Thank You, Jack

This was preached on Thursday, November 22, 2018.

Whenever someone wins an award, we expect them to thank the people who made it possible. Because no one achieves anything great on their own. And self-aware people know that a key part of the reason they succeeded was a parent who set an example to them, a teacher who inspired them, a hero they wished to emulate, a mentor who guided them, colleagues who helped them, and, often, a spouse who supported them. For writers and thinkers and scientists the person who influenced them is usually another writer or thinker or scientist, whom they may or may not have ever met. Today is the 55^th anniversary of the death of a man who has had a tremendous influence on me. And, no, it's not JFK. However, the president's assassination on the same day did eclipse the news of this man's death. And ironically I know precisely what I was doing that day because of Kennedy's death. Yet at the time I had never even heard of C.S. Lewis.

It would be years later, when I was in the youth group at Memorial Presbyterian Church, that my mom would lend me a copy of The Screwtape Letters. And to steal a phrase from Lewis, “my imagination was baptized.” He wasn't responsible for me becoming a Christian but he was responsible for the way I see Christianity and approach all the issues it touches on. I do not agree with him on everything but he taught me to ask the right questions, to notice nuance and that it was important to use my head as well as my heart in following Jesus. For that I am grateful.

I used to think that Lewis was one of the most original thinkers in Christendom if not the world. Later, as I read more theology, I realized that wasn't quite true. Lewis was educated in philosophy and built on the ideas of others. What was unique was how he could take what some thinker of the past had come up with and make it understandable to the average person. He, like Jesus, would take some commonplace situation and use it to illustrate a profound spiritual or moral truth. I try to do the same, especially when I sense that the point I am making is too abstract. And in fact a good way to test whether your theology is correct is to apply it to everyday life and see if it works. For those insights I am grateful.

Lewis was able to approach subjects not only logically but also psychologically. One of the things that attracted me about The Screwtape Letters was the shrewd psychological insight into the whole process of temptation and the ways we avoid dealing with the truth. His grasp of how people think and react grounds his fantasy and science fiction novels as well. Though a very intellectual person himself, he was in touch with his feelings. One of his most affecting books is A Grief Observed, which chronicles his state of mind after the death of his wife. It was so nakedly honest that he published it under a pseudonym. This had the unfortunate side effect that his friends kept buying him copies to help him through his grieving. For his ability to see and express some of the deepest of human feelings, I am grateful.

Lewis has one characteristic that makes him almost unique in literature: his ability to make good attractive. Often in books and movies, the characters that really stand out are the villains. Dracula, the Joker, Darth Vader, Lord Voldemort and others are often more interesting that the heroes in their tales. Professor Moriarty only appears in 2 of the original Sherlock Holmes stories but you would never know that given how often he is inserted into modern additions to the saga. In comparison to the villains they face heroes are often less colorful and engaging. And the evil schemes in stories are often presented in ways that make them seem not that bad. Thanos thinks the universe is overcrowded and wants to preserve resources for a more sustainable population. That just happens to involve killing half the sentient beings that exist. The delightful musical Wicked makes us fall in love with the the wicked Witch of the West, who, if you remember, wanted to kill Dorothy Gale, for simply surviving a tornado, unlike the witch's sister, who just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Lewis, on the other hand, was able to make his Christ-figure Aslan hugely charismatic. One mother wrote to Lewis that her little boy was worried because he loved Aslan more than Jesus. Lewis wrote back that this was impossible. Aslan was Jesus as he would appear in the world of Narnia. The woman's son just liked the lion body better than the human one, which God understands because he made little boys that way.

And while dystopias, such as those of The Hunger Games, The Handmaid's Tale and 1984, dominate science fiction and fantasy, Lewis created Narnia and the paradise planet Perelandra, places where we would gladly live, unlike some fictional worlds. Likewise his vision of heaven in The Great Divorce makes it desirable, not dull as people with more impoverished imaginations picture it. Someone once wrote to Lewis that he should follow up The Screwtape Letters with a book of advice from an archangel to someone's guardian angel. Lewis said that though the mental space he had to put himself into to see things from the devil's point of view was difficult, he felt he would be incapable of getting into the mind of someone who was pure goodness. Yet in his fiction he is capable of giving us extended views and tastes of goodness and moral beauty that most writers could not achieve. For his ability to communicate the aching joy and haunting goodness of God, I am grateful.

Lewis also crystallized the problem with folks saying that Jesus was merely a great moral teacher and ignoring his claims to be God. To quote him at length: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” Jesus is either a lunatic, a liar or the Lord. It is a trilemma, if you will, we all must deal with. For laying out that choice so starkly, I am grateful.

I reread Lewis' books every few years. Often I find something in them that I thought I had come up with but which I must have gotten from him. I have so internalized what he said that it has become a part of me. And while his illustrations have helped me understand difficult concepts I'll never forget what he said when he tried to explain how God is outside of our timeline. After using one illustration he wrote, “This idea has helped me a good deal. If it does not help you, leave it alone. It is a 'Christian' idea in the sense that great and wise Christians have held it and there is nothing in it contrary to Christianity. But it is not in the Bible or any of the creeds. You can be a perfectly good Christian without accepting it, or indeed without thinking of the matter at all.” The idea that if one Christian's explanation of something doesn't help, you can drop it was liberating. Some illustrations illuminate, others don't. What's helps you understand something may not help me and vice versa. It doesn't mean the subject isn't true, just that a specific way of explaining it may not be useful, at least to some folks.

People often get the explanations mixed up with the thing itself. I recently found out that my understanding of how wings make planes fly was wrong. I swear the old explanation was what I was taught or read. But planes do fly, even if I am not completely clear how. You can drive a car even if you don't understand the internal combustion engine. You don't need to understand the Trinity to pray to God, have a sense of Jesus' presence and let the Spirit guide and remake you. Theology is like a map, Lewis said. It is compiled based on many people's observations and experiences. If you are going sailing, if you are going way out into a body of water, you really need a map. You can, of course, add your own markings and annotations and observations as you go. On the other hand, you don't need a map to enjoy the beach or to go swimming. Not everyone is or needs to be a sailor. Nor need all Christians be theologians. For reminding me that not everyone needs to understand God exactly as I understand him, I am grateful.

I did not go to church for much of my childhood. So I didn't use the terminology that other Christians did. Things like justification, sanctification, passion, grace, etc. were not a part of my vocabulary when I became a Christian. Lewis eschewed theological terms when he wrote, precisely so as not to confuse or put off people who were seeking to understand Christianity. What he did for me was give me the ability to express my understanding and feelings about God in my own way. I find it helpful when communicating the gospel. Not everyone knows what certain Christian words means. And some who have picked up the jargon haven't really examined or thought about the ideas behind it too closely. People throw around the words “believe” or “faith” without realizing they mean more that just mentally acknowledging that something exists. Lewis showed me that you can deal with ideas intelligently using ordinary speech and common words. Which helped me think much more clearly about such things. Having to explain something without resorting to the technical terms for it reveals how well you actually understand what you are talking about. Wanna have fun? Try explaining God's omnipresence to a 4 year old. For forcing me to think about things clearly without hiding behind big words, I am grateful.

It's all very well for someone to be able to talk about the Christian life, and while none of us live it perfectly, there have been some highly respected Christians who have failed spectacularly. Lewis does not appear to be one. While his life was not spotless, he was in the words of a friend, “the most thoroughly converted man I ever met.” Lewis could have been a rich man from his books but he felt that giving was an important part of being a Christian and as he said, if our charities are not pinching us or hampering us at all, they are too small. Thus he refused to upgrade his standard of living but instead created a charitable fund for his royalties, which he used to support many poor families, underwrite the education of orphans and seminarians and give to numerous charities and church ministries.

Lewis also responded to every person who wrote him. As his fame spread, he dreaded this but seeing that so many people found their faith or strengthened it through his writings, he felt it was his Christian duty. Thus he wrote thousands of letters to people he otherwise did not know, as well as reams of them to friends. One of the people who came to Jesus through his books and wrote to him was an American woman named Joy Davidman, a Jewish ex-communist who first turned to God when her husband left her. Eventually she and Lewis met and fell in love. She died of cancer less than 4 years after their wedding and Lewis found himself step-father to her two boys. One of them remained a Christian but the other wished to become an Orthodox Jew. Lewis paid for the boy to study Hebrew and the Torah and he served him Kosher food. He became a rabbi. Lewis did not impose his faith upon his adopted son. For the many examples of unconditional Christian love displayed in his life, I am grateful.

We all of us have people who came to us at a specific moment and changed our lives. C.S. Lewis was one of the people who did that for me, although he had left this world long before I discovered him. So this day, the anniversary of his death, I wish to honor him. And I would to ask each of you to think about and give thanks to God for the people who made a great impact in your life. They could be a parent or a relative, a teacher or a coach, an author or a national or world figure. And who knows why your hero is Walter Peyton, or Mari Malik, or Albert Einstein, or Nellie Bly and why one of mine is C.S. Lewis. They speak to different things in different people. But all were created by God in the image of God and each reveals certain aspects of God. And God can call people via those glimpses of his love or wisdom or grace in other people.

What about you? Are you a hero or a reflection of God's goodness to someone in your life? I hope so. Because we have a lot of good people here. And I thank God for each of you. But I don't say it enough. Just like we don't often enough tell God how grateful we are for him. With that in mind, I want to conclude with a passage from Lewis' book A Reflection on the Psalms:

“When I first began to draw near to a belief in God and even for sometime after it had been given to me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously made by all religious people that we should 'praise' God; still more in the suggestion that God Himself demanded it...The most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise... The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars...I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?'

“The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.... I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating...to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in a ditch...This is so even when our expressions are inadequate, as of course they usually are. But how if one could really and fully praise even such things to perfection – utterly 'get out' in poetry or music or paint the upsurge of appreciation which almost bursts you?...It is along these lines that I find it easiest to understand the Christian doctrine that 'Heaven' is a state in which angels now, and men hereafter, are perpetually employed in praising God...To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by that delight which far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever'. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”