When I hear about the stories of the great saints, I often have a hard time believing that I could do those things, even with God's grace. Being cast into a white hot furnace? Facing people who are determined to kill me?
The three young men who King Nebuchadnezzar wanted to kill have consistently in the Book of Daniel shown their absolute trust in God. From not wanting to be made to eat food given to them that would violate the Law, to today's dramatic scene where even being thrown into a white hot furnace that even killed the men throwing them into the furnace, even this did not harm them.
Why? Because they trusted completely in God. Consider the absolute power of faith in their attitude, and in their actions. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego throw themselves completely upon God and God's mercy. Consider their powerful statement of faith.
"There is no need for us to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up."
Wow! Their faith is so strong that even if things do not turn out in such a way that they do not need to die, even then they love God so much they can accept whatever happens. And it has to be the case that this powerful witness and complete trust caused King Nebuchadnezzar to praise the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
And in today's gospel, Jesus is continuing to try to help those who want to kill him to see who he clearly is. We heard yesterday that what would seem to be the height of Jesus' failure is indeed the moment of his triumph. "When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM."
And when we know this truth we can become truly free. Free from our sins, those actions that enslave us. And we can know this not because we are smart enough to figure this out on our own, but because Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. And when we surrender to the Truth that is Jesus, we know a freedom that is greater than anything we could imagine.
What we have to understand is that this will not always occur in the way we imagine it. We might think that if we follow God everything will work out wonderfully. But the total trust of the three young men in the first readings is only surpassed by the full trust of Jesus at Gethsemane.
Jesus works so hard to help those who wanted to kill him to realize that he wasn't the scandalous Messiah, the one who would be killed, but rather the fulfillment of all the promises made to the prophets. He is the very fulfillment of the Law they think they are trying to uphold.
This Lent ideally is a time where through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving we become able to accept God's grace more fully. This grace enables us to give our lives completely to God because our total self-gift of faith to God is only possible because of God's grace.
And so if we are ever asked, "Is it true you will only worship Jesus Christ?" let us be sure to say yes because we can accept God's grace to do so.
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