“Be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods
or worship the golden image which you have set up.”
We know them better, perhaps, by their Hebrew names from the canticle, the Benedicite, Omnia Opera, taken from the Apocryphal book, the Song of the Three Young Men, regarded as an addition to the Book of Daniel between verses 23 and 24 of this evening’s first lesson from the 3rd chapter of the Book of Daniel. The canticle, appointed for use at Morning Prayer, speaks of Ananias, Azarias, and Misael. Here they are known by their Persian or pagan names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, colourful and memorable names, to be sure.
And a colourful, memorable and powerful story. But then, that is a feature of the Book of Daniel, a book comprising six stories and four dream visions, a book which has bequeathed a number of memorable commonplaces which are, perhaps still with us even in our biblically illiterate era. We still speak of “feet of clay”, of “the writing on the wall”, of being “in the Lion’s den”, and, for the historically minded, perhaps, “the king’s matter” – a reference from the Book of Daniel delicately applied to Henry the VIII with respect to his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Written during the Hellenizing reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, following upon the conquests of Alexander the Great, the stories are set in an earlier period of persecution and conquest when Israel was in captivity in Babylon.
They are stories of courage and conviction, stories which reveal the primacy of faith and the worship of God in his majesty and truth over and against the tyranny and overreach of worldly powers and potentates. Here Daniel’s companions are put to the test about their primary allegiance: to God or to the image of the King Nebuchadnezzar who ordered that at “the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music” everyone was to fall down and worship the golden image? Failure to comply meant being cast into “a burning fiery furnace”. Charmingly and colourfully told, with the fourfold repetition of the cacophonous command, for instance, it concentrates an all important question of conscience. What do you really value? Or to put in the language of Matthew from tonight’s second lesson, “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” What do you treasure? Which is a way of asking what do we really worship? God or ourselves in our practical, hedonistic and economic pursuits?
The civic religion of the state often attempts to coerce conscience and in so doing reaches beyond its legitimate power, trying to control what belongs to our spiritual and intellectual freedom and human dignity. We may go along unthinkingly with the forms of political correctness or consumerist relativism, letting such things define us unawares; or we may embrace such things as our gods and demand the subservience of others to their agendas, like so many Nebuchadnezzar wannabes; or we may awaken to discover the vanity and folly of such things and refuse to be defined by them. The stories of Daniel are about the triumph of faith in the awesome and transcendent majesty of the God revealed to Israel over and against the transitory and passing kingdoms of the world. Indeed, the Book of Daniel contributes to a form of biblical literature known as apocalyptic literature which descants on the rise and fall of kingdoms and worldly powers.
Shadrach, Meschach, and Abendego are thrown into the burning fiery furnace for refusing to worship the image of Nebuchadnezzar. The canticle imagines them singing the praises of God in the heat of the furnace, in the moment of their persecution. A beautiful canticle, it teaches the important insight that the whole of creation exists for the praises of God. It is a marvelous litany of praise signaling the freedom and grace of worship and its power and truth. God is truth, after all. Idolatry is about confusing the Creator of the whole world with the things of creation; it is a parody of the truth which we have been given to think and live. Whom do we worship?
The story provides another important lesson. Not only does the worship of the living God define our real spiritual freedom, but in worship we are with the One whom we worship. Nebuchadnezzar looking into the burning fiery furnace sees Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego “walking in the midst of the fire” unhurt, and with them he sees a fourth man described as being “like a son of the gods.” The worship of God places us with God. We discover a greater community than what belongs simply to our social, political and economic lives. It is a spiritual community defined by praise, defined by worship.
A pious tale, we may say, and certainly told to strengthen the Jewish people when similar demands were placed upon them by the successors to Alexander the Great, like Antiochus Epiphanes who erected “the abomination of desolation” – an image of himself as Zeus – in the temple at Jerusalem. And yet, the point is that there is an important spiritual and intellectual insight in such a pious tale. What do we worship? It really matters. Nebuchadnezzar at least grants religious toleration and freedom of worship to the Jews.
On this “Back-to-Church” Sunday, we are being called back to God and to the worship of God, the God who has revealed himself in the witness of the Scriptures. For us, as Christians, that means God the Blessed Trinity, revealed in the witness of the Scriptures to Jesus Christ. We have to think it; such is worship, too.
Our Choral Evensongs may serve to recall us to the peace and joy of worship and to the dignity of our humanity as made in the image of God. For that is what worship is about – the dignity of humanity found in honouring the God in whose image we are made. We are recalled to a great and significant truth even in the face of the pressures to be conformed to the world. In worship we are being transformed more and more into that which we worship. In worship, too, we discover the true antidote to all our anxieties. For what are they except our preoccupation with temporal and passing things at the expense of things eternal? In the story of Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego we see how truth speaks to power. We discover our spiritual freedom.
“Be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods
or worship the golden image which you have set up.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XIV, Evening Prayer
September 25th, 2011