Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Working in the Kingdom of God or serving this world's kingdoms

Today's reading, Daniel 2: 31-45, certainly speaks to us today. It relates the king's dream of a magnificent huge, exceedingly bright and terrifying statue. Its head pure gold, its chest and arms silver, bronze belly and thighs, iron legs and feet made of iron and clay. A humongous stone rolls down the mountain shattering this statue. This stone fills the entire earth--a kingdom set up by God that will never be destroyed.  The feet and toes of the statue are made of iron and clay, which never mix and symbolize a divided kingdom, fragility and strength.

What a portrait of today's world and of us. God created humankind in His image and likeness.  As such we are magnificent in Christ. Pure gold and silver symbolize our beauty in Christ Jesus. We, too, however, have feet of iron and clay--weak humanly speaking with a propensity to live divided lives: lives of greatness in God as well as lives chasing after that which alienates us from God and puts us in disharmony with ourselves and others. Jesus tells us in the Gospels that we cannot serve both God and mammon. We will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other.  Am I aware that, left to myself apart from the sacraments and the Word of God, I am standing on clay feet, not growing in my love for God or of neighbor, that I can be as self-serving and engage simply in accumulating the riches and accolades of this world as did King Nebuchadnezzar, treasures that will be blown in the wind and become chaff that will be scattered at the final judgment?

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