On this Wednesday of the third week of Advent in the calendar year A of the liturgical cycle, we come to a very beautiful and powerful theme: the Kingdom of God that endures forever. My brothers and sisters, in the first reading from Genesis, Jacob’s blessing over Judah is not merely a paternal blessing, but a royal and prophetic blessing. He says, “The scepter shall never depart from Judah.” And this establishes Judah as the enduring royal tribe, which was the principal indication by God to reveal his plan of the kingdom that lasts forever.
So before any kingdoms were present, before any empires came into existence, God was already indicating the Eternal King. The imagery of the lion signals kingship, authority, and permanence. And interestingly enough, scholars tell us that the wise men, when they journeyed east from Babylon, saw something in the night sky that would have indicated the people of God, Israel. And what they saw was the constellation, something happening within the constellation of Leo the Lion, which represented the people of God, Judah.
And so, my brothers and sisters, I’d like to turn our attention to the prophecies of Daniel that God made through Daniel when he interprets the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, who sees a huge statue of gold, silver, and bronze, and all of those elements represented particular kingdoms that were to come, empires.
First, the Babylonian kingdom, the Babylonian Empire, which began to exist from 626 before Christ. And yet it didn’t last. It was conquered by the Medes and the Persians in 539 before Christ, and this was symbolized by the head of gold, the Persians.
Then the Persian Empire, which lasted from 539 to 331 before Christ, was overthrown by Alexander the Great, by the Greeks, symbolized by the silver. And so the Greek Empire began to exist and reign over the world from 331 to 168 before Christ, a Greek empire which was fragmented after Alexander’s death, an empire which was later absorbed by Rome.
And the might of the Roman Empire, symbolized by bronze, an element that endures because of all the temporary kingdoms that have come and gone, the Roman Empire was the one that would endure the longest of them all. And so the Roman Empire, which began to exist in 168 before Christ, through a gradual internal collapse, through political instability, economic strain, military overextension throughout the world, and most of all through moral decay, which weakened its unity, and plagued by divisions, was ultimately dismantled by successive barbarian invasions, which saw to the fall of Rome, traditionally held to have taken place in the year 476 after the birth of Christ.
And this was symbolized in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar by iron mixed with clay. Daniel’s central claim is that these kingdoms are real, powerful, historically verifiable, yet temporary. They came and they have gone. They came into existence; they faded away.
But Daniel foretells a fifth kingdom not made by human hands, which, and I quote, “shall never be destroyed, shall break in pieces all these kingdoms, and bring them to an end.” Daniel, chapter two, verse forty-four. This kingdom does not replace others by force, by wars, but it outlasts them by divine origin.
Now Matthew’s genealogy in today’s Gospel is deliberately constructed to answer Daniel and Genesis together. Jesus is traced explicitly to Judah, David, the exile, the restoration, because the genealogy passes through every collapsed kingdom: the Davidic monarchy, the Babylonian exile, the Persian administration over the world, the Greek influence with the reign of its power, and the Roman occupation which would envelop the entire globe.
Yet the royal line never disappears, even when the thrones did. Matthew is proclaiming, while empires rise and fall, God quietly keeps his promise alive in a family line. Look at how God ultimately is the Lord not only of all creation, but even of the unfolding of history.
Rome is ruling when Jesus is born. Caesar holds political power, yet the true king enters history without an army, without a palace, without coercion. The scepter promised to Judah survives Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, not by power, but
by fidelity. And in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal King finally steps into history. We now imagine ourselves before Pilate, standing there with Jesus, and Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you a king?” And what was our Lord’s response? “I am. But my kingdom is not of this world.”
So, my brothers and sisters, as we approach the birth of this King of kings, may you know that you belong to his kingdom. But let us bring before the Lord in prayer what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God. For we know that that
kingdom is not built by human hands and cannot be destroyed by the armies of the world, because it dwells within us.
The Spirit of God that has changed our lives forever, and that will see us through to that eternal kingdom, the Paradise that will never end with God, our loving Father, who sends us his only Son to redeem us and bring us home.
May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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