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Faith and Reality

Daniel 3: 1-7<= /i>

Daniel 3: 12-18

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When = I was in the fifth or sixth grade, I came home from Sunday School one day excited ab= out three large words the teacher had taught us: that God was omnipotent, omnis= cient and omnipresent! As I relayed what I learned about these words, my two older sisters showed annoyed amusement and I knew I would pay for my childish arrogance later that day! My father, in his typical Germanic way was silent= for a long time and then he said: “The day will come, young man, when hopefully you will question the truth of those words.” Well, talk abo= ut disappointment! My first foray into intellectualism was smashed rather quic= kly.

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Not l= ong after that the minister preached a sermon on Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego= . He became quite dramatic in describing how the furnace was fired up to such hi= gh degree that the men who threw the three Jewish men into the furnace were instantly incinerated as a sign of God’s anger at their sin! But the = three young Jewish men did not even have their hair singed by the fire.

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This = all left quite an impression on me and I wanted to say to my father: “See! the= re you have it; an all powerful God` who can do anything!” But I had lea= rned early in my life not to try to get one up on my father. Then tragedy hit on= e of the families in our small community. A two year old daughter wandered from their house one day, across the meadow to the river where she walked out on= to the ice. The ice gave way and she drowned. That summer the next youngest daughter, my age, was playing with her siblings on a hay mow in their grandfather’s barn, not knowing there was an opening in the middle of= the hay mow to the floor. Dolores fell and was killed instantly. As I began to experience the world around me, I began to wonder, is God really all that powerful? P= erhaps what ever God is, God is not who the Sunday School teacher described. And of course it has taken a life-time to even get a hint of what I can expect from God, and what I cannot expect.

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Later= , as an English literature student at the University of Michigan, we were studying = W. H. Auden’s Christmas poem, “For The Time Being.” In Auden’s poem, Joseph, confronted with the unsettling news that Mary is pregnant, cries out to God: “All I ask is one important and elegant proof…that your will is love.” I was really caught by that! = 211; “ one important and elegant proof!” Well, I knew plenty of peop= le that would point to the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego as the only proof needed that God loved his own special people. But it didn’t work for me any longer. First of all I could not accept the story as historical.= And secondly, well, it’s not very elegant proof!

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You s= ee, the Hebrew people were in exile in Babylon. Being the brightest and the best th= at Israel had to offer, many of them achieved positions of importance and hono= r in Babylon, and were rewarded by King Nebuchadnezzar. But then the king erecte= d a golden idol and proclaimed that all of the people should worship the idol. = This was a sacrilege for the Hebrews to worship other than the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel. It would be as painful to them = as death itself. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to comply with the ord= er. Their response to the king was this:

1. We really do not feel compelled to = answer your questions about why we will not worship the golden idol.

2. And we inform you, O king, that the= God whom we serve is able to deliver us, not only from the fiery furnace, but f= rom your hands as well.

3. But if not…that is, if our Go= d does not deliver us from the furnace, we still will not serve your gods nor wors= hip the golden image you have set up as a sacrilege.

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The k= ing became so angry that he ordered the heat of the furnace put up to such a hi= gh degree that the men who threw these three Hebrew men into the furnace were instantly incinerated. But these three men remain untouched by the fire. Which led King Nebuchadn= ezzar to proclaim: “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, w= ho has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him…ther= e is no other god who is able to deliver in this way.”
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Wow! = If this is not proof of the power of God, then why is it important for the story to= be in Holy Scripture? I think this story was never intended to be taken litera= lly. But it is still an important story that challenges our faith to the very co= re of our being. You see the story is not so much about deliverance from the f= iery furnace as it is about a huge level of faithfulness. “But if not…”- t= here is the key. If there is no visible proof of God’s love; if God is not able to deliver us from the fiery furnace, still we will be as faithful in death as we were in life. That is a gigantic measure of faith. Some would a= rgue that is a dangerous measure of faith! For what do we say of people who are willing to kill themselves along with thousands of others, for a cause? Do = we honor the hugeness of that faith? Is that what God expects of a creation God once called “good”?

Gener= ations later the Jewish people would face the fiery furnaces of Germany. Who could even imagine that it would happen? It was not Jews only who went into the furnaces, but Jews in particular who were said to have contaminated the lif= e of Germany and diminished the blood-line. It is as if Hitler said, “We w= ill build the fiery furnace and the gas chamber and we will see then if their G= od will save them!”

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And y= ou see, some of them were saved. There were good and gracious human beings in those times, with huge, magnanimous faith, who risked their own lives to protect = some Jewish people. Their faith required them to do that. If God could not save, they could. If God could not overpower the evil of the Nazi regime, these people, who had paid attention to the Spirit of God, could overcome the evi= l. Had not God in Christ set the standard of behavior for humanity? But at lea= st six million times no one was saved, and they went to the fiery furnace with= the Shema Yisroel on their lips: “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God is one.” “But = if not…we will be faithful.”

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What = does it say about faith in our time; this time, when the world seems out of control, and life is so fragile all around us? Is there some important and elegant p= roof of our faith and hope in the future? Perhaps proof is the wrong thing to lo= ok for. Perhaps there are among us people of gigantic and magnanimous faith, w= ho have found goodness in strange and ordinary places; humans of huge spirit a= nd creative mind. Can we become people who do not need proof; people who in sp= ite of everything, will push forward with courage and wit, with purpose and intelligence, with the spirit of a Jesus, or even of someone else?

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Why d= o we need these stories? The writers of the various stories of the Book of Daniel faced political and economic disaster that we have not yet seen. The remain= ing survivors of Auschwitz, the living remnant of Hiroshima, the veterans of Darfur, the various tragedies of the contemporary Middle East, have a chanc= e to receive these stories of Daniel as living testimony, and find in them stren= gth to survive. Perhaps it is not an all powerful God we need after all, but a = God who will not leave us alone; who pesters us and challenges us to goodness, forgiveness and love all of our days, until we learn respect for every human being; a people who know that our enemy is always and still and forever our neighbor. Amen.