The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

Daniel is a story about empires. Daniel is a story of hope and promise. Empires rise, dominate, oppress, make a few rich and the masses poor, only to send those poor masses to die on fields of blood for a forgotten glory. 

Ancient Israel knows of that oppression. For sixty-two periods of seven years each, she had kings. She tried being an empire herself. Then came Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, the Seleucids, and Rome. Rome was the end of ancient Israel, but not the end of oppressive empires. Ottoman, Third Reich, USSR, PRC, British, and USA. 

Without exception, every world-domineering empire has thought of itself as the exception. 

• Each has imagined that it was divinely appointed to advance civilization. 
• Each has imagined its wars to be just, it’s soldiers to be patriots, its laws exemplary, and its leaders great. 
• Each has its own whitewashed version of history. 
• Each imagines its citizens as superior. 
• Each is convinced God is on their side. 
• Flags, slogans, symbols, songs, anthems, parades, pledges, and oaths 

Like Nebuchadnezzar, we imagine our kingdoms as great glittering monuments. God sees our kingdoms as beasts – blood-thirsty monsters that will all be obliterated at his appearing – replaced by the Kingdom of God in which the last are first, the meek own the land, the poor are rich, and the weak are strong.

The story of the Bible begins in a garden. Located high on a mountain, the garden intersects heaven. Heavenly beings, including God, converse with earthly creatures, animal and human. The humans bear the image of the creator. They are naked, vulnerable, unashamed, in touch with their true selves, without need of masks, personas, or clothing. 

There is forbidden fruit. Once it is taken, the only redemption comes from an innocent slaughtered lamb. On a Roman gibbet, the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, not so that a few humans can fly away to heaven someday, but so that all of creation – the entire cosmos and all its beings – can be made new. 

God invites us to join in making all new, to live in the midst of sickness, sorrow, war, oppression, injustice, and empire with a different ethic. Eschewing militarism, violence, consumerism, nationalism, classism, and racism, we are invited to live in love – love that forgives enemies, feeds the hungry, houses the homeless, washes the feet of the weary, and judges no one while serving everyone. 

God invites us to give up the personas of which we are so proud, to lower our sectarian banners, drop our narrow allegiances, forsake our jingoistic identities, and forge our weapons into agricultural implements. 

Who am I? White, American, middle-class cis-gendered male, member of the XYZ Party and the ZYX Denomination? No. I am a child of God. My allegiance is to Jesus. I am a citizen of the Kingdom of God. I am here to love and to serve. I want nothing of your wealth, power, honors, or ideals. Like father Abraham, I look for city designed and constructed by God.  

Jesus described the homeless, hungry, poor, displaced, marginalized, oppressed, sick, and incarcerated as his siblings. Jesus was born, lived, and died among the despised and oppressed. He welcomed the outcasts and the weak. His kingdom is upside down. 

Four Hebrew lads were said to be pleasant to look at, just as was the forbidden fruit in the first garden. When he invaded and destroyed Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar plucked forbidden fruit.

Like sacrificial lambs, the lads are described as unblemished. Like the Master, they refused to bow to nationalism, refused to salute the flag and stand for the anthem, take up spears and kill for the king. Like sacrificial lambs, they were thrown to the fire where idols are forged, or to lions. The fire did not singe them. The lions did not hurt them. 

They were citizens of an empire much stronger than Babylon or Persia. They conquered by laying down their lives. Like Esther, for such a time as this … if I perish, I perish. Far better, said the apostle, to depart and be with Messiah. They conquered the conqueror with cruciform love. Daniel saw into the future with the eyes of faith. He, like Abraham, envisioned the city of God. John the revelator saw it more fully, descending like a bride adorned for her spouse – a garden city with gates that never shut. Earth and heaven homogenized, blended, become one. Thy Kingdom come.