I say this a lot, but if you’re new here: I don’t pick our Sunday scriptures – though I sometimes tweak them, or choose not to use one. The readings come to us from a three-year cycle or calendar called the Revised Common Lectionary, which is used by lots of churches and denominations. 

Which is why we have this very odd little reading from the Book of Daniel today. So odd that in looking back in my files, I don’t think I’ve even included it in the service before, let alone talked about it in a sermon. Well: today’s the day! 

This little snippet isn’t that weird, but if you go read the whole chapter, you’ll get descriptions of these strange and terrifying beasts, one of which has ten horns, and then grows an eleventh horn, which has eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that speaks boastfully. And so on. Plenty weird. In the next chapter, Daniel has another strange vision – first he sees a great ram with long horns, and then suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between its eyes comes from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. Fortunately for Daniel, his dreams and visions also include mysterious figures who explain their meanings – though the explanations are also fairly cryptic, like, “The holy people will be delivered into the enemy’s hands for a time, times and half a time.” 

If you’ve read any of the Book of Revelation, this may feel familiar. Biblical scholars call these texts apocalyptic literature. They envision current events in the world as manifestations of a cosmic battle between good and evil, and express them through rich and strange symbolic imagery. There’s overlap with the prophetic literature, but apocalyptic texts are generally a few notches weirder. Their cryptic imagery has allowed them to be interpreted and reinterpreted over the ages, for better or worse. But their real purpose, in their original context, is to give hope to the hopeless in situations of danger and dire oppression. 

The book of Daniel tells the story of several young men – Daniel among them – who live in the time of the Babylonian exile, when God’s people were conquered, taken from their homeland and forced to live among peoples of other languages, cultures, and faiths. Daniel and his friends – the three young men of fiery furnace fame – are such bright young things that they rise to high stations in the Babylonian court. The story just before this chapter is a classic Sunday school tale: Daniel is such an effective administrator that the king plans to put him in charge of everything! But some folks get jealous of his success and contrive to get him sentenced to death, because he insists on continuing to pray to the God of Israel, instead of honoring the King of Babylon as a god. Daniel is thrown into a pit of hungry lions, but he miraculously survives. The king decrees that everyone should honor the God of Daniel. Chapter 6 concludes by noting that Daniel prospered, under the reign of this king and his successor. 

So Daniel is prospering! He’s doing great at work, he’s respected and valued. But… he has these terrifying dreams and visions about what’s happening, and what’s about to happen, in the world. The text tells us how these visions make him feel: Troubled. Terrified. Exhausted. Overwhelmed. Confused – unable to understand what it all means, and how to respond. 

So: We have Daniel – things are going pretty well for him personally, but he can’t shake a sense of impending doom. He’s working, socializing, resting, whatever, but that sense of being troubled is with him all the time. I think there are probably a fair number of folks hearing my voice right now who feel the same.

Compare the prospering-but-troubled Daniel to the person sketched out by the “woes” in Jesus’ sermon from our Gospel. People who have everything they need; people who feel cheerful and contented; people who are respected and esteemed. 

I think these verses are meant to pile up into a picture of a person who is both comfortable and complacent. Kind of like the rich man who steps over the suffering Lazarus every day, in the story Jesus told a few weeks ago. A person who has everything he needs, safe in his bubble. 

I went to a talk last week on politics in America recently, and one of the speakers said that people shouldn’t take politics so seriously,  because while things like elections and laws and policies can make people’s lives better or worse, they don’t represent an existential threat for “the vast majority of people.” 

Now, as a Christian, I feel bound to say that anything that represents an existential threat to even a minority of people should be a concern! And it’s pretty easy to start naming groups of people for whom current politics DO represent an existential threat – that is, a threat to a person’s fundamental ability to live in the world safely: Undocumented folks. Transgender folks. People who may need abortion care, or even help managing a miscarriage. People who may not be able to buy food starting this week. People whose health insurance coverage may increase in cost by five digits in the coming months. People at risk from climate disasters. And so on! 

I don’t want to be overly hard on that speaker, who said other thoughtful things, but that “politics doesn’t really matter” statement sounds to me like the voice of the person sketched out by Jesus’ Woes. I’M fine; so everything must BE fine; and the people who say it isn’t are making a big deal over nothing. 

What does Jesus mean by proclaiming Woe! on these folks? I don’t think he’s saying that they’re doomed or damned. I think he thinks they’re missing out on living the fulness of their own humanity… and that it’s going to hurt when their bubbles burst. 

And then there are the folks Jesus names as blessed! This is more of the upside-down-ness of Luke’s Gospel. People who seem lesser and lowly are actually blessed, precious to God. Even when hungry, poor, grieving, rejected, excluded, reviled. 

So you could say – I’m going to say – that our readings sketch out three groups of people. The blessed and struggling! The be-woed – content in their bubbles. And folk like Daniel – prospering but troubled. I expect all three groups are among our worshippers today.

All three kinds of people may have barriers to feeling like you belong, like you’re part of God’s work in this time and place. 

For the blessed-and-struggling, you just can’t. Your focus is on getting through the day, putting one foot in front of another. Keeping yourself and your loved ones alive and OK-ish. You don’t have energy or capacity to look around or do more. 

For the comfortable and unconcerned, there just isn’t a sense of urgency or need. As we say in the Midwest when somebody offers us something we don’t want, “I’m all set.” But – but! I note that there were such folks in the crowd listening to Jesus; I think there are probably such folks in this gathering today. There can be, if you will, a crack in the bubble. A sense that maybe there is a bigger picture that calls for attention and engagement, no matter how “all set” one may feel. 

For the prosperous and troubled, like Daniel: the barrier is the sense of overwhelm and helplessness. Not knowing what to do – what you even can do, in the face of the boastful horns and cosmic goats of our time. 

Today we honor the Feast of All Saints (though our observance here throws in some All Souls too). All Saints is a major feast of the church, and brings together a lot of different themes and meanings. In a few moments we’ll turn towards the sacred work of remembrance, honoring the saints who have shown forth God’s light in ages past, and our own beloved dead. 

All Saints also calls us to mindfulness of our own sainthood. In the early church – as you hear in our Ephesians reading – all the members were referred to as saints. You can hear that usage in Black churches today, too. At an event last weekend I heard Pastor Marcus Allen talk about his mom and grandma bringing him to church as a child, and how he “just fell in love with the prayers and the Bible and being among the saints.” I love that. 

Later we’ll sing the beloved and extremely English hymn, “I sing a song of the saints of God,” with its theme of everyday sainthood and refrain of, “I mean to be one too!” But in today’s lessons, sainthood isn’t something we aspire to; it’s something given. The reason we have this Daniel reading today is this sentence: ”The holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever—for ever and ever.” Our Ephesians reading leans on the concept of inheritance – that there are things that just come to us because we’re part of God’s family. The word shows up three times in this passage – like in the wonderful phrase,“The riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.”

And here – this is such a beautiful sentence, I wish we could add it to our baptismal liturgy: “In [Christ] you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”

Baptism is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people. We are saints and heirs. There is, of course, always a call to live in response to grace – but the grace comes first. It’s not up to us. A few verses later, the author of Ephesians says, “You are God’s accomplishment.” All of us together – the struggling blessed, the all set, the troubled and prosperous – we belong. Named and claimed. We’re given hope. We’re given power. We’re given the riches of divine grace. 

I’m sure there are people hearing my voice who haven’t yet decided if you’re in on this whole church thing, this whole God thing. There could be hubris or intrusion or even a sense of coercion in me standing up here telling you that you’re part of something that you’re not yet sure you want to be part of. My theology puts a strong emphasis on free will, on our freedom to say Yes or No to what God invites us into and asks of us. At the same time, I know that often the barriers are questions of worthiness and belonging. Am I good enough? Do I know enough? Do I believe cleanly or clearly enough? Am I the right kind of person to be here, to be part of whatever this is? To belong to a church; to be loved by God? 

The emphatic answer of these texts and of the Gospel is that God’s welcome is eager and immediate and all-encompassing. The letter to the Ephesians is written to people who aren’t sure whether they fully belong in the church. After today’s reading, the text explores reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles in Christ, then comes to one of my favorite passages – I printed it in our bulletins: “So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household… In [Christ] the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.  And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by the Spirit.” 

There are mysteries of belief and belonging. But I feel bold enough to to say that it matters that you’re here. For you; for us; for God. Whatever is going on in our lives and our hearts, God welcomes us as saints and heirs. This is a holy and hopeful mystery: all of us, blessed and struggling, comfortable and woeful, prospering and troubled, the sure and the seeking, the bold and the ambivalent: right here, right now, part of of something beautiful that God is building. 

Read more about apocalyptic literature here:

https://matthewroot.ca/2023/05/03/understanding-biblical-genres-apocalyptic/