Sermon for Christ Mass
‘Further up and further in’
These are words of Aslan, the Christ figure in the 1956 novel, the Last Battle which concludes the Narnia series by CS Lewis.
The Narnia Chronicles were part of my childhood and they have shaped my life in all kinds of ways. Lewis grew up in a fundamentalist and loveless home. He became someone who we would recognise as a modern person, shrugging off religion as at best an illusion, at worst a dangerous delusion. Yet like some of us in mid-life he had an awakening and calling himself the most reluctant convert in England embraced the faith which became his guiding star. He called Christianity the true myth the path to the healing of a world of anger, anguish, and anxiety. His books spoke to people living in the shadow of endless wars and the atrocities of the Holocaust and the shadow of nuclear destruction.
In the novel the Last Battle all seems lost for the beautiful land of Narnia with its intelligent and talking animals who live in harmony with humans. The people are deceived by a pretend Aslan, the land is invaded by a cruel foreign army who worship an invented God of horror and hatred. and there is a fundamental loss of trust in leaders. Perhaps nothing much ever changes. The Calor mites in the story worship the horrific God Tash. Yet whether we acknowledge it or not we bend the knee before a social order in which injustice and cruelty is necessary for us to live.
We like the characters in the novel have forgotten the ancient harmony of goodness, beauty and truth destroying the world and driving to extinction countless sentient creatures.
At the epicentre of the Last Battle is a stable. This is at the centre of delusion created by the evil Shift and his gullible donkey accomplice Puzzle into which the enemies of the new order are thrown and are murdered. Yet when hurled through the door the two children from earth who have been returned to Narnia discover wonder, delight, and the presence of the true Aslan. Outside the door the fires of destruction rage but within is the same Narnia yet deeper and more real than the shadowlands outside. Further up and further in invites the true Aslan, the Christ figure.
Again and again our primordial faith ever new invites to enter the stable, hear again the Christmass story, listen to the spirit world of the angels and bow down like the ancient philosophers from distant lands and become breathless before the love, the impossible love, the impossible faith, the outrageous and unreasonable claim that God has become one with us so that we might be restored to our unity with the Divine. Further up and further in we are invited into the Light of truth and to the amazing experience of knowing, experiencing the amazing love in the risen and crucified Lord Jesus Christ. To do this we must bend low, let go of our presumptions and be willing like the characters in the Christmas story take the hard journey which leads from the shadowlands into the Light.
In truth we live amid the shadows of doubt, delusion and suffering yet these are illuminated in the Incarnation and those of us who respond to the Light return to the shadows of the cave to witness to the life and love that calls us ‘further up and further in’
I stand at the door of your heart says the living Christ. What will your response be as you stand once again before the stable door of the nativity? Will you be willing to move further up and further in to the One who invites you freely or will you drift further down and further out away from this harmony of goodness, beauty and truth into the place of nothing where only forgetfulness and despair awaits you.
‘Further up and further in’
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