien and sometimes your voice sounds like James Earl Jones and sometimes like Tiny Tim—I remember getting really down on myself, and my Father told me: "You won't always be like this—I can already see that one day it will all be different. You'll be tall and strong and things won't break when you walk in the room." And sometimes—on my best days—I looked at myself like that. I thought of myself not just in terms of where I'd been—or where I was—but in terms of where I was going. And when I did—part of me already was like that. Knowing that Christ will come again, gives us perspective—gives us hope, and, in a certain sense, makes that future day present right now.

In his novel Luisa Domic, George Dennison writes about a young girl who had witnessed her family slaughtered in the political uprising in Chile. After seeing her husband and children slaughtered, Luisa becomes very fragile—so fragile she finally breaks down emotionally and begins to scream and cannot stop; like Daniel, her center is gone; the temple is toppled.

Her friend Harold goes to the piano, sits down, and begins to play. This is how Dennison describes the scene:

Harold's piano had gone out to her and found her where she was. He was receiving her voice and enfolding it in a structure that constituted a kind of music that could not be heard in her voice. The music achieved a human presence beside her in the darkness of her agony. It was a presence and it said: "I am with you. I am with you."

Sooner or later we come to places where it feels as if the world is ending. It's dark and confusing, and we cannot see our way. Yet it is in those places we must gain our sight and see God's presence in the here and now and also in the future. We will know that God is with us and will always be with us—even until the end of the age.

G. Porter Taylor St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church Athens, GA