Creative Team Building and Leadership Resources - In our Elements

Fire Walkers

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Fellow Passengers: This week’s Prophetic Passage* (Daniel 3) transports me to the cafeteria lunch table today at Eastern Mennonite University, where the Baptist Peace Fellowship’s annual gathering, aka Peace Camp, is underway. I got to spend some time catching up at lunch with an old friend from Toronto, Lee McKenna, who does the most amazing work in nonviolence training and community building work around the world. Her work in recent years has taken her to Africa, where she has trained several hundred who have gone on to train several thousand leaders in the new South Sudan in the processes of building a civil society across lines of tribal and religious differences. At the core of her training is the understanding of the economic factors that lie deep at the core of violence. In South Sudan and in much of Africa, it is the age old Cain and Abel struggle between tillers and shepherds over control of the land. Add to that the idolatry of all those resources that lie beneath the land – oil, gold, diamonds, and coltan (that precious metal we all carry around in our pockets, as it is necessary to cell phone technology). As much as we’d like to be separate from this world, we are fully integrated into it, including its violence. Wars continue to rage over these idols that demand our homage, if we want to enjoy the lifestyle we are accustomed to.

Daniel’s companions were fully integrated into the world of the Chaldeans, where they had been exiled. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not isolate themselves from that world or form an alternative community. In fact, they proved themselves so trustworthy to the Chaldean King that they had risen in his administration to levels of important leadership. But there came a day when they had to make a radical heart decision – a choice of ultimate allegiance. Did God have their hearts, or did they bow down to the idol of gold? For them, there was no choice. Their hearts and their lives and their way of life belonged to God. Threats of the hell of a fiery oven did not dissuade them. And at the end of the day, as the famous story tells us, they were joined in that furnace by a fourth figure who appeared as a god, and the fire had no power to harm them.

As encouraging as this story is, it is also troubling, when you consider how many people with the faith of these three Hebrew children do get harmed and violated by the furnaces of hate and violence that rage in our world. Today I got to play guitar and sing along with some young Burmese refugee teenagers, whose lives are marked by great loss from the persecution that has plagued the Karen people of their homeland. They give the most amazing testimonies, and ask the most honest questions as they struggle to grow in faith and learn how to forgive the enemies who have killed so many thousands in the ethnic cleansing of this tribal people. The song they taught us today is translated in English as “love your neighbor.” When I spend time with them, and see that there is a deep joy and a wonder of life that has not been dispelled from their lives, I begin to understand the Daniel story a little better. I believe there is a place deep in our hearts, in our souls, that is inviolate, that cannot be singed by the fires of violence that burn in our world. Whenever people anywhere in the world refuse to bow down to the golden statues that demand allegiance, there is a likelihood that the Chaldean culture we live in will recognize the subversion and will engage in persecution, perhaps even death. But there is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God, a place deep in each of our souls, where we can walk through the fire without being harmed. And it is this witness of the presence of God in the midst of the fire, that the story tells us has the power to transform the idolatrous culture at large. It’s enough to make me want to simplify my life, to learn to do without a cell phone, and quit paying homage to the coltan idol that drives our way of life.

How about you? Where does this passage take you on your journey of faith? Feel free to comment.

No comments yet


to top

  • Daniel 3

    *Today's Passage

    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, and the governors, the counsellors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces, to assemble and come to the dedication of the statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. So the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counsellors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces, assembled for the dedication of the statue that King Nebuchadnezzar 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 immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.’ Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshipped the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

    Accordingly, at this time certain Chaldeans came forward and denounced the Jews. They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, ‘O king, live for ever! You, O king, have made a decree, that everyone who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, shall fall down and worship the golden statue, and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire. 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, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, 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 horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble to fall down and worship the statue that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be 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 defence 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 was so filled with rage against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that his face was 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 to throw them into the furnace of blazing fire. So the men were bound, still wearing their tunics,* their trousers,* their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the furnace of blazing fire. Because the king’s command was urgent and the furnace was so overheated, the raging flames killed the men who lifted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But the three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire.

    Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up quickly. He said to his counsellors, ‘Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire?’ They answered the king, ‘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 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire. And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counsellors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any 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.

      –Daniel 3, NRSV