Sermon for April 21st, 2013

Daniel 7:1-8
1In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream: 2I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, 3and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. 4The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then, as I watched, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being; and a human mind was given to it. 5Another beast appeared, a second one, that looked like a bear. It was raised up on one side, had three tusks in its mouth among its teeth and was told, ‘Arise, devour many bodies!’ 6After this, as I watched, another appeared, like a leopard. The beast had four wings of a bird on its back and four heads; and dominion was given to it. 7After 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 was different from all the beasts that preceded it, and it had ten horns. 8I was considering the horns, when another horn appeared, a little one coming up among them; to make room for it, three of the earlier horns were plucked up by the roots. There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking arrogantly.

Revelation 12:1-6; 13:1-4, 11-13,16-18
12:1A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. 3Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. 5And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; 6and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

13:1And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names. 2And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And the dragon gave it his power and his throne and great authority. 3One of its heads seemed to have received a death-blow, but its mortal wound had been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast. 4They worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’

11 Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. 12It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. 13It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all; 16Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, 17so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. 18This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.

Of Dragons, Monsters and Emperors
When my oldest son Grady was just two years old, he would sometimes wake up too early and we'd bring him back to our room to sleep with us for awhile. Of course, he never once went back to sleep, so Amy and I would take turns reading books to him so while one of us read, at least the other could sleep. This would last for three or four books, at which point he would begin to squirm, wiggle, holler, and try to get down, so he could go play (unsupervised) in the living room. Which was never a good idea.

One morning, when he began his escape attempts, his evil father came up with a plot to keep him in bed, and said to him, “You can get down from the bed, but watch out for the alligators on the floor–-they might eat your toes.” Amy gave me a dirty look, but it didn’t phase Grady for even a second: He instantly pointed, and said “look–-I see one, Daddy!” At which point his imagination began to fill in the gaps of my vague threat. He named the alligators: Nick, Nack, and Ruby became the three pink alligators who lived on our bedroom floor, although sometimes they liked to crawl on the ceiling. They did eat toes in a pinch, but what they really liked was macaroni and cheese. Nick was very preoccupied with his personal hygiene, and consistently washed his claws in the bathroom before eating (especially dirty toes). Nack and Ruby, not so much.

At the end of the day my threat didn't really scare him that much. On the other hand, at least his creativity kept him in bed for another five minutes.

In both of today's scripture passages, we have some pretty scary monsters--lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Actually it's lions and leopards and bears...and dragons...and beasts with multiple horns. Through the centuries, these monsters from the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation have been the subject of many paintings and drawings, appearing in bizarre, grotesque, and disturbing ways. More recently, these monsters have appeared in Christian films, documentaries and depictions of the end times--not as dream-visions and symbols--but as literal, actual monsters projected into a nightmarish future that is just around the corner.

But, as I've said in previous sermons, scaring people into the Kingdom of God doesn't work so well. It's about as effective (and lasts about as long) as me threatening my two-year-old son with imaginary alligators. And it's probably not what the author of Revelation, John of Patmos, had in mind in the first place. There are three things I'd like you to keep in mind as we read about monsters and dragons in today's scripture passage:
 * 1) First, we have to remember that these monsters appeared to John (and to Daniel, for that matter) in the context of a dream. Things tend to be a little bit surreal in dreams.
 * 2) Second, almost all of the images in John's dream are highly symbolic--sometimes John even tells us exactly what something represents. Symbols by nature represent things that are not themselves.  If a dragon is a symbol, the one thing it can't be...is an actual dragon.
 * 3) Finally, to those who read all of these symbols as things that will happen in the future, it's not quite that easy. Some symbols represent things that John expects to happen in his future ("soon" as he says), but as we're about to read, some represent things that have already taken place in John's past, and some represent things that are already happening in John's 1st century present.  It's not always easy to sort out which ones are which.

12:1A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. 3Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. 5And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; 6and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

We begin not with a monster, but with a woman giving birth to a child. Some have interpreted the woman as the virgin Mary, and others as the nation of Israel (with the twelve stars in her crown representing the twelve tribes). Either way, Mary or Israel gives birth to a son, and this is almost certainly intended to represent Jesus Christ. Note that here, the symbols in the vision are describing events that took place in the past, about 70 years before John wrote Revelation.

Next we have our first monster--a red dragon with seven heads, wearing seven crowns and ten horns. This dragon is often taken to represent Satan, or the Devil. But before we jump to that conclusion, consider this: The dragon is red. Red is the color of the Roman Empire. The dragon has seven heads. Rome was known (and is still known today) as the city of seven hills. The dragon's seven heads are wearing seven crowns, but not just any crown--they are diadems--the specific type of crown worn by Caesar. Rome rose to power under the leadership of seven ancient, legendary kings. It was the Roman appointed regent, King Herod, who, according to the gospel of Matthew, sought to kill Jesus Christ at the time of his birth, and it was the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who sentenced him to die on the cross. A few decades before John wrote Revelation, it was the Roman government that utterly destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, killing hundreds of thousands of John's fellow Jews, just as the Babylonians had destroyed the Temple and defeated the Jewish people 600 years before that, during the lifetime of Daniel. Daniel's monsters were the forces of Babylon. John's monsters were the forces of Rome.

13:1And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names. 2And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And the dragon gave it his power and his throne and great authority. 3One of its heads seemed to have received a death-blow, but its mortal wound had been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast. 4They worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’

Monster number two is similar to monster number one--both have seven heads, seven crowns, ten horns. Monster number two is also similar to Daniel's monsters, too -- Lion, leopard and bear all rolled into one. But they're still two separate, distinct monsters, right? Well...maybe not. Remember that John is writing in a certain style, a certain genre--apocalyptic writing--just like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah before him, and like apocalyptic writings found in other manuscripts from John's time. An important feature of apocalyptic writing is repetition. Often a single idea, person, or event will be represented multiple times using different symbols. Each symbol represents the same thing, but perhaps from a different angle, or a different perspective. We see this in Revelation with the seven seals, followed by the seven trumpets, all of which represent similar catastrophes happening on the earth.

So there's a good chance the second monster also represents Rome, with its seven heads and seven crowns. But where the first monster was more generalized and abstract, the second is more specific: It represents the authority and power of Rome, given to it by the first monster. There's something else going on here, too. The Roman Empire, in John's view, has set itself up as a rival to God -- a power to be worshiped as God, with Roman temples to Roman Emperors. This is why blasphemies are written on the heads of the second monster. John's God is one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So John describes the blasphemy, the mockery of God that is Rome, in three persons as well. Just as Jesus died and rose again, so one of the second monster's heads is given a mortal blow, and then a counterfeit resurrection. Just as Jesus the son brings glory to God the father, so the second monster brings glory and worship to the first monster.

Up to this point, John has been describing his vision in the past tense: I saw this; the beast did this. In the next passage, listen for the change in tense that happens just two verses in:

11 Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. 12It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. 13It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all; 16Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, 17so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. 18This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.

Present tense. Is John describing something that already happened, something that is happening in his time, or something that will happen in the future? We can't be sure. But of the three possibilities, his use of past tense and present tense makes it seem like the "future" is the least likely one.

The third Monster is a perverse version of the Holy Spirit -- it makes fire come down from heaven, just like the Holy Spirit does at pentecost. Just as we are marked by God's Spirit in our Baptism, so the third monster puts its mark on its followers: This is the famous "Mark of the Beast." But remember we're still talking about Rome here...so what is the mark that "no one can buy or sell" without? Don't think too hard about this one: The mark no one can buy or sell without, the one that people keep in their hand and on their mind...is money. Each Roman coin would have been stamped with an image of Caesar, along with his blasphemous divine titles. In fact, the Greek word used here for "mark" (χάραγμα) is also the word for "stamping" money, and was sometimes used as slang for money. Another way to translate that passage would be "no one can buy or sell who does not have the money of the beast."

So what about the number, 666? "Gematria" which was an ancient system of assigning a number to each letter of a person's name and then adding them all up. Many scholars have noted that the name of the Roman Emperor Nero adds up to 666. But so do thousands of other names if you play with them for long enough. And I did translate a few names into Hebrew and add the numbers together just to see. I can tell you two names that definitely do NOT add up to 666, no matter how you arrange them: George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble.

Honestly, I think there's another explanation for that number, 666. Elaine Pagels (along with other scholars) suggests that in the Bible, the number 7 is associated with God, and with perfection. 777, then is the Holy Trinity of perfection. And 666, one short in each digit, is not a "Satanic" number, but rather a number that represents human imperfection. John is telling us that any earthly kingdom led by a human ruler, whether it's Rome or Babylon, no matter how great, will always fall short in the end. Only God's kingdom is perfect.

And that brings me to what I think is a larger point in this whole passage about dragons, monsters and emperors. John may have been launching a bitter attack on the Roman Empire, but I think there is a timeless message in Revelation that applies to us as well.

It has to do with the problem of evil. Because that's what all these monsters are to John: They're a symbolic representation of all the evil he sees in the world around him. All the evil that he fears, despises, and yet feels powerless to stop. And too many times, we find ourselves in the same boat. We watch with horror on our television screens as bombs explode in Boston, as people are injured and killed, and we look at the ones who commit such acts, and we say...that's evil. We may not know where it came from or what to do about it, but we know what it is. It's Evil.

But then, what do we make of the explosion, also last week, in the town of West, just north of Waco, Texas? The fire and subsequent explosion at a fertilizer plant killed and injured more people than the explosion in Boston, and yet by all accounts it was an accident. Is this, too, evil? The ancients, those in John's time, who attributed absolutely everything to supernatural forces would have had no problems labeling this as "evil." But for us, it's a little bit more complicated. We know that weather is impersonal, wars are fought by well-intentioned people on both sides, and mental illness drives people to do things beyond their ability to control. Furthermore, we question how evil can possibly exist in the world if God really loves us and is powerful enough to stop evil. And who created evil anyhow? Didn't God create everything?

Like the monsters and the mysteries in the book of Revelation, these questions are probably too big, too dark and deep for us to answer with any real clarity. But I like what the famous theologian and church-father St. Augustine has to say about evil. He said that God created everything. God did not create evil. Because evil is no thing. Evil is nothing. Just like the color black is not really a color at all--it's the absence of all color. So too, says Augustine, evil is simply the absence of Good...the absence of Love...the absence of God's love.

How could God's love be absent? Think about how God chose to show his love to us: For God so loved the world...that he sent his only son. And then his son sent us into the world, so that through our love, others would know God's love. God's love is absent...when we are absent. The answer to the problem of evil...is love. Let us face the dragons and monsters of this world with all the love God has already given to us. In the cosmic struggles between good and evil, let us be God's hands and God's feet, pierced by nails but ready to serve others, ready to walk alongside them, ready to love. Lord, make us the instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.