“The Minor Leagues: The “Minor” Prophets of the Bible,” Week One
I remember the Advent calendars that would go up on the wall of the family room in my parent’s house in Kansas—and despite that introductory line, have no fear, I know I am preaching in May and not in December. (“Has moving from the West Coast to the Deep South so addled our pastor’s brain that he no longer knows what month it is? Jesus, fix it…”)
The Advent calendar served a dual purpose for child me who was a trifle young to grasp such deep theological concepts like penitence as a form of preparation—which is at the root of the origins of Advent as a season. First, the calendar was an excuse for even more trinkets and treats through the entire month of December, not just Christmas. And second, the calendar made it more socially acceptable for me to count down the days to Christmas Day itself.
And I continued that countdown practice throughout my life, and not just for Christmas. As a teenager, I counted down the days until I got my driver’s license and until I moved away to college. As an adult, I counted down the days to my ordination on June 11, 2011, and to my wedding with Carrie on June 7, 2014. And you may have well made similar countdowns to a wedding or birth!
They all counted down to meaningful, epochal moments of my life, which—even if they were a bit self-centered at the time—I think can be Biblical in nature if we treat them with the sort of reverence that Daniel does his encounter with the archangel Gabriel here in Daniel 9.
This is a new sermon series to take us all the way through the summer, from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend, and truthfully, it is a series that I have wanted to give for a long time now, almost a decade, in fact. But it never quit fit into the arc of my ministry until now. Because I think that after all the work that we as a team put into resuming in-person worship services after fourteen months of online-only worship, a few months of a relatively simple series can help us catch our breath and focus on getting back into the weekly rhythm of worshiping in-person again. We have gotten off our couches and back to the gym, now we need to settle into a pace on the treadmill.
So, this sermon series was born. Each Sunday, we will hear from one of the twelve (or thirteen) minor prophets of the Tanakh (Old Testament), so-called because the books attributed to them are much shorter in length than those of the three “major” prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. As a group, I have found the minor prophets especially dear and compelling, but I acknowledge for some, maybe many, of you they may seem unfamiliar or even intimidating, and this series is meant to help chip away at that. The sermons are designed to be standalone, so that if you do some traveling this summer and miss a Sunday or three, I do not want you to feel like you have fallen behind everyone else. So I hope by the end of this series come Labor Day, we have discovered newfound affinity for these so-called minor prophets, and elevated them closer to major status in our faith.
We will be reading the prophets in the order they appear in the Protestant versions of the Tanakh, which means that we begin with Daniel, who is familiar to us through beloved stories like him in the lion’s den, or his mates Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego surviving by divine intervention death by burning at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon.
But there is a whole other half to the book bearing Daniel’s name. Those stories come the first half of the book, chapters one through six, while chapters seven through twelve are an entirely different matter—so much so that in Jewish tradition, Daniel is not even categorized as one of the prophets. If you open up a Jewish translation of the Tanakh, Daniel appears with the kethuvim, the assorted writings like Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, rather than with the navi’im, or prophets. And that is an important thing to note as we read Scriptures that we share with another faith, and especially when that faith faces down antisemitism in the present climate, that we not only acknowledge but respect the differing interpretations of the same text between Christianity and Judaism without expecting Judaism to reflect Christianity, or to change itself for the sake of Christianity. We do not get to impose our agenda onto Judaism. That only actively creates more harm.
Over in Christian translations, though, Daniel appears with the prophets, and his book traditionally appears first in the lineup after the major prophets wrap up with Ezekiel, so we begin with him. And I could have selected from one of the more well-known stories that populate the first half of the book, but I reached for this passage from the heart of the second half, in Daniel 9, for a couple of reasons. One is, as I said, to hopefully foster familiarity with, and love for, an under-read and underrated genre of our Scriptures.
The other is the epoch that Gabriel gives to Daniel for his
spiritual task—seventy weeks. It hearkened me immediately back to the
seventy-times-seven theme of our 70th anniversary celebrations
earlier this spring, and I thought it would make for a natural bridge from that
sermon series to this. Because what Gabriel is saying to Daniel in a literal
sense is that Daniel has a year and change to lead this spiritual revival of
the people, presumably in exile in Babylon after the sacking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II (although many scholars believe Daniel as an entire book is closer in date to the Maccabean revolt of 164 BCE, which would also make sense when talking about the need for spiritual revival).
But metaphorically, as I hope we have come to understand through our seventy-times-seven study, Gabriel is giving Daniel potentially much more time than the literal year and change.
Daniel’s literal countdown may be week by week until he reaches seventy, but I hope that we have learned from our five weeks in the seventy-times-seven sermon series that this does not necessarily mean that is how God counts down. God is not so constrained. After all, as 2 Peter 3:8 notes, a day with the Lord is like a thousand years. God’s countdowns are not our countdowns.
Which does not automatically invalidate any practice of counting down to a special day we may indulge in. On the contrary, if we recognize the divinity that is present in the passage of time—that God ordered for us a system of seven-day weeks to reflect creation, and seven-year epochs for each sabbatical year, and forty-nine-year jubilees, our own countdowns can and should be spiritual practices. You counting down to a birthday, or a holiday, or a vacation, does not have to be self-centered. It can be God-inspired.
And that is a vital aspect to this second half of the book of Daniel, because it is overtly apocalyptic in nature, with great concern given for the timing of God’s intervention in earthly affairs. That is why the number seventy is given additional weight—as my favorite professor in seminary, Father Albert, drilled into me in New Testament classes, the apocalypses in the Bible are meant to mirror creation. Creation is ordered by the seven days of creation, so here, Gabriel orders Daniels quest by seventy weeks. One mirrors the other.
So the question of the day then becomes, how can our observation of time, our coutdowns and celebrations, our marking and keeping of time, how can this very simple but foundational practice in being humanity together in a society, in civilization, how can it be done in a way that reflects God?
Lets start here: are we making space to notice the Holy Spirit in the daily schedules and vagaries of our lives? The Spirit is always there, bidden or unbidden, but are we making time for ourselves to notice it, to hear what it is saying to us, and to see what it is revealing to us? Amid our countdowns and our checklists, are we not only being open to what the Holy Spirit has to say, are we actively seeking out what the Holy Spirit has to say?
Especially if we are eyeballs-deep in church work, I think this is an important question. As we go about committee work, or focus on filling each possible position, or just checking off all the items on a list that I know many days of ministry can feel like, are we not only making ourselves open to what God may be telling us about our work, but actively seeking out what God may be telling us?
For the lesson of Pentecost Sunday just a week ago should still be fresh in our minds—that even after ascending, Christ was not finished with His church, not then and not now. A God—and a Messiah—who is finished with us is a God and Messiah with nothing left to say to us. And that simply is not so.
Will we give to God not just our openness, but our willingness? To not simply be passively open to God changing the wind in our sails, but to taking the compass and charting a course towards what God would have us do ourselves. I think, at their core, each of the prophets we will listen to this summer will ask us some variation of this question, and now, as we have resumed worship of God in-person, in God’s house and our sanctuary, is as opportune a moment for us to seek answers as any.
May these answers come to us, if not in our time then surely in God’s time.
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
May 30, 2021