We were on a vacation with family friends, traversing the mileage it took to get from the lobby to our majestic 14th-floor beachview unit. Seeing there were too many of us for one elevator, I volunteered to stay behind with one of the more pokey children. She was a petite doe-eyed blonde 9-year-old who, when we got to the 14th floor and started winding our way around the exterior balcony to our apartment, began to look increasingly troubled. When I asked her what was wrong, she pointed down to the parking lot 150 feet below and half-whispered, “Any of us could die at any moment.” We locked eyes and backed slowly away from the railing, hugging the interior wall as we inched the rest of the way to our door. When you’re in a vulnerable position, a violent vision just hits different.
Certainly, Daniel knew this to be true. After being kidnapped and forced into slavery, molested and traumatized, Daniel had gotten to see and even be a vessel for the power of God in turning the heart of a narcissistic king toward Himself. Things were somewhat looking up... And then that king died and his ambitious son Nabonidus took his place, who then almost immediately launched a military campaign and left his worthless son Belshazzar in charge. When Broadway composer Lin-Manuel Miranda was recently asked how he felt about a political memoir that rips one of his songs for its title, he replied, “You know, I have strong feelings about it, but one of the main themes of that musical is that we don’t often get to decide how our own legacies are used.” Nebuchadnezzar had handed down an inheritance not only of power and wealth, but of repented arrogance and idolatry; yet he could not hand down the regenerated heart or hard-won character that would use that inheritance well.
And so, Daniel lives to see yet another parody ascend to the throne and misuse the vessels of the Living God. It seems as though every small comfort in the midst of this terrible exile has just come undone as he and his people are once again subject to a violent and beastly regime. He must have been tempted to think that the world was truly in the hands of feckless kings and generals. “How long, Oh Lord!?” It is under the weight of this terrible vulnerability that he’s hit with the truth in the form of an apocalyptic vision, not unlike the one Isaiah had received decades before in a similar situation. The veil is torn back and God is seated on his own throne above all thrones. A relentless succession of beasts overtakes one another, brutally trampling the saints of God in the process… until a Son of Man appears. Over time, Daniel’s vision in chapter 7 would become a precious legacy of language and imagery; an inheritance for the son of a Nazarene carpenter as he unveiled his own identity and vocation to a people living under the iron foot of Rome.
I hope to see you this Sunday as we are renewed by Word, Sacrament, and prayer together.
- josh
