January 15, 2023 – Second Sunday after Epiphany
Daniel 3.8-30
I Peter 4.12-19
The Fiery Furnace and the Birmingham Jail
Second Sunday after Epiphany
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” written in the spring of 1963, begins this way:
“My Dear Fellow Clergymen: While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities ‘unwise and untimely.’ Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.”
The terms are patient and reasonable all right; Dr. King goes on from there for eleven single-spaced pages patiently and reasonably explaining to his fellow clergy why the work of justice, of squarely facing oppression and of fighting for equality and inclusion for people of all colors and races is in fact consistent with both the Old Testament vision and the teachings of Jesus. King is never sarcastic or condescending to his colleagues, but we can certainly hear him skirting the borders of each in his introduction, “Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work… [otherwise] I would have no time for constructive work.” It is also in his Birmingham letter that Dr. King wrote the familiar words,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
As I read Dr. King’s letter again this week, I was reminded that he makes the case for social justice and civil rights, in part, by appealing to this morning’s story of the three men in the fiery furnace: “Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience,” he wrote. “It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the premise that a higher moral law was at stake.” Dr. King saw that sometimes rejecting the requirements of the republic is the right thing to do. It brought to mind a sermon I read many years ago by Clarence Jordan, the founder of Georgia’s Koinonia Farm and one of the founders of Habitat for Humanity. Jordan’s sermon was titled “The Adventures of Three Students in a Fiery Furnace,” and in it he updates the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego by reimagining them as freedom riders and draft dodgers calling out the immorality of racial discrimination and war. And it got me to wondering, what is it about this old Sunday School gem of a story in the book of Daniel that makes it such a rich lode to be mined by the twentieth century’s preeminent civil rights leaders?
I changed the first three words of the story this morning to make it clear that we are not reading history at this point in the Old Testament. In the spirits of Clarence Jordan and Dr. King we are reading a veiled protest against Roman Emperor Antiochus Ephiphanes, who ruled in the second century before the birth of Jesus, and was one of the cruelest rulers of the empire. But since to criticize the emperor was the quickest route to a beheading, the writer set the story several centuries in the past in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, though it is such a thinly veiled allegory that nearly everyone in the day understood its true intent.
It is a fantastic story of hyperbole piled upon exaggeration generously laced with embroidery. Consider: the king was so angry that his face became distorted; the furnace was cranked up seven times hotter than it had ever been before; Nebuchadnezzar ordered the strongest guards in the army to throw the three men into the furnace. It features clearly defined good guys and bad guys; it is God versus the idols, faithfulness versus apostasy. The three young men walk boldly and unharmed into a furnace so hot that the guards who throw them in spontaneously combust into a pile of ashes. All of this exaggeration and embroidery are meant to tell us we are not reading a true story but rather a tale, a fable, which points to something higher and more important than itself. It does not ask the question, “How could such a thing possibly happen” as much as it does, “What does this mean?”
Well, in part, it means that sometimes you have to stand against the powers and potentates of our world. Sometimes you have to stand for justice and equality and diversity and inclusion regardless of what others are doing or saying. This is one of the reasons Dr. King wrote about this fantastic fairy tale of a story in his response to his colleagues who thought he should stick to his knitting. It’s why Clarence Jordan reinterpreted the story in a way that made it as fresh as tomorrow’s headlines. In his sermon Jordan said, “This might be considered a historical parable in which the writer has concealed a truth; and the truth is that in the time of testing, when God and government are on a collision course, God calls people to be faithful even though it means disobedience to the government.” Or the emperor: sometimes you have to walk into that fiery furnace because doing otherwise is an affront to the almighty and a rejection of everything the Hebrew and Christian faiths represent.
This in itself makes the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego an important one for our own day. But for me, what is truly astonishing, and represents the real fulcrum of the story, is not that the three young men emerge from the furnace unscathed. For me, the real punch line, if you will, are three little words I’d wager no one noticed in verse 18. Listen again: “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… 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.” There is the crux: But if not… In these three little words is the real thrust of the story. These are the words which bring this fantastic, unbelievable, exaggerated exercise of imagination back to earth. These three young men did not waltz casually into what appeared to be a certain death because they were confident God would somehow at the last minute swoop down and rescue them. They did so because to fall down and worship Nebuchadnezzar’s statue would be to deny both their God and themselves. They did so because even if God chose not to lift a finger to help, they would still refuse to resort to idolatry. Yes, God was perfectly able to save them; of this they were confident. But even if God did not come to the rescue, their faith would be no less real, no less strong, no less dependable. It is a faith, a trust, which does not tether God’s goodness to their own well-being.
Do I really need to elaborate? When God does not do what we want God to do, or expect God to do, when God does not behave the way we imagine a god should behave, when God does not conform to our own imagination or understanding, how quick we are to question God, or to second-guess the divine, or to question God’s very existence? Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego did not worship such a contingent God. Yes, they believed that God is all-powerful: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace.” And they also believed that God would act on their behalf: “And God will deliver us out of your hand, O King.” But they also allowed as how God just might decide not to intervene in human affairs at that particular juncture: “But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up.” Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego insisted, by their response to their time of trial and trouble, that God is worthy of their trust and devotion even in those times that God did not act in what they perceived were their own best interests. And here is one of the most penetrating thoughts in the entire book of Daniel, indeed in the entire Old and New Testaments. This Sunday School story that we used to know and love and perhaps some of us even sang about, has profound truths that are not often heard from the pulpit – by the way, did I tell you that this story does not appear in the lectionary, meaning that the hundreds if not thousands of preachers who faithfully follow the lectionary year after hear will never read this story to their congregations. It may be because it does sound like such a children’s story, such a fairy tale. But it may also be because we aren’t sure we want to hear about a God who is true and good and holy and just even in those times when what we perceive as our own best interests don’t seem to be served.
But God is not contingent. God does not require my happiness, or my consent, or my understanding, or even my belief, in order still to be God. God is greater than my puny imagination. I imagine Dr. King knew this all too well. After all, he walked into that fiery furnace and he did not walk out. You’ve likely heard these words before, but they deserve to be heard again. They are the words he spoke in a Masonic Temple in Memphis the night of April 3, 1968:
“We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter to me now, because I’ve been to the mountain top, and I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Less than 24 hours after he spoke these words, Dr. King was dead, felled by an assassin’s bullet. “I may not get there with you… I’m not fearing any man.” But if not… we will not serve your gods. The ideas for which Dr. King and Clarence Jordan and countless others have stood are larger than any of us, they are larger than all of us. Love, justice, grace, equality, hope, respect, freedom, faithfulness, these are worthy of our finest and greatest efforts, in the spirit of all the Shadrachs, Meshachs Abednegos, past, present and future.