Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent
At times Lent can feel like a burning fire. It’s not always pleasant to give things up—in fact it can be painful. Yet we also hope that giving up material things can have a purifying role in our lives and that it can help lead us closer to God. At other times, we can find ourselves, during Lent, feeling like it is difficult to connect with God. We can be brought face to face with our own weaknesses and lack of holiness. Lent helps us to renounce the control that we sometimes think that we have in our spiritual lives. This is especially true if we think that what we give up for Lent is what gives us favor in God’s eyes. It forces us to remember that we are already loved by God, and nothing we do can make God love us more. Both of these aspects of Lent are present in Azariah’s prayer in the first reading for today.
Azariah’s prayer comes from the story of the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, has a golden statue made. He then issues a decree that everyone serving in the government of his kingdom must bow down and worship the statue. Anyone who does not do so will be thrown into a white-hot, fiery furnace. It turns out that there are three men
who refuse to worship the statue. They are faithful to the Lord and the commandment against worshipping idols. When Nebuchadnezzar has the three men thrown into the furnace, everyone is shocked to see that they are unharmed. Instead of being burned and consumed by the flames, Azariah and his companions are free to worship and pray to God.
The miraculous nature of this event suggests that it is God who saving the men from the flames of the furnace. Azariah begins to pray to God from the furnace, singing praises to God for saving him and his companions from those who want to destroy them. Azariah’s prayer is not just a prayer of thanksgiving. He also asks for mercy and forgiveness, referring to the hardship of exile in Babylon and all of the ways that this exile has seemed to put further distance between God and God’s people.
Azariah’s prayer resonates with certain themes in the gospel reading for today. Peter asks Jesus how often he must forgive the person who sins against him. Jesus’ answer is to tell the parable of the servant who is forgiven a great debt by his master but who refuses, in turn, to forgive someone who owes him a much smaller amount of money. As I reflect on this parable in the light of Azariah’s prayer, I am first led to consider the many ways that I am dependent on God. I rely on God for my very life and breath. But, as both Azariah’s prayer and the Jesus’ parable show, I am also dependent on God’s mercy and his forgiveness. Second, I am reminded of the fact that God remains faithful and keeps his promises even when we human beings are not. Time and again, God responds to our unfaithfulness by renewing his side of the covenant. This is true for Azariah and his companions, and it is also true for us today.
Today I pray for perseverance in keeping the Lenten fast. And I pray that I can learn to trust God more during those times when I, like Azariah, become aware of the great distance between my own small efforts and God’s great faithfulness.
- Joel Schickel