The American Empire

Putting our trust in the eternal Empire of Christ

11/26/2019

Daniel 2:31-45 Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar: "In your vision, O king, you saw a statue, very large and exceedingly bright, terrifying in appearance as it stood before you. The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron, its feet partly iron and partly tile. While you looked at the statue, a stone which was hewn from a mountain without a hand being put to it, struck its iron and tile feet, breaking them in pieces. The iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled at once, fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer, and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

A friend of mine was studying at the University of Notre Dame a few years ago and said the average age of world empires and kingdoms is roughly 400 years. Have you ever heard that? Of course, some empires endured longer while others were of shorter duration. Just like human beings have an average life-expectancy of 80 or 90 years (sorry to scare you if you’re close to that age), so, too, do human kingdoms, empires and civilizations. Although, what I found fascinating was not how long empires last, but rather that eventually empires end. They don’t last forever.

A further interesting fact is that during the life-time of every empire, the citizens always think their particular kingdom would never end. How many Americans today can imagine a time when the United State will end and be replaced by some other superpower in the world? To most Americans, myself included, that seems impossible, if not laughable. And yet every great kingdom that came before the United States – the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, etc. – all thought exactly the same thing: our civilization will never end but endure into eternity. If my Fighting Irish friend is correct our American Empire, which has been around a little over 200 years, has reached its zenith and therefore, we have begun our steady descent to our death. Just like human beings like to deny that we will die – so we invent things like Viagra – so too, civilizations all deny they will die. But die they do; no human empire is eternal.

Our scriptures today also argue for the rise and fall of empires, just like my friend from Notre Dame asserted. The prophet Danciel interprets a dream for King Nebuchadnezzer, which was a succession of kingdoms that would follow his, symbolized by a statue made of various materials. The Babylonians were the golden head of the statue, who would be replaced by the Persians symbolized by silver, who would be then later succeeded by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, the bronze belly and thighs, which in turn would be conquered by the Roman Empire the legs and feet of iron and clay.

But all these human kingdoms would be destroyed by an unearthly kingdom, the Kingdom of God, symbolized by “a stone which was hewn from a mountain without a hand being put to it.” In other words, the final kingdom is not made by human hands, that fashion gold, silver, bronze or iron, but by God’s hand that shapes and fashions the whole world, and everything in it. Daniel, of course, it predicting the coming of Christ, “a stone rejected by the builders but becoming the cornerstone” (Luke 20:17).

But Daniel’s point, I believe, was deeper than to interpret the dream. He was saying what my Fighting Irish friend was saying: every empire ends, even the greatest go the way of the Do-do bird, to extinction. But do you think the Babylonians or Persians or Greeks or the Romans or we Americans thought their civilization would ever end? Of course not. We all deny we will die, both individual human beings as well as collective human civilizations.

My friends, we are so blessed to live in the United States of America, and to live in the time of her life-cycle that we do. Arguably, we are standing at the apex of the American Empire. We feel the euphoria of Nebuchadnezzer at the height of the Babylonian Empire, and we may feel like our empire will last forever. But we hear Daniel’s voice today in my friend from Notre Dame, like Nebuchadnezzer heard it in his day from the young Jewish exile, saying: this won’t last.

Instead, put your eggs in the basket of the eternal empire not made by hands. That is, put your faith and trust in the Kingdom of God established by Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit – the Hand of God – and not by human intervention. In other words, the only eternal empire is the Church, established by the hand of God in Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, and built on Peter the Rock, and placed firmly on the foundation of the twelve apostles. And how long has the Catholic Church lasted. 200 years? 400 year? Over 2,000 years and still going strong. Why? Well, because the Church is not a human kingdom but rather the Kingdom of God on earth, and she will endure until her King returns in glory.

Praised be Jesus Christ!