Scripture: Daniel 3
Now I have to admit – the first time I saw this story was what was scheduled to be our first week of Advent text, my reaction was… “huh?” How on earth does the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being thrown in the fiery furnace have ANYTHING to do with the first week of Advent? I mean – I guess they both involve fire.
Then I realized it might be helpful to recognize the context of the book of Daniel. As we’ve been going through this Narrative Lectionary, we’ve been following the trials and tribulations of the people of God. Last week, Pastor Meg talked about the Prophet Jeremiah, who was one of the prophets who was alive during the time of the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonian Empire and were taken away as exiles into Babylon.
Daniel is a book that takes a look at what happened during their time in Exile – in fact, many scholars believe it was the last book of the Old Testament to be written – and they believe it was written as a book of hope that looked back at their time in Babylonian exile while living under the oppression of what was known as the Seleucid Empire – which was about 100 years before Jesus’ birth.
A book that addresses issues of faith in the midst of oppression and difficult circumstances. Faith in a time when it seemed God wasn’t really listening to His people. It’s a book that deals with issues of hope in the midst of despair. Hope in the midst of oppression. Hope in the midst of exile.
Now I want you to think about what living in exile means for a few moments. Imagine yourselves, living in your homes, having your businesses or your work that you go to every day – your friends, family, and your culture. All things that are familiar and that you are around day in and day out – and one day, an invading army comes in, confiscates all that you own, and carries you off to another country – where you don’t speak the language, you don’t know the culture, you don’t know the people. You have no livelihood and you have to basically start your life over in ways you never imagined.
You’re an outsider. Your religion, rather than being the majority, is now the minority.
It’s hard to comprehend, so maybe a way that speaks more to mid-western America is to think about what it’s like in the United States just when you move from one part of the country to another – or especially what it’s like when you move into a smaller, perhaps more rural community that is very close knit and never, no matter how long you live there, accepts you as “one of them.” You know what I’m talking about.
If you’ve ever had that happen, you know, at least on some scale – what it’s like to be an outsider. To be different. To somehow… not belong.
To be looked at as strange, as different.
Now multiply that by about a hundred and that would be the situation that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego find themselves in as well. Strange. Different. They don’t worship the Babylonian gods. They live in a land where it is illegal to perform the two signs of the covenant with their God – circumcision and Sabbath.
And now – to add insult to injury – they’re being singled out because they refuse to bow down and worship the golden statue that the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar has built.
It is about living in a time and a place where their most basic commitments to God are being undercut by the culture and forces around them. It’s about who they are as God’s people in the midst of this exile, in the midst of being an outsider, out of place, not living in their own land.
It’s about faithfulness in the face of persecution.
I remember in seminary a young woman from Liberia that was a classmate of mine.
During one of our classes, we were required to get up and tell people about our “faith story.” Basically the “ok, what madness drove you to want to go to seminary and become a pastor.”
This woman got up and began to talk about the civil war that plagued her country, how she had been hunted down and persecuted on account of her ethnicity and her faith and was currently a refugee that had escaped – but only by the sheer grace of God.
Three times, she said, she stood in an execution line, where the women were lined up and shot in the head one by one. As the gunman came to her, lifted his gun and pointed it at her head, a soldier standing nearby, that she had never met, said “wait… this is my sister,” and pulled her out of the execution line. During her time in Liberia, she stood in three different execution lines and every time was spared by some random act of a stranger she didn’t know.
What did she want to do when she graduated? She wanted to go back to Liberia and help her people. A woman who had been living in exile, and to go home was akin to walking into that fiery furnace.
You know what happened in Liberia? The women of Liberia, Muslim and Christian alike organized and staged a non-violent, silent protest for peace. They forced the two sides to sit down and meet and refused to let the leaders of the two sides leave the Presidential Palace until a peace agreement had been reached. After 14 years of civil war, these women brought peace to their nation and eventually brought to power the country’s first democratically elected female head of state.
Hope. In the midst of seeming hopelessness. Hope and peace in the midst of what seems like overwhelming odds.
The faith of Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego is a simple faith that doesn’t require a lot of words. There’s no real argument that goes into their discussion with King Nebuchadnezzar, no armed resistance, no trying to argue about who is right and who is wrong. Just a simple, we won’t bow down and if God is going to save us, then he’s going to save us.
A faith that doesn’t see what the end is going to be – but trusts that God is going to be there anyway.
One of our favorite Advent tunes is the Song, “Oh Come, Oh Come Immanuel.” Immanuel, of course means “God with us” and the words, if you’ve ever paid attention, go a little something like this, “Oh Come, Oh Come Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel. That mourns in lonely exile here. Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel. Shall come to you o Israel.”
It is a song about hope in the midst of exile – a song about the promise of God coming to a people who live under oppression and captivity, awaiting the appearance of God’s redemption in their midst.
It’s been over 2500 years since the Babylonian captivity of Israel. But the Christian faithful today still find themselves throughout the world the victims of oppressive and violent regimes, where practicing their faith comes with as much danger as what Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego faced.
54 churches that were burned in Egypt, the bombing of the congregation in Pakistan, the shooting at the Kenya mall… throughout the world, this story has a profound – if not extremely gutsy – point even in 2013. Of people living with the constant faith and hope that in the midst of fiery trials and tribulations, God is there with them. That no matter what the other side of that trial looks like – God is present. God is there.
So as we begin our Advent season, we too call out for the Coming of Christ, for God to be present with us in our world, in our sufferings, and in our times of need. We continue to look for the promise of God to redeem our lives and our world, knowing that we too continue to live in exile from God’s Kingdom.
Oh Come Oh Come Immanuel… Rejoice, Rejoice… Immanuel shall come to you…
Then I realized it might be helpful to recognize the context of the book of Daniel. As we’ve been going through this Narrative Lectionary, we’ve been following the trials and tribulations of the people of God. Last week, Pastor Meg talked about the Prophet Jeremiah, who was one of the prophets who was alive during the time of the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonian Empire and were taken away as exiles into Babylon.
Daniel is a book that takes a look at what happened during their time in Exile – in fact, many scholars believe it was the last book of the Old Testament to be written – and they believe it was written as a book of hope that looked back at their time in Babylonian exile while living under the oppression of what was known as the Seleucid Empire – which was about 100 years before Jesus’ birth.
A book that addresses issues of faith in the midst of oppression and difficult circumstances. Faith in a time when it seemed God wasn’t really listening to His people. It’s a book that deals with issues of hope in the midst of despair. Hope in the midst of oppression. Hope in the midst of exile.
Now I want you to think about what living in exile means for a few moments. Imagine yourselves, living in your homes, having your businesses or your work that you go to every day – your friends, family, and your culture. All things that are familiar and that you are around day in and day out – and one day, an invading army comes in, confiscates all that you own, and carries you off to another country – where you don’t speak the language, you don’t know the culture, you don’t know the people. You have no livelihood and you have to basically start your life over in ways you never imagined.
You’re an outsider. Your religion, rather than being the majority, is now the minority.
It’s hard to comprehend, so maybe a way that speaks more to mid-western America is to think about what it’s like in the United States just when you move from one part of the country to another – or especially what it’s like when you move into a smaller, perhaps more rural community that is very close knit and never, no matter how long you live there, accepts you as “one of them.” You know what I’m talking about.
If you’ve ever had that happen, you know, at least on some scale – what it’s like to be an outsider. To be different. To somehow… not belong.
To be looked at as strange, as different.
Now multiply that by about a hundred and that would be the situation that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego find themselves in as well. Strange. Different. They don’t worship the Babylonian gods. They live in a land where it is illegal to perform the two signs of the covenant with their God – circumcision and Sabbath.
And now – to add insult to injury – they’re being singled out because they refuse to bow down and worship the golden statue that the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar has built.
It is about living in a time and a place where their most basic commitments to God are being undercut by the culture and forces around them. It’s about who they are as God’s people in the midst of this exile, in the midst of being an outsider, out of place, not living in their own land.
It’s about faithfulness in the face of persecution.
I remember in seminary a young woman from Liberia that was a classmate of mine.
During one of our classes, we were required to get up and tell people about our “faith story.” Basically the “ok, what madness drove you to want to go to seminary and become a pastor.”
This woman got up and began to talk about the civil war that plagued her country, how she had been hunted down and persecuted on account of her ethnicity and her faith and was currently a refugee that had escaped – but only by the sheer grace of God.
Three times, she said, she stood in an execution line, where the women were lined up and shot in the head one by one. As the gunman came to her, lifted his gun and pointed it at her head, a soldier standing nearby, that she had never met, said “wait… this is my sister,” and pulled her out of the execution line. During her time in Liberia, she stood in three different execution lines and every time was spared by some random act of a stranger she didn’t know.
What did she want to do when she graduated? She wanted to go back to Liberia and help her people. A woman who had been living in exile, and to go home was akin to walking into that fiery furnace.
You know what happened in Liberia? The women of Liberia, Muslim and Christian alike organized and staged a non-violent, silent protest for peace. They forced the two sides to sit down and meet and refused to let the leaders of the two sides leave the Presidential Palace until a peace agreement had been reached. After 14 years of civil war, these women brought peace to their nation and eventually brought to power the country’s first democratically elected female head of state.
Hope. In the midst of seeming hopelessness. Hope and peace in the midst of what seems like overwhelming odds.
The faith of Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego is a simple faith that doesn’t require a lot of words. There’s no real argument that goes into their discussion with King Nebuchadnezzar, no armed resistance, no trying to argue about who is right and who is wrong. Just a simple, we won’t bow down and if God is going to save us, then he’s going to save us.
A faith that doesn’t see what the end is going to be – but trusts that God is going to be there anyway.
One of our favorite Advent tunes is the Song, “Oh Come, Oh Come Immanuel.” Immanuel, of course means “God with us” and the words, if you’ve ever paid attention, go a little something like this, “Oh Come, Oh Come Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel. That mourns in lonely exile here. Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel. Shall come to you o Israel.”
It is a song about hope in the midst of exile – a song about the promise of God coming to a people who live under oppression and captivity, awaiting the appearance of God’s redemption in their midst.
It’s been over 2500 years since the Babylonian captivity of Israel. But the Christian faithful today still find themselves throughout the world the victims of oppressive and violent regimes, where practicing their faith comes with as much danger as what Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego faced.
54 churches that were burned in Egypt, the bombing of the congregation in Pakistan, the shooting at the Kenya mall… throughout the world, this story has a profound – if not extremely gutsy – point even in 2013. Of people living with the constant faith and hope that in the midst of fiery trials and tribulations, God is there with them. That no matter what the other side of that trial looks like – God is present. God is there.
So as we begin our Advent season, we too call out for the Coming of Christ, for God to be present with us in our world, in our sufferings, and in our times of need. We continue to look for the promise of God to redeem our lives and our world, knowing that we too continue to live in exile from God’s Kingdom.
Oh Come Oh Come Immanuel… Rejoice, Rejoice… Immanuel shall come to you…
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