Hope Lives!

Sermon 1 in Sermon Series “HOPE:  Studies in the Prophets”

November 3, 2013

Daniel 7:1-18

Scripture

In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream.  2 Daniel said: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. 3 Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.

13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,[a] coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

15 “I, Daniel, was troubled in spirit, and the visions that passed through my mind disturbed me. 16 I approached one of those standing there and asked him the meaning of all this.

“So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things: 17 ‘The four great beasts are four kings that will rise from the earth. 18 But the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever.’

Sermon

Introduction:  Tension

             The world stood still.  A taunt, tension filled 2 inch cable crossed a 1,500 foot deep chasm near the Grand Canyon.  Nik Wallenda, the grandson of the found tight rope walker who crossed Tallulah Gorge with great fanfare in the 1970’s, stood between two sides of the canyon – 30 mph winds swaying the cable.  The tension in this cable had been minutely studied.  If the tension is too loose, Wallenda would sink too low and sway too high fighting to stay on the cable;  if, however, the tension is too tight it keeps the cable from swinging any in the wind, creating an uncontrollable bounce that would send him into the chasm. 

            On this day in June 2013, there was more than just tension in the wire.  Tension creased itself on the televised HD face of Wallenda’s face as he faced the higher than expected updrafts of wind in the canyon.  Tension crumbled the body language of his family as they nervously watched from the side.  Tension raised the tenor of the voices in the announcers as they questioned if they were watching a feat of daring or a man before he dies.  Finally, tension held my breath, building tension in my back and my neck as I try to not care, when in reality, I am invested in knowing if this man will live or die.  For over 12 tension filled minutes the world held its breath waiting for Wallenda to run the final few yards to the side of the canyon.  Then as we saw him embraced by this family, the tension releases.  We start to breathe again.

            Tension.  We see it in the cable that carried Wallenda and we experience it in the stressors of our lives.  In spectacles like Wallenda’s or in movies or books, we expect the tension to finally reach resolution.  Some of us struggle with tension so much, we simply need to know how things end – we read the last few pages of a book before we even start the first page. 

What happens, though, when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, when there is no expectation or anticipation for the tension to be released?  Where do we find hope in these situations? 

           

Movement 1:  Tension filled the world of those who heard Daniel’s vision.  Interpreters have chosen two distinct communities – both facing tremendous tension and conflict in their lives - as the possible first hearers of this vision.  First, these words could have been delivered to Jews during the Babylonian exile – men, women and children forced from their homes and marched around the Fertile Crescent to live homesick lives – never knowing if they would ever return.  The second, and more likely scenario, has the first hearers of these visions living around the year 168 BC during the Greek occupation of Jerusalem.  Jews had rebelled against their Greek occupiers for violating the sanctity of their temple.  Now the occupying forces were violently destroying and killing the Jewish population.  In both scenarios, the Jews hearing these visions were in desperate situations with no solution in sight.  All seemed lost from where they lived – watching as friends and families were deported or killed. 

            Daniel's vision presents a tension filled world:  “there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. 3 Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.”  These 4 beasts represent the kingdoms which would occupy Israel, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans.  Each one carried a greater feeling of fear and terror.   

Anne Frank felt this fear and terror.  Anne, a Jewish girl, also lived in an occupied city, in Nazi occupied Amsterdam, Netherlands.  On June 12, 1942, she received a diary for her 13^th birthday.  Twenty two days later, she went into hiding in a hidden room upstairs of her father’s office with 6 others - her father, mother, and older sister, and another family of there.  For over two years, these 7 individuals lived in a world of constant tension – wondering if the Nazi soldiers would discover them.  In this world – they never knew what each hour or day would hold. 

In August 1944, they were betrayed.  Both families were marched to Jewish concentration camps.  It was only Anne’s father Otto who survived the camps allowing Anne’s documentation of her world to inspire and challenge all who read her words or see her words brought to life on stages around the world.  

God and Daniel both knew that tension filled worlds like that of ancient Israel or that of Anne Frank numb our ability to find hope to keep living.    

Movement 2:  Our world, like Daniels, lives in tension.  People throughout our nation and world today live in tension filled situations where they cannot see a way under, thru, or around the situation before them.  Like the Jews of the Babylonian exile or the Greek occupation, life for these individuals grows weary and frayed at the edges wondering what will happen next.  Iraqis live with fear of constant car bombs as they go about normal lives.  Chinese Christians fear the authorities will discover their house churches and detain their pastors.  But tension filled worlds are not just overseas. 

            For most of his life Gilroy Hain lived a comfortable middle class lifestyle.  He worked for aerospace and engineering companies around the country, traveling every few years to a new job and community. The longest he was ever with any one employer was seven years. He went from job to job to job until all of a sudden, when he was in his 50s, there weren't any more jobs for him, without his college degree. So, te drained his meager 401(k) account waiting for his job search to pan out. It never did.

            Suddenly, he went from comfortable, middle class worker to homeless man trying to survive.  For two years he lived in a stand of trees in Los Angeles, getting up every day to work his job at Starbucks.  It wasn’t until he turned 62 and began to withdraw his social security that he could find a room to rent and move beyond just surviving. 

            I wish his story was an isolated incident.  Yet, I know too many friends personally who have traveled in such desperate, tension filled circumstances.  Tension filled lives are all around us. 

Movement 3:  We also live tension filled lives.  We don’t really have to look too far, do we, to see the tension in our own lives.  We have a fear of the future.  We wonder what the world will be like when our children or grandchildren are grown.  We experience anxieties in daily life.  Everywhere we look we feel the tension of life today – we turn on the talking heads on tv, we read the local paper, we see the vitriol of our current politics.  Anxiety like a contagion eats our stability and hopes for a future.  All of this leads to anger.  Our fear, anxiety and tensions have created unacknowledged anger living just below the surface of our lives.  We get angry at our President, at our Congress, at our local politicians, at our school leaders, and at others in leadership.  Often, without even realizing it, this anger spills out to the people we love the most. 

            This tension becomes a massive boulder upon our lives.   Like a large rock placed upon our shoulders, we feel our lives gradually pressing closer and closer to the ground.

            In the fall of 2007, I found the boulder pressing me to the ground.  Like a perfect storm, the tension in my life had grown from nothing to overwhelming in a few short weeks. That fall we knew that Marcia would begin her hardest semester of her Master’s degree.  She would observe in classrooms during the day and take master’s classes in the evening and need to figure out time to study in her spare time.  We knew it would be tough.  Then, as August moved into September, our church gave our pastor an unexpected sabbatical for the fall.  Without warning I went from Associate Pastor to Pastor for almost two months.  The tension began to climb exponentially. 

Then, soon after Labor Day my mother got very sick.  It was still just two years after my father’s death and my mom struggled every day with grief and little hope.  For almost a month, she was in the hospital and rehabilitation. 

Suddenly, I found myself trying to work with Marcia to take care of our girls during an incredibility busy school and work schedule.  I needed to take care of my mom to make sure she got the care she needed.  And I the needs of a congregation never seemed to stop.  I remember preaching a sermon in October about feeling like I was holding on above a large abyss with only my fingertips.  I literally wondered if we would make it. 

Tension filled lives wear down our bodies, our brains and our spirits. It causes us to lose all perspective and hope. 

Movement 4:  Daniel’s vision reveals God’s hope for a tension filled world.  This is the Good News of Daniel’s vision.  In spite of the tension that filled their occupied worlds there was hope.  Daniel 7 to the end of the book presents a different type of literary style from the first 6 chapters.  The first 6 chapters are narratives about these incredible heroes of the faith who live as exiles in Babylon.  We have heard these stories since many of us were children.  There is Shadrack, Meshack, and Abenego who were “Cool in the furnance” – friends of Daniel’s who were thrown into an oven for worshipping Yahweh.  And who can forget Daniel in the Lion’s Den. 

            But here in Chapter 7 the narrative stops and we hear an apocalyptic vision of the future.  It’s a vision filled with symbolic beings and tension filled situations.  The vision is so graphic; Daniel gets agitated, afraid, and needs an explanation.  This style of writing – called apocalyptic writing - is found throughout the bible – most notably in Revelation.  While it presents us with some strange interpretations, the authors use this writing style like John uses it in Revelation – to peel back our understanding of reality to help us see more than we can really see.  The symbolic writing gives readers the ability to see life from a different perspective. 

            Yes, Daniel’s Vision says - there have been these 4 different kingdoms or beasts that have occupied and destroyed your land.  But look up – there will come a day when the Son of Man – an image that Jesus will use for himself – who will come to rescue those who live in tension filled worlds. 

            This Son of Man will be “given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

This reminds me Revelation 21 when new heaven and the new earth come down from heave to replace the beaten up, violent, dying world in which we live.  I love this image of heaven – it reminds me, like the words from Daniel – of the day when all of this tension will be removed.  It gives me – like those in Daniel’s day – hope.  Even when we don’t know all the answers, when we feel overwhelmed, when we feel the grave getting closer, when we have buried more family members than are left at thanksgiving table, we know there is more.  More to beyond life.  more.  Hope lives.  This is exactly what Daniel is trying to tell us.  Hope lives. 

Movement 5:  Hope lives!  This is the Good News today for you and me. 

            Hope is ours for the taking.  Hope lives when tension fills our lives.  Hope lives when we are afraid of what the future might bring.  Hope lives when anxieties claw our eyes and keep us from seeing from God’s perspective.  Hope lives in a world of violence and disagreement.  Hope lives when a government shuts down or a website won’t work or all we can talk about is health insurance.  Hope lives when we still mourn those whom we loved so much no longer share our house or our lives.  Hope lives when we come home to a quiet house and our children live a plane ride away.  Hope lives when our bodies are shutting down.  Hope lives when we can’t pay our bills.  Hope lives when jobs are scarce or inadequate.  Hope lives – Hope lives.  Hope lives. 

Conclusion

            In late May 1943, a B-24 airplane carrying a 26-year-old Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic track star and navy bombardier, went down over the Pacific.  For nearly seven weeks — longer than any other such instance in recorded history — Zamperini and his pilot managed to survive on a fragile raft. They traveled 2,000 miles, only to land in a series of Japanese prison camps, where, for the next two years, Zamperini underwent a whole new set of tortures.

His story recorded by Laura Hildebrandt in a book called Unbroken is filled with more tension and stress and fear than any of us could ever imagine.  Yet – the story is one of incredible hope.  Hope lives in the story of Zamperini – from his days on the raft to his days in the camps to the days of their rescue to even the days when he returns home.   In fact, his greatest story of hope is worth reading the whole book for – you just have to get to the very end to see it. 

Zamperini’s tension filled life could have been lifted from the days of Babylon or Greek or Nazi Germany or Communism or the Great Recession or even our own stories of grief and fear and anxiety.  He demonstrates for us the importance of what Daniel’s vision tells – the possibilities of life when we allow hope to live.  When we look up and see life from God’s perspective – we learn there is more to this life and our reality than we will ever see. 

Listen to these words from Romans 5:3-4 - And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Hope lives.  Hope lives.  Hope lives.  Praise be to God.  Hope lives.  Amen!