The Kingdom to Come Sermon
The Kingdom to come : Daniel 12: 1-3
I want to focus our thoughts this morning on those few verses from the Book of Daniel talking about the Kingdom to come. The writing is in an unfamiliar style. We call it apocalyptic, in line with that other visionary Book at the end of the Bible, the Book of Revelation. It talks about Daniel’s faithfulness to God as a fellow servant of God in a time of tribulation. It talks of times unsurpassed in distress since nations began. And it assures us that God give us help, Michael and all the angels, to help us in this cosmic battle against the forces of evil.
This week we have witnessed the celebration of 20 years of the falling of the Berlin Wall leading to the reunification of Germany. That division was the consequence of the Iron Wall and Cold War of the post-war years following the defeat of Nazism. Coventry was one of the British cities severely bombed in the Blitz. Its Cathedral was almost razed to the ground. In its ashes arose a new building alongside the old with a startling statue by Jacob Epstein depicting the victory of the archangel Michael over the Devil, out of the context of the defeat of the evils that created the Holocaust which nearly totally destroyed the Jews in Europe and caused misery to millions more the worldover. There’s a reminder of this on the back page of the notices.
Thomas Aquinas the Medieval theologian writes of St. Michael, as a guardian angel of individuals. The name “Michael” is also a battle cry against internecine forces trying to destroy God’s creation and the people of the world. In his Commentary on Daniel, Martin Luther, the great prophet of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, claims that Michael is associated with the work of Christ himself in a spiritual struggle against the powers and principalities. The name is a battle cry in Hebrew, “who is like unto God?” For him none other than Jesus Christ is our confession. Jesus Christ reveals God to us!
But there may well be archangels at the beck and call of Christ. St. Michael and All Angels are fighting in behalf of humanity, the church, on behalf of the Kingdom of God so it continues overcoming the powers and principalities of this world, with their alienation from God and dehumanization of his creatures. In Luther’ commentary on Daniel , he investigates the history of his own turbulent time, and insists that its revelation of the last days in the particular way that immediately proclaims the resurrection, makes it a prophecy also for the time of Jesus and the disciples and indeed for his time and our time. For Luther, Daniel proclaimed the resurrection to eternal life the same way that the disciples did in Jerusalem after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. The victory of Michael is a foretaste of that of the Lord Christ, whose followers only multiply during one Roman persecution after another, until the Roman Empire cannot beat the followers of Christ but has to join them. As Tertullian reminds us “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”.
So the Emperor Constantine declares Christianity the official religion, to domesticate and distort it for the purposes of the unity of the Roman Empire instead of making it accountable to the Kingdom to come. Michael, who is like unto God, is associated with the work of Jesus Christ himself, according to Luther, and we preachers, in the glorious company of the priesthood of all believers, are the angels of God, God’s messengers and ambassadors sent to defend humanity, to defend God’s creation, to defend God’s Church, from the evil one, the accuser.
In the Epistle of Jude, the brother of James, and therefore also of Jesus there is a passage referring to Michael. The tradition in Jude has the demons accusing Moses of murder and Michael is defending him by saying that judgment belongs to ultimately to God alone. The struggle over Moses’ body is here depicted. The wisdom of Luther’s insight into our human condition is evident. Moses may well have murdered that Egyptian overseer who oppressed his people and thus he was a wretched sinner, sharing our universal human condition. This day we remember many in prisons the world over who have committed terrible crimes and live with the consequences. But, Jude says, God covered up his sin, forgave it, and declared him righteous, because of his repentance, and the ‘angels bore his spirit home’, as the old Negro Spiritual puts it. Michael refused to let the demons take their prize to hell. And Michael, standing in the place of Christ, will stand over each one of us, and see to it that our sins do not count against us, but will bear our spirits home to heaven. Luther says in the commentary, “St. Michael is Christ and comes up and stands with Christians and comforts them with [such] words of grace”. Whether we Methodists take up that image, daemon-like in Philip Pullman’s powerful writings, and believe in guardian angels we can discuss again perhaps.
In the anguish we feel for our country and our world at this time, with dire predictions about climate change and renewed anxieties about the presence of wars and calamities all around us, in the anguish we feel for the Church and humanity and environmentally for all God’s creation, Daniel proclaims a message about as close to the resurrection as the Hebrews get. Daniel writes:
The people will be delivered, everyone found written in the book, and many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever (12:1c-3).
That poetic Hebrew sentence says to us that those who are wise and point the way to “joyful justice” shall shine like the sky [on a bright summer’s day] and like the glorious stars at night forever and ever. That’s the nature of the Kingdom to come whatever the despair about the kingdoms of this world.
So we preachers of the Good News, of the late and breaking Good News of what God is doing through Jesus Christ, that is, the history-making Good News, which is a strap line not just for BBC 24 for now but for all time, are the messengers called to follow Michael, the one like unto God, and with “Michael” our battle cry, we fly to the ends of the world, as Daniel writes, and tell of the resurrection of the dead and the hope to come. We need to shine like a bright summer’s day and like the glorious stars in heaven so that many are converted before the dead arise. Of course Daniel prophesies that beforehand the city will be destroyed and the last days will be filled with anguish. There will be tribulation. Antichrists will arise. Wars will continue. But at the end Christ will return, with resurrection and reward.
Luther says that that Daniel does not just mean physical suffering and disaster here on earth but spiritual suffering and disaster: it is about whether the church and its members choose to stand or fall before the challenge we now face. Luther maintains that it is being challenged on two fronts:
- the first is the Epicurean one. What an appropriate word for our day! Apathy and the feel-good factors reigns supreme. It refers to the materialism and the pleasures which surround us as paramount in a life dominated by our well-being. So the church might try to market itself by being more entertaining and gathering large numbers in our effort to prove the worth of fresh expressions. Do we pay as much attention to the needs of others as we do to our own comforts and success? Meanwhile our soldiers are over in Afghanistan in harm’s way, becoming casualties, limbs blown off, returning as psychological casualties, and here we are: thinking about the next pleasure we can enjoy. The Epicurean way disrespects the word and sacrament, according to Luther.
- Secondly, Luther continues, the church is attacked by fear, anxiety, and consciences filled by despair. Again, how apt for our situation! Franklin Delano Roosevelt said ‘there is nothing to fear but fear itself’ in the context of the terrible years of depression and war. We can become governed by irrational fear so that the things we do are more dangerous than the things we fear. Perhaps the War on Terrorism has coloured our relationship with other people especially Muslims in the wake of terrible acts of individual violence. We have to pray for God to change the heart of our enemies and we ourselves have to repent in order to bring about the sort of work of reconciliation that Coventry Cathedral represents in our fractured world. Tonight we will share a Peace Communion in our small chapel to pray for and commit ourselves to work for peace in God’s world.
How does the church respond to this challenge? If it is tormented by feeling it is not doing enough, as I sense the Methodist Church does in its desperation to determine a strategy for survival in the 21st century, then Luther reminds us that it is still trusting in its own works. Even the post-World War II Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt pronounced by the Assembled Churches in Germany, was not free of this misplaced emphasis. Perhaps influenced by Pastor Niemoller’s speech ‘First they came for the Jews... and then they came for me. There was no one left to speak for me’, it stated:
We accuse ourselves for not standing up for our beliefs more courageously, not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyfully, and not loving more ardently (October 19, 1945).
Yes we too can beat our breasts and retreat into an apathy which despairs of the kingdoms of this world and our ability to change anything, least of all ourselves, as we lapse into our comfort zones. We preachers and disciples of Christ rather have to stand up in the love and light of the Christ who calls us to follow him and spread the word about what God is doing so that in this time of anguish and anxiety the Gospel spreads more and more, the way it did in the early times when it brought the Roman Empire to its knees, and when the Gospel spread like wildfire because of the Reformation. “For the word of God comes, whenever it comes,” said Luther, “to change and renew the world.”
If we do it, it will not be enough. But if we proclaim it, with Christ and all the angels of heaven, then we will call all people to heed the warning that the Kingdom of God is upon us, here and now and to come. It is a challenge to the church to respond so that humanity will not be destroyed, but will become reconciled and gathered together under the wholesome forgiving words of God’s grace.
With Christ and the angels on our side, we can’t help already claiming the victory. The victory is won, because God’s love prevails over the evil one. We receive God’s forgiveness and one day we will enjoy God’s justice and grace with the reward of resurrection in his enduring Kingdom.
Prayer:
Lord God, in company of St. Michael and all the Archangels, defend us in battle; be our defence against the wickedness and snares of the world, the flesh and the devil. May God rebuke them, we humbly pray; and cast into Hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Protect us we pray and guide us in your ways of righteousness this and every day. Amen
