(See Photos of our day with Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego).
It takes a certain gift, in
the midst of a dark and terrible situation, to use humor to make a point. It’s a particular way of remembering,
or grieving, or stirring people to hope, Comedy is. Up to this point we’ve seen prophets who have thundered
criticism at the empire. Prophets who have embodied deep grief and sorrow.
Prophets who could inspire to a distant hope in the future. But they have all
been so serious.
And this is a serious story
too, I mean, the men themselves were not laughing, and neither was
Nebechenezzer. But the telling of
the story is that sharp, political humor that highlights the power as foolish
and lifts up the powerless as hero. Comedy can be enormously prophetic.
I think of the movie Life is Beautiful, an award-winning
comedy about the Holocaust, in which
writer, actor and director Roberto Benigni plays a father who creates a fantasy
game for his young son in a concentration camp, so as to spare him from the
horrors of reality.
But the genre has us
laughing and crying at the same time, recognizing the loss of humanity and
truth and dignity on the part not just of the prisoners but of their captors as
well, who have bought into a reality where this evil is practiced and
accepted.
By refusing to accept it, in
fact making up a false reality, this father and son live a more true reality, in
which humanity is upheld and people are respected and life is meant to be lived
in harmony. Their game is a prophetic act, and viewing the holocaust through
they eyes of comedy is prophetic as well.
Comedy can point out the
absurdity of the empire, can highlight evil and remind us of truth in
instinctive, nearly unspoken ways.
Begnini says of the film, “I am a comedian and my way is not to show
directly. Just to evoke. This to me was wonderful, the balance of comedy with
tragedy.”
Our story today is this kind
of film. It’s recounting a tragic
or horrifying situation in a funny way.
And that humor is serving a purpose. It’s reminding, inspiring, reawakening hope, perspective,
frustration. It’s doing what the prophets do: criticizing and energizing.
Most likely the last book of
the Old Testament to be written down, the Book of Daniel was probably written
four centuries after the Babylonian exile in which its stories are set, when
the people of Israel found themselves again facing immense persecution. So they reached back in their collective
memory for these stories of another time of persecution, when their ancestors
had been driven from their land and taken captive into foreign territory.
And is it ever foreign. For the Israelites in exile there is no
collective identity like they’ve known, no recognition of the God who had
delivered them, or the law given them in the time of Moses. There is no temple to center their
worship or promised land beneath their feet. They must adapt to foreign language and customs and religion
and way of life in almost every way.
In the midst of this time
four reportedly cultured and good-looking men from the upper strata of Israeli
society are taken into the palace to serve the king. Daniel, and Hananiah,
Mishael, and Azariah, whom the king promptly renamed them the much more palatable Shadrack, Meshack and
Abednego.
And together, they become for one
another the prophetic community.
They nurture the memory of who God is and who they are, they grieve and
hope and through conversation deeply rooted in tradition, prayer, and shared language,
they remind one another of God’s promises and their part in the covenant
relationship with God.
For example, when everyone else in
the castle was gorging on un-kosher bacon feasts, they asked the steward to
give them only fruit, vegetables and water. And so as not to get the steward in trouble with the king
for starving these four, God made sure they were robust and healthy- even
compared to all others in the palace.
And so the steward kept up their secret diet, and they maintained
faithfulness to their God in the tradition of their ancestors.
Daniel had a gift of interpreting
dreams, although it doesn’t sound like he even knew this was the case until
King Nebechenezzer had a doozie of a nightmare and none of his wise advisors
could sort the thing out, so he planned to execute everyone in the palace for
their lack of insight, until Daniel offered to give it a go, and whispered a
prayer on his way into the throne room, “God, help me know what the dream
means.” And then he did. The king
was so grateful and impressed, that Daniel kept rising through the ranks
–eventually making governor of the city, and continued bringing the three boys
up the Babylonian political ladder with him.
Daniel, who is star of the rest of
this book with his lion-defying and dream-interpreting and apocalyptic-visioning,
doesn’t show up in this story, for some reason, but his three companions do,
his best mates, his fellow comrades in exile. And they continue, by their words and actions, to be a thorn
in the empire’s side, to embody – quite literally – an alternative reality to
the one set before them all as complete and inevitable. And not only do they do this by
refusing to bow, they also do this quite powerfully in what they say just before they refuse to bow. “Our God might save us, but even if God
does not, we will not bow.”
Even if God does not…
There’s radical freedom in this
story. The freedom of these three not to participate in what everyone else
does. The freedom of God to meet them how God will. And God does meet them – not by sparing them from the fire,
however, but by joining them right there in it. But perhaps the more prophetic moment here is the one
where they name both their own
freedom and God’s.
We will not bow. And God may not act.
Both of these things go so deeply
and shockingly against the wisdom of the day, against the empire mentality, the
royal consciousness, where the king is in charge and no one is really free, not
even the king, but really, not even God.
Gods are made and manipulated, pleased and coddled.
But in their words is an echo of
Moses’ encounter with the Divine on the mountain and in the burning bush, I am who I will be. You cannot contain me. And also I, who brought you into
freedom, will reach out to you and care for you and show you how to live free
and in harmony with one another.
And these three boys believe
it. In the face of death itself,
they stand for a reality bigger than what is in front of them, an authority
greater than this foolish, blustering king, a power more formidable than a
raging fire, a way of being that does not bow to humiliation, punishment or
even death itself, but to the God who stands outside life and death, beyond and
yet within it, and they remember.
And so to trust in this God is not
necessarily to trust that they will be saved, it is to trust in the Savior God,
whether or not God chooses to save them.
It is not to trust in what God does
in exchange for our pleasing God, it is to trust who God is, regardless of our good or bad behavior, and regardless
of God’s specific intervention in the time or the way we think God should
act.
To trust in God is to trust in one
who is free – more free than we can ever know or understand or grasp as human
beings. But who has made us in the image of this very same freedom. And it is such a radical freedom
that it is not free from- free from
obligation to others, free from work or contribution to the whole, free from
accountability – that’s the empire’s freedom, that is the crazy king’s kind of
freedom: to make a arbitrary idol and demand everyone agree with you.
No, God is not free from. God is free for. Free to be for us, to be with us. Free to create and recreate. Free to share Godself with those God has made. Free to change God's mind. Free to act, and free not to.
And we are made free
for as well. Free to see our neighbor and act for her, free to give of
ourselves expecting nothing in return, free not to compete and judge and
compare, and get our worth and value from what others think of us or our own
intellect or power or charm, free to love unconditionally, free for unrestrained
joy, free for deep connection, for forgiving and apologizing and restoring,
free to live fully present, free to be known and to know, free to share and to
give.
We are free because God is free,
free to live. Fearlessly, honestly,
fully, joyfully. And every other person with their face in the dirt before that
monstrosity, that enormous and ridiculous waste of gold, that ego on a stick
that Nebechenezer had set up in their presence, every other
person there was not free. Forgot
their freedom. Bowed to the King’s
hunk of gold, which is to say bowed to their fear of punishment, to their fear
of humiliation or loss of honor or home or title or life. Every other person swallowed the lie
that we are not free. We are
owned. Bought. Slaves to the system, whatever our particular system might be.
But when the three stood up to the
king, when the three survived the flames, they revealed to everyone that the wizard
was just a schmuck behind a curtain with a loudspeaker and some
pyrotechnics. The only thing
the king can do to maintain his empire at this moment is to now demand everyone
bow to their God, or he’ll have them torn limb from limb. But it’s too late. The emperor has no
clothes and the kid on the street has screamed it for all to hear.
There are lots of ways of
being prophetic, and humor is not to be underestimated - it can expose,
criticize and energize. Sometimes
laughing at the situation frees you just enough to suddenly envision an
alternative, and if you can envision it, perhaps you can even live from it, and
if you can live from it, then the alternative is more real and more possible
than the situation would lead you to believe.
Even right in the middle of
it, even when you can’t change it, even if it is a huge idol and peer pressure
from the entire nation and a violent and unstable ruler and a blazing fire
ready to consume you- there is something outside this, another option for how
to be in this. In such a dire
moment, when faced with the command: “You will do A, or B will be done to you.”
The boys answer, “Be that as it may, we choose C.”
This is a story you tell
when you’re persecuted and scared, when you’re struggling and weak, when the
empire is bigger than you and you think you’re going to lose your place, and
you might even forget who you are, or that you are free. You tell the story of the ridiculous,
over the top king enslaved to his ego and his power, and the comprehensively
demanding, death-threat pressure on everyone there, and these guys who stood up anyway. And who let God be God, and who
remembered God was free and they were too – whether
or not God saves us, we will not bow, they said.
You tell the story of the
God who joins them in the most terrible part, the part that should kill you but
miraculously doesn’t.
When you’re struggling and
things are serious and ominous, and you need a dose of truth, you tell this
story of the true God who shows up much differently than the vociferous, domineering,
power-wielding king. The true God who
slips silently into the fire and stands alongside, incognito, and without
engaging the power players or validating this circus with so much as a word.
And perhaps in the telling,
in the absurdity and severity of the story, it will dawn on you, even if just
for a moment, that in the middle of it all and despite all evidence to the
contrary, you are more free than you act, and in fact, life is beautiful. And
when this realization washes over you, I defy you to keep a straight face.
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