Scriptural Sermons

I was at our family farm recently for a week’s vacation. The house on the farm is really old -- built around 1850. One place you don’t want to go in an old farmhouse is the basement. It’s dark. The spiderwebs (and spiders) are plentiful and enormous. And the floor is damp mud. But a bullfrog had somehow gotten down there who was making an awful racket. At any rate, hunting for the bullfrog, I came across a few boxes. After I captured and released him, curiosity drove me back for the boxes. They were filled with, of all things, my childhood toys. I had not seen them for nearly half a century. It was like opening a nostalgic time capsule. Bozo, Chatty Cathy, Mrs. Beasley, Creepy Crawlers, you name it. And there, at the very bottom, was my favorite toy of all -- my decoder ring. The younger generation would probably not have a clue as to what a decoder ring is. They became popular toys in the post-World War II years because codes had played such a prominent role during the war, a role laced with drama and intrigue. It’s hard to explain how they work, but a picture speaks 1,000 words. Look at your bulletin cover, and you can figure it out instantly. My sister and I had such fun with our decoder ring. It was a perfect springboard to imaginative play. We’d use it to exchange secret messages, to create treasure maps, and to write our diaries. But why, you may wonder, am I talking about my old decoder ring during a sermon? That’s bizarre -- as bizarre as our Old Testament Lesson. “After this I saw in the visions by night a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth and was devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet….It had ten horns. I was considering them when another horn appeared, a little one coming up among them...There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking arrogantly.” That’s bizarre too. But the reason I am talking about my old decoder ring is because it relates to our Old Testament Lesson. Our Old Testament Lesson is an example of apocalyptic literature. Whenever the Bible sounds esoteric like that, and it only does so in two books -- Daniel and Revelation -- it’s apocalyptic literature. When people want to dismiss the Bible this is where they generally head. How can these freaky, flaky visions have any credibility? How can they possibly be relevant to us? The thing is, they’re codes. They’re codes. Just like the codes of World War II. Just like the codes of my old decoder ring. But why would the writer of Daniel write in code? It’s because his community was being persecuted. Persecuted communities tend to use codes. It’s because, obviously, they are being persecuted. They are being persecuted so they are driven underground, driven to hiding and secrecy. Think of the fish code used by the early church during its persecution. It was used to mark Christian tombs, to denote meeting places, to distinguish friend from foe. Or think more recently of the quilts hung on the clothes lines along the underground railroad. They were codes to mark a way station. Why not use freaky, flaky visions? The persecutors would have been dismissive just as people today are. Contemporary scholars don’t have a decoder ring, as the original community did, but they don’t need one. They have disciplines like textual criticism and historical criticism -- pretty sophisticated stuff. They’ve cracked the code without the decoder ring. The message of apocalyptic literature is really very simple. The community, as I said, was being persecuted. And when I say persecuted, I mean persecuted -- persecuted beyond what we can even imagine. People who think we have it so bad now have simply not read history. The books of Maccabees describe the persecution in grim detail. In one instance, a mother was forced to watch her seven sons scalped and fried alive before she met the same fate. So I do mean persecuted. The message of apocalyptic literature addressed this. The message had two parts. The first is this: God holds the future. It’s amazing if you think about it. God holds the future. Often, a relatively small loss can cause people to shake their fist then turn their back on God. As a pastor people express to me all the time that this is why they do not go to church anymore. They’re mad at God because God allowed the conditions of existence to afflict them. But in the midst of persecution, and persecution of that magnitude, there is the exhortation to fearless and indomitable faith in God and God’s ultimate victory. The second part of the message is even more amazing. It is this: Witness to it. God holds the future. Witness to it. Enact your faith in God and God’s ultimate victory. Yes, it’s pretty amazing, how much the Bible thinks we’re capable of; how much the Bible expects from us, how much the Bible demands of us. “Take up your cross and follow me?” “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends?” “Love your enemy?” But all things considered, what better thing is there to do in the face of persecution? It’s a darned sight better than cowering and capitulating and despairing. You might as well make the most of it, so to speak. And beyond that, God’s cause is nowhere more clearly advanced than in just this way. During the aforementioned persecution of the early church, Christians were being thrown to the lions. But a strange thing happened. They did not evince terror or torment or panic. They forgave their persecutors. They comforted one another. They sang hymns. They prayed to God. The crowds initially were disappointed. They had come precisely for terror and torment and panic. But then it dawned on them that these Christians, they had something. Something that they themselves did not. What they had was the message of apocalyptic literature. God holds the future. Witness to it. The persecution of the early church actually increased its membership and increased it vastly. This is why the church father Tertullian declared that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. But again more recently, we can see God’s caused advanced by the rescuers who harbored Jews during the Holocaust. We can see God’s cause advanced by the marchers at Selma who withstood the dogs and hoses and clubs. We can see it advanced by Father Oscar Romero and others like him who refused to keep silence in the face of brutal governmental repression. And the reason it’s so easy to see why God’s cause is so clearly advanced in this way. These are all but echoes of the persecution of the Son of God. What was Christ’s willing witness on the cross if not his faith that God holds the future? And three days later, that witness was vindicated, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.” Not one of us knows what the future holds. I personally don’t worry much about persecution, and I doubt you do either. We can count ourselves lucky on that score. But I have other worries. How much more innocence will be massacred before we come to terms with gun violence? Who are the children whose lives will be cut short? Who are the families who will bear their grief to the grave? What will happen as climate change plays out -- as mass populations are forced to migrate, as coastlines flood, as species go extinct? When will there be a nuclear war? The doomsday clock is set at 11:58. It’s when, not if. I have my worries. We all do. We don’t know what the future holds, but thanks to apocalyptic literature, we know who holds the future. May we bear witness to that. Amen.