Teaching Our Children

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 1^st 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 6^th 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 2^nd 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 1^st 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 19^th Century version of an 8^th Century Irish song attributed to 5^th 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.