Finding Christ in Narnia

Dr. Kenneth Hawley: Today we'll have our program. I'll be going through a presentation like we did yesterday.
And at the conclusion of the presentation, that will be the end of chapel.
It'll be the end of our 24-hour reading marathon.
It'll be concluded by our own Josh Stevens in costume today as Aslan.
He will conclude that reading marathon.
And it will also be the beginning of our riding carnival.
When you go out there, you'll see a number of booths that are set up and open for you to participate in.
And there'll also be lots of good food that is free of charge to you by our friends at Aramark.
We hope you enjoy it.
Now today, I want to talk about finding Christ in Narnia.
Last time, we talked about finding yourself in Narnia.
That moment when, as you read along, you might realize, as you read about these characters,
maybe coming to realize something about themselves, that you realize something about yourself.
That maybe along with Eustace, you realize you've made a lot of choices,
that it puts you in a position where you know what, you don't like it, and you want to change.
But you're not sure you have the strength to do that.
You call upon divine help for that.
Or like Rillian, you have found yourself in a place where you don't want to be,
that you've been fooled into thinking that it's where you belong,
but you really do belong somewhere else, and you can't get there by yourself.
You're going to need your friends to help you.
Well, today as we talk about finding Christ in Narnia,
it's one of those themes that becomes fairly obvious once we read the most popular of all the books,
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
That's one we're going to start with in just a moment.
Because in this story, Lewis tells us the story of Jesus.
He uses the story of Jesus to help us understand his story.
And as we read it, we understand that there are truths about forgiveness and reconciliation and starting over.
And making a way forward after you've completely blown it that God makes possible.
That by the sacrifice of Christ is available to us.
That these kinds of stories, they're not real in the sense that you and I are real and the events of this day are real.
They're fictional.
But in those fictional worlds, stories are told that just might be more true than what you're thinking right now.
They just might be more true than what you keep telling yourself.
And reading a story like this that is made up, it's invented, it's imaginary.
Reading a story like that might actually give you the truth in a way that talking to yourself,
talking to another friend who hasn't been giving you what you need might not give you.
That these are good shadows, that these are true stories.
And this fictional world helps us know things that are the most true,
that are the most fundamentally true, the most eternally true.
Again, there are seven stories.
We're going to look just very briefly at three of them.
As I mentioned, the first one, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
but then also briefly The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
where Lewis explains what all these stories are here for,
what they're intended to do,
and then the very last story, The Last Battle,
that tells what happens when Narnia comes to an end,
but when the rest of their real life actually begins.
We start with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,
And there's lots of things that happen in this story,
and hopefully some of you saw the movie last night.
But at the end of this story, toward the end of it,
after Edmund has betrayed his family,
after he has done the worst thing he could possibly do
and the worst thing he's ever done,
Aslan offers his own life as a sacrifice
to save not only Edmund, but all of Narnia.
It begins, of course, with the wardrobe,
the wardrobe that is magic.
And as they play hide-and-seek in this dusty old house,
one day Lucy stumbles into the wardrobe and finds herself in Narnia Edmund had done the same thing
but his journey was a little different and one day all four of them make their way into this
magical world where for some reason it's it's always winter but it's never Christmas that the
power of the white witch is such that everything that is good is lost to them and it's something
that they kind of remember and still kind of hope for, but they haven't seen in generations.
And it's only Aslan that will bring it back to them all.
But as they make their way into Narnia, they eventually realize the truth about Edmund.
He'd lied to them.
He'd been there before.
He'd been there on his own, and separate from Lucy, he had encountered the White Witch.
Not knowing that she was a White Witch, he believed her to be a powerful queen who could
give him what he would always wanted, which was influence and power and things that a
little brother never gets. And he, in these moments, is selfish and he's greedy and he has
these jealous thoughts and envious thoughts and bitter thoughts about his brother especially
and about everybody who's ever mistreated him. And we see here the power of evil to take advantage
of us when we feel mistreated. And that's what happens to Edmund. He betrays everybody. He
doesn't realize at the time he's doing it that what he's doing is signing their death warrant
and the witch will kill them all to preserve her own power.
When he is rescued and all that disaster is averted,
there's still one disaster that has not been avoided,
and that is that some price has to be paid.
He can't just be free.
The traitor has to face judgment.
And rather than Edmund facing that judgment,
Aslan steps in, restores Edmund to his family,
and Aslan voluntarily takes his place
and allows himself to be killed.
the witch gloats over his death saying that you haven't saved anyone as soon as you're dead i'll
kill them all anyway and she thinks she has won but it turns out she was wrong the next morning
just like that morning in the gospels the rising of the sun had made everything look so different
all the colors and shadows were changed that for a moment they didn't see the important thing
Then they did. It's Lucy and Susan, the women who were weeping at the death of
their favorite friend, Aslan. The stone table had been broken into two pieces by
a great crack that ran down it from the end to end, and there was no Aslan. But
there, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had ever seen him before,
shaking his mane, for it had apparently grown again, stood Aslan himself, the
resurrected King, the one who had offered his life now living again. And this story
is just another version, a good shadow of the true story that our Gospels tell us in
the Scripture, that there is hope for such life after death. And he explains to them
that though the witch knew the deep magic, the magic deeper still which she did not know,
when a willing victim who's committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the table
would crack and death itself would start working backwards.
That Aslan by offering his life has triggered a deeper truth than the fact that traitors
need to die or someone must die for them.
The deeper truth is that love wins.
That redemption is more powerful than judgment or death.
And this is the story of the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, but it's not the first time
that story's been told.
In the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it talks about their journey all the way across the
seas of Narnia to the very edge of the world.
They want to meet Aslan in his own country.
And so they sail all the way across that world to where the waves grow sweet and they encounter
the lamb who is also the lion.
As Lucy speaks to this lamb on the shore, she asks him, "Is this the way to Aslan's
country?"
"Not for you," said the lamb.
For you the door into Aslan's country is from your own world.
What? said Edmund.
Is there a way into Aslan's country from our world too?
There is a way into my country from all the worlds, said the lamb.
And as he spoke, his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed.
And he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane.
Oh, Aslan, will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?
I shall be telling you all the time, said Aslan.
So at the end of this story, Edmund and Lucy, who had enjoyed so much of their adventures in Narnia,
are told they don't get to come back.
They have to go back to their own world.
And they're afraid they'll never know and see Aslan in the way they've known him before.
And he says, no, you will know me.
And I will know you.
And I will keep telling you about me all the time.
And he explains further that he is there too.
But I have another name.
You must learn to know me by that name.
This was the very reason why you were brought into Narnia,
that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.
That the whole reason that Edmund and Lucy were brought into Narnia
was that they would know Aslan.
And that by knowing Aslan, they would know him by his other name.
Christ, Jesus, Lord, King, Savior, Redeemer, Eternal Friend.
This is what they've come to know by their time in Narnia.
And it's as if Lewis is saying that all these adventures were divinely made possible so that these children would know the Lord.
And somehow that's true for us too.
That the whole series of Narnia was written so that by going into that world for a while, you and I might know Aslan there for a time.
So that when we put the book down and turn around to our own world and live our own lives, we might recognize Aslan by another name.
That same love, that same power, that same goodness by the name of Jesus.
Now the last battle tells of when everything comes to an end.
And in this story, the frame for it is that in the real world of England, the children that have been a part of all these stories have died tragically in a train accident.
and that train accident transports them into Narnia as it's coming to an end.
The stars are falling from the sky.
Everything is going dark.
The sun has been extinguished,
and they are entering into what we would call heaven, eternal life, the afterlife.
And it's called in this text, farewell to the shadow lands,
because for Lewis and in these stories, the idea is that this whole life,
This whole world, everything in it is really just a foretaste, a glimpse, a shadow of a reality that we don't know fully yet, but we have known something of it.
And everything about our lives that is good and true and exciting and interesting and as Lewis would call it, inspiring joy within us, that is telling us that we were made for another world altogether.
And our time here was just to prepare us for that world, that this world isn't everything.
It's only the beginning.
In this story, it mimics, it illustrates once more the story we mentioned last time, the allegory of the cave.
That the cave itself is like this whole life.
And in it, we trade in shadows and we argue over things that aren't even substantial or real.
And there are times in which we gain some perspective on it, but we won't really understand the cave until we leave it.
until we can find our way beyond it.
But we're obligated, once we have perspective that goes beyond the cave,
to return into that cave and help other people know that there's a way out,
that there is another world beyond,
that this isn't it, staying here in this darkness, in this world of shadows.
This is only the beginning.
In this story, Professor Kirk,
the old man who had once housed him in that dusty old house that had the wardrobe,
he explains to them that Narnia that you went to,
it was not the real Narnia.
That one had a beginning and an end.
It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia,
which has always been here and always will be here.
Just as our world, England and all,
is only a shadow or a copy of something in Aslan's real world.
As if, again, it's not just that Narnia was this way,
but England was this way.
Every bit of your life was only preparing you
and restoring and renewing and endowing your affections
with the ability to recognize life that is truly life,
goodness that is truly goodness,
hope that is truly hope,
so that you would experience one day a life that never ends.
He says it's only a shadow or a copy of something greater.
And of course it's different.
It's as different as a real thing is from a shadow
or waking life is from a dream.
His voice stirred everyone like a trumpet as he spoke these words,
but when he added under his breath, it's all in Plato, all in Plato.
Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?
The older ones laughed.
The idea is that everything he tells them about their life here
is only the beginning of something that's greater.
And when Aslan explains it, he says, back in that other life,
your mother, your father, all of you are what you used to call it
in the shadow lands, dead.
The term is over and the holidays have begun.
The dream has ended and this is the morning.
Again, he imagines all of life as school and the afterlife as the holidays.
It's summer break.
And all of life is really just a dream compared to the reality that is life with God.
This is only the beginning of that life.
As he spoke, he no longer looked to them like a lion.
But the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.
He's explaining that what is happening in this moment is that it's not just a story.
And he wasn't just a lion.
Everything about it is the truth about Jesus and our truth about our life in him.
And that our life here is only the beginning of what he has in store for us.
And you can't even explain it.
You have to use a story to try to communicate it.
And for us, this is the end of all the stories.
We can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.
But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story.
All their life in this world, all their adventures in Narnia,
they'd only been the cover and the title page.
And now at last, they were beginning chapter one of the great story,
which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever,
in which every chapter is better than the one before.
And so Lewis even uses stories as the image, as the metaphor, as the comparison.
If you want to understand life and afterlife, think of a story.
And this one is just the title page.
Everything we've done, we've barely even turned the page to number one,
much less the last page.
In this way, he's suggesting that stories can do the work of Plato's allegory.
They can call us out of darkness.
They can call us into the light that when we pick up a story, when we read it, we think we're entering a false world, a world of fiction and imagination.
But there's a sense in which that world might be telling us the truth in a way our world is not.
That we just might be living in a world filled with shadows and lies.
And those books we're reading are more true than the life we're living.
Each book, then, might offer us a journey out of what Plato calls the prison house of this world
into a real world of truth and beauty, God's world, God's life.
These good stories tell us the truth about our own world,
and they give us the light to see by when we return to that darkness
to live in a world that is not yet ready for the next chapter, the rest of the story.
We enter into Narnia so that we can know Aslan for a while.
We find them there so we can know them better here.
And every time we've entered into one of these stories, we've encountered shadows that are good.
Imaginative recreations that are real and true because they speak of a reality and a truth that go beyond this very life.
And everything about them reminds us that when we put down that book, we are putting down that world to reenter our own.
and we see more clearly now what is good and true and real
and what kind of life we should be living
and how we should be acting and what choices we should be making.
And every time we read a good story,
we are better prepared to live the life we live surrounded by lies,
surrounded by all kinds of behaviors and ways of living and being
that are not healthy or good or constructive or a blessing to anybody.
But we know better, and we have been renewed and restored
by the experience of reading about it for a while
so that now we turn to life with those good shadows
telling us that something is casting that shadow
that is altogether real.
And this story has been a true one.
And just as in a moment,
that 24-hour reading marathon will come to a close
and these stories will come to an end,
then the carnival will begin.
Just as our life here and all of our stories
will one day end,
and they will have only been the beginning
of the life that God has in store for us with him.
We hope you enjoy it and enjoy your day.
You're dismissed.
Thank you.