DOOR TO A NEW KINGDOM (Narnia #1)
December 3, 2005 / Upper Room Fellowship
I have a suggestion for all of the single Christians here this morning. Tomorrow, they say, December 4, is Saint Barbara’s Day – Saint Barbara being one of the legendary martyrs of the Church. If you young ladies will take a twig from a cherry tree and put it in a glass of water, and keep a close eye on it, maybe, just maybe, it will bloom by Christmas Eve. And if it does, according to all the collective wisdom of those who know, you will end up being married by the following Christmas. I don’t know if it works every time, but it is substantially cheaper than signing up for eharmony.com.
Last weekend I spent Thanksgiving with my daughter and son-in-law. Charles and Karli had just signed up for Netflix, where you get a DVD a week mailed out to your house. So we spent about three hours cranking through TV episodes of Smallville, which I had never seen before. And this man to whom I have entrusted my granddaughter’s moral upbringing spent maybe half an hour, in all seriousness, explaining to me the science and the background of how Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman, can fly. Why bullets don’t hurt the Man of Steel. How the lower gravitational force fields on earth compared to on the planet Krypton make it possible for this high school kid in rural Kansas to run faster than a speeding bullet and throw footballs 300 yards in a perfect spiral. My son-in-law Charles knows all the kingdom rules for Superman, all the background policies for how and when Spiderman can do what he does; in fact, he seems to understand the entire doctrinal code for everything D.C. Comics has ever produced.
And now this coming Friday, December 9, maybe the biggest fantasy ever created is going to unfold around the world. I’m not getting paid by the Walt Disney people – even though they’ve just spent something like $180,000,000 making their new holiday movie called The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But it’s my assigned spiritual task today to persuade you that a secret door exists. It’s out there. It can be found. It’s not locked. And if you go up to this door and turn the handle, a new world opens up – a kingdom that Hollywood can’t even try to portray.
Six days from now millions of moviegoers are going to plunk down their ten dollars, and then vicariously walk into a closet. A wardrobe closet in an old Professor Kirke’s house. And if you follow Lucy into the closet, and push your way through all of the thick fur coats and the suffocating mustiness and mothballs, all of a sudden you’re in this magical, make-believe world. It’s a place inhabited by Fauns, which are half-man, half-goat. Dwarves. Tree-women, otherwise known as Dryads. Giants. Centaurs. Unicorns. And also two central characters, personifying good and evil, light and darkness, heaven and hell: Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, also known as the White Witch. And then Aslan the Lion.
Now, even though our church here in Temple City is in the shadows of Tinseltown itself, I wouldn’t consider wasting a whole month of sermons, especially during the Christmas season, on bits and pieces of a Hollywood movie. Except for one thing: anyone who reads this story, or goes to the movies with an honest, searching heart, is going to instantly realize that Aslan the Lion is a type of Jesus. In fact, that’s one key challenge director Andrew Adamson faced: was to not let that fact be too screamingly obvious for a mainstream movie audience.
I’ve only read this first book in the Narnia series of seven, but I found the entire Gethsemane scene, Calvary, and Resurrection Sunday. It’s all there. Aslan is a superhero who lays down his life for a sinning child. He comes to life again and triumphs over the White Witch. And in a land locked in eternal winter, but never Christmas – that’s the Narnia curse – Aslan the Lion even melts the icicles and allows Father Christmas to enter the story.
Here is a paragraph from C. S. Lewis’ story: “A great crowd of people were standing all around the Stone Table and though the moon was shining many of them carried torches which burned with evil-looking red flames and black smoke.”
Now John 18:2: So Judas came to the grove, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: “Even now, as they worked about [Aslan’s] face putting on the muzzle, one bite from his jaws would have cost two or three of them their hands. But he never moved. . . . So thickly was he surrounded by the whole crowd of creatures kicking him, hitting him, spitting on him, jeering at him.”
Compare to the Bible and the story of Jesus: “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to [Peter], “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels. But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” . . . Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, “Prophesy to us, Christ. Who hit you?” Matt. 26:52-54, 67, 68.
So clearly, as a Christian, this is a story I hope the whole world will pay attention to. I hope everyone sees the movie. I hope all of you read these seven books to your children. I’ve always thought that this was the finest kind of Christian expression: where the story of Jesus is just underneath the surface of a worldly, well-told, exciting, audience-grabbing tale.
It’s a surprise that Lewis himself always thought that a lot of Christian books were kind of a waste – ironic since he wrote so many of them. But in a book of essays entitled God in the Dock, he made this marvelous observation á la “The Chronicles of Narnia”: “We must attack the enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent.” So we need love stories, kid stories, science fiction, fantasy, soap operas – with a hint about a Redeemer just behind the curtain.
As a writer myself, who once scratched out a series of ten books with a sports-oriented Christian teen fiction theme, all out of the imagination, I’ve done some thinking about all of this lately. And while I want every secular person there is to rush out and spend two hours in Narnia with this lion who will save us from our sins, I’m almost afraid for our Upper Room family to go there. Not afraid, really . . . but concerned. And here is why:
All of us who live close to the kingdom, and who have already read a story about a King dying for us, run the risk of seeing too many fairy tales, and ultimately deciding that this is just one more. In the month of December, America is filled with good people, sincere people, who halfway embrace the Christmas story – but only halfway. They know Santa Claus is a fabrication, but Jesus is probably real. The North Pole is a myth; heaven is an 80% possibility. A man in a red suit coming down the chimney is something we concede doesn’t really happen; will a King on his throne appear in the sky for a Second Coming? Well, maybe. We know in our hearts that Aslan the Lion didn’t really die for Edmund, but we split the difference when it comes to someone named Jesus being crucified on a Roman cross for us. We half-commit to the invisible kingdom, the fantasy world of salvation, but with the other half of our soul we say: “You know what? I am a man of this real world. My business is here. My family is here. My holdings and my home are here. I’ll participate in this movie franchise called Christianity; I’ll go to some of the gatherings and my kids will wear shepherd’s costumes at the December 17 party Upper Room is holding. But in my core, where I make the decisions that really count, I’m going to stay with what I know for sure.”
Probably the most vivid example of people living in both worlds is with the cult midnight movie feature: Rocky Horror Picture Show. There are people who have seen it 200 times. There are people who have memorized the entire dialogue and can say it along with the movie audience. There are people who spend hours on the Internet looking for fellow devotees. There are people who spend hundreds of dollars for costumes; they go out to the Nuart Theater at midnight on a Saturday night and meet other people who have the same tongue-in-cheek passion they do. But in their heart they know it’s a game; it’s a global fantasy club they belong to just for a diversion.
And here at Upper Room Fellowship we have a group of people who are at all places on this spectrum of decision. We belong to a church named after a Thursday night in Jerusalem. A man named Jesus and his twelve followers were at the moment of decision. Would these guys bet on the reality of what their leader had talked about for three-and-a-half years? Was there a door out there that led to eternal life? Was the cross a portal to eternity?
One of the men decided that night, that Thursday night, that the game was over for him. Life was life and fantasy was fantasy. “He’s a man – he’s just a man,” Judas says to himself. “He’s not a king. He’s just the same as anyone I know.” And there were millions of people who went to see the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, where I borrowed those lyrics, and bought the double-disc albums, and saw the films. They got halfway into the event, but then said to themselves: “Aaah, just one more Broadway story. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and now this Galilee-Man whose molecular structure lets him walk on water and conjure up leprosy healings.”
I had supper recently with an Upper Room man who said to me very frankly: “Pastor Dave, I’ve got to tell you, I just don’t think I see it anymore.” He was a man who had lived in this church his entire existence. His parents are in it. His friends are in it. He went to the schools based on this franchise. He certainly qualified as a “Christmas Christian,” if you know what I mean. But as for believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he’s building mansions in a place called heaven, that we are all going there soon . . . that was just too supernatural, too much like something the writers of Smallville would come up with.
This entire month of December all of us are going to do a whole lot of the fantasy thing, and maybe a little bit of soul-searching about the real thing. We read the Rule Book and then “play” Christmas: we buy presents; we wrap them; we give them. We sing Christmas carols about this alien baby from another galaxy. We go to parties that have the Man from Nazareth as the motif. There will be TV specials about him. We’ll tell our children this “maybe-legend-maybe-true” story about him. And maybe, sometime when we’re by ourselves and it’s quiet and the radio is off, we’ll stop and think: “Do I really believe this? Am I going to commit, in the Year 2006, to being a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve and being a part of Jesus Christ’s invisible kingdom here on Planet Earth? Or will the Jesus franchise simply be my favorite of the superhero stories?”
You know, the theme line of Narnia is this: it’s never Christmas. Everything you need for Christmas is there . . . but it’s never Christmas. There’s snow; there’s cold; there’s candles. But it’s never Christmas. Why? Because for these lost people, Aslan hasn’t come yet. They haven’t gotten to know the King. Their world is dominated by an enemy who doesn’t want them to ever experience the joy of a real Christmas.
And for so many lost people here in our world, there’s snow and there’s music and presents and nonstop carols on KOST 103.5 FM. But that’s not really Christmas. That’s playing Christmas. That’s a day off from work which happens to fall on December 25. But unless we embrace the raw, powerful, eternal truth of Jesus being our living Savior, unless we take our families by the hand and say to our children: “This is no game; this is no costume party; this one is real” – there’s really no Christmas. We’re just playing a game with them and with ourselves.
I want you to know that this is you, and this is me. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I believe with all my heart in the Christmas story; I believe Jesus died for my sins and that he lives in heaven today. I believe his kingdom is going to triumph, and I want to be a part of that victory.
But sometimes I have some money, and I hold it in my hand. I don’t want to give it to him because I’m still a little bit a man of this world.
There are times when I’m unhappy with someone, and Aslan the Lion says to me, “David, let me have that. Put that on my broad shoulders; let me take it away; let me bear that burden.” And I say in reply: “I don’t know. I rather like holding onto this. Just in case this world is eternal and you’re not, I better keep planning on evening up this score myself.”
There are days when I know I should, in a sense, read about Narnia. I should reflect on this great story; I should take half an hour and simply journey to that land where someone prays for his enemies and then dies for them. I’ve got the Narnia book on my bookshelf, and it would do me good as a citizen to read a few pages and then talk with Aslan. All through these magical pages, he longs more than anything to have time with the children and love them and just be with them. But even though I’m a believer, I still want to get back to the Professor’s house, to go through the wardrobe closet the backwards direction and spend that half hour of time in the comforting, tangible reality we all call home.
So you see, I believe . . . but I don’t always believe. I don’t believe enough. None of us believe enough. Is that safe to say? None of us believe enough.
The good news is that Jesus loves people who don’t believe very much. In fact, he has a passion for those who don’t believe at all.
At the very beginning of this Narnia adventure, there’s a bad boy named Edmund. His sister Lucy has an accidental journey to Narnia; she stumbles into the land of snow and magic, and when she comes back, he doesn’t believe her. He ridicules her. In the next chapter, when he ends up going too, he falls prey to the White Witch. He gets fooled into serving Satan. The enemy of the human race lies to him and offers him Turkish Delight – a yummy treat that poisons your conscience and makes you betray your own brothers and sisters.
What happens? The entire book is devoted to Aslan rescuing Edmund. Getting him out of the clutches of the wicked Queen and setting him free. Not just setting him free, but making him into a king. King Edmund the Just. And Aslan says to the other children after redeeming this lost boy: “Here is your brother. There is no need to talk to him about what is past.”
So if you’ve spent a lot of years treating the Christian story as half of what it is, giving Jesus a corner of your heart and no more, spending every December playing Christmas . . . he still dies for you. And today, if you’re willing to finally concede that his kingdom is real, all real, he offers you the entire miracle: eternal life, a crown, and a throne.
One of the hard, mature things we all have to do is to separate fact from fiction. I heard a cute story about a kid who finally began to face up to the fragility of his belief in the Tooth Fairy. He confronted his mother and asked her, “Mom, are you the Tooth Fairy?” Well, she gave a little sigh, now that the secret was out, and because this marked a rite of passage. The end of the innocence. But she gave a little nod and said, “Uh, yes, honey, I guess I kind of am.”
Well, the kid accepted the New Theology without freaking out. But a moment later he asked her: “Then how do you get into all the other kids’ houses?”
But just as it’s important to separate fact from fiction, it’s equally important for God’s people to separate fiction from fact. You know, if you want to dabble in fiction, you can do some great things with a door. When I was a high school missionary kid living in Singapore, we all got to take a tour once on the U.S.S. Nimitz. And I now have a sci-fi film in my collection, about a time-travel portal that opens up and allows that very aircraft carrier to go back from now to the year 1941. In fact, it’s December 6, 1941, just one day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. What an opportunity – all of America’s awesome nuclear arsenal, with heat-seeking missiles and the latest in supersonic jet fighters and bombers . . . and the Japanese army has these little putt-putt Zeros tiptoeing toward Honolulu at 90 miles an hour with their one-propeller engines.
H. G. Wells opens the door to his time machine and goes instantly from one era to another, tracking down Jack the Ripper and falling in love with a woman who lives a century later than he does. Doors open up new dimensions, new worlds, a new matrix, a new life.
But there’s one door, and really just one, that I care about today. I care about that closet door that opens up to a world where Aslan the Lion lives. I want that door to be real; I want its promises to be true.
You see, I’m fifty years old. I’m the oldest person at Upper Room Fellowship. Last weekend I played with my granddaughter, and holding Kira made me realize that even if I’m not in the sunset years yet, I can sense the shadows and the twilight coming up. Unless someone else is unexpectedly struck down by cancer or a car crash, it’s safe to say that I’m going to be the first person at Upper Room Fellowship to walk up to the door of heaven.
One of these days a machine is going to beep slower . . . and slower . . . and then stop. I know there’s a myth that Superman is immortal, but I’m not Superman. And I’m going to find out what is on the other side of all of the Bible’s promises. Is this world everything? Or does another kingdom begin when our life down here comes to an end?
In the book of John, chapter 10, Jesus steps forward and tells us about a door. “I am the door,” he says. “I am the door to eternal life. Whoever enters through me will be saved.” In John 5:24 he tells us that when we go through the door with his own name on it, we enter eternal life, and don’t ever lose it. “You have crossed over from death to life,” he says. “Because I am the Resurrection and the Life” (11:25).
So this is my commitment. This is my decision. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” We will believe in him. And not just believe, but live by those beliefs.
I was very thankful for the things that our guest speaker, Clarissa Worley, said to us a few weekends ago. She told us men: “BE men. Be strong. Be leaders in your homes. Sacrifice yourselves for your wives and for your children.” And I think she would say, reflecting on what we’re considering today, “Teach your children well. Have fun with the fantasies. Enjoy the legends. The same man who directed this Narnia film also directed Shrek I and Shrek II. Go. Have a good time. Enjoy the secular good things about Christmas. But then teach your children well. Lead them to embrace and believe in and love the one true story, the one miracle that really did happen, the one door that does open up to a place we call heaven and will soon call home.”
Shall we pray?
Lord, thank you for the imaginative minds of those who can inspire us with their stories. But thank you also for reaching out to us with this one story that is our lifeline and our salvation. Father, even if Narnia does have some computer-generated wizardry in it, take us by the hand and lead us into your eternal reality and the Christmas that is lasting.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
