Sermon Ideas For Daniel 7:9-14 Part 3

The importance of the book, of narrative, that we found in Daniel 12:1-3 is prefaced by Daniel 7:9-14, in which the pure ruler takes his throne to judge. The books are opened; all are judged, and order is restored. This scene, with its images of the final judgment through the reading of the book reminds us that life is narrative and that there, too, is a cosmic narrative. It also raises the question of obtaining a pure and right judgment on human action and the question of authority in the image of Christ the King.

The king is the one who can judge impartially and restore order to a chaotic world. In Romanesque churches, the tympanum is used generally to picture the enthroned Christ, most often the Apocalyptic Vision or the Last Judgment.¹ The tympanum of the Autun Cathedral of Burgundy shows the souls rising from the dead and being caught between angels who can redeem and devils who can condemn their souls. Both the angels and devils weigh the souls on large scales and make a judgment on who goes to heaven and who to hell. The serenity of the angels is in marked contrast to the unleashed power of the devils who are savage and who fully enjoy their roles as judges. Daniel puts the power to judge in a single figure, the king. The king comes in the manifestation of a warrior, on a throne like a chariot, with wheels burning with divine fire. The king is both serene and terrible. He is horned, symbolizing his divinity. This king's power, however, is not only political but spiritual, as the horns symbolize. Moses, the most powerful prophet and spiritual leader of Israel is pictured as having horns, and Alexander the Great, the great political leader and general, was called "the two-horned." Daniel's king combines both kinds of power as he overthrows an oppressive political empire to establish a new political and spiritual one that is the eternal kingdom of God.

In everyday human existence, the desire of order and right judgment is a difficult one. Who in our lives can determine what is right and just action? This desire of justice and restoration of order is illustrated most powerfully in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. In Lee's novel, Atticus Finch defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white woman. This accusation shatters the equanimity of a town, for it is a lie. The accusation forces the town to look at the narrative by which it understands itself--to understand and judge itself even as it tries this black man. For Atticus, the court of law is the place where justice should be done. In the court of law, Atticus argues, individual prejudices should be put aside so that human beings can be judged reasonably and fairly. As Atticus makes his final arguments to the jury, he charges them in two ways: he asks that they believe Tom and that they do their duty, both, not for their own sakes' but for God's. Atticus is asking that the men of the jury see Tom from a perspective larger than their own and that they act as reasonable and loving human beings working out of a dimension of justice beyond human law. This is not to be, however. Though the jury deliberates longer than anyone in the town expects, they find Tom guilty. The power of the racist narrative that is the foundation of the town's understanding of itself is more persuasive than an overarching justice.

Thornton Wilder in Our Town offers us another view of a small town, from the perspective of the dead. Emily, the heroine of the play, dies, but she wants to remain among the living. The Stage Manager tells her that, not only can she relive moments of her life, but she can watch herself reliving them, see herself and those in the world of the living from the perspective of the future: of death. This perspective offers a possibility of judgment not only of the self but of the "other." Mrs. Gibbs warns Emily not to try to go back, but Emily wants to. What she sees is how much of life we do not pay attention to because time passes so quickly. Emily, knowing this, begs her mother: "Let's look at one another," but realizes that living human beings cannot and do not realize the need to live each moment consciously and fully. Thus, human life is lost and human beings do not understand how quickly life passes, but, even with that passing, something remains: "something way down deep that's eternal about every human being"²; the promise of the purification of that eternal soul; and the promise of something great and important to come..

The image of the king is at the center of Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies. Shakespeare shows us again and again how the political order and the cosmic order are disrupted when kingship is exploited. In Hamlet, for example, the throne of Denmark is a tyranny established through the murder of the rightful king. Though, on the surface, the kingdom seems to run in an orderly way and Claudius seems to be a well-liked king, the opening of the play in fog and darkness shows us that something, as the line goes, is rotten in Denmark. Hamlet's task, in the tragedy, is to restore the kingdom to order even as he comes to understand his own identity. Hamlet is the central actor of his own play. This acting takes him out of his self and away from his identity. His identity is found, finally, in death. He names his own successor: Fortinbras, who will bring order to the political realm even as he honors the dead prince and his father. In The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's comedies, a kingdom is disrupted and almost destroyed by jealousy. Leontes, the king, jealous of his wife and his best friend, imprisons his wife, causes the death of his son, and decrees that his infant daughter be exposed. Only through the loyalty of his servants and courtiers is his kingdom and family restored. Central to that restoration is Paulina, the queen's serving woman, who keeps her mistress alive and hidden. At the end of the play, Paulina, telling the king that she has a statue of his wife, brings him into her presence. In a magical moment, the statue comes to life. Though we know that the queen has never died, this moment inspires awe and silence. The tone of the play, which begins, like Hamlet, with such darkness, is wonder, as we and the characters stand in the presence of a miraculous resurrection of character, family, and society. Shakespeare intimates, in both plays, that there is something beyond the human that calls the human to account and into harmony.

This miracle, this harmony, is what George Herbert yearns for in "Love" II. Using the images of fire and purification, Herbert asks that the "Immortal Heat" that is good attract our lesser flames to God's greater fire. Herbert's plea in this poem is that God bring us to God's will and make our works part of God's work before the last judgment. In that union, self and God, human work and the Kingdom Of God, individual story, community story, and cosmic story become reconciled and one. Thus,

All knees shall bow to thee; all wits shall rise, And praise him who did make and mend our eyes.³

Carolyn Jones

NOTES

1. H. W. Janeon, History of Art, Vol. 1 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), p. 291. 2. Thornton Wilder, "Our Town" in Three Plays (New York: Avon Books, 1976), p. 52. 3. George Herbert, "Love" II in George Herbert: The Country Parson, The Temple, ed. John N. Wall, Jr. (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), p. 169.