Monday, 9 September 2024 The Revd Neil Thorogood,
Daniel 9: 20 – 27
While I was speaking, and was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God on behalf of the holy mountain of my God — while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen before in a vision, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He came and said to me, ‘Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. At the beginning of your supplications a word went out, and I have come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved. So consider the word and understand the vision:
‘Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time. After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator.’
Reflection
We are deep in history and deep in mystery. Those who know far more than I suggest these verses take us to Seluicid (Syrian) kings who overtake Alexander the Great’s empire after his death in 323 BC. One, Antiochus IV, wrought havoc and horror for the Jews. Our text ends with Jerusalem’s devastation; “an abomination that desecrates.” Antiochus, like so many before and since, weaponised religion for empire. He personally walked into the Temple’s Holy of Holies and ordered gold and silver to be stripped. Later, he banned Temple worship, replacing it with an altar to Zeus; a Greek idol worshipped at the heart of the Jewish world’s holiest place. The second commandment obliterated. Jewish rebellion and massacres followed.
History unfolds its horrors as it always does across the Bible’s pages. And into the story, as always, comes the word from God. That word comes in conversation as Daniel prays the evening prayers. There is confession, “my sin and the sin of my people…” There is comfort, “you are greatly loved.” And there is judgement, “to the end there shall be war.” This is strange, alarming faith. Maybe its fury and fear feel impossibly remote.
But what if this text wants us to learn to discern God at work in the events of history? What if Daniel’s conviction that the world is God’s arena far more than humanity’s stage needs to shape our vision and conduct more and more? What might the messengers say into our prayers as we look to our times? What might we hear from God as climate catastrophe unfolds and habitats collapse? How might our prayers dig ever deeper into wars’ realities and causes? Where might God point us as we debate migration and asylum, empire and racism, injustice and greed, identity and voting?
What might we need to confess? How might we see God judging us? And, crucially alongside both of these, how might we discern that we and all creation are also greatly loved?
Prayer
Daniel’s world is not the world we know.
But other empires captivate and control us.
We live where money,
and the power money brings,
works to bless and to blind us.
We live with plenty of violence
and much anguish.
Living God,
in your judgement,
forgive us.
In your love and mercy,
set us free.
Inspire in us your holy habit
of listening for your voice,
and acting upon it.
In Christ’s name.
Amen