Sermon Archive

"Jesus the Lion, Jesus the Lamb"

In a speech last Wednesday, as he accepted the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, British playwright Harold Pinter began by commenting on the almost unconscious process that's involved in creating works of art: "They start with an image, a word, a phrase, he said..." (as reported by Sarah Lyall, The New York Times, December 8, 2005, p. A3) A phrase, a word, an image.

Well, for C. S. Lewis, that Oxford don and scholar of Medieval and Renaissance literature, it was indeed an image that gave rise to the cycle of seven books for children that we know as "The Chronicles of Narnia." And the image that primed his flow of imagination was a Faun (F-a-u-n), a figure from Roman mythology having the body of a human but the horns, ears, tail, and hind legs of a goat. Yes, Narnia was born from Lewis's imagination when there leapt into his mind the quite fantastical image of a Faun carrying parcels and an umbrella as he strolled through a snowy wood.

That initiating image of a Faun in a snowy wood cross-pollinated in Lewis's mind with the interest in writing children's books that had quickened in him during World War II. In 1940, German planes began bombing London and other parts of England, trying to force Britain to submit to Nazi air power. Large numbers of children were evacuated from London and sent for safety to the countryside. For some of these children it was Professor Lewis himself who opened his home. Now, in that home of his there was a large, old-fashioned wooden wardrobe, a tall cabinet for hanging coats and other garments. And one of the children staying with Lewis became quite fascinated with that wardrobe and began imagining aloud that there had to be some way out of it on its other side.

Well, add together (1) children taking refuge in the remote home of a professor, (2) a child being fascinated by an old wooden wardrobe, (3) a magical exit out that wardrobe's other side, (4) a snowy fantasy world through whose woods strolled a Faun carrying an umbrella and packages—and voila, you have the opening scenes of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of the Narnia chronicles to be published (in 1950) and the first of these chronicles to be made into a Hollywood movie (just now released and currently showing in your local theaters). And in order to see the movie before preaching this sermon, Margaret and I took our own little trek, last Friday noon, through the snowy landscape of our very own fantasy world—Yonkers.

Now, about "The Chronicles" the critic Andrew Rilstone has observed that Lewis sends into his own internal never-never land of Narnia children who are versions of himself. And he sends them into a landscape that is full of every image, theme, or thing that he himself had ever loved as a child: talking animals, mythological creatures, knights in shining armor, magical weapons, sea voyages, images of "joy"—all of these then integrated and unified through a set of themes and motifs drawn from his rather newfound Christian faith. See http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/narnia.htm

The central figure of the chronicles is Aslan, the Lion who is the rightful King of Narnia. Lewis himself claims that the figure of Aslan entered imaginatively into the first of his children's books of its own accord, during the process of his writing. Yet because Lewis had rather recently come to see Jesus as the central and indispensable figure in his own life and world, I'm of the view that Lewis's universes, both real and imaginary, just had to have in them some sort of saving figure, some sort of "Jesus."

Clearly, Aslan the Lion is the Jesus-figure in the world of Narnia. And in 1954, when five of the seven Narnia chronicles had already been published, Lewis sought to explain to a group of 5th grade children here in the U.S. what lies behind the imaginative world portrayed in his books. "Let us suppose," he said— "Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that [Jesus], [just] as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen."

Well, what happens in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is this. First, a little girl named Lucy, and then her somewhat older brother Edmund, and eventually her two oldest siblings, Peter and Susan—all four of these come magically to pass through a professor's giant wardrobe and out the other side into the snow-covered fantasy world of Narnia. There Lucy meets Mr. Tumnus, the umbrella-carrying Faun, and Edmund meets the White Witch, the Queen of Narnia, under whose evil rule it is "always winter and never Christmas." Then all four children meet Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. It's in their home that Mr. Beaver tells the four children about Aslan the Lion, whom he describes as "the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea." Aslan is not often in Narnia. But rumor has it that he's just come back, and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver want to fulfill an ancient prophecy by taking these sons of Adam and daughters of Eve to meet Aslan.

Now—unbeknownst to Lucy, Susan, and Peter—during Edmund's first trip to Narnia, he had met the White Witch Queen, who had then cast over him a spell of desire for the magical Turkish delight she had fed him. So, filled with this desire to find and eat more sweets, Edmund slips out of the home of the Beavers and heads for the castle of the Queen. In due course, Edmund reveals to her that Aslan is again in the land, and he also identifies for her the place to which his siblings will be traveling—the Stone Table.

The Queen takes Edmund captive and sets out in her sleigh with him to find the other children, so as to do them harm and save her reign.

Meanwhile, as the Beavers lead Lucy, Susan, and Peter closer and closer to the Stone Table, Narnia starts to undergo a transformation. First, into this wintry world where "Christmas never comes," none other than Father Christmas now arrives in his sleigh to bestow on the children a series of magical gifts, which they will later need to overcome the Queen. Then as the party gets even nearer to Aslan, the snow starts to melt, flowers begin to bloom, and spring arrives.

The coming of spring stymies the Queen, whose sleigh can't travel through the mud, so she is much delayed in reaching the place of the Stone Table, where Aslan and his supporters are gathering.

Indeed, the animals and mythic creatures allied with Aslan are able to swoop into the camp of the Queen and rescue Edmund, who up to this point has definitely been the bad boy of this story—the liar and the traitor. But Aslan proceeds to take aside the shaken and remorseful Edmund for a private conversation, whose content is unrecorded by Lewis but life-transforming for Edmund. Then his siblings forgive and shake hands with their prodigal brother.

But the Wicked Witch shows up again, to stake her claim to the life of this traitorous child who has betrayed both his siblings and Aslan-to stake her claim to Edmund as her lawful prey, in accordance with the Deep Magic of Narnia. Thereupon Aslan takes the Queen aside and talks with her privately, during which he acknowledges her claim and offers his own life in exchange for Edmund's.

Shortly thereafter, at the camp of the Queen, as the two girls, Lucy and Susan, watch from afar in horror, Aslan is taunted, bound, and slain by the Queen and her minions. But death cannot hold Aslan. As Lucy and Susan continue their watch, mice nibble away the bonds imprisoning Aslan's body, and then, at the dawn of a new day, the girls hear the Stone Table on which Aslan had been slain cracking into two, after which Aslan's corpse is no more to be seen. Then suddenly, behind them, they hear Aslan's voice. They turn and see that Aslan is once again alive. And Aslan's miraculous return to life then begets the return to life of many others, for Aslan proceeds to bring new life to the many victims of the Queen whom she had turned into stone statues.

Well, for those who know the gospels' story of Jesus, the symbols that Lewis uses to narrate "the redemption" of Edmund, "the death and resurrection" of Aslan, and, in the battle that ensues, the triumph of the forces of good over the forces of evil—these narrative symbols make it abundantly clear that Aslan the Lion is indeed Narnia's very own Jesus-figure.

Now the point of my sermon today is not to retell the story, but rather to address the question raised by Adam Gopnik in his article in the November 21st issue of The New Yorker (pp. 88-93). There Gopnik asks whether a lion is really the best animal Lewis could have chosen for symbolizing Jesus. He writes (p. 92), "…a central point of the Gospel story is that Jesus is not the lion of the faith but the lamb of God." And, of course, the metaphor we find John the Baptist using to describe Jesus in this morning's Second Lesson is precisely the one Gopnik highlights for us here: the metaphor "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." And Gopnik concludes this query of his by saying: "The moral force of the Christian story is that the lions are all on the other side."

But is Gopnik right? Who is Jesus really? Is Jesus a strong, triumphant lion, or a gentle, sacrificial lamb? Well, I would suggest that in truth Jesus is both Lion and Lamb, that in truth these two metaphors for Jesus complement and limit each other quite well.

As for "Jesus the Lion," there is a wild, threatening, and unsafe side to Jesus. In Mary's hymn, the Magnificat, which Sean read as this morning's First Lesson, the prospect of Jesus's birth is welcomed with words that are quite on the wild, unsafe, and "lion-like" side Listen:

"The Lord has shown strength of arm,

and has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

The Lord has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

The Lord has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty." (Luke 1:51-53)

And throughout Jesus's ministry, he summoned his followers to leave their families and homes and to wander the landscape with him, challenging all the powers of this world—whether religious, or political, or economic. And the sign that was placed over Jesus's head on the cross did, after all, read: "King of the Jews."

Yet throughout the gospels' story of Jesus there is also testimony to "Jesus the Lamb," to the gentle, suffering-servant side of Jesus that led him to choose to surrender his own life in order to save others.

Interestingly, Lewis himself portrays Aslan—that is, Jesus—as both Lion and Lamb, a point which Gopnik seems to have missed altogether.

One can cite first that Lewis, even as he is portraying Aslan as a Lion, is also depicting Aslan as one who has a "lamb-like" side to him. For instance, at one point, Mr. Beaver describes Aslan by saying, "...he isn't safe. But he's good." And then, of course, at the end, Aslan does redeem Edmund's life with his own.

And one can cite second that Lewis, as if to lift the veil from all the covert allusions to Aslan's lamb-like side—that Lewis goes on to depict Aslan quite overtly as the Lamb. He does this at the conclusion to the third of his Narnian chronicles, published in 1952 and entitled: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Edmund and Lucy have traveled by sea to the very end of the Narnian world. There, where the sky comes down to meet the earth, they disembark and begin to wade southward along the beach. Now, let me conclude this sermon by reading for you this passage, which one critic has described as "the John 3:16" of the Narnian chronicles.

"But between [the children] and the foot of the sky there was something [very] white on the green grass... [Lucy and Edmund] came on [ahead] and saw that it was a Lamb.

"'Come and have breakfast,' said the Lamb in its sweet milky voice.

"Then they noticed for the first time that there was a fire lit on the grass and fish roasting on it. They sat down and ate the fish.... And it was the most delicious food they had ever tasted." (cf. John 21:9-13)

"'Please, Lamb,' said Lucy, '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; but 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,' said Lucy. 'Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?'

"'I shall be telling you all the time,' said Aslan...

"… 'Are—are you [in our world], too, Sir?' said Edmund.

"'I am,' said Aslan. 'But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.'" End of quote. (Harper Trophy, 1994, pp. 267-270)

Yes, the Aslan of our world! Jesus the Lion, Jesus the Lamb!

Let us pray:

O God, during this Advent season, give to us here, in this "grown-up" world of ours, the gifts of insight and imagination, so that we may come ever more fully to see, and to know, and to serve both Jesus the Lion and Jesus the Lamb. Amen.