The Different Drum

Before then, I suppose, you were either a kid or a young adult. Teenagers hadn't been invented. Perhaps that's why there aren't many Biblical teens; we hear of Jesus from birth up to the age of twelve, and then his story resumes at 30.

Paul, Peter, John, Mary?
Well, Mary may well have been a teenager - almost certainly was a teenager - when the angel came to her with surprising news, but insofar as she was already engaged to be married, she was socially considered to be a young adult of marriageable age, and therefore not quite in the category of the teenagers leading our service today - I hope.

No, if you want to read about teenagers, particularly about those marching to a different drum, you have to go back in the Old Testament to the Book of Daniel, to the rollicking old tale of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

This famous trio, traditionally teens, were all summer employees of the Babylonian civil service, but as Jews they believed that there was one God only, and his name was Yahweh, Jehovah, the Lord God Almighty. Therefore when Nebuchadnezzar had a ninety-foot idol made out of 18-carat gold and commanded everybody to grovel at its feet OR ELSE, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego tried to get themselves registered as conscientious objectors

(Daniel 3):
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."

Nebuchadnezzar lost no time in ordering them to be thrown into a flaming, fiery furnace prepared especially for the occasion. He ordered the furnace to be heated to seven times its normal temperature and had the three trussed up in their robes, trousers, turbans and other regalia which passed for standard teenage clothing from al Gap and Old (Phoenician) Navy. Then old Nebuchadnezzar took his seat front row centre, and waited for the show to begin.

The fire was so hot that the men who tossed them in were burned to a crisp in the process. This wasn't supposed to be part of the act, and neither was what happened next. First of all, Nebuchadnezzar could see that there were four men in the furnace instead of three and that the fourth was an angel. Second, they were all obviously fireproof.

Nebuchadnezzar was so undone that he called them to come out, and when they emerged with not even their turbans brown, he pardoned them on the spot and remarked that Yahweh was clearly a God you didn't fool around with. He then went a step further by issuing a new command to the effect that from that day forward, anybody caught treating Yahweh with anything but the highest respect was to be torn limb from limb, and his house burned down, in that order.

Yahweh was presumably pleased by this sudden conversion of Nebuchadnezzar's, but he may have had the sense that there were still a few rough edges to take care of before the job was complete.

It is a great story, and the good guys win, so what more could we want? Well, what we might want is a bit of an idea of why this story is useful, or important, or relevant to us, here, today, beyond some obvious, immediate entertainment value. And to ask that question, we must ask why the story was important many years ago, when it was written.

The Book of Daniel was written in a time of Israel's existence when they had no homeland of their own; when they were subject to a tyrannical rule imposed by external nations; when living in a manner pleasing to God was to run counter what society expected and oft times even demanded. The surrounding society was marching to the beat of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble; the people of God were marching to the beat of a different drummer, that of the heartbeat of the Lord God Almighty.

The two didn't always match, and it was tough to remain faithful, but faithful the people remained, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were examples of the youthful faithful who made good. So when the kids came home listening to all that wild Greek music and wearing togas and adopting the morals and actions of the dominant culture - and believe me, the morals and actions of the 1st century BC Greeks were not the morals and actions you wanted your nice Jewish boys and girls to adopt - Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were good examples for the kids to follow.

Turn the clock ahead a few hundred years, and the fiery forecourt of Nebuchadnezzar is transformed into the gates of the Temple of God. There is another trial taking place, this time of Peter and John, names more familiar but much less fun than Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. John, by the way, was probably in his teens when he started to follow Jesus; he is traditionally pictured as a "beardless youth" (a tradition Leonardo da Vinci followed in his famous painting of the Last Supper.

Dan Brown, in the Da Vinci Code, thought that John, with his long hair and lack of beard, looked more like, oh, say, Mary Magdalene, than like one of the male disciples, but that's because Dan Brown is a snake-oil salesman with the singular talent of selling millions of books based on bad research, sheer fancy, and historical red herrings that would make a preschooler blush - but I digress.

Back to Peter and John). Peter and John are being grilled on what happened the day before, when a beggar lame from birth, a regular fixture of the Temple grounds for nigh on 40 years, is suddenly found to be jumping and leaping and praising God and generally carrying on in such a way that the whole place is upside down with excitement, and Peter and John are said to be the cause of it all. But Peter clears up the confusion:

"You are questioning us today about a kind deed in which a crippled man was healed. But there is something we must tell you and everyone else in Israel. This man is standing here completely well because of the power of Jesus Christ from Nazareth.

You put Jesus to death on a cross, but God raised him to life… Only Jesus has the power to save! His name is the only one in all the world that can save anyone."

Well, this was not what the officials wanted to hear, for it went completely against the grain of how they liked to see the world work, and besides, they had hoped to have rid themselves of the Jesus problem some time ago. Yet, here is a fellow they all recognised as the lame beggar, into whose bowl they all had tossed a coin or two over the years, and he's standing before them, standing straight and tall, grinning like an idiot in his joy. Here's what happened next:

The officials commanded them to leave the council room. Then the officials said to each other, "What can we do with these men? Everyone in Jerusalem knows about this miracle, and we cannot say it didn't happen. But to keep this thing from spreading, we will warn them never again to speak to anyone about the name of Jesus."

So they called the two apostles back in and told them that they must never, for any reason, teach anything about the name of Jesus. Peter and John answered, "Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey him? We cannot keep quiet about what we have seen and heard." The officials could not find any reason to punish Peter and John. So they threatened them and let them go.

"Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey Him?" I wonder if Peter and John were thinking about old Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who said much the same thing to Nebuchadnezzar when the problem arose for them. "Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey Him?"

Turn the dial on the time machine another 1500 years, and the council of the Temple Court is the courtroom of the Holy Roman Emperor in Worms, and standing in the middle of the floor, surrounded by papers and pamphlets and posters and books, is a very lonely looking fellow named Martin Luther.

In his teens, he dropped out of Law School, enraging his parents, and followed his own determination to become a monk. He is charged with treason and heresy. The papers and pamphlets and posters and books are the crown's evidence against him, and the chief prosecutor, the villain of the piece, a chap by the name of Eck (which is easier to spell but not as much fun as Nebuchadnezzar) is moving in for the kill. Pointing to the great pile of documents surrounding Luther, he says: "Are these yours, written by your hand, and if so, which of them do you now recant in regret for having written such lies?"

And Luther looks at the piles papers and pamphlets and posters and books, through which he had been encouraging people to return to following the teaching of God and not the false teaching of an increasingly unfaithful church bureaucracy, and after apologizing in advance for offending anyone by his answer, he says:

"Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other, may God help me, Amen".

Or, in other words, "Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey Him?" Luther knows that in giving this answer, he has signed his own death warrant. What he doesn't know, is that these words also gave birth to the Protestant Reformation and the Protestant Church, of which the good congregation of Guildwood Community Presbyterian Church is but one part. We are free to worship in the way we do because of Luther, and others like him, making their stand: "Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey Him?"

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Peter and John. Martin Luther. All these looked at the beliefs, practises and values of the society surrounding them, societies which had strayed from the path of God, and when brought face to face with living according to what society expected and what the Gospel demanded, said, "Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey Him?"

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Peter and John. Martin Luther. What would they say about our society, our fair land? What would they say about how we live our lives, what would they think of us? Would they see in us a reflection of the beliefs, practises and values of the society surrounding us, or would they glimpse in us, however imperfectly, a reflection of Jesus?

And if we doubt that Jesus can be glimpsed in us in even the smallest way, by even the most keen-eyed of observers, maybe it is time for us to take a stand. Maybe it is time to re-establish our priorities, to rethink the way in which we live our lives, to take a good hard look at the beliefs, practises and values of our world, and to say, "Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey Him?"

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Peter and John. Martin Luther. What would they say about the incredible pressures facing our teens today, about the multi-billion dollar industries dedicated to moulding them into mindless spenders of disposable income, into victims of the latest trend, the latest fad, the latest body image?

What would they say about the values expressed by the entertainment industry targeted like a cruise missile right at their hearts and minds and souls? I think Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who lived through such a time, would say, "we will not serve your gods or worship the images of gold you have set up." I think Peter and John would say, "Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey Him?" I think Martin Luther would say, "My conscience is captive to the Word of God. It is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other, may God help me."

Let us, the people of God, young and old, support one another in as we march to the beat of a different drummer; that of the heartbeat of the Lord our God. ~ Amen.