United Dioceses of Dublin & Glendalough

Lessons: Daniel 7.1–18; St Luke 6.17–31

St Luke 6.17: … He came down the hill with them and stopped on some level ground where a large crowd of his disciples had gathered, and with them great numbers of people …

Daniel is included among The Prophets precisely because he draws into our world of self–satisfied literalism a visionary and apocalyptic expression of what is real. To many, his perspective is that of late–night television or three–dimensional cinema. However, if we even begin to try to grapple with his fast–flowing images, we sense a thread of integrity in the face of regimes which ask of themselves no questions, of political systems which accept no criticism and of leaders who eat everything before them. And, surely, the flourishing of the Arab Spring in a sodden Irish Autumn, along with our own wind–swept Presidential Election, is a good and a noble time for each one of us to consider the entente between public service and personal simplicity. In our own country, North and South, this National Cathedral of St Patrick is uniquely placed through its dean and Chapter – of which I am a member and in which, by convention, I have neither voice nor vote – to offer welcome to stranger and friend alike, whether local or visitor, to share its deeply embedded tradition of tolerance and respect for all that is good and true, noble and lovely; this House of God is uniquely placed to speak simply and prophetically into a deep societal anger about the end–game visited on the Irish people by self–regulating institutions. I speak of multi–nationals for whom the casino became a more natural hunting–ground than the carefully garnered savings of the widow and the orphan; I speak of organizations for whom the roof over the heads of children, women and men was a commodity for speculation rather than a focus of domestic security; I speak of corporations for whom the thrill of the international chase was more enlivening than the shape of things to come, and I say this in a nation all too seductively bewitched by leprechaun’s gold.

Daniel, as he dreams, finds himself in the thick of it all – as it, whoever it is, and however it defines itself – comes to meet him and growl at him. Daniel is pertinent in the extreme as Daniel, in his day and in his time, identifies corrupt political regime after corrupt political regime. The most frightening thing, surely, if only our eyes are open to it, is that his lion, his bear, his leopard and his unnameable creation of ten horns, human eyes and articulate bombast constitute four successive and sustained images of the run–away–train of political power. Each of the four regimes which he identifies with surgical accuracy morphs alarmingly and terrifyingly before his eye. Each has life coursing though its veins, each is organic, each is plausible, each is articulate and each is profoundly corrupt and corrupting – and each both knows it and enjoys it to the full. This is the pornography of politics – and it is always with us. This sort of regime has nothing but utter contempt for the halting speech of lived democracy. Daniel is not dead, Daniel is merely dis–owned in a world of political spin which does not, in its own self–generated, self–satisfied sound–bite: do God. The End Game of Samuel Beckett, that most eminent of Dubliners and Old Portorans, may seem to give little hope in a world of Narcissism and Nihilism, both of whom, because they are embodiments of that same political pornography, have survived the death–rattle of the Celtic Tiger. In simple humanity, I beg to differ. I clutch to the cross of Jesus Christ and I clutch also to Beckett’s own bon mot, both of them, in their own way, the common voice of those with no voice. Beckett gives it expression in En attendant Godot: Fail again, fail better. Jesus Christ gives it voice in St Luke 6.22: Blessed are you when people hate you and ostracize you, when they insult you and slander your very name, because of the Son of Man.

In this Force 9 gale of political analysis, our Lord himself offers a welcome corrective to the lofty and frenetic grandeur of the prophecy of Daniel. We find Jesus coming down from praying in the hill country, after spending the night in communion with his Heavenly Father; he has been choosing twelve close disciples – and then rather suddenly we find him on the lower ground. He is, in effect and out of Season, a living embodiment of Philippian kenosis, something which we associate more closely with the Readings for Palm Sunday. He is filled with the lucidity of clear vision which comes through the penetrating simplicity of spiritual insight and which so often and so dismally eludes the contemporary church. A few weeks ago, we met those pushy over–achievers James and John, Sons of Thunder, offspring of Mr and Mrs Zebedee – and the Gospels tell us that Mrs Zebedee was a force to be reckoned with and certainly no push over – we found James and John being turned on their heads, spun around on their axis of ambition and pretension, asked if they were willing to drink the cup which the Son of God and Son of Man was about to drink – and, even if they were, there was no way in heaven or earth that they could avoid drinking the suffering which flowed into and out of that cup. The Way of the Cross is the way, the truth and life itself – and disciples now as then need to get accustomed to it – and most of us in the church of today have less and less idea of what I’m talking about. My meaning is, however, as plain as the level ground on which our Lord delivered his Lucan Sermon on the Plain. There is little point in blaming others for what we ourselves have not even bothered to find out. Meanwhile, our blessed Lord comes down from the hills of prayer and obedience in order to heal – even before he has opened his mouth and begun to teach. The contrast with a sound–bite driven culture of mass communication could hardly be stronger. Nor could the impassioned plea of Holy Scripture to be counter–cultural be louder in its whispered simplicity. I can only add: Let him and her who have ears to hear, do just that – hear! Swift’s saeva indignatio of earlier centuries and of an anterior corrupt and corrupting Dublin still has its place in a world of smart phones and of iPads.

Both of today’s Readings present us with signs of the times, signs indeed of other times and signs most particularly of the End Time. But, to many within the church today, this very concept is another fantasy of late night television. Yet, I hate to spoil the party, but it is something with which we must grapple in the Season of Advent soon to unfold. It enlivens and energizes the Baptist’s cry, announcing that the Lord is nigh … John is the patron saint of righteous and focused indignation and John will keep crying in a wilderness which we stubbornly refuse to tend. The Beatitudes, as St Luke gives them voice, are complemented by The Woes – with a realism rarely owned in a culture of jollification, whatever the forecast. In the words of another recent sound–bite: There is no gain without pain. Daniel gives colourful and energetic voice to the hope of the oppressed in times of excruciating repression – we still need to voice that voice. The Ancient of Days and the One like a Son of Man challenge our home–spun certainties about: goal and intention in a life lived in hope and fear, in faith and in doubt, in freedom and in obedience AND most easily forgotten of all: in blessing and in woe.

It is to the babe of Bethlehem, the carpenter–child of Nazareth, that we owe the insight that it is on the level playing field of lived and living human experience that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit make their dwelling in faith, in hope and in love. The prophecy of Daniel which combines and consolidates service and sovereignty points us to a Kingship which voices the hope that, when heaven and earth pass away, there will be a new heaven and a new earth which is the fruit of those who: love enemies, do good to those who enact hatred, and bless those who curse. It is with urgency that Christian people worldwide seek and strive to bring the fruits of this new creation to bear on those who in this life feel deep down that they have no option but to cower in the face of the inscrutable face of power used and abused in equal measure. The challenges remain. The opportunities come and go. The in–coming Presidency of Ireland gives focus to our thoughts as we hope for personal identification on the part of the First Citizen with the voices crying out antiphonally, from side to side, like the choristers of this cathedral church, for compassion and for change.

Daniel 7.18: But the holy ones of the Most High will receive the kingly power and retain possession of it always, for ever and ever.

+Michael

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