Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Pentecost 25 B - Daniel 12:1-3

Daniel 12:1-3
The trouble with writing a daily lectionary based blog is you can’t pick the easy scriptures or avoid the more difficult ones. So let me say that doom and gloom scriptures with everlasting judgment trouble me even if I count myself as one whose name is “found written in the book”. Of course there are plenty of scripture passages that will support the idea that the chance of being one of the “wise shiny ones” is akin to winning the lottery which is even more troubling because I never win anything. Later verses in the 12th chapter of Daniel are considered by some to be the key to unlocking the riddle of the time of tribulation in the Book of Revelation where most people have a losing lottery ticket and are left behind. That is not to say God cannot do whatever God wants even sentence the whole lot of us to shame and everlasting contempt. But in light of the cross I find that unlikely and the cross is the key to unlocking the mystery of scripture. There are certainly things worthy of judgment and I count myself guilty on all counts but as my theology professor Walt Bouman liked to say judgment is a penultimate word, or the word that comes before the ultimate word. For Christians of the Lutheran persuasion the ultimate word is always the cross which is a word of mercy expressed fully by God’s self-sacrifice for wise and foolish alike. The truth of Daniel is more apparent in its immediate context. It is a word for persecuted people held captive in a foreign land where more than one of their loved ones are sleeping in the dust. It is a promise that the scales of justice will be balanced and despite a time of unprecedented anguish deliverance will have the final say. Does it mean that everyone will shine and no one will be eternally ashamed? I don’t know, but God does and somehow knowing that the God of the cross has the final say makes even doom and gloom scriptures less troubling.

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