The trouble with writing a
daily lectionary based blog is you can’t pick the easy scriptures or avoid the
more difficult ones. So let me say that doom and gloom scriptures with
everlasting judgment trouble me even if I count myself as one whose name is “found
written in the book”. Of course there are plenty of scripture passages that
will support the idea that the chance of being one of the “wise shiny ones” is
akin to winning the lottery which is even more troubling because I never win
anything. Later verses in the 12th chapter of Daniel are considered by some to
be the key to unlocking the riddle of the time of tribulation in the Book of
Revelation where most people have a losing lottery ticket and are left behind.
That is not to say God cannot do whatever God wants even sentence the whole lot
of us to shame and everlasting contempt. But in light of the cross I find that
unlikely and the cross is the key to unlocking the mystery of scripture. There
are certainly things worthy of judgment and I count myself guilty on all counts
but as my theology professor Walt Bouman liked to say judgment is a penultimate
word, or the word that comes before the ultimate word. For Christians of the
Lutheran persuasion the ultimate word is always the cross which is a word of mercy
expressed fully by God’s self-sacrifice for wise and foolish alike. The truth
of Daniel is more apparent in its immediate context. It is a word for
persecuted people held captive in a foreign land where more than one of their
loved ones are sleeping in the dust. It is a promise that the scales of justice
will be balanced and despite a time of unprecedented anguish deliverance will
have the final say. Does it mean that everyone will shine and no one will be
eternally ashamed? I don’t know, but God does and somehow knowing that the God
of the cross has the final say makes even doom and gloom scriptures less
troubling.
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