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.