An Introduction to a Celebration of Christian
Education Teachers and Students.
Trinity Sunday May 31, 2015 All Saints’ Church Thomas
E. Wilson Rector
During the service in place of the Psalm today, we
sang or said Canticle 13, the Song of the Three Young Men or Benedictus es, Domine. When I was
growing up in the Episcopal Church, while we would have communion every Sunday
at the 8:00 service, the 10:00 service had communion only on the 1st
Sunday and the other Sundays were Morning Prayer. During Morning Prayer, we
sang two Canticles every week the Venite
(Come let us sing to the Lord) and the Benedictus
es, Domine. (Blessed art thou O Lord God of our Fathers,* Praised and
exalted above all for ever).
We don’t sing it that often because we don’t do
Morning Prayer that often anymore, but that refrain was imprinted in my brain,
and I find some times when I am walking on the beach I will sing that refrain
as a praise to God when I see how wonderful the world is and I am so thankful
for it. It is easy to praise God when everything is going my way. Yet this song
was composed for a different purpose. It composed to accompany the story of
three young Jewish men whose Hebrew names were Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah,
but they maybe more familiar to you by their Babylonian names, Shadrach,
Meshack and Abednego. The Book of Daniel tells of the Jewish people who were in
exile in Babylon in the 6th Century BC after the fall of Jerusalem
in 587 BC. One story from that Book is about these three young men who refused
to bow down to a massive gold-plated pagan image. For their refusal they are
threatened with being thrown into a fiery furnace. The three young men continue
to refuse and say to King Nebuchadnezzar:
“Your threat means nothing to us. If
you throw us in the fire, the God we serve can rescue us from your roaring
furnace and anything else you might cook up, O king. But even if he doesn’t, it
wouldn’t make a bit of difference, O king. We still wouldn’t serve your gods or
worship the gold statue you set up.” (The Message translation)
So the King had them thrown them into the fiery
furnace which was so hot - how hot was
it? – it was so hot that it burned up the guards who had thrown them into the
furnace and the closest spectators as well. The King looks into the furnace and
he sees four figures walking around and they are singing this song. The fourth
figure is an angel who walks with them and gives them strength. He calls for
them to come out and he tells his people not to abuse the Jewish people any
longer.
The song that we sang comes from the 2nd
Century BC- four hundred years after when these stories were supposed to take
place. The song and story were taught by the Jewish teachers and Rabbis so that
the children of the people in Israel would know that God was with them even as
they were being oppressed by a Greek tyrant named Antiochus Epiphanies IV who
wanted them to follow the Greek Gods and culture. Three centuries in the 1st
Century AD when the Romans were
oppressing the Christians, their teachers taught the adults and children these
songs and stories so that the Christian children would know that there was a
power greater than themselves to help them resist the pressure of the Roman
pagan culture.
The song we sang today, “I Bind Unto Myself Today”,
is a metrical late 19th Century version of an 8th Century
Irish song attributed to 5th Century St. Patrick’s adaptation of an
earlier Celtic prayer, and it was taught by the monks, teachers, and priests to
the Irish children and their parents to find strength especially during the
murderous raids by the Vikings. If children were kidnapped by the Vikings,
those who knew this sung prayer could keep reminding themselves each day of
their faith while they were held prisoner or as a slave in a pagan land. We tell the stories and sing the songs passed
down to us so that we will be able to tell our own stories and sing our own
songs of faith as we grow deeper in our spiritual journey.
Today we celebrate our children and the teachers who
teach the Christian story and songs to them so that they hold on to the
Christian faith of their parents and so that all will be reminded how important
it is to know that God walks with us through all the fiery furnaces of this
world, and that when things are not going well, we can still give thanks for
all things.