Daniel 3: 1-2, 3b-6, 8-9, 12, 19-30; Isaiah 43: 1-3
Steve Lindsley
June 21, 2009
When I was a student at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, VA, my fellow seminary colleagues and I spent two years of intense graduate school preparing ourselves for the work of ministry in God's church. So we studied very hard, as I'm sure you can imagine. We immersed ourselves in the study of the Bible, of theology and educational philosophy. We sat at the feet of faculty giants like Dr. Isabel Rogers and Paul Osbourne. And we watched lots of Veggie Tales. You heard me right. We watched Veggie Tales and loved every herbivore minute of it.
For those of you uninitiated, Veggie Tales is the brainchild of Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki, two computer graphic artists who stumbled upon a new way of engaging kids of all ages in the Christian faith. The end result of their work is a library of half-hour videos where a cornucopia of vegetables – Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, primarily – re-enact various Bible stories or walk us through moral tales that conclude with some overarching Biblical lesson. The plot lines are clever, the special effects satisfying, and the humor, like a lot of cartoons today, is crafty enough to appeal to both kids and adults.
We were in seminary when the very first Veggie Tales videos were made, and the timing could not have been more perfect. As we studied day and night how to teach the gospel message to an increasingly sophisticated culture nearing the millennium, along come talking vegetables with a message and a wicked sense of humor. What, pray tell, could be better than that? We used to gather – and I know this sounds kind of lame, but seriously, it was 1995 – we used to gather in one of our dorm apartments and sit around the TV on Friday nights, refreshments in hand, to watch the brand new VHS tape (not a DVD; again, it was 1995). We saw them as they came out: Where's God When I'm Scared, God Wants Me To Forgive Them?, and Are You My Neighbor?
The fourth in the series (and there are now around 30 of them, by the way), the fourth one is one of my all-time favorites, telling the same story as the scripture passage Ellen read a minute ago. Except it's a little different, you see. It's not Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who take the stage. Here it's Rack, Shack and Benny. Rolls off the tongue a little easier. And it's not King Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonians, it's Mr. Nezzer and his Chocolate Factory. And it's not that they're asked to bow down to an idol of the king's likeness, it's that they're told to sing what's called “The Bunny Song” - a song about how great the chocolate bunnies made at the factory are, how they'd do anything for the chocolate bunny, how they must offer full praise and adoration to the chocolate bunny.
Sure it's a stretch – but it is a children's video, and it is a pretty creative way to tell the story. Besides, the premise remains unchanged: a bad guy tries to make a bunch of good guys do something that isn't right but they refuse. So the bad guy punishes them by throwing them into a fiery furnace. Amazingly, the good guys live to tell about it, impressing the bad guy so much that he becomes a good guy. All's well that ends well.
It's really not a bad way to make the story more accessible for kids. Nevertheless, there's a little more to it, vegetables and chocolate bunnies aside. The story is found in the book of Daniel, which chronicles a difficult time for the Jewish people – their Babylonian captivity, after their beloved city Jerusalem had been burned to the ground and God's people were hauled off to live in a foreign land. This story and others in the book highlight a series of events where the Jewish faith clashed horribly with the Babylonian's way of life.
The interesting thing about this is that it wasn't written at the same time. In fact, Daniel was written hundreds of years later; long after the Jews had returned to their homeland and were now suffering under the tyrannical rule of a nasty dude named Antiochus Epiphanies IV. For simplicity's sake, and in the spirit of Veggie Tales, let's just call him Pippy. Pippy tried to make life as absolutely miserable for the Jews as he possibly could. He executed them frequently, he taxed them heavily, and he even went so far as to erect a statue of the greek God Zeus in the Jewish temple, sacrificing all kinds of things forbidden by Torah law. It was the ultimate desecration of a holy place. He was a schoolyard bully with a lot of power and a sick twisted sense of how to use it – and the Jews of the day paid a heavy price.
So the book of Daniel – and the story of Rack, Shack and Benny – was written for the Jews during Pippy's reign. It was a way of looking back at a past persecution to encourage them in their current one – because if their predecessors were able to hang in there, and even come out the better for it, then they could too. The stories of Daniel were designed to encourage the Jews to remain strong, keep the faith, despite the horrible hardships they were having to endure.
Take, for instance, fire. The Bible uses fire in a lot of different ways. It can be used for good – it reveals God's presence, like the burning bush Moses found on the mountain. It leads people, like the pillar of fire that guided the Israelites to the Promised Land. But fire can also be used for bad too, and all you'd need to do would be to ask the Jews about that.
Fire was the fate that faced Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego for their insubordination; their unwillingness to go along with the crowd. Scripture tells us that Nebuchadnezzar had the furnace heated up so hot that the guards who took the three of them to the opening wound up dying themselves. We know how the rest of the story goes; how the three of them somehow, miraculously, do not suffer the same fate – even when they are actually in the furnace. The king sees them in there, totally unharmed, and calls them out. They exit and stand before the king - not a hair singed, not a stitch on their garments smelling anything of smoke. A miracle indeed! Although he lived long before Daniel's time, the words of the prophet Isaiah can't help but come to mind:
and the flames shall not consume you.
Amazing indeed! But there's another story going on here; something else that seeks our attention. It's hard to see it, because the fire kind of captivates us, as fire usually does. Our eyes drawn to the flicker of the flames; our skin made aware of its heat. Fire is what made this story such a powerful one over the years, to the point that a couple of computer geeks with a creative genius and strong faith saw fit to make it into a children's video.
But the truth of it is that fire may not be the main thing the writer of Daniel wants us to notice – there's something else. Do you see it? Three times the passage mentions something else that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had to contend with. Three times the passage talks about how the men were or were not “bound” - tied up, shackled, handcuffed. The first is when the King orders them bound as the furnace is made ready. The second is when the king peers into the blazing hot and asks one of the court hands if he, in fact, bound them earlier. The third is when the king confirms that the three of them are “unbound” inside the furnace.
Now I don't know about you, but this strikes me as kind of odd, don't you think? I mean, as far as the story itself goes, the truly amazing part is that the three of these survived the fire. I mean, if I were the king, standing there looking in at a fire that had already claimed the lives of two of my guards, I really think the last thing I'd be paying attention to was whether the three were still bound or not – don't you think? Don't you think it's just odd that the writer pays any attention to this at all?
It is odd – as long as we persist in thinking that this story is about the fire. As long as we believe that there isn't anything else going on in this little tale. But the fact that so much is made of whether they were bound or not leads us to get over the fire, already, and focus on what's important. And it's not that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego survived the fire – amazing as that is. What appears to be the real miracle here is that they went into the blaze bound from head to toe and emerged unbound. They are no longer imprisoned, shackled, restrained. They are now unbound. They are free.
Free from what, you ask? Free from the furnace, to be sure – but they are free for so much more. They are free to make a choice not to worship some statue but to worship the God of their ancestors. They are free to follow God's lead, even when doing that may make life more difficult for them, even when doing that may put their very lives at risk. They are unbound and set free to fully serve God.
That is the real miracle of the furnace. It's not that they survived. It's that they went in bound and emerged unbound. It's that the fiery ordeal set them free. It's a totally different way of looking at the story, but it makes all the sense in the world – to those Jews suffering under Pippy's reign, and to all people of faith. It reminds us that a life of faith is rarely an easy one, contrary to some of the stuff we hear talked about by television preachers. And when those hard times come, when those “fiery ordeals” enter our lives, we know that God goes into them with us, where God removes the shackles and grants us the ability to emerge even more faithful, even more ready to serve our God.
It also reminds us of our solidarity with fellow Christians around the world who truly suffer for their faith. Just this past week I read in the newspaper about a priest and two seminary students were shot and killed in Southwest Mexico. This kind of stuff happens all the time, often unbeknownst to us. I think of countless individuals down through the church's history who have literally put their lives on the line to do what they felt God was calling them to do – Mother Teresa. Oscar Romero. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Martin Luther King Jr. As Christians living in a country where our suffering will never reach that level, we are called to remember those who pay the ultimate price for their faith by speaking out against injustice and supporting them through our work and our prayers, so that one day the furnace flames will burn no more.
Because it is then when we know, as children of God, what it truly means to be “unbound.” When all people live in peace and harmony. When everyone has a voice, and when the structures of society work to benefit all and not just a few. When the idea of a Samaritan helping a hated Jew, and a Jew accepting help from a hated Samaritan, is a story that no longer surprises us. When the fires of hatred, bigotry, inequality and injustice are snuffed out forever.
And when those flames are extinguished, when the people are truly set free, we hear the word of God come to us, as it did again to the prophet Isaiah hundreds of years before:
He who created you, O Jacob,
He who formed you, O Israel:
DO NOT FEAR.
For I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
Because you are precious in my sight and honored,
And I love you.
Like Rack, Shack and Benny, you and I have been unbound, ready to serve. And that is a message that is good enough for a persecuted people, good enough for a children's video of vegetables, good enough for you and me. Thanks be to God. AMEN.
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