Scripture
Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods and you do not worship the golden statue that I have set up? Now if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, you should fall down and worship the statue that I have made. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire, and who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter. 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.”
Then Nebuchadnezzar was so filled with rage against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that his face was distorted. He ordered the furnace heated up seven times more than was customary and ordered some of the strongest guards in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to throw them into the furnace of blazing fire. So the men were bound, still wearing their tunics, their trousers, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the furnace of blazing fire. Because the king’s command was urgent and the furnace was so overheated, the raging flames killed the men who lifted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But the three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire.
Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up quickly. He said to his counselors, “Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire?” They answered the king, “True, O king.” He replied, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the fourth has the appearance of a god.”
Nebuchadnezzar then approached the door of the furnace of blazing fire and said, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!” So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire. And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together and saw 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.
Sermon
Last December my family and I became captivated by a TV show called “1923,” a spin-off of the popular show “Yellowstone.” Focusing on the Dutton family, “1923” tells the stories of settlers and ranchers in Montana just before the great depression, including the wars between ranchers and those who herd sheep. It also tells the stories of Native American children who were subjected to the forced assimilation practices of the American Indian boarding schools. We see this unfold through the story of a young girl named Teonna Rainwater. The purpose of the schools was to teach these children that their native culture was wrong and disgusting, to “civilize” them by teaching them to embrace the American way of life and the dominant religion of the time, Christianity. They were forbidden to speak their native languages. They were forbidden to use the names they had been given, and forced to take new, “Christian” names. They were taught Western ways of dress, behavior, and speech through the use of brutal corporal punishment. When Teonna fails to learn the lesson of the day (making soap), she is beaten. When she disagrees with her teachers, she is beaten. When she refuses to answer to her Christian name, she is beaten.
Writers have described the show’s portrayal of these schools as, sadly, highly accurate. This kind of forced assimilation falls into the category of cultural genocide—the desire to completely wipe out a people and their culture by making them disappear into the majority populace, no longer in possession of their own customs, religion, or language.
I bring this up because there is something similarly sinister going on in our passage today from the Book of the prophet Daniel. It’s more subtle, but it is there. The three young men whose names are repeated so many times in our text—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—have been exiled to Babylon, where their captors are trying their best to take their religion, their culture, and even their names away from them.
Names are always incredibly important in scripture. Scholar Juliana Claasens writes,
In Daniel 1, we learn that the names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had been changed from their birth names, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. This change in names is quite significant as names not only signify one’s identity and heritage, but in the case of these particular names, also one’s religious beliefs. So all three of the original names of these Jewish men contain references to God such as “God is gracious” in the case of Hananiah, “Who is like God?” in the case of Mishael, and “God keeps him” in the case of Azariah.[1]
Now, they have been given names that correlate to Babylonian religious practices, meaning “Inspired of [the god] Aku (Shadrach); “Belonging to [the god] Aku (Meshach), and “servant of [the god] Nego” (Abednego).
This sets the stage for the story we have before us today, in which the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar is determined to have the three young men bow down and worship the statue he has commissioned—a massive, 90-feet high gold image which is most likely of himself. (It wasn’t uncommon for royalty to consider themselves gods—this was also the case with the Roman Empire.)
Nebuchadnezzar’s honor is on the line. He has sent a call out to just about all the officials in the land—an almost comical list made up of “the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces” [Daniel 3:2]. He will lose face if he can’t force these young men with no home-country of their own to bow down to his statue.
He is clear to all who are “invited” to bow down to the statue. Refusal to do so means being burned alive in a furnace. All is carefully choreographed. Music will begin—all the musical instruments playing together—at which time, all are to bow. Initially, it seems the king’s plan has worked, until some Chaldeans come forward to rat out the three young Jewish men. They are brought before him, and he once again issues the “invitation”: bow or be burnt. At the end of the invitation, in a rhetorical question, he confidently asks, “who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” [Daniel 3:15]
The young men calmly respond to the king. No sign of fear. Fascinating: it’s not that they are sure God will save them from the fire. They admit: they hope for God’s deliverance, but the threat of burning will not change their minds, in the case that God doesn’t materialize. Their confidence is not in a God who saves with showy miracles, but in the God their true Hebrew names describe: God who is gracious, God who is unlike any other, God who will guard and keep them, even if their bodies perish.
Nebuchadnezzar goes a little bonkers at their refusal. He cannot fathom it. In a fury that contorts his face into a gruesome mask, he tells his servants to crank the fire up to seven times its usual heat. As a result, the servants who bind the men up and throw them in are, themselves, killed instantly.
But not the three men. The king is the best witness to what happens. He speaks to his counsellors: “Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire?” They answered the king, “True, O king.” He replied, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the fourth has the appearance of a god” [Daniel 3:24-25].
The king immediately calls to the men to come out of the fire. Not only does he call to them; he calls out their allegiance. He says, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!” Nebuchadnezzar has answered his own question. Who is the God who will deliver them? The Most High God. Their God, the God who has been hidden behind their new Babylonian names. The men come out. They are fine. They don’t even smell like they were sitting near a campfire. They are utterly untouched by the fiery furnace. [Daniel 3:26]
In fact, they are also, but for their names, utterly untouched by the king’s attempts to disappear their culture through forced assimilation. Think of the groups being talked about in the news these days—the profiles of the people who officials in so many places are attempting to wipe out, make illegal, make no more. When this happens, it’s always couched in some story about how dangerous these people are. It is always the result of fear—fear of the other, fear that their own values can’t hold up against the values they imagine the other represents. And that’s just what it is: Their imaginations.
Who is the God? The one God. The Most High God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of Israel. Sometimes, God does something really splashy—really attention-getting. The fiery furnace is one of those attention-getting moments. But even when God doesn’t do the splashy thing… when we suspect our prayers aren’t being answered as we had hoped, when we are too befuddled or heartbroken to even figure out how to pray, God is with us.
In my work with the Commission on Ministry (COM) occasionally I have opportunities to be with churches who are going through difficult times. And sometimes, in the midst of a tough conversation, wisdom will spring forth from the voice of someone who has been mostly quiet. I once heard a man, after listening to anguished descriptions of the rough patch they were in the middle of, say: “Remember: when the three men were in the fiery furnace, there was a fourth man in there with them. We’re not alone in this. God is with us.”
God is with us, and we aren’t always aware of that fact. The biggest heartbreaks and tragedies often seem to come with some kind of inner mechanism that shorts out our ability to connect…we may even forget to pray. But God is with us nonetheless. In our miraculous moments and in our quiet defeats, God is there… walking with us, ready to listen, to comfort, and to heal.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Juliana Claasens, “Daniel: The Fiery Furnace, Commentary on Daniel 3:1-30,” Working Preacher, December 3, 2017. Commentary on Daniel 3:1 [2-7] 8-30 - Working Preacher from Luther Seminary