Margie Quinn
The book of Daniel is, as one scholar put it, the most unusual book in the Hebrew bible. The first chapters of the book are “court tales” about a mad King, a fiery furnace, and a lion's den. The second half of the book reveals strange visions and wild dreams of beasts from the sea and the like, that are so fantastical it’s hard to make sense of them. It’s an apocalyptic book just like the book of Revelation. But apocalypse doesn’t mean “doomsday” or “end of the world” in this case. It means “unveiling or “uncovering.” It simply reveals what already is.
Many scholars think that a few of these stories are folklore, told around a campfire as a way to orally preserve stories of faith and resistance. So, let me tell you a little faithful, fiery folklore this morning.
In the third chapter of this book of unveiling, we meet the mad King Nebuchadnezzar, the conqueror of Jerusalem, the man who is responsible for the destruction of the Temple, who forced many of God’s people, the Jewish people, to live in exile under military occupation. Exile for the Israelites was an experience of military defeat, deportation and oppression in a new and strange land, which ended their days of independence.
In the same year that the Temple, the true place of worship for God’s people, comes down, this mad monarch wants to erect a golden statue as a new symbol of worship. We’re not quite sure what the statue was of, some scholars think it was of King Neb himself, but it doesn’t really matter: the King had the economic and political power, (and a particular kind of pride that derives its prestige and privilege from the suffering of others) to do whatever he wanted. This statue is set up in the plain of Dura, meaning that the politically occupied people, the colonized people, would have to walk by it every day, constantly reminded of their inferiority in this strange land.
Isn’t that what colonialism does? We’ve seen it before– settlers take over land that is not theirs and build statues symbolizing their conquests, their inventions, their victories, and their heroes, making sure that the people striving for a kin-dom of God know that this is the kingdom of Babylon.
Why does he demand the golden statue? Because he can. He’s rich enough. He has enough gold. And not only that, he has enough people in government who hang on his every word, his minions, with whom he can demand obedience. We learn in verse 2 that he sends for all of these leaders, the highest officials of government who represent Babylonian power, to gather around the statue. They have been called by the King to attend his little statue dedication party. When they’re all there, they learn that every time they hear a particular musical ensemble or anthem, if you will, they should fall down and worship this golden statue. And, as verse 6 tells us, “Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.”
DUN DUN DUN….are you seeing the set up here?
Enter Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Which aren’t even their god-given, Hebrew names but the names that the King has forced upon them. Their Jewish names, Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael, are taken from them, their identities stripped and changed to fit into the language of conquest. Sound familiar?
The King has changed their names, because as history shows us, the best way to enslave the minds of oppressed people is to take away their cultural identities, change their names, change their hair and their clothes and forbid them from speaking their native language.
The first thing we learn about these three friends is that they won’t bow down to his object of gold. You see, a group of people come up to King Neb and alert him to the fact that certain “foreigners” living under his imperial control are disobeying his command. These three courageous friends, who were actually given leadership positions to oversee Babylonian affairs, who have already tasted a little bit of what it feels like to be among the political elite, throw a wrench in the King’s plan. The narrative of “whatever Neb wants, King Neb gets,” stops here.
These three courageous friends, these lowly Jewish exiles, stand in faith before the King as he asks, “Is it true…that you don’t serve my gods or worship my statue?” Giving them one more chance to change their minds, he states again, “Now, like I said before, if you’re ready, when you hear the anthem, fall down and worship…but if you don’t, you’ll be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire, and who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”
I hate spoiler alerts but spoiler alert: we know who this God is who will deliver them out of the King’s hands. This is the God who delivered the Israelites from Egypt, who gave Esther the courage to stand up to the mad King Ahasuerus, the same God who likes to do some of his best work in burning bushes and fiery furnaces. I digress.
These three courageous friends stubbornly refuse to compromise their faith, even in the face of royal wrath and terrible threats. In fact, they double down, despite knowing that their faith has consequences.
These three courageous friends let him know that they don’t need to get into an argument with him about their Deliverer. In fact, they don’t state that God will definitely deliver them. Instead they say, “ If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.” Even if their God doesn’t deliver them, they still won’t obey the King’s commands. Imagine having that kind of faith, that kind of courage, to resist the powers that be even if you don’t know the outcome of your actions.
Still, their faith has consequences–it leads them right into the fire. The King orders that the furnace be heated up to 7x its normal temperature and gets his strongest guards to bind them and throw them into the furnace. They are bound and thrown in and because the fire is so overheated, the flames kill the King’s own guards who lifted the men into it. The rage of the King is so great, it results in the senseless loss of some of his own officials.
The three friends fall down, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire. King Neb is watching the whole thing. “Wait a minute,” he asks his minions, “didn’t we throw in three men?” “True, O King,” they reply. “But I see four men in there, unbound, walking in the middle of the fire…and they aren’t hurt…and the fourth has an appearance of a god.”
He immediately approaches the door and says, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!” Did you pick up on that? He recognizes that the God who delivers them is not a god of gold but the most High God, their God.
So, they come out of the fire. And all of the minions gather and see that the fire “had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their tunics were not scorched, and not even the smell of fire came from them.”
King Neb blesses them for their courage and admits that an angel of their God has delivered them because they trusted their God. This is, what we would call, a plot twist. All of the sudden, this King who tried to culturally and spiritually assimilate these men by tempting them with power and prestige, recognizes that their God has delivered them. In the big ending of this story, King Neb is humbled enough to give them credit for disobeying his command and “yielding up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own. “The humbling of the mighty emperor,” Daniel Christopher-Smith writes, “was instigated by the civil disobedience of three who lived by another reality, because they served another Sovereign.” Another reality. Another sovereign.
As people of faith, we have a lot to learn from these three courageous friends. As people of faith, we will inevitably find ourselves in opposition to dominant culture and idolatrous patriotism. As people of faith, we will find ourselves resisting a culture based on military conquests and economic abuse of conquered peoples.
And we have two choices. Will we fall on our knees to worship the symbols of worldly power in all of its religious expressions or will we refuse to be moved by the music of national interest, unwilling to bow before the golden statues of the people in power?
We must be willing to walk through the fire, not alone but with courageous friends, knowing that there is an angel of God who walks with us every step of the way.
We may be afraid, the road may seem long, and it may be very daunting to resist what the King offers. But the most High God beckons us to step into a radical faith, not the Babylon-poisoned faith of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego but the ancient, bold faith of Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael.
Amen.