Daniel 4: “I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.”
- What Constitutes Crazy?
- What Constitutes Sanity?
- What is the Gift for us from this part of Israel’s Exile?
What would have happened if the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had returned to France from exile, not just once, as he did to fight and lose the Battle of Waterloo, but again, to try a third time for the throne? He did not actually. But that was the point of a delightful movie, made nearly thirty years ago, called, The Emperor’s New Clothes (Don’t worry; everybody in it keeps all their clothes on). The plot involves a switch on the island of Elba, where Napoleon lived his last years in exile, between Napoleon and a Napoleon look-alike who stays on under British imprisonment, to fool his captors. Meanwhile, the real Napoleon is smuggled onto a ship, bound for France. There, some spies and agents await him, ready to declare him emperor and try, a third time, to help him conquer and rule Europe, this time for keeps.
But things go awry. The Napoleon look-alike so enjoys his pampered life of luxury on the island that he conveniently neglects to declare himself the impostor he is. And his captors are none the wiser. So the real former emperor of France has to live among the poor and the working folk of Paris, waiting for the declaration from his look-alike on the Island of Elba: “I am not the emperor—he is among you.”
But that declaration never comes. In fact, the impostor so indulges and enjoys his life of Riley that he keels over dead from all the wine and rich foods. The news then comes to France: Napoleon is dead. From then on, all the efforts of the real Napoleon to reveal himself and claim his throne are met with laughter and scorn.
“So you’re Napoleon, too? Seems like there’s a lot of that going around. Take a number and stand in line!”
In Paris, Napoleon meets a boy and his mother, a widow. She falls in love with him, and he with her. But when he keeps insisting that he is the Emperor Napoleon, and that soon, she shall be Empress of France and all Europe, she thinks he’s delusional. She weeps and pleads with him to come to his senses and accept all the simple joys and pleasures of life already available to them, and not to risk it for some loony-tunes scheme to overthrow the government.
But Napoleon remains un-dissuaded until one night a wrong turn lands him inside the grounds of a hospital for delusional and hallucinating patients. Especially for a certain kind of delusional and hallucinating patient. All of them are walking around with a hand inside their coats, with hats turned sideways on their heads. Everyone there believes that they are the Emperor Napoleon.
And that gets the real former Emperor to wondering: Who’s really delusional here? Is my quest for empire crazy? At the cost of making widows out of women like the one who loves me, and sending young men to die in battle like the one who now loves me as a father? Just for my pride and ambition? What kind of crazy is that? Especially when I already have with them enough to make me happy, feeling like a king?”
Today’s chapter from Daniel poses some similar questions to us: What kind of crazy is this in Nebuchadnezzar’s head? Secondly, what would constitute sanity, by contrast? And then a third question: What is the gift for us today from this event in Israel’s experience of exile?
As for that first question, what kind of crazy is King Nebuchadnezzar showing? First, please understand that I am not talking about any kind of clinical, medical mental illness here. For that I would not use words like “crazy.” King Nebuchadnezzar’s seven years of wandering in the wilds are not a medical, mental health issue, like depression or schizophrenia. For those we issue no moral judgments, only compassion and care.
Daniel Chapter 4, however, makes clear that Nebuchadnezzar’s disorder is not medical, but moral and spiritual. By striving for the heavens, he has fallen into an abyss. By claiming to be divine, he becomes a beast. For such deliberate self-contradictory, self-debasing and self-defeating attitudes and actions, we can use a word like “crazy.”
Now, if we also think it’s crazy that Nebuchadnezzar would get his throne back after he took leave of his senses and wandered the hills eating grass like a cow for seven years, that’s right. It’s also part of the craziness in this story. Nebuchadnezzar is not alone in his folly. But from what I know of the pagan, primal, mystical, magical worldview, we shouldn’t be surprised if people saw Nebuchadnezzar down on all fours eating like an animal, and thought, “Cool! He is indeed blessed by heaven! He is a true son of the gods.” They may well have considered it entirely possible, even desirable and admirable, that people should change places and shapes with animals, rocks, trees and other beings of earth and heaven. That only shows that he is one of the blessed, elite few with enough divine, magical, mystical power to do so, supposedly.
Not only might some have thought that Nebuchadnezzar was blessed by the gods, or that he was a god, he even came to look like some of Babylon’s gods: like the idols and divine figures displayed on the gates to the city of Babylon. Only goes to prove: we become like who or what we worship. Worship something or someone beastly, and what do we become?
But when Nebuchadnezzar thought himself a god and so became a beast, that was not the first such time in the Bible. He replayed Adam’s fall, by grasping for godhood. And not just Adam; it’s everyone’s temptation. Again: “Think we’re God? There’s a lot of that going around. Take a number and stand in line.”
To the Jews in Exile 2600 years ago, this event is saying: If you should wonder if this non-stop imperial spectacle of grandiosity and cruelty, and the worship of the emperor, and the drive to always expand the empire lest it die, and to confuse mortals with the gods is crazy, you’re not alone, nor are you the crazy ones. Even though everything about the nonstop imperial spectacle says that you are. You can trust your God-given perceptions. So don’t give in to the worship of the emperor, his empire, and his gods. Yes, it really is crazy-making. And its days are numbered.
The King’s craziness was not because of his position of being a king, but because of his presumption of being a god. But the warning applies to everyone, princes or paupers. The arrogance, the grandiosity, the cruelty and brutality, the fear and the fervor of the nonstop imperial spectacle and the worship of leaders and celebrities and raw power messes with everybody’s heads. You see it today in the commercial advertising and the political discourse that are always pushing us toward fear, hatred, greed and dissatisfaction, to want whatever is more, and bigger, and newer, and most popular. You see it in the games and the entertainment that glorify violence and vengeance and which harden our hearts against human weakness and suffering. It makes us despise or overlook all the wonder, the beauty and the blessings already around us and available to us.
When Nebuchadnezzar got down on all fours, living in the fields and eating grass, God lifted the veil on the craziness of believing that any of us can ever be entirely self-made people who alone are responsible for all the good things we have and have done. Or that our own powers can ever match those of God, or thwart them. Or that we can rise above the limits and the laws of God and of creation.
(Pause)
“And then my soul remembered God,” says Psalm 77: 3. Which brings me to the second question of this message: What constitutes sanity in this story? Sanity and humanity returned to Nebuchadnezzar when, he said, “I raised my eyes toward heaven and then my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.” That is one major aspect of sanity, according to this story: remembering who is God, and that we are not God. That’s also the second step of Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step programs: “I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” Believing that there is a power greater than ourselves, and relying on that power greater than ourselves, IS the sanity that AA aims for.
In our crazy-making world, we have to stop and step aside regularly to push the reset buttons on our sanity and our humanity, like we’re doing right now in this service of worship, and in every service of worship. We push our sanity reset buttons in our prayers, and every time we read and study the Bible. Do that, and we’ll rediscover just how really truly remarkable we already are, how high and wondrous it already is just to simply be human, what kind of dignity we already have, what kind of royalty, majesty and celebrity we already enjoy as image-bearers of God, and joint heirs with Jesus, just by being human. The proofs and signs of our dignity, royalty and majesty are not the great works we do with little love, like King Nebuchadnezzar building the most impressive city on earth, through conquest and killing. Instead, our royalty, majesty and dignity are displayed in all the little things we can do with great love.
Daniel describes the path back to sanity when he says to King Nebuchadnezzar, “Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed (Daniel 4: 27).
Repentance and compassion: That is the kind of sanity that Daniel encourages for the king, and for us. Such sanity and humanity have everything to do with humility, repentance, contentment, simplicity and the acceptance of our human limits and boundaries. It has everything to do with submission to God, to God’s love and to God’s laws. It also has to do with justice, mercy and compassion, especially for the weak and the vulnerable. The nonstop imperial spectacle of grandiosity and brutality, and the worship of emperors and of empire, tell us that such kind and gentle qualities are weak and humiliating. But Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that, if anything, they are what true royalty, dignity and majesty are about.
For “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, over Napoleon and Nebuchadnezzar, himself said that. The One before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord not only said that, he demonstrated it.
And that brings us to the third question in the outline: What is the Gift for us from this event in Israel’s Exile? For even out of the failure of Israel’s kings, which led to their exile, there comes a gift, to Israel and to us. Even out of their encounter with the cruelty, immorality and idolatry of Babylon’s beastly kings, there comes a gift to the world. Israel came out of exile with a new and radically different vision of kingship and kingdom, one we might call, “the un-beast,” or “the anti-beast.” In short, the gift from Israel’s suffering under Babylon’s beastly, imperial crazy-making is Jesus. For even in Babylon he made an appearance, five hundred years before his birth. He appeared in another dream, one which Daniel had, recorded in chapter 7.
Powerful, predatory beasts also make another appearance in that same dream. In it, Daniel sees four hideous beasts: a lion with wings, a bear, a leopard and something even scarier with talking horns on its head, saying things more boastful and blasphemous than what Nebuchadnezzar said. Those beasts stand for kings and kingdoms. I won’t go into which kings and kingdoms those beasts all stand for. The important thing is that these kings and kingdoms are raving, ravenous beasts, because they claim to be divine and godlike, when really they are just brutal, blasphemous, prideful and predatory. Those kingdoms are short-lived, one giving way to another.
All this talk of beasts in Daniel may have inspired a Jewish rabbi, according to a story from Hitler’s Germany. A certain high-ranking Gestapo officer had pursued the last Jewish rabbi in Berlin for quite some time. After he finally caught the rabbi and had him seated across from his desk, the Gestapo officer confessed, “You know, I have really enjoyed this chase. You were a worthy opponent, outfoxing us and staying ahead of us for so long. I’m going to miss the thrill of the hunt. How about I give you a chance to earn your freedom for a day, before we resume the chase?”
“That depends on what you ask of me,” said the rabbi.
“Simply this,” said the Gestapo agent. “One of my eyes is a glass eye, made by the world’s best glass eye maker. It is so good, so real and so lifelike, that nobody ever notices it. Whenever I tell people about it, they don’t believe me. They can only guess which one it is. If you can guess which of my eyes is the glass eye, I’ll let you go free for one day before I resume the chase.”
“Agreed,” said the rabbi. The rabbi looked at him and thought for a bit. Then he said, “It’s your left eye, isn’t it?”
“You’re right!” said the Gestapo agent. “How did you know?”
“Because that eye,” the rabbi said, “is the one that looks human.”
Again, we become like whatever or whoever we worship.
After the beasts in Daniel’s dream there comes a completely different character, a human one, whose description I’ll read, because it is so important to the rest of the Bible: “and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son of Man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. 14 And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; and whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and whose kingdom.. shall not be destroyed.”
Who is this “Son of Man” whom Daniel sees in his vision?
This is why Jesus called himself, “the Son of Man.” Some translations call him, “The Human One.” Jesus laid claim to being the person in Daniel’s dream, the “Son of Man,” the “Human One” in contrast to the world’s powerful, prideful and predatory beasts. God’s everlasting, worldwide kingdom goes to one who embraces being human, who looks like us in our lowliness and our dignity, who accepts and embraces the majesty and the misery of our human condition. That hope and that vision of that kind of human and humane king, and that kind of human and humane kingdom, is a gift that God gave to Israel in Exile. Israel came out of the fiery furnace of Exile with the hope and the promise of a different kind of king, and a different kind of kingdom for themselves and for the world. That king and that kingdom would be just, compassionate, submitted to God, and eternal. The name which our Hebrew ancestors gave to this promised, hoped-for king, this “Son of Man,” is “The Messiah,” meaning, “The Anointed One.” Or in Greek, “The Christ.” Christian faith says that he is Jesus of Nazareth.
We confess Daniel’s Son of Man to be also the Son of God. For the kingdom of this Son of Man is what Jesus called, “the Kingdom of God.” This king and this kingdom come to us in the exact opposite way, which Nebuchadnezzar and Napoleon took. They rose up, reached high for godhood, fought, failed and fell. God, through Christ, stooped down to accept and to embrace our humanity, as “The Human One,” or “The Son of Man,” made peace with us, and raised us up with him to his throne above every power and principality in earth and heaven.
And so this hymn from the earliest decades of the Christian movement which the Apostle Paul quoted to his friends in Philippi:
Christ, “… being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
That’s the kind of king and kingdom that emerges as a promise of God and the hope of Israel, from her time in Exile. What a gift! What humanity! And what sanity.