Hosea 1-2, Revelation 22, Psalm 98 OR Baruch 2
The Revelation ends with a stern warning to take the words of prophecy seriously. Hosea opens with a striking parable: Hosea’s own life story (if it is indeed a true story) has become a parable for the relationship of God and Israel; faithlessness, rebuke, return and forgiveness.
But today is a time for celebration: you have turned the final page of the book! Just don’t stop reading just yet…
Daniel 11-12, Revelation 21, Psalm 97 OR Baruch 1
I’ll get on to our new apocryphal book in due course, but in the meantime Daniel has run his course and after apocalyptic visions of the rise and mostly the fall of empires, ends up right in the middle of Revelation, it seems, with the sending of Michael and All Angels into the fray.
Fun coincidence: St Michael and his angels celebrate their feast day today.
As the Revelation draws to a close, it goes a step further, beyond the rise and fall of empires and even of temples; to a time when thy kingdom is come, thy will is done, on the new earth as in the new heaven.
The Collect for Saint Michael and All Angels
O everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the ministries of angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant that, as thy holy angels always serve and worship thee in heaven, so by thy appointment they may help and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. amen.
Daniel 9-10, Revelation 20, Psalm 96 OR Sirach 51
Sirach is finally (!) finished, with a flourish: a psalm and an ode to Wisdom. A long and uneven book, even this one has its moments of poetry.
Day 300; from here it’s all downhill. Two more days and the New Testament will be complete. Two more months and the challenge will be done. It is time to start thinking about how daily bible reading has affected your faith, your prayer life, your discipleship. What do you want to take with you out of this challenge? How will you feed the new habits of devotion you have formed? What will you be glad to let go?
Daniel 7-8, Revelation 19, Psalm 95 OR Sirach 50
Once again, we are reminded how much prophecy relies on the poetic imagination, the ability to tap into cultural memes and themes that speak to the soul of a nation, and use its history to reveal its future.
Daniel’s vision is of the destruction of the empires that have tormented, dispersed and all but destroyed Jerusalem, exiled its people, wreaked havoc on its religion. John harks back to Babylon to represent Rome and its place in the litany of the oppressors of Israel; as Babylon was, Rome is, and both, not to mention the Medes and the Persians, will suffer the same fate.
It is the hope of those who have no hope; the liberty of those who are not free; to imagine a future in which their oppressors have already been torn down (by divine means, because they can see no hope of releasing themselves from this captivity).
The age of the great empires is arguably over. But what has arisen to take the place of their palaces? The message of Daniel and of the Revelation is not only for Babylon and Rome, but for any system that opposes God and the freedom of God’s people to live in the light, spending theirs days in the knowledge of the love of God and the peace which passes all understanding, rather than the knowledge of the other.
Which empirical system is next for the cycle of the apocalypse, to be revealed as a servant of the false prophets? Where is Babylon?
Daniel 1-2, Revelation 16, 92 OR Sirach 47
The book of Daniel is a complicated piece of work, combining stories in different languages and styles, and complemented by books in the Apocrypha which we will read in the next few weeks: Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Song of the Three Young Men and the Prayer of Azariah.
Daniel starts out a little like Joseph, as a dream-interpreter in the house of a foreign king. From his story comes folk wisdom such as the giant with feet of clay. Later, Daniel himself is the visionary, and we will revisit the language of Ezekiel and Revelation in some of the scenes for which Daniel himself needs angelic help with interpretation.
In the meantime, Sirach is drawing toward a close, finishing its wisdom with a litany of wise and faithful men who populate the history of the people of Israel. If we are tempted to wonder where all of the women went, we might remember that Wisdom herself is a female character, Sophia, inspiring and guiding each of the men named by other men.
Ezekiel 47-48, Revelation 15, Psalm 91 OR Sirach 46
To the modern Christian reader, it may seem as though the drama of Ezekiel kind of drops away toward the end of the book – an anticlimax to a dramatic book of visions. But it is difficult to underestimate the importance of the temple to the Jewish exiles, or to those who suffered the loss of the second temple. Witness the inclusion of a temple even in heaven in the book of revelation.
What occupies the place of temple in our/your religion? Over the Christian centuries candidates have included the adoration of the blessed sacrament, basilicas, even relics of the saints. What draws your imagination and occupies the place of temple for you? A place? A person? A prayer?
Ezekiel 41-42, Revelation 12, Psalm 89:1-18 OR Sirach 43
Question of the day: how much of our vision of the events described in Revelation 12 – the woman, the child, the dragon, the angels … how much of our vision comes from the dream of John, described to the churches persecuted by Rome in the wake of the death and Resurrection of Jesus; and how much to John Milton, Paradise Lost, for example:
Thus measuring things in heav’n by things on earth
At they request, and that thou may’st beware
By what is past, to thee I have revealed
What might have else to human race been hid;
The discord which befell, and war in heav’n
Among th’ angelic powers, and the deep fall
Of those too high aspiring, who rebelled
With Satan, he who envies now thy state,
Who now is plotting how he may seduce
Thee also from obedience, that with him
Bereaved of happiness thou may’st partake
His punishment, eternal misery;
Which would be all his solace and revenge,
As a despite done against the Most High,
Thee once to gain companion of his woe.
But listen not to his temptations, warn
Thy weaker let it profit thee to have heard
By terrible example the regard
Of disobedience; firm they might have stood,
Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress.John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VI, 893-912 (Norton Critical Edition, Norton, 1975)
Ezekiel 39-40, Revelation 11, Psalm 88 OR Sirach 42
Three and a half years; three and a half days. In biblical literature, seven is a perfect number; the number of the days of creation, of the cycle of history, God’s time. It is indivisible and therefore complete in itself.
Three and a half is half of this number; a sign of radical incompletion. So the trials and tribulations prophesied for the people concerned with this revelation are not the end of the story. The story of God never ends in defeat or distress. The story is not complete until all has been renewed; the new creation. Three and a half is never sufficient to carry out the plan of God for God’s world; so do not be dismayed, is the message. God is not done yet.
Ezekiel 37-38, Revelation 10, Psalm 87 OR Sirach 41
Who knew that our mothers were quoting scripture when they taught us our table manners?
Sirach 41:19 Be ashamed: before the Lord’s truth and covenant, of leaning on your elbow at meals!
In other news, here’s a poem I found based on the dry bones:
Ezekiel 35-36, Revelation 9, Psalm 86 OR Sirach 40
This morning I have been playing catch-up on last week’s readings. Reading swathes of Ezekiel side by side with Revelation is enlightening. Both authors, visionaries, prophets, lived to see the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of empirical forces: one during the rise of Babylon, the other at the hands of the Romans. Both lived within a religious minority which struggled to keep its identity and its hope alive in the face of persecution, exile, suppression and oppression. No wonder they have so much in common, from the physical details of the living creatures surrounding the heavenly throne – a cultural meme, no doubt – to the mood swings from the hell of war to the hope of heaven. The marking of the faithful, the judgement of the idolatrous, the stern faithfulness of God; name a theme in one book and find it in the other.
Earlier today, I came across an old article about secular versus religious understandings of history, and how both are infused with shared mythology. The author, John Gray, writes that,
…Grayling has no doubt as to the direction of history.
But the belief that history is a directional process is as faith-based as anything in the Christian catechism. Secular thinkers such as Grayling reject the idea of providence, but they continue to think humankind is moving towards a universal goal – a civilisation based on a science that will eventually encompass the entire species. In pre-Christian Europe, human life was understood as a series of cycles; history was seen as ratio or comic rather than redemptive. With the arrival of Christianity, it came to be believed that history had a pre-determined goal, which was human salvation.
Which is fine as far as it goes. But I wonder if Ezekiel and John of Patmos might argue that the cycle of history does not deny its direction, nor does Providence shirk the cycles of human history, tragic or comic, and universally mythological.
Epiphany's Bible Challenge 