Logos

This sermon was originally preached on December 29, 2002. It has been updated.

According to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, pan-dimensional beings created a giant computer called Deep Thought. They programmed it to tell them the answer to life, the universe and everything. It took 7 ½ million years to calculate. When at last the day of the answer came, Deep Thought told the 2 representatives who were to transmit it to the people, that while it was sure of the answer, they probably weren't going to like it. Nevertheless they wanted to know what it was. And so Deep Thought, a greater computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain at Maximegalon, the Googleplex Star Thinker in the seventh galaxy of light and ingenuity, and the Great Hyperbolic Omni-cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12, tells them that the answer to the great question of life, the universe and everything is...42.

After they get over the shock, the pan-galactic beings are appalled that all the computer has to show after millions of years is a number. So Deep Thought points out that the question is rather nebulous and needs to be precisely stated in order to understand the answer. When asked if Deep Thought can frame the question, it says “No” but it can design a computer that will. And that computer will be called...Earth.

What tickles me is that, while Adams' absurdist space saga is satire, it does touch on some real concerns. Earth is full of questions about the meaning of life. In Adams' book the answer is ultimately a joke. In real life, it is anything but.

Deep down, isn't that what we are all searching for—an answer to everything? Only it's not one question; it's more like 3. Where do we (and everything) come from? Why are we here? And where are we going? The search for these answers fuel philosophy, religion and even science. The answers we get are varied. But we can sketch the broad outlines.

Science tells us that we are made of stardust, elements that formed as our planet solidified from a swirling mass of gas and debris left over from the Big Bang. That's where we come from. And science tells us that, after billions of years, all the energy of the universe will be used up, everything will come apart and continue to exist as an immense lukewarm soup. That's where we are going. As to why we are here, science says we are simply here to reproduce and die as part of an ecosystem that was formed by blind chance. True, some scientists have different opinions but by and large what science can tell us is basically descriptive and on the surface rather than prescriptive and deep. It says we are nothing but a collection of organic components.

But humanity has never been satisfied by that. We believe that there is a meaning to life. In fact, we cannot live without meaning. Dr. Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps, realized that those who survived had meaning and purpose in their lives. It might have been as simple as wishing to see their loved ones again but the will to live depends on having a reason to live. Those who saw no greater purpose to their lives tended to despair and perish.

Existentialism is a school of philosophy in which everyone decides on the meaning of his own life. A person creates meaning for himself or herself. The problem is that this makes everyone's meaning equally valid. It's all subjective. But that means there is no overall meaning to life and since we can all make up whatever meaning we wish, it's basically like whistling in the dark. Beneath existentialism is acceptance of the scientific model that we are just random bits of ephemeral phenomena. So we tell ourselves whatever we want in order to comfort ourselves but there may be no objective truth to it.

The alternative is that the meaning of life is objective. It is either deduced by some authority or revealed by God. Each religion conceives of it differently. But what is it? What is the ultimate value of life?

To many religions it is simply knowing one's place and obeying God. To a Buddhist or Hindu, the object is to leave behind the circle of death, rebirth and pain and to achieve Nirvana where one is absorbed by the World Soul and ceases to exist as an individual. To the Mormon, the purpose of life is to marry for eternity and beget children forever and one day, if you are a man, to become a god of one's own little world. To some groups, the purpose of life is to grow intellectually, becoming more enlightened and wise.

In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the author gives a profound answer to the question of the meaning and purpose of life. Before we get to it, let's look at how his audience perceived what he wrote.

John uses a concept familiar to both the Jews and the Greeks of his time: the Word of God. For the Jews, God's Word was powerful. It was creative. God created the world just by speaking it into existence. “God said, 'Let there be light.' And it was so.”

God's Word also gave life. Again, God created life just by saying so. But God's Word also illuminated the minds of people.The Jews not only thought of God's Word as scripture but also as humanity's basic understanding of the world.

Finally, God's Word was his wisdom. This last concept was particularly important in their wisdom literature. In the Book of Proverbs (Chapter 8) as well as in later writings like the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom is pictured as God'sw agent in creation, a separate creature of his through whom all things were made. All of this lies behind what John means in the prologue to his Gospel.

The Greek philosophers also spoke of the Word. The Greek term is “logos.” And it means not only “word” but also “reason.” The Logos is the pattern behind creation, the thing that keeps order throughout a world in flux, the mind of the Creator itself. So when John uses the term “Word” he is speaking to both Gentile and Jew about a key philosophical and theological idea that shapes their worldviews.

John's first statement actually precedes the first sentence in Genesis. “In the beginning was the Word.” The reason behind everything, the pattern for all that is, was there from the start. “...the Word was with God...” It is not an afterthought; it was there with God before anything was created. It is original in every sense of the word.

“...and the Word was God.” The Greek is deceptively simple here but basically it means that what God was, the Word was. As we say in the Nicene Creed, “...of one being with the Father.” The Word was divine, of the same stuff as God.

John goes on to say that, just like the Hebrew concept of the Word and Wisdom of God, all things were made through the Logos and it gives us life and light.

Now all this sounds very abstract until we get to verse 14. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us...” The reason for life, the universe and everything became a human being. This is radical! Imagine it: the reason why we are all here was lying in an animal's feedbox, the wellspring of life suckled at Mary's breast, the principle that holds the universe together made his appearance in the world as the most vulnerable creature imaginable, a human infant.

I could write a book on this passage. All I want to point out here is this: if he is the principle behind everything, then Jesus is a better meaning to life than any philosophical statement or abstract theological concept. Because he is a person. As such he is complex. Our universe is complex. In fact, since he is both divine and human, we can see in him much more than we could deduce from any written word. He is the ultimate expression of God's mind and in him we see a multiplicity of meanings that overlap. We see justice, truth, grace, hope, trust, forgiveness, wisdom, paradox, kindness, healing, transcendence, creativity, sacrifice, love and more. In Jesus we see what God is like.

But because he has become one of us and follows the will of God perfectly, we also see what we can be. We see what a human life that is wholly responsive to God can do. So in Jesus Christ we not only see eternity but also our future and the potential future of humanity. Through Christ, we can rise above the self-destructive and corrosive effects of our sins to be loving, healing, giving stewards of God's gifts.

So what are the Christian answers to the 3 questions we posed?

Where do we come from? From God's creative love expressed through Christ, our original pattern.

Why are we here? To grow into that image of God which he planted in us until we mirror that joyous love we find in the interplay of the Father and the Son, united in the Spirit of their love.

Where are we going? If we choose to unite to God and leave behind those sins which limit and hinder us, we will become more like him, which is to say, more the people we were intended to be: diverse and yet harmonious, individual yet unified. It is a voyage of discovery and growth which will never end, and which promises surprises and delights forever more as we go deeper and deeper into the riches found in our infinitely wonderful God.

Choose Your Story

What kind of story do you want to live in?

One where you need to have greed so you'll win?

One where with might you must fight other folk?

Or acquire the power their rights to revoke?

Or in fantasy flee while the world needs repair?

Or surrender to death, decay and despair?

Or to answer the call from the God who made all,

Who saw us rather than rise choose to fall.

He didn't give up but instead became man

To show us how with this own Spirit we can

Live without greed, choose not to fight,

But with love and forgiveness set God's world aright.

With his words, he enlightened,

With his touch, the sick healed,

With no army or wealth,

Great power did he wield.

When those who had wealth, power and might

Seized him, he told his disciples, “Don't fight!”

He willingly went to suffer and die.

On the cross, it appeared his whole life was a lie.

Abandoned, he prayed with his very last breath,

And his tale should have ended, like ours, with cruel death.

All hope, with his body, lay dead in a tomb;

His disciples all hid, enshrouded in gloom.

One morning some went, one last duty to pay.

But the tomb they found empty; the stone rolled away.

The men, still in hiding, heard the women arrive,

But could not believe that they saw him alive!

Their door remained shut against those that they feared,

Yet the One who is Life crossed death's gate and appeared.

“I'm alive! I can eat. You can touch me, you see.

Breathe my Spirit within. Take your cross. Follow me.”

And they did. Through the world with this tale they did wend.

And they died, yet God's story of love did not end.

For the tale of the God who is Love lives today.

It calls to folks still; it will not go away.

For the story that lives in your head and your heart

Is the one, in the end, in which you will take part.

Does love conquer hate? Does death finally lose?

Does God's goodness win? What do you choose?

Though power and greed tell you just to give in,

What kind of story do you want to live in?

Commitment

This was originally preached on December 21, 2008. There has been some updating.

You've probably not heard of Katherine Gun. She worked in the Government Communications Headquarters, an intelligence organization in Britain. One day in early 2003, she received an email from the National Security Agency in the U.S. requesting Britain's help in bugging the U.N. offices of 6 nations. These 6 were seen as swing votes on the U.N. Security Council for getting international approval of the invasion of Iraq. The 29 year old translator knew that this was a violation of the Vienna Conventions which govern global diplomacy. So, having a conscience, she leaked the email to a British newspaper. She was fired. Worse, because Britain has no first amendment right to free speech and because as a government employee, she was subject to the Official Secrets Act, Katherine Gun was arrested and faced trial and imprisonment. Though this was front page news throughout the rest of the world, here in the U.S. the story was barely a blip on the screen. You can read the story of this shy but courageous whistleblower in the book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War. There is also a film called Official Secrets with Keira Knightly playing Katherine Gun.

Today we consider a different young woman making an even more momentous decision. She was probably in her early teens, just past puberty. Her marriage was probably arranged and she had little say in it. She was taught how to keep a home, prepare meals, say some necessary prayers and do the few religious rituals that women were allowed to perform. No one taught her to read. She came from a small town and people were conservative. There is no reason to assume that Mary was anything special. Except, maybe, for her name.

Mary is our version of the name Miriam, which comes from the Hebrew word for “bitter.” But it can also mean “rebellious.” It is a curious choice for parents to saddle their infant daughter with. She was probably named for a deceased female relative as a way of keeping the name alive. And it was a popular name; there are a plethora of Marys in the gospels. Perhaps it was used so often because it was the name of Moses' sister, who watched over her infant brother when he was set afloat in the Nile. She was also a prophetess. Based on the age of the Hebrew language used, the Song of Miriam is the oldest written portion of the Bible. (Exodus 15:20-21) Despite the patriarchal structure of Jewish life, women have always figured prominently in God's plan. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Rahab, Deborah and others have pivotal roles in the Old Testament, as do Lydia, Priscilla, Junias, Joanna, and the various Marys in the New.

But it all leads up to and flows from the decision this Mary makes in today's Gospel. (Luke 1:26-38) And it is a difficult decision. Becoming the mother of the Messiah is not like winning a TV game show. The immediate fallout could be fatal. Mary is a virgin and betrothed. Her pregnancy could get her thrown out of her home, divorced by her fiance, and possibly stoned to death as an adulterer. Even if God protects her from the worst, she would be a disgraced woman, an outcast. So her decision is not an impulsive one. On the one hand, God is bestowing on her an immense honor. On the other hand, it will totally change her life, and humanly speaking, not for the better.

Nor will it end when the child is born. She will have to raise him, perhaps alone, probably in extreme poverty. The average poor person in our society is a single mother. And in Jesus' day, there were no food stamps, no welfare programs, and no notion of equality between the sexes. By saying “Yes” to God, Mary is facing, at best, a life full of whispers and at worst, a life of hardship.

And at first, it looks like the consequences will be bad. She goes to stay with her kinswoman Elizabeth for a while. I don't think this is done out of a desire to support the older woman so much as to get Mary out of town before she starts showing.

And Joseph is indeed thinking of divorce. Betrothal was as binding as marriage, even though the couple was not to live together or sleep together until after the wedding ceremony. Joseph is torn between preserving his reputation as a righteous man and keeping Mary from being stoned to death. If he doesn't put her away, no respectable Jew will do business with him. But Joseph is not so self-righteous that he feels Mary should pay the ultimate price for apparently cheating on him. Perhaps he works out Mary's exile with her parents. If and when she returns to Nazareth, the divorce will be history. She'd be shunned but perhaps the village elders and the Pharisees would spare her for the sake of her baby.

But then Joseph has a dream in which he is told to marry his betrothed and raise her son, the Messiah. It's not exactly a happy ending. There will always be rumors about the circumstances of Jesus' birth. Mary and Joseph will also have to flee the country to avoid the paranoid and murderous King Herod. But both parents are committed to following through on their decisions to obey God. And that's what makes them heroic.

Commitment is a quality seriously lacking in today's society. Companies show no commitment to their employees, dropping pensions, downgrading healthcare insurance, and cutting the salaries of those at the bottom rather than those at the top. C.E.O.s show no commitment to the continuing health of their companies, preferring short term profits over long term sustainability. Sexual partners show no commitment to each other, refusing to make public and legal vows of lifelong fidelity. Many parents, and especially fathers, show no commitment to raising their children, leaving them behind so the parents can follow their own desires.

And sadly, a lot of Christians show no commitment to their faith, picking and choosing which beliefs and moral principles to follow. The result is that there is little difference between the lifestyles of self-identified Christians and those of nonbelievers. These “Christians” like the idea of Jesus as their Savior but not as their Lord. They like the idea that God loves them as they are but not the idea that God loves them enough to change them into better people. They want God both to love them and to leave them alone to do as they please.

There are reasons why we shy away from commitment. It means hard work. Make a commitment to Habitat for Humanity and it means hours of physical labor.

Commitment means responsibility. Make a commitment to raise a child and it means being responsible for feeding her, seeing she does her homework, and teaching her to be a moral human being.

Commitment means giving up some of your freedom. Make the commitment to marry someone and you're not free to have other lovers.

Commitment means reordering your priorities. It means sacrifice. It means maintaining your focus on what's essential and what's important. And so we avoid commitments.

But commitment is necessary for anything important to succeed. Nothing worthwhile comes to fruition without committed people behind it. Thomas Edison tested literally hundreds of filaments before he found the one that would work in his lightbulb. It took scientists 21 years to go from the discovery of the connection between insulin and diabetes to figuring out how to produce insulin for medical use in humans. J.K. Rowling's first manuscript was rejected by 12 different publishers before it was accepted. Were it not for the persistence of committed people this world would be a darker, sicker, and less enchanting place.

But those are examples of people committed to a project they themselves conceived. Mary and Joseph were making a commitment to obey God and didn't know exactly what it would entail. They knew the stories of the prophets: how they were persecuted and even martyred. They knew the popular idea of the Messiah, a holy warrior like his ancestor David, who would drive out the Gentiles and establish the kingdom of God militarily. And they knew what happened when people tried to revolt against the Romans—they got crucified. So they knew that the path they were taking was fraught with danger.

Yet they said “Yes.” Far from Jerusalem, farther still from Rome, this teenage girl and this young handiman from a small town said “Yes” to following God's way, though it put them at odds with the powers that be. What they agreed to do couldn't be less likely to succeed. But they trusted in God and reoriented their lives to accommodate their commitment.

Mary and Joseph's commitment paid off. Jesus was indeed the Messiah, albeit not the kind everyone thought he'd be. He dealt with the powers which oppress people, but not in the way everyone expected. He got himself killed, as some feared, but even that didn't turn out the way people would have predicted: he rose again. The kingdom of God did get started, but it isn't a political or military kingdom. It has no borders. And Jesus has commissioned us to spread his kingdom.

It takes commitment to follow Jesus. It means hard work. The kingdom of God isn't going to come about through wishful thinking. It means responsibility. Every person you meet is either a citizen of the kingdom of God or a potential citizen and so they must be treated that way. And it means giving up some freedom. We aren't free to indulge in the sins we'd like to. We need to shed every harmful habit that hinders us on our mission. It means sacrifices and reordering our priorities. It means maintaining focus on Jesus: who he is, what he has done for us and is doing in us, and how we respond.

There are many who honor Jesus with their lips but not in their lives. They love his words that comfort them but not those that command or challenge them. They want eternal life but they won't surrender control of this life for it. The kingdom only manifests itself in the hearts and lives of those committed to its principles and its king. It has to be more than just someone's interest or hobby. The holy self-sacrificial love of God in Christ for everyone, be they neighbor or enemy, has to show itself in every aspect of our life if it is to have a real impact in this world. Jesus needs disciples, not dabblers. Which are you?

Restoration Work

This was originally preached on December 14, 2008. There has been some updating.

I promise this will not be another sermon about Doctor Who. But in order to set the stage for today's topic, which is why Advent is a penitential season and how today's scriptures fit in, I want to briefly revisit the new version of the world's oldest science fiction show. In my earlier sermon, I spoke of how the Doctor is explicitly being treated as a messianic figure. He is the one “who makes people better,” a positive and healing hero. But one aspect I did not deal with is the new Doctor's other side. The oppressed may hail and love him but the oppressors hate and fear him. His archenemies, the Daleks, call him “the Bringer of Darkness,” “the Destroyer of Worlds,” and “the “Oncoming Storm.” The Doctor is merciful but not to the merciless. And in a very theologically-rooted 2-part adventure, written by Paul Cornell whose wife is an Anglican priest, the Doctor encounters a family of predatory aliens who decimate a boys' school. The eternal fates he arranges for them are both just and terrible. The coming of the Doctor is good news for those who are suffering but very bad news for those who cause the suffering.

In a similar way, the coming of Christ is good news for those who want to be saved but not for those who have a stake in keeping things in this unjust world as they are. And since we are all sinners and we all knowingly do things we know aren't right, Jesus' advent should make us a little uncomfortable. In fact, if you substitute his name for another in what is already the most disturbing Christmas song I know, you get a sense of what Advent is about: “You better watch out; you'd better not cry; you'd better not pout; I'm telling you why—Jesus Christ is coming to town. He's making a list and checking it twice; gonna find out who's naughty and nice. Jesus Christ is coming to town. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake!”

Advent says, “Jesus is coming! And he's really ticked off about all the evil that plagues this world he created—evils that his own creatures have perpetrated and perpetuated.” That's why Advent is penitential. We are to look at ourselves and how complacent and complicit we are in regards to the world's problems. We acknowledge how we have fallen short of what God expects of us. And we ask for the help of the Holy Spirit in restoring our lives. Basically, we are cleaning ourselves up for the coming of Jesus.

But you will notice a different tone in the readings of today's lectionary. They focus not on the stick, so to speak, but the carrot, or, more accurately, the goal of our journey with Jesus: the healing of this sick world.

It starts with the stirring passage from Isaiah that Jesus read at the beginning of his ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor...”

It sounds as if the prophet is talking about the Jubilee year. (Leviticus 25) Every 7 years Israelites were to leave their land fallow, so that they wouldn't deplete its fertility. And every 50 years (7 Sabbatical years, plus 1) all debts were to be cancelled, all debt slaves were freed and all lands were returned to their original families. It may sound foreign to us because of our western tradition of private land ownership, but the premise in Biblical times is that the land belonged not to the Israelites but to God. (Leviticus 25:23) So God could reshuffle the stewardship of his land. Obviously the Jubilee year was a very good thing for those who had lost their financial footing. The Jubilee gave families a fresh start, restoring their position in the agricultural community.

The passage in Isaiah goes on to talk of comforting those who mourn, of planting and of repairing cities. The immediate context was the Jews returning from exile in Babylon. When they returned to the promised land, they would have to revive their country. This would involve planting crops, rebuilding their cities and comforting those who would be stunned upon seeing how dilapidated Judea was after 70 years of neglect. God promises blessings. The imagery used is that of a man or woman decked out on their wedding day. (v.10) The simile then switches to that of spring and of a garden flowering. (v.11) Both pictures are those of beauty and joy and a bountiful future.

The theme continues in Psalm126. “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those in a dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” Another image is presented, that of the wadi or creek beds found in the southern desert of the Negev. During the summer, they are dry. But in the rainy season, they fill and overflow and bring life to the desert.This is followed by a different kind of water imagery. “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” The hard work of replanting to sustain the returning populace will be rewarded with abundance. It is almost as if the psalmist is saying the seeds will be watered with the tears of the people. God is able to transmute the very elements of sorrow into joy.

The Magnificat can be used in place of the psalm. The song of Mary, the mother of Jesus, speaks of a God who turns the usual order of things upside down. He has chosen a humble servant to bear his son. In a similar way, “he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.” He has “filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty.” God is redressing the inequities of the world, helping those who need his help and rely on him. And the prime example of this is Jesus, who healed those who put their trust in him.

Too often we forget what the whole enterprise of God is about. It's not about the end of the world or escaping hell or sitting about playing harps. It's about restoration—restoring people's freedom, their livelihood, their faith, their hope, their joy. It's about restoring his creation, which he pronounced good. It's about restoring relationships—with ourselves, with each other and with him.

Restoration can mean pain. I saw a documentary about a child whose face was covered by an enormous tumor. She couldn't see, and breathing was difficult. It took several operations for the surgeon to reduce the mass and make the child look normal. The doctor had to remove many pounds of flesh from her face. The hospitalizations were rough on the child. The recovery was hard. But the results were astonishing. She could see again. She could breathe freely. She was no longer stared at and pointed at in public. The pain was worth the cure.

On the other hand, I had a friend who ignored a mole that grew and changed color. A coworker and I urged her to see a doctor. But she was afraid of needles and scalpels. She lied to us and said a doctor was treating it, when she was really just scraping at it herself and covering it with a dressing. The skin cancer metastasized to her brain. First it crippled her with a stroke and then, in just a month, it killed her. But before she died she recorded a PSA for the radio station where we worked, urging others to not let their fears lull them into a lethal neglect of getting help.

Our fears can be fatal. They can blind us to our need for God. We are afraid of what he will do to us and how we will have to change. We are afraid of what he will demand of us. We can't see beyond the pain and the tears. But they are just stages in the process of restoring us to spiritual health. God wants to remove the burden of our sins, restore our sight, let the fresh air of the Spirit in, and restore us to the beauty he intended us to have. But he can't do it if we don't let him.

When I quoted Isaiah earlier, I did what Jesus did: stopped on a hopeful note. The passage goes on from “to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” to “and the day of vengeance of our God.” Only we can determine which kind of day it will be for us. Are we a healthy part of the body of Christ or a malignant growth that must be removed? Are we part of the problem or part of God's solution?

One thing we can do is take back the holiday that the season of Advent leads up to. Christmas has been changed from a celebration of God's gift to us of Jesus into an orgy of accumulating more stuff. You may have heard of a movement called Redefining Christmas. The idea is simple. Instead of racking your brains, trying to come up with some new gadgets to give to family and friends that they don't already have, you give to charities in their names. The choice of charities is huge. In the name of an animal lover you could give to an animal rescue organization. In the name of someone with a passion for justice, you could give to a human rights organization. In the name of someone who is compassionate, you could give to an organization that provides disaster relief, or one that helps disabled children, or one that fights a disease. For someone who loves beauty there are arts organizations. There are also groups involved in education or women's issues or helping refugees or veterans or prisoners.

Jesus is coming. That can be good news or bad news, depending on whether or not you acknowledge both your and the world's need for him. But in the meantime, we need not just sit on our hands, waiting. We can be like John the baptizer, spreading the news, encouraging people to start preparing the way of the Lord, laying the groundwork for the kingdom of God. (Luke 3:10-14) We needn't be the Messiah to do his work. Nor need we do it alone. We can join with others to do great things. And know that wherever 2 or 3 gather in his name, there he is in our midst. (Matthew 18:20) That's why we are called the body of Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:27)

In Advent we remember that Jesus exists in the past, the present and the future. Jesus came at Christmas to start his work. Jesus is coming again to complete his work. But in the meantime our priority is that Jesus is here now, working in us. Look around you. There's a lot that needs restoring. What are we waiting for?

The Gospel According to Narnia

In connection with the 60^th anniversary of C.S. Lewis' death, here's a sermon from December 4, 2005. There has been some updating.

Where would you go if you could travel in time? What event would you wish to witness with your own eyes? What great person would you like to meet face to face? What historical mystery would you want to solve? I could generate a list of several dozen places, persons and enigmas I would like to visit. But I'm pretty sure that in the Top Ten would be any Thursday evening during any school term in the 1930s and 40s at Magdalen College in the rooms of a particular Oxford tutor. Because the odds would be quite good that I would overhear the jovial, witty and sharp conversation, as well as a few works in progress, from some of the most talented writers in England at that time. If I were lucky, I might hear the first draft of The Lord of the Rings read by J.R.R. Tolkien himself, a chapter of the latest spiritual thriller by Charles Williams, and an essay, poem, or chapter from one of the works of apologetics or fiction by C.S. Lewis. It was in Lewis' rooms that this group called the Inklings met to drink, smoke, and present their creations. They were the first people in the world to journey with Frodo to Mt. Doom, to discover that the communion chalice of the small church in Fardles was in fact the Holy Grail, and to set sail on the Dawn Treader for the Lonely Isles.

I decided that I had to read the Harry Potter books when I heard them compared favorably to the Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis' stories belong to that small category of children's books that you can enjoy at any age and any number of times. Though a loyal Lewis fan from my teens, I didn't read the Narnia tales until I was in college. I loved them so much that I rationed out the reading of each because they are so brief. I raised my children on them. So it is with both high anticipation and no small anxiety that we await the Netflix adaptation of them.

The origins of the stories go back to Lewis' childhood in Ireland. One day his older brother Warren showed him a miniature forest he had created in a box, with tiny trees and flowers. Lewis felt the first tang of what he came to call joy, a deep and vivid longing for something seemingly unattainable. He experienced it when he looked out his nursery window towards the green hills in the distance. He would encounter it again when he discovered the Norse myths. He would come to recognize this as one of the ways God calls us from the distractions of this world to the joys of the reality behind it. Pointing out that we are not born with appetites like hunger or sex unless the thing that satisfies it exists, Lewis said, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for a different world...Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”

The Lewis brothers also created Animal Land, about which they wrote stories and drew pictures. But the talking beasts of his childhood creation lived in a country dully named Boxen, which was prosaic and political. It was a kid's eye view of the dreary adult world he had picked up from his father, a lawyer. No joy was to be found in Boxen.

During the 2^nd World War, Lewis and his brother accepted into their bachelor home a group of children evacuated from London during the Nazi bombings. One little girl showed interest in a wardrobe built by Lewis' grandfather. She wondered what was behind it and what she would find if she entered it. That triggered the writer's imagination. Ten years later he combined the girl's curiosity with a picture he had held in his mind since he was 16—that of a faun carrying parcels and an umbrella in a snowy forest. Lewis' stories often evolved from images in his head. But it wasn't until a lion that haunted his dreams leapt into the midst of his pictures that the story started to pull itself together. Add the question “What would Christ be like had he been incarnated in a different world than ours?” and the result is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia.

Dedicated to his godchild, Lucy Barfield, the first story follows the Pevensie children as they walk through a wardrobe into a fairy tale world of fauns and centaurs and giants and talking animals. It is ruled by the White Witch whose spell has turned Narnia into a place where it is always winter but never Christmas. Upon entering this world, the children unwittingly fulfill a prophecy about the end of the witch's reign and the coming of Aslan, the true king of Narnia. At first the children think that Aslan is a man. A beaver disabuses them of that notion. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.” When asked if he is safe, the reply is, “Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.”

One of the themes that runs through Lewis' work is that goodness is not the same as niceness. Long before we heard on the news neighbors saying that the man who turned out to be a serial killer was such a nice, quiet man, Lewis pointed out that evil people can be very nice. By the same token, good people aren't always the most polite or appear harmless. As his friend and fellow writer Dorothy L. Sayers said, “The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore—on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him 'meek and mild' and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand.” Niceness is not identical with morality. One has to do with how a person does things; the other has to do with what kind of things a person does. Aslan can be gentle and he can be fearsome. He is not tame but he is good.

A corollary to this principle is that doing the right thing is not always easy or pleasant. Sometimes you must tell the truth when a lie would spare everyone embarrassment. Sometimes you must stand against the crowd when going along with them would make everything proceed more smoothly. Sometimes you must risk your life for the sake of others.

We see Aslan's goodness when he turns himself over to the witch to be killed to save the life of someone who betrayed him. Lewis presents us with a reimagining of the passion that is much less graphic than Mel Gibson's but just as moving. And Lewis' version of the resurrection is the most joyous one imaginable.

It seems hard for most writers to make goodness attractive. In contrast to stories where villains are often more interesting than heroes, and good guys are just a few shades less messed up than bad guys, Lewis succeeds in making Aslan charismatic and heroic without being flawed. What we generally like about our heroes are their powers. We want Superman's strength and flying ability, Wolverine's claws and self-healing properties, James Bond's gadgets and Sherlock Holmes' brains. But Aslan makes us want to emulate his moral qualities. His bravery makes us want to be braver; his mercy makes us want to be merciful.

Repentance and forgiveness are also themes that run through Lewis' work. In the third adventure, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we meet a cousin of the Pevensies, the disagreeable Eustace Clarence Scrubb. A thoroughly modern and spoiled kid, he hates Narnia as much as his cousins love it. The only part of the adventure that appeals to him is the discovery of a dragon's treasure hoard. But when he puts on a golden armband, he turns into a dragon. He narrowly escapes being slain by good King Caspian when his cousins recognize who he is. Eustace uses his power of flight to help the crew of the ship The Dawn Treader but he doesn't want to remain a dragon. And the magic armband cuts into his now dragon-sized foreleg. One night Aslan visits him and leads him to a spring-fed well. Eustace longs to ease his pain in the water. The lion tells the dragon to undress and bath in the well. Eventually, Eustace realizes he must shed his dragon skin like a snake does. Using his own claws, Eustace scrapes off the dragon skin only to find another layer beneath. He tries again and again but always finds more scales beneath each layer. Finally he lets Aslan remove the dragon's hide from him. He tells us, “I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate by now. So I just lay down on my back to let him do it. The first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place.” After Aslan removed the dragon skin, “he caught hold of me—I didn't like that much for I was tender underneath now that I'd got no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing around, I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again.” After the bath, Aslan dresses Eustace in new clothes. I cannot think of a better dramatization of the pain of shedding our sinful nature, the joy of finding our true nature in God and the role of baptism in our spiritual rebirth.

In The Magician's Nephew, we see the creation of Narnia as Aslan sings into existence the stars, the land, the plants and animals. We also learn that origins of the White Witch and the wardrobe. If the first book in the series is the Gospel story, this book is the Genesis of Narnia. In The Last Battle, Narnia comes to its end and we see the righteous enter not the clouds but the true Narnia. The old Narnia is but a shadow of the new world. As a unicorn exclaims, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.” A better picture of the afterlife in the new creation I cannot envision.

As you read through the Chronicles of Narnia you will encounter a chivalrous mouse, the invisible bouncing Dufflepods, brave beavers, a pessimistic but valiant Marshwiggle, stars who have retired from the sky, a voyage to the literal end of the world, a slave who saves a princess and a kingdom, a righteous foreigner who learns that a person can serve Aslan even if he doesn't know his name, and a truly regal cabdriver. In each tale, C.S. Lewis used his gifts to create a world which is so vivid and beautiful that you wish you could stay there. Infusing it all is a Christian sensibility that informs the stories but never detracts from them. Some feel that fantasy is nothing but escapism but Lewis used the conventions of the genre to recast moral issues and highlight spiritual realities apart from the usual trappings that often turn people off to the gospel. A sublimely logical scholar, Lewis nevertheless understood that some truths are better conveyed through stories than through polemics. And sometimes old familiar stories can regain their power when reimagined and retold in new ways.

In fact, one mother thought Lewis had done his work too well. She wrote that her son realized that he loved Aslan more than Jesus and was afraid he was committing idolatry. Lewis, who answered every letter he received, wrote back that this was impossible because Aslan was Jesus, just in a lion's body. The boy just liked the lion body better. God would not hold it against him because God made little boys and knew that they thought that way.

If you or someone you know has not read the Narnia books, I cannot think of a better Christmas gift. I pray that the Netflix series will be faithful not only to the books but to the love of nature, the enjoyment of simple pleasures, the humor, the deep understanding of humanity, the childlike sense of wonder, and most of all, the joy, the haunting love of all that is true and pure and good that these tales embody. And may many look into the golden face of Aslan and see Jesus, the Lion of Judah, who is not tame, who is not safe, but who is good and who loves us and calls us out of the shadowlands into the bright, beautiful and very real kingdom of his Father.

The Gospel According to Doctor Who

In connection with the 60^th anniversary of Doctor Who, here's a sermon from November 30, 2008. There has been some updating.

If you are trying to communicate, you need to know something about your target audience. What are they interested in? What are their needs? Their desires? Their fears? The success of your message depends on how well you speak to these things. Sometimes it is just a matter of how you communicate your message and what you emphasize. By changing what you highlight, you can win people who previously were indifferent to your message. As long as the core is the same, you aren't changing the message; you are merely translating it into a language the audience understands.

That's what happened to Doctor Who. It was already the longest running science fiction TV series in the world and a very popular one in Britain. But over here it was a cult series, a show with a small but extremely devoted following. In 1989, after 26 seasons, the BBC cancelled it. But like the original Star Trek, fans kept it alive. And eventually it was revived. The hero remained the eccentric Time Lord known only as the Doctor, who travels literally everywhere in his T.A.R.D.I.S., which stands for “Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.” The Doctor continued to pick up companions on his adventures. And if he is fatally wounded, he can regenerate a new body. With it comes a new personality, either grumpy, or goofy, or straightforwardly heroic. What is constant, besides his technical savvy, is his wisdom, compassion and thirst for justice. The Doctor also prefers to solve his problems by using brains rather than brawn. So what did this new version of the series do differently that has made it into an international hit?

Since this is a sermon and not a TV review, I will focus on something the original version rarely touched on but which the current series put front and center: the messianic nature of the Doctor.

When the original series debuted in 1963, the day after President Kennedy was assassinated and C.S. Lewis died, the Doctor was a cranky exile from another world who dressed in Victorian garb. He indulged his granddaughter by letting her go to school on earth. Two of her teachers, concerned about how she could be so precocious about science and history and so ignorant about things like the money system, follow her one evening—to a junkyard! When they think an angry old gentleman has locked her in a blue box, they force their way in, only to find that the box is a lot bigger on the inside.

In a fit of rage, the Doctor traps them in his craft, throws a switch, and the blue box, his Tardis, travels back 10,000 years. It turns out the Doctor can't control his time machine very well. It was in for repairs when he stole it. He is also not always to be trusted. He will put his companions into danger to satisfy his curiosity. His scientific detachment is at times, well, alien. But he begins to change after encountering the Daleks, a race so mutated by a nuclear war that they started, that they have encased their squidlike bodies in individual armored vehicles. Bred to believe they are superior to all other races in the universe, the Doctor decides to oppose them. Eventually he becomes more heroic.

When the first actor to play the Doctor became too sick to continue, the writers came up with the idea that the Doctor can regenerate when mortally wounded, essentially dying and being reborn. So a variety of actors have played the role: tall, short, skinny, fat, funny, serious. In the new series the Doctor has regenerated into a woman and even changed his race. With a hero who can look like anyone and who can have adventures anywhere in time and space, this is the most flexible format for a TV series ever.

As a hero, the Doctor in the original series was more mad scientist than messiah. He was less like the once and future king Arthur and more like Merlin. But when writer Russell T. Davies finally managed to reboot the series in 2005, he saw something else in the character's self-selected title of Doctor. Rather than interpret it as a doctorate in science, as the classic series had, the new series sees the Doctor as “the man who makes people better.” Whereas the old series often ended its stories with the defeat or destruction of the bad guys, in the current series the bad guys and monsters are sometimes redeemed or healed.

This was first seen in an episode in which a mysterious plague is changing people into creepy zombies with gas masks for faces. The Doctor realizes that this is the result of alien medical nonogenes who have been trying to repair wounded human beings during a war. They were incorporating the gas masks not knowing what humans looked like. The Doctor finds the child the nanogenes first encountered and reunites him with his mother, hoping they will recognize her as the source and correct their genetic mistakes. They do. Then he redirects the reprogrammed nanogenes towards the others they fixed wrong so they will make them right again. As the people change, he utters what sounds like a prayer: “Come on; give me a day like this!...Just this once—everybody lives!” The Doctor, whose own planet was destroyed in a war with the Daleks, get to savor a victory where no one dies but is resurrected and restored.

In the same episode, the Doctor meets a slick conman from the 51^st century whose scam inadvertently caused the plague. Inspired by the Doctor, “Captain” Jack Harkness risks his life to stop a bomb. The Doctor saves him and the reformed conman becomes a member of the Tardis crew and, in his own TV series, a hero in his own right.

In another episode, the Doctor encounters an old foe, an alien from a criminal family, up to her old tricks, endangering earth. The Doctor originally intends to turn her over to her home planet, which will execute her for her crimes. But as he gets to know her better he becomes uncomfortable with this idea. When time energy from the Tardis regresses the alien back into an egg, the Doctor decides to put her with a different family, giving her a second chance to grow up. He gives her a new life. Because the Doctor makes others better people.

We see this in his companions in the new series. In the classic series they were mostly pretty young things whose job was to (A) ask the Doctor what's going on and (B) get rescued from the bad guys. His companions in the new series have more prominence. They are fully developed characters and they even get to save the Doctor at times. His first companion in the new series was Rose, a 19 year old who works in a department store. She finds herself torn between her exciting new life with the Doctor and her family and friends. Eventually they all become companions and are changed by their time with the Doctor. So they are no longer merely window dressing, nor lowly assistants to the hero. They come to emulate the Doctor's nobility and self-sacrifice. One, Martha, literally becomes an apostle for the Doctor, spreading the word about how he has saved earth. When the Doctor is captured by his old enemy, the Master, who has taken over the earth, Martha has people all over the globe call upon the name of the Doctor at a designated time, freeing him from the control the Master has over him. Basically the Master is defeated by faith, hope and prayer.

This religious content is anything but accidental. The new series has had robotic angel hosts and horned personifications of evil and sometimes even calls its hero “the lonely god.” In one episode things come to a halt as all the beleaguered people trapped in a worldwide traffic jam join in an unexpected but moving rendition of “The Old Rugged Cross”, where “the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain.” Though an atheist, Russell T. Davies seems to be sympathetic to certain Christian ideas and themes, like forgiveness and redemption, and he expresses them better than many Christians do.

So what does this have to do with Advent and the gospel? Just is: the newest incarnation of this show is obviously appealing to people's longing for a different kind of hero. In a culture that gives heroes a licence to kill large numbers of aliens and robots as well as humans, in the Doctor we see one who offers mercy as well as justice. He seeks to heal the suffering. He changes the lives of those who encounter him, inspiring and empowering them to be heroes as well. Sound familiar?

In Advent we focus on the coming of such a hero. Our Old Testament passages look for the Messiah, God's anointed prophet, priest and king, who will set things right. Some passages concentrate on the day God will judge and overturn the evil, corrupt and oppressive ways of the world, while others stress the hope of healing and reconciliation. Our New Testament lessons examine the paradoxical way in which Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God, not by killing sinners but by dying for them. They also look forward towards the day when he will finish the process, which, according to the book of Revelation involves a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, where neither death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain will exist and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. (Revelation 21:3-4) The problem is that our familiarity with the texts have blinded us to how revolutionary the story of Jesus really is.

The old Doctor Who was a geek's dream, with the engineer as hero, who could come up with a technical fix for any problem. The new Doctor is more like a medic. He makes people better, both by healing them and by modeling a selfless life that they wish to follow. In a recent episode the Doctor finds out that after winning the lottery a former companion of his gave it all away to help people who were suffering, in imitation of the Doctor. The god the old Doctor most resembled was Prometheus, who stole the secret of fire from the Greek gods to give it to humans for their betterment. The divine person the new Doctor most resembles is Jesus, who changes people's lives.

Just as Davies brought out elements in the show's old mythos to revitalize the saga of the Doctor, we need to rethink how we present Jesus. Is he merely this authoritarian figure, easily confused with the establishment, who makes pronouncements that we dutifully observe without thinking? Or is he the ultimate hero, who creatively and daringly dealt with the problems with which we still grapple and who brought about a new way of making things right? Whereas the world decides to fight evil with grim determination—when it doesn't despair in the face of evil or cooperate with it—Jesus fights it with hope. Whereas the world sees peace as a wary temporary truce with those who cannot be trusted, Jesus brings about peace by bringing people from every race and nation together through faith in a just and loving God. Whereas the world seeks to eliminate enemies by shedding their blood, Jesus eliminates enemies by letting his own blood be shed and by offering them forgiveness and love and healing. He eliminates bad guys by turning those who respond to him into good guys.

When things get bad, the world fantasizes about James Bond or John Wick, who defeat evil by being more ruthless than it is. Doctor Who has offered a different model, a hero who wins by using his heart and mind and inspiring others. And the appeal of this hero's story is that it comes from what is essentially a fresh retelling of the greatest story ever told: the story of how God became one of us, lived and died as we do, and rose again to give us new life as new creations in Christ. It is up to us to leave the land of fiction and proclaim to a sin-sick world that there is a real hero we can follow, Jesus Christ, the Great Physician who makes people better.