By: Brad Hendrickson

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 & Psalm 93

These two richly extravagant passages come to us this morning from what is called the Revised Common Lectionary. This Lectionary includes a 3-year rotation of selections from Scripture — Year A, Year B (which this is the last Sunday of), and Year C — that allow millions of widely varied Christian denominations to share each week in some of the more prominent or consequential passages from the Bible.

And there we have it: ‘the Bible’. So many of us read, and reference, and seek to preach from, and pray over, and debate with our friends about — and on and on — ‘the Bible’, as though it is a single kind of Thing. We speak of taking ‘the dog’ for a walk, or putting ‘the rake’ away in ‘the garage’, and so forth.

And, while ‘the Bible’ is indeed singular in many respects, I’m reminded with this week’s readings all the more of how this collection — this library —of 66 books (more in other traditions) is quite a varied mosaic of God and God’s people.

The image I’ve selected is an artist’s rendering of how the collected canon of this library is indeed self-referential and this reality of an internally coherent corpus of writings written across, oh, a thousand years or so is a wonder to behold. Nothing like it exists in ancient history.

I will see, if I can, to briefly speak to these two passages — the first from Daniel chapter 7 and second, Psalm 93.

The book of Daniel is one of the most exciting but also puzzling books of the Old Testament. It’s listed among the so-called Minor Prophets (I’m reminded of the Pedro the Lion’s haunting, bittersweet song, ‘Of Minor Prophets and their Prostitute Wives’ here) but it’s not clear whether the book of Daniel really belongs with books like Hosea and Amos and the others. Daniel seems to come at us from several different angles and indeed it seems to be a combination of different kinds of book that seem to have been put together probably over a period of time with an original core
that maybe goes right back to the time of Daniel himself in the Babylonian exile but then with lots of interpretative material that’s been added and developed, particularly to address some of the issues that were vital for the Jewish people in the 2nd century BC.

In particular, unlike almost all the rest of the Old Testament, some of Daniel is in Aramaic and not Hebrew. Most of Jewish Scripture — what Christians call the Old (or First) Testament — from Genesis to Malachi is in Hebrew but here in the middle of Daniel is a bit of Aramaic which is a language that came into the usage of the Jewish people really from the time of the exile
onwards and, for reasons which scholars have all sorts of different explanations for, from chapter 2:4 through to the end of chapter 7 we find that’s in Aramaic whereas the rest of the book — chapter 1 and the beginning of 2, and then chapters 8–12 — are in Hebrew.

But if the book of Daniel is a mixture of language it’s also a mixture of genres. Several bits of the book are basically heroic tales, particularly tales of near martyrdom: moments when it looked as though some of God’s faithful people were going to be killed for their refusal to compromise and
then were extraordinarily rescued at the last minute. But then toward the end of the book it becomes clear that there are real martyrs in view as well — probably, again, the ones of the second century BC — and so the book develops around these heroic tales, tales of God’s people who are
determined who stick with their loyalty to the god of Israel even under great threat.

Though just a few of the tidier verses are specifically highlighted in the Lectionary today, the bigger vision laid out in the full chapter is really something over the top. In Daniel’s apocalyptic vision (the first of four in the book) there were terrifying images of wild, predatory beasts — a giant
eagle here, a lion rising from the Mediterranean Sea there, something resembling a bear with ribs between its teeth. On and on these manifestations of chaos and destruction presented themselves, crushing and crashing, boasting and bragging. And what Daniel then says he saw in the midst of this oracle was something different, something transcendent above it all — not escapist or indifferent, but something Other, something pure and blazing with the refining, consuming fire of the sun, who had at last come to bring reckoning to the madness around them all.

What Daniel saw — indeed, Who it was that Daniel saw — was One who was, “given authority, honor, and a kingdom so that all people of every heritage, nationality, and language might serve Him.” This vision of the coming Divine justice upended catastrophe and expanded “the people of
God” — those serving God — to all of the obedient servants, regardless of ethnic or tribal particulars.

With that in mind, let’s now pivot to Psalm 93. This text, with its focus on the kingship of God and the divine rule over the chaotic powers of anarchy, is fitting for the celebration of Christ the King Sunday. The psalm was probably used originally as part of the fall festival (the Feast of Tabernacles
— or Sukkot). During the festival, there was a declaration and celebration of God’s reenthronement as king. The opening line of the psalm declares that ‘Yahweh has become king’ — that is, he has resumed and reasserted his role as king of the world and, like an earthly king, is dressed in regal
robes, the beauty of all of creation.

The content of the psalm moves from the kingship of God to the theme of creation. The kingship of God is manifest in his establishment of the world. While many of us modern folks might very well take the idea of the divine establishment and indeed permanence of the world as a given, for the
ancients the world was far more uncertain, unknown, and threatening than it is for so many of us gathered here this morning.

Psalm 93 proclaims Yahweh’s rule over chaos and anarchy. He is mightier than the floods, mightier than the thunders of many waters, and mightier than the waves of the sea.

It is with passages such as these that the earliest followers of Jesus came to see Yahweh’s kingship being brought to bear in and through the word and work of Jesus — gathering followers across ethnic divides, bringing the prophetic healing of Yahweh’s wholeness, declaring of the Temple’s
sacrificial system that ‘It is finished’ in and through his accepting the brutality of the world and being vindicated through resurrection as the one in whom all the fulness of Yahweh was pleased to dwell. And it is this king whom we celebrate today, and whose birth we pivot to in the coming days
to observe during Advent: a king, yes, but as as one whose glory is self-emptied in place of washing the feet of those who would betray his agenda, one whose crown is made of piercing thorns, of a king who welcomes us as his creation, a creation he is working in and through us to redeem, restore, renew and, yes, vindicate on the far side of our current suffering, until God is at last, through Christ, all in all.