Fiery Furnaces

Fiery Furnaces

A sermon by Kenneth Padley

Reading: Daniel 3.13-30

The Trial of God is a play by Romanian-born holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Set in 1649, it recounts the arrival of three pious and learned rabbis in the imaginary city of Shamgorod. Here they are told that the Jewish population of the city has been recently massacred in a pogrom. The rabbis respond by putting God in the dock. Witnesses are heard, evidence gathered, and conclusions drawn. The end result is a unanimous condemnation of the Lord Almighty as guilty of crimes against humanity. Yet the play has a twist – as the final act draws to a close, the protagonists realise that evening is falling and so they cease venting at God and say their prayers. Despite it all, something of faith and hope remains.

Wiesel described his play as a ‘tragic farce’. Maybe it needed to be comic in order to plumb the depths of the persecutions which he and his companions suffered at the hands of the Nazis – and which countless other minorities have endured across the blood-spattered pages of history.

Tonight’s first reading attempts something similar to Wiesel’s play. The third chapter of the prophet Daniel offers an imaginative retrospection into the Babylon of sixth century BC, a land of exile, in order to lay bare the irreconcilable pressures which were being faced by the people of God four centuries later.

In the year 167BC, Hellenistic despot Antiochus IV desecrated the temple in Jerusalem, subverting Jewish worship and setting up a statue to himself. How could God’s people remain faithful in the face of such sacrilege imposed by state violence?

One response was to document their feelings in the collation of stories which we read as the Book of Daniel. Here in chapter 3 we learn of the massive idol put up by King Nebuchadnezzar. Was it a statue of the King or of his principal deity, Marduk? Perhaps deliberately, Daniel does not tell us: for victimised minorities, the gods, king and nation of their oppressors are all entwined as part of a single totalitarian regime.

Daniel 3 moves from tragedy to farce, turning to recite a pantomime about civil servants commanded to worship that idolistic statue in response to repeated orchestral promptings. Thus (verse 2) King Nebuchadnezzar sent for ‘the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counsellors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces’, ordering them (verse 4) to bow down when they hear ‘the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble’.

Jewish readers would have recognised none of those musical instruments from the context of their worship. All were foreign terms for instruments used in a secular context. And so, in time, the farce is exposed as a façade, and the three friends of the eponymous Daniel – Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego [Dan 1.7] – face a mortal dilemma. Should they apostasize their beliefs or endure agonizing incineration?

Their response is immediate and unwavering. They know, verse 17, that – if their faith is true – then God has the power to deliver them from any ordeal. Nonetheless, verse 18, they acknowledge that such a God is his sovereignty might not choose a path of redemptive intervention. So, in solidarity with countless martyrs down the ages, they are realistic about their fate. Even if God will not deliver us, quote ‘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’.

The implicit challenge facing the three friends is the same as we read in the Old Testament Book of Job: should believers only honour God because of the blessings which he gives us in the good times? God may be trusted to protect us, but our honouring of God is not conditional on his preserving us from every malady and misfortune.

And so Christians recognise no other god but God, come what may. In the face of this confession, human potentates are ultimately frustrated and defeated, whether their victims escape the flames (as in Daniel chapter 3) or whether they do not (as in an equivalent tribulation in the second book of Maccabees chapter 7).

In the narrative of Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar is given a chance to acknowledge his error through a vision of our unsinged heroes within his crematorium. The King says in verse 25, “‘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’”. To the author of Daniel, that fourth figure seems an anonymous mystery. To the Christian, he might appear potentially familiar. Here is a rescuer who saves victims not from the fire but in the fire and through the fire. The crucified Jesus contends alongside the suffering in every age.

Friends, we hope never to be faced with the dilemma of conscience which confronted Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. Nonetheless, our world still knows megalomaniac demagogues like Nebuchadnezzar. Some of them are even democratically elected.

And our world knows too the equivalent of the fiery furnace, traumas and tragedies beyond our control which happen in the course of world affairs, institutional life, and personal circumstance, furnaces which rage bright in the face of faith and justice.

• A few are devastatingly literal, egregious examples of the effects of poor building construction and management.
• One is global, the delicate climactic equilibrium, against which leaders seek to roll back international commitments for carbon reduction to the peril of their grandchildren.
• Some are metaphorical, including the historic tendency of institutions (recently highlighted) to preserve their own interests above those of the most vulnerable charged to their care.
• Many are personal, tragedies which beset communities, families and individuals, some doubtless being experienced by those within this room tonight.

At the centre of each of these furnaces, whether recognised or not by latter-day Nebuchadnezzars, the crucified Jesus stands with and alongside the suffering.

History and theology advise that flawed humans will keep slipping up – six steps forwards, then half a dozen back. Nonetheless, flawed humans can and must strive and pray for better – even for best. And, through grace, we know the one who contends alongside us.