The Power of a Reckless Commitment

July 31, 1988

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Scripture: Daniel 3:1-25

I’ve always been fascinated by hearing Charles Laughton read the Bible. Some of you are too young, of course, to remember Charles Laughton....the eminent English actor...“Mutiny on the Bounty”, that sort of thing.... “Come here, Mr. Christian...”

He wasn’t pretty, but he had a rich, British accented speaking voice that was wonderful. He used to read from time to time selections from the Bible. He made records of Bible reading and they’re magnificent.

It’s moving to hear him as the words come tripping off his tongue, as he alternates between a whisper and a roar, and runs the gamut in between to let the words tell their story....

On his lips they almost seem to sing, or pound, depending on the passage. There’s a lyrical quality about them, and a dignity, and a strength that even the casual listener can’t help but detect.

If you’ve never heard Charles Laughton read the Bible, then, by all means, buy, borrow or steal the record.... Well, no, I don’t mean that. Don’t steal it—PROCURE the record. It would be a steal at twice the price.

The Bible is meant to be read out loud, that’s the point of it. It was written that way, to be heard, and the Book of Daniel is a prime example. SOMETHING’S LOST WHEN IT’S READ JUST IN SILENCE.

The Hebrew, you see, was always an ear man, if I may put it that way. His religion was primarily a religion of the ear.

Yahweh, the Lord God Jehovah, wasn’t something you looked at, wasn’t something you contemplated, gazed at, or even thought about primarily...that was more the Greek approach to religion....For the Hebrew God was Someone you responded to, God spoke and you had to answer, God called and you had to reply, God beckoned, God summoned, God subpoenaed, if you please, and you had to choose.

This is the nature of the Biblical record, and it’s the essential nature, too of the Christian Faith---A RELIGION OF THE WORD...the heart of it is encounter, dialogue, confrontation, meeting---human and God, person and God, in the private, personal sanctuary of the human heart.

Now one of the classic Bible stories that reflects this and that deals with the reckless faith born of such an encounter is the story of those three Hebrew boys found in the 3rd chapter of Daniel. It’s a part of Mr. Laughton’s repertoire, and I think it’s my favorite of the lot.

You know the background...three Jewish boys in a foreign land--- transferred to Babylonia during the period of the captivity still faithful to their God even in the midst of pagan idolatry,

somehow coming to places of prominence and prestige, yet never compromising their basic loyalty.

AND THEN IT HAPPENS.... WHAM!... just like that. Out of the blue, a decision has to be made. Nebuchadnezzar the king sets up an idol, a golden image, probably out there in front of the palace, and out goes the decree: “Hear ye, hear ye, EVERYBODY COME IN AND BOW DOWN.”

That’s the way of the tyrant, isn’t it, always the way, whether it’s Nebuchadnezzar, or Hitler, or the Ayatollah, or the Grand Dragon, or even some little, rinky-dink bully or group---it’s always the same... DO IT MY WAY, see it the way I see it, worship at MY shrine, or we’ll make sure you don’t bother us anymore.

A golden image, of course, could represent almost anything, couldn’t it...money, prestige, popularity, success, power, nationalism... make your own list—It could be almost anything—ANTHING GIVEN THE STATUS OF ULTIMACY AND SHOVED UP INTO THE PLACE THAT RIGHTLY BELONGS ONLY TO GOD.

So here they are... three young men, put in a bind, but not able to stomach that kind of effrontery, and not afraid to look the king in the face and say so....

There’s really a kind of free-wheeling recklessness about it, a kind of almost devil-may-care abandonment about the whole thing.

They gulp, I’m sure, take a deep breath, probably, but then they make up their minds. THEY DEFY THE KING, defy him to his face, and refuse categorically to obey the decree, knowing full well the likely consequences of their obstinacy.

“Listen, King, we have no need to answer you in this matter. We believe our God is able to deliver us from this fiery furnace. But even if God doesn’t, let it be known to you, O king, we will not serve your gods, and we will not worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”

Maybe it’s from this story that Luther got his courage back in 1521 before the Diet of Worms.... remember? When they insisted that he take back what he had written in criticism of a corrupt church, Luther said, “I will not take it back. I will not recant. Here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.”

It’s exactly what these three boys are saying. A man, even if he is a boy, and maybe lots of boys are men... a man has to say NO sometimes in the face of uncompromising evil. He has to say NO because if he doesn’t, he’ll forfeit something in his soul that will make him less than a man.     Here it is.

So they stand there, in all their youthful vulnerability, looking at the consequences with open-eyed awareness, and then choosing in spite of it all.

You simply can’t put yourself in their place, can you, without feeling the shivers run up and down your spine.

Well, I don’t think it’s necessary to dwell on the rest of the story in detail...you know it. The furnace was heated and overheated and overheated some more. Then the 3 were unceremoniously thrown in. It was so hot those who put them in the fire were themselves consumed by the flames.

40 years ago it would have seemed too barbaric for belief, but since Dachau, and Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, and other places where furnaces have claimed victims, we know it’s not beneath the level of man’s hideous capacity to stoop.

They were thrown into the flames and forgotten, for a moment at least, and the twisted reasoning of demonism congratulated itself on its ability to flex physical muscle.

BUT LOOK! It didn’t last. Something happened. The physical muscle didn’t prevail. DELIVERANCE CAME, in the form of another power, another kind of power, a presence, which sustained and protected them, just by its very being there.

Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t explain it, and I’d be telling you a story if I said I could. I don’t know whether the writer intended it to be regarded as history or as poetry, and, frankly, what difference does it make?

Truth isn’t limited to just literal truth, remember, and the important thing is that there’s truth here, told in just about as vivid and powerful a way as it could be presented.

SUSTENANCE IN AND DELIVERANCE FROM THE RAVAGES OF EVIL... that was their experience in the furnace, that was the essence of it, and far from being unique, it’s an experience thousands of people can testify to down through the ages, whatever the facticity of these particular details.

SOMEONE ELSE, SOMEHOW, WAS THERE WITH THEM, AND THAT PRESENCE SAW THEM THROUGH.

Even the king, finally, was moved when he recognized it, this new kind of power unleashed by a reckless commitment.

Well, that’s the story as the Hebrew community remembered and recorded it. It became a part of their collective religious memory, and they went back to it, time and time again, when other threats faced them....It helped to strengthen them, to steel their nerves for the new fires they

had to pass through to remember these 3 young men and their boundless, reckless audacity.

Oh, but you say, it’s such an old story, over 2000 years old. And in some ways, it’s kind of a bizarre story. Is there anything in it for our day? Are there any lessons lurking around that have pertinence for our generation? Well, I think there most assuredly are, and with your permission I’d like to lift out some possibilities.

1) This, first of all...it almost jumps up and grabs you...CONDITIONS DON’T HAVE TO BE RIGHT FOR A PERSON’S WITNESS TO HAVE IMPACT.

That is, you don’t have to have a perfect environment for your faith to be influential. As a matter of fact, it may well be that the most effective witness is precisely when things look darkest.

It’s so easy to hold back from putting in a good word for righteousness. It’s so easy to postpone taking a stand because the “lay of the land” isn’t right. Aren’t we all guilty of it?

Why buck the tide, we say...there’s nothing you can do. Wait for a better moment to come along...and by our waiting we strengthen the tide and make it just that much harder to reverse.

Martin Niemoller, that gallant pastor in Germany during the 2nd World War, who was imprisoned finally by Hitler because of his opposition to what was happening, wrote after the war:

“In Germany they came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

That hits me, I’m afraid, with its pertinence.... AND SO DO THESE 3 BOYS.

Of course they weren’t playing consensus politics. Of course they didn’t wait for the Gallup poll results. They didn’t consult Dan Rather, or Jean Dixon, or Dear Abby....[1] I doubt seriously if they looked at the horoscope....THEY HAD NO ONE, HUMANLY SPEAKING, ON THEIR SIDE. They were a minority, a tiny, feeble minority. And yet, in a way, that very fact made their witness all the sharper by contrast.

The same thing has happened more than once in history...Thank God John Wesley in 18th Century England didn’t wait until conditions were right to begin opposing the decaying moral climate of his country. It was the worst possible time, in a sense, for the birth of a religious revival........drunkenness, gambling, immorality, the blatant disregard of responsibility....THOSE WERE CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS SOCIETY. They had morals that make Hugh Heffner[2] look like Little Lord Fauntleroy[3].

If Wesley had waited for consensus, he’d never have started. He just plunged right into the middle of it, and raised high a banner of righteousness and integrity.... “This is what God expects”, he preached, “and no one is exempt, not the king, not the clergy, not the landed gentry, not the members of the Administrative Board, not anybody....AND PEOPLE LISTENED, AND SOME RESPONDED.

Not everybody, but a surprisingly large number, and it made a difference.

Thomas Macaulay[4] said it was precisely the Wesleyan Revival which kept England from undergoing a revolution, like the one which bathed France in blood just across the Channel, only two short years before Mr. Wesley’s death.

CONDITIONS DON’T HAVE TO BE RIGHT FOR A PERSON’S WITNESS TO HAVE IMPACT, that’s the point of it, and if we wait to make our witness until everybody’s with us, the time is going to run out before we even get started.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we aren’t living in a time right now somewhat like Wesley’s...maybe even in some ways like the environment of ancient Babylon.

To a great extent it’s a pagan world out there, and to be real honest, I wouldn’t even limit it to out there. I’ve just returned from Jurisdictional Conference and the election of Bishops in the United Methodist Church.... I think I can tell you that Babylon is not exclusively extra-ecclesiastical.

But this is the kind of world we live in----whatever our lip service, the actual motivation of most people is not dominated by Christian principle.... “Business is business”, which really means pleasure is king....

I’ll not belabor it. You’re not the ones to whom it needs to be said. My basic point is simply a word of realism---the followers of Jesus Christ... the genuine followers... are in the minority, and most people in any given situation probably couldn’t care less.

But does it mean that we should just fold our tents and wither? What do you think Wesley would say? Or these 3 Hebrew boys?

You KNOW what they would say. Just to ASK it is to answer....You don’t wait for conditions to be right to make your contribution. You’ll be waiting until doomsday. NOW is the time to step up our witness.

LET THE WORLD SEE TO WHOM OUR ALLEGIANCE BELONGS.

It can be a light in the darkness as it has been before.... I’m convinced a blinded world today is crying for light. It desperately needs the message we’ve been commissioned to share.

The temper of the times sure wasn’t propitious over there in Babylon, but that didn’t stop those boys from standing up for what they believed, and it ought to be both a comfort and a challenge for us to know that conditions don’t have to be ideal now, either, for our witness as God’s people to have an impact.

2) Now, that leads to another insight from this story.... We’re at point #2, and out of respect for your safety and comfort, I’m happy to report that we’re picking up speed.

If it’s true that conditions don’t have to be ideal for a person’s witness to have impact, it’s also true that THERE’S NO GUARANTEE OF VICTORY JUST AUTOMATICALLY BUILT INTO DISCIPLESHIP.

Don’t be mislead here... in this case it turned out well, these 3 were delivered, physically, but it doesn’t always work out that way, and even these, when they went into it, didn’t know what the outcome would be.

Maybe we need to underscore it in our preaching more decisively---GOD DOESN’T ALWAYS DELIVER GOD’S CHILDREN FROM TROUBLE IN THE PHYSICAL SENSE.

You can’t turn the Christian pilgrimage into some kind of Hollywood-type production with the

sun sinking slowly into the west, the way it used to do in the old-timey movies....

It doesn’t always work that way in real life, and it’s dangerous to think it does. Why should we expect deliverance and rescue when others haven’t gotten it?

God didn’t deliver Stephen from the rocks and stones of the lynch mob that day outside the gates of Jerusalem....

God didn’t deliver Latimer and Ridley from the burning stake in 16th Century England....

GOD DIDN’T EVEN DELIVER HIS OWN SON... remember... from the brutal, drawn-out agony of the Cross, where evil men had thrust him.

No, physical deliverance isn’t the message of this Old Testament story, and to turn it into that is to misread it. TO GIVE YOURSELF TO GOD IS NOT A GUARANTEE OF TRIUMPH AND SUCCESS AND HONOR, not at least in the dimension of this life.

God doesn’t call us to be victorious... that’s his department.

As Harrell Beck[5] used to say, “We’re not in management, we’re in SALES.”

God doesn’t call us to be victorious, God doesn’t even call us to be successful.... WHAT GOD DOES CALL US TO BE IS OBEDIENT.... What God does call us to be is faithful.... and to leave the rest to GOD.

Don’t you like Kirsopp Lake’s[6] definition of faith? Have you heard it? “Faith”, says Kirsopp Lake, “is not belief in spite of evidence. It’s life in scorn of consequence.”

That’s classic. That’s what we have here. That’s the kind of faith these 3 boys displayed, “life in scorn of consequence”.

They didn’t know they would win, and probably didn’t expect to win, but they went anyways, took the heat, with a recklessness, and an abandonment that sort of puts our puny faith in the shade.

“When God calls a person”, says Dietrich Bonhoffer, “He usually bids him come and die.”

And let’s be clear about it. The New Testament, when it’s read honestly, doesn’t promise anything easier. We’re not encouraged there to look for the prize in the package. We’re not assured there of any exemption, or immunity from life’s hardships.

We’re not promised any cheap triumphs or smooth sailing because of our allegiance.

There is only the call to go, and care, and give, and serve, and endure, and to trust in God’s incredible ability to do something worthwhile with our commitment.

This, too, is part of the lesson from the fiery furnace. THERE’S NO GUARANTEE OF VICTORY JUST AUTOMATICALLY BUILT INTO DISCIPLESHIP.

3) And yet, there is a guarantee. There is an abiding promise... and this is the 3rd observation I would make.... What a great thing to be able to say, what a marvelous thing to be able to proclaim.... I guess this is why I’m a preacher.

WHATEVER LIFE THROWS AT US, THE LORD IS MINDFUL OF THE LORD’s OWN. Isn’t that magnificent? Isn’t that really what the writer of this story is saying here? Isn’t this why this old story has lived and been loved for so long?

No, there’s not always deliverance. No, there’s not always victory. BUT THERE IS, FOR THOSE WHO TRUST GOD, THE STEADFAST REALITY OF GOD’S PRESENCE TO SUSTAIN THROUGH PERIL AND CRISIS, and maybe that’s even better.

God never abandons us when we lean on God and admit our dependence.

Some of you right there in this room could testify to it.... I know you could. Some of you could stand up right now, if you were asked to, and talk about it. You’ve felt God with you as you kept lonely vigil by a bedside, as you paced an antiseptic hospital corridor, as you waited through the night for some word to come.

You’ve known God’s presence by your side as you struggled to make a decision, or to find answer that just wouldn’t materialize.

You’ve known in your own way, discovered in your own life exactly what these 3 boys came to know in the midst of their ordeal.... SOMEONE ELSE WAS THERE WITH YOU, AND IT WAS GOD’s STRENGTH AND POWER, NOT YOUR OWN, THAT PULLED YOU THROUGH.

That’s the enduring truth this story tells so powerfully. Lowell expressed it in “The Present Crisis”[7] for a different generation---

“Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.

Yet that scaffold sways the future,

And behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadows,

Keeping watch above His own.”

It makes a difference when the truth of that gets hold of you.

We may be living in a world right now that has some of the aspects of what Lowell was talking about, maybe even a world that bears some resemblance to a fiery furnace----

It has been that way for some people in recent history. Maybe we’re a people without a future. What guarantee do we have that life as we know it will be perpetuated? What promise do we have, either personally or corporately, that things as they stand will endure? It may even be that the world itself is running out of time. Who would be brash enough to deny at least the possibility of it?

Yet, isn’t there, friends, something more? There, there in the shadows, there, just offstage in the misty periphery, still keeping watch above his own, is that other Figure, that other Reality, whose face we can’t quite see, but whose quiet, contagious Spirit pervades our whole existence, and refuses, whatever we do, to let us alone.

As long as God’s there, as long as God’s with us, what is there really to fear? FOR IN GOD’S PRESENCE IS OUR PEACE, AND IN OUR RECKLESS COMMITMENT TO GOD’S LORDSHIP IS OUR STRENGTH AND GLORY FOREVERMORE.

It’s a great story the Book of Daniel tells, one of the greatest in the entire Old Testament. Let me urge you to read it over again in your own Bible when you get a chance. And when you go, linger for a while over the climax of the story----

“Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished and rose up in haste and spoke unto his counselors. “Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?’ They answered and said, ‘True, O king.’ He answered and said, ‘Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the first, and they have no hurt. And the form of the fourth is like unto the Son of God.’”

The incredible sustaining power of a reckless commitment.

--

[1] Dan Rather was the anchor of the CBS Evening News.  Jean Dixon was a self-proclaimed psychic, and Dear Abby was an advice columnist syndicated throughout the US.

[2] Hugh Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles.

[3] Little Lord Fauntleroy is a 1936 American drama film based on the 1886 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The main theme of Little Lord Fauntleroy is the meaning of true nobility.

[4] British Historian

[5] Harrell F. Beck was an American preacher, professor, and academic who taught Hebrew Scripture for 33 years at Boston University School of Theology

[6] Kirsopp Lake was an English New Testament scholar, Church historian, Greek palaeographer, and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School

[7] "The Present Crisis" is an 1845 poem by James Russell Lowell.