Sunday, April 19, 2015

Aslan, a powerful portrayal of Jesus: 3rd Sunday of Easter


(Listen to this homily here).

            One of my all time favorite books is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, part of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series.  I highly recommend this book and series to everyone.
            If you haven’t had a chance to read this book or see the movie, it tells the tale of four children who step through a wardrobe into a different world—Narnia.  This is a place where fantasy comes to life with dwarves, centaurs, talking animals and mysterious powers.  The children walk into a battle between good and evil.  The wicked White Witch has grasped control, leaving Narnia in a time where it is always winter, but never Christmas—similar to International Falls!  My favorite character—and the main character at that—is Aslan, a talking lion.  He is the son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea who actually created Narnia at the beginning of time. 
            One of the children does a punk move—he betrays his siblings and all of Narnia to the White Witch.  The price for such a betrayal—death.  Aslan takes the boys’ place, and the most powerful scene depicts this majestic animal being shaved and slain on a large rock.  Much to the readers’ delight—and to all the characters in Narnia—Aslan rises again, conquers the White Witch and her minion and brings peace back to the land.
            When the last pages of this book and series were over, I was bummed.  That’s the mark of great writing—being disappointed when it is over.  C.S. Lewis captured my imagination.  While he was writing fantasy, C.S. Lewis made it clear that Aslan, the king of Narnia, was a deliberate depiction of Christ.  Lewis once stated that he wrote how he thought Jesus would appear in a different world.
            The Chronicles of Narnia was fiction.  What we are about here—this is fact.  Jesus’ resurrection was not fantasy.  It was not a story.  It was and is true.
            I have been preaching the past couple of weeks on the realness of the resurrection.  Today I would like to point out that this resurrection was indeed a bodily resurrection.
            Our current society is pretty arrogant.  Without even knowing it, we often walk around as if we are the smartest generation in the history of the world.  Perhaps this is true in some areas—medicine, science, technology, space travel and the like.  But what about common sense, faith or understanding the human person? 
            Such biases have slipped into biblical studies and even faith communities.  Scholars point to a spiritual resurrection, or a shared dream, or an apparition or anything but the scientifically-impossible claim of a bodily resurrection.  Many 21st century readers of the Bible treat the disciples like primitive cave people who would believe any myth, story or tall tale that claimed a dead man rose.
            The disciples weren’t idiots!  Listen again to how the disciples reacted to seeing Jesus: “…they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”  Would you react any differently if you saw your dead friend walking around? 
Jesus made it abundantly clear that they were seeing a body: “And why do questions arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.  Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.”  To drive home the point, he asks for something to eat and, “They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.”  Ghosts do not eat.  Apparitions don’t eat.  Only a living body can eat.
The bodily resurrection is true.
I’d like to close with a great quote from C.S. Lewis’ book.  While it is written in the genre of fantasy, it is true about the reality of Jesus: “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward…”  Jesus, the willing victim, took our place and was killed in our stead.  He rose from the dead—bodily—and now death itself works backwards.

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