What a strange and beautiful text for All Saints’ Sunday. It works perfectly in so far as those Saints of Light whom we love themselves live with integrity, taking, at times, radical and necessary risks for the sake of their own ethical benchmark. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—not their original names, of course, but names given by the Babylonian Empire—were displaced persons, deportees, prisoners of war, people of the exile brought to Babylon after the siege of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar. In an earlier part of the story, they were spared from the King’s quick anger by the book’s namesake, Daniel, and now they are back in the grip of Nebuchadnezzar’s frothing rage, this time about to be thrown into the furnace.