Sermon Transcript: August 11, 2024
We continue today in a series that started just last week on the gift of holy imagination, which is based on readings from the book of Daniel. Daniel is a book from the Hebrew scriptures. It’s one of the prophetic books. Daniel is a very interesting character, and it’s a very interesting book. It’s filled with magnificent stories, miraculous events, wonderful characters, and also many mysterious visions as well.
We started last week by being introduced to Daniel and his setting. The book itself takes place during the time of the Babylonian exile, where Daniel and his compatriots are under King Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel finds favor with the king by providing an interpretation of a dream that the king had, which no one else was able to decipher. But Daniel, crediting God and God alone, offers an interpretation of this dream. The king is impressed, and he gives Daniel and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, a place in his court.
We pick up on the story today in chapter three. Just a quick note: if you’re following along in your bulletin, you’ll notice that it’s a long reading. I did cut down on the reading somewhat. Basically, I cut out the parts where it repeats. Hebrew scriptures often repeat for emphasis, but it can also prolong the reading. I’ve made an effort to cut it down a bit for us today, but it’s an engaging story, so I think you’ll have no trouble following whatsoever.
Let us listen to God’s word to us today through these ancient and holy stories.
Daniel 3: 1-30
King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue whose height was sixty cubits and whose width was six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent for the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces to assemble and come to the dedication of the statue that he had set up.
When they were standing before the statue that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, the herald proclaimed aloud, “You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, you are to fall down and worship the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whoever does not fall down and worship shall be immediately thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.”
Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the entire musical ensemble, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. At this time, certain Chaldeans came forward to denounce the Jews. They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, “O king, live forever! You, O king, have made a decree. There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—these pay no heed to you, O king. They do not serve your gods, and they do not worship the golden statue that you have set up.”
Then Nebuchadnezzar, in furious rage, commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought in. So they brought those men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Is it true that you do not serve my gods and you do not worship the golden statue that I have set up? Now if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the entire musical ensemble, fall down and worship the statue that I have made, and all will be well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall be immediately thrown into a furnace of blazing fire. And who is the god that will deliver you out of my hands?”
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter. If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, 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.”
Then Nebuchadnezzar, filled with rage against the three, had his face distorted. He ordered the furnace to be heated up seven times more than was customary and ordered some of the strongest guards in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and throw them into the furnace of blazing fire. So the men were bound, still wearing their tunics, trousers, hats, and other garments, and they were thrown into the furnace of blazing fire.
Because the king’s command was so urgent and the furnace was overheated, the raging flames killed the men who lifted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But the three men fell down, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire. Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astounded and rose up quickly. He said to his counselors, “Was it not three men we threw bound into the fire?” They answered, “True, O king.” He replied, “But 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.”
Nebuchadnezzar then approached the door of the furnace of blazing fire and said, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!” So they came out of the fire, and the satraps, prefects, governors, and king’s counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had no power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their tunics were not harmed, and not even the smell of fire came from them. Nebuchadnezzar said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him. They disobeyed the king’s command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God. Therefore, I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that utters blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to deliver in this way.”
Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.
For the Word of God in Scripture, for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us. Thanks be to God.
I see the chuckles. I see the chuckles. In today’s passage, we encounter King Nebuchadnezzar, whose dream Daniel interpreted in our reading last Sunday. That dream told the king of the eventual downfall of his dynasty. Yet despite being the deliverer of bad news— you know that saying, “don’t shoot the messenger”?—the king doesn’t shoot the messenger, Daniel. Instead, he promotes him and his friends to a special place in his court. And that sets up today’s dilemma.
There’s this delicate balance of power. Daniel and his friends have proximity to the king, yet their ultimate loyalty is to God and their Jewish heritage. What would happen if these forces came into conflict? Well, it doesn’t take long for us to find out when the king builds a golden statue and orders everyone to worship it upon command. Failure to do so would result in being thrown into a furnace. This puts Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the unenviable position of having to choose between their faith in God and the threat to their own lives.
But they do not hesitate. Even in the face of death, they refuse to worship the statue. The king is enraged, and his face is distorted. He orders the three to be thrown into the furnace, which is turned up so high that even those throwing them in are consumed by the flames. Yet our three heroes remain unharmed. Indeed, when the king looks in the furnace, he sees this mysterious fourth figure with them, with the appearance of a god, Daniel tells us. Seeing this, the king calls out the three, then immediately reverses course, sending out a new decree that instead of worshiping the golden statue, everyone is ordered to worship God—the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And if they don’t, they will be torn limb from limb, and their houses will be destroyed.
Now, if memory serves me correctly, the lesson extracted from this story in every children’s Bible I ever read, or was read to me, is that we are to trust in God like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and God will protect us. Because God truly cares for us. This simplistic message may be okay for us when we are children. But is that enough to sustain us as mature Christians into adulthood?
Today I want to ask, what if we read this story through the lens of holy imagination? What new interpretation and insight might we uncover? I mentioned this last week: Daniel belongs to a genre of biblical literature known as apocalyptic literature. Who remembers what that means?
“End times,” okay. Does it mean destruction and fire and judgment? No? Okay, that’s okay. But you remember that that’s kind of the Hollywood version, right? Does anybody else remember?
Yes, it’s an unveiling. It’s a revelation. So apocalyptic means that something hidden is being revealed. The idea is that this reality we see is kind of a facade. And every once in a while, we get an apocalypse—a revelation. We get a peek behind the curtain of our reality, and we see a glimpse of God’s reality, of a bigger reality, of something more—one might even say of God’s dream for this world. And this can be the source of our holy imagination, where we see the world not just as it is, but as it could be, perhaps as it should be, perhaps as God dreams it to be.
Read this way, perhaps we can see that the reality in question in today’s story is that of power and how it is wielded in the world. King Nebuchadnezzar has one and only one vision of power: oppressive and coercive. He even seems to go out of his way to demonstrate his power by creating a statue and ordering everyone to worship it under the threat of death.
Even after Daniel’s friends show another way, the king still doesn’t get it. He uses the same threat of death—just not a furnace this time, but being torn limb from limb—to enforce the new decree to worship not the golden statue any longer, but the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He’s using power in the same way; it’s just directed at something else.
And so, I gather the giggles at the end because we sense that the king is having some transformative experience, and yet he still just doesn’t get it. This gives us insight into prophets like Daniel. Their purpose is not to predict future events but to present alternative realities. Walter Brueggemann, in his book The Prophetic Imagination, writes, “The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything, but imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger.”
Brueggemann continues, “Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist.” That’s profound. Every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. And it’s the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination—to keep on conjuring and proposing future alternatives to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.
The ministry of imagination. I like that. I want to be a part of a church that embraces that role. How about you? To support artists and musicians. To nurture and engage creativity. To expand and not shrink our collective imaginations.
This story rightly points out that it is often an act of resistance against those who wield power in coercive and even oppressive ways. They want to shrink creativity. They see the arts as a luxury to more practical matters. They fail to see the vital role that it plays—or perhaps they see it all too well.
The role of faith—what we do here every Sunday—is to keep holy imagination alive. To not simply accept the world as it is, but to garner the courage to refuse to give in to threats of power, even in the face of extreme adversity. To put our trust in God and God alone, who does not express power through threat, coercion, or oppression, but through self-giving love.
It was Charlie Chaplin who said, “You need power only when you want to do something harmful. Otherwise, love is enough to get everything done.”
May it be so.
Amen.
