Sermon: The Lion: Not Safe, But Good
NOTE ON SERMON: We began and ended this sermon with a “readers theater” out of “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
BLACK
LUCY But we must save Mr. Tumnus, we must. LIGHTS UP
NARRATOR Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy were all huddled within Mr. and Mrs. Beaver’s cottage discussing the fate of Lucy’s friend, Mr. Tumnus.
LUCY He’s such a kind faun.
PETER Couldn’t we have some sort of stratagem?
MR. BEAVER It’s no good, Son of Adam. No good your trying, of all people. But now that Aslan is on the move.
LUCY, EDMUND, AND SUSAN Oh, yes! Tell us about Aslan!
NARRATOR They all said at once; for once again that strange feeling -- like the first signs of spring, like good news, had come over them.
SUSAN Who is Aslan?
MR. BEAVER Aslan? Why don’t you know? He’s the King. He’s the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that will save Mr. Tumnus.
EDMUND She won’t turn him into stone too?
MR. BEAVER Lord love you, Son of Adam, what a simple thing to say! Turn him into stone? If she can stand on her own two feet and look him in the face it’ll be the most she can do and more than I expect of her. No, no. He’ll put all to rights as it says in an old rhyme in these parts: Wrong will be right when Aslan comes in sight, at the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, when he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, and when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again. You’ll understand when you see him.
SUSAN But shall we see him?
MR. BEAVER Why, Daughter of Eve, that’s what I brought you here for. I’m to lead you where you shall meet him.
LUCY Is -- is he a man?
MR. BEAVER (sternly) Aslan a man! Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion.
SUSAN Ooh! I’d thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.
MRS. BEAVER That you will, dearie, and no mistake. If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or just silly.
LUCY Then he isn’t safe?
MR. BEAVER Safe? Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.
BLACK OUT
Brief intro of Lewis: C. S. Lewis, or Jack Lewis, as he preferred to be called, was born in Belfast, Ireland on November 29, 1898. In his teen years, Lewis abandoned Christianity. He saw religion as a "kind of . . . nonsense into which humanity tended to blunder." Lewis moved further away from Christianity after he left school in 1914 to be tutored privately by William Kirkpatrick, a family friend who had tutored Lewis’s father. Kirkpatrick, who was a staunch atheist, challenged Lewis to abandon conventional ideas about religion.
Later, however, as he entered his early 30s and settled into both his professional and domestic life, Lewis came to a real turning point in his spiritual life. This turn to Christ came as a result of faithful Christian friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien (who wrote the Lord of the Rings Trilogy). While riding on a double-decker bus in the early summer of 1929, Lewis suddenly felt he had no choice but acknowledge the existence of God. Shortly afterward, alone in his room at the university, he knelt and prayed to receive Christ into His life.
His Christian walk was accompanied by many doubts, inward debates, and discussions with friends. However, as a professor at Oxford and later Cambridge he eventually became a staunch defender of the faith, through radio talks and books such as Mere Christianity. He remains one of the most read authors in all of Christianity, especially by Pastors.
Initially when Lewis turned to writing children’s books, his publisher and some of his friends tried to talk him out of it; they thought it would hurt his reputation as writer of serious works. J.R.R. Tolkien in particular criticized Lewis’s first Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He thought that there were too many elements that clashed—a Father Christmas and an evil witch, talking animals and children. Thankfully, Lewis didn’t listen to any of them. The Narnia books have since sold more than 100 million copies and are among the most beloved books of classic children’s literature. (Bio taken partially from www.factmonster.com)
Aslan, the Lion is the Christ-figure in the Narnia stories.
A worried mother of 9 year old Laurence wrote Lewis concerned that her son was beginning to love Aslan more than Jesus. Lewis wrote back:
“Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus; and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before.”
Aslan in the Narnia stories is described by Lewis as a powerful mixture of terrifying strength and gentle goodness. The narrator in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe says, “People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.” In one of the most famous lines of the book, Mr Beaver tells Lucy, “Safe?...Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
Hebrews 3:1 (NIV)
1 Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.
If we are to fix our thoughts on Jesus, we must know His true nature. If Aslan is a picture of Christ, what does it mean that He is not safe, but good.
Christ is Holy…which means he is “not safe.” Yet He is good…which means He is full of love.
Revelation 4:8b (NIV)
8 Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."
Holy - Set apart, dedicated to sacred purposes; sacred, clean, morally or ceremonially pure. God is entirely holy in His nature, motives, thoughts, words, and deeds. We cannot put God into our safe, convenient box because His holiness is immovable.
1 John 4:8 (NIV)
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Love - God’s Agape love is unconditional love. It is the patient, kind, and good love described in I Cor. 13.
In order to walk in a Biblical understanding of Christ, we must seek to understand both His holiness and His love. To know Christ’s holiness apart from His love or to know His love apart from His holiness is to have a skewed understand of His very nature.
In the following passage, we see Jesus Christ full of holiness and love. We see a savior who is not safe, but good.
John 8:1-11 (NLT)
1 Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives,
2 but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them.
3 As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and Pharisees brought a woman they had caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.
4 "Teacher," they said to Jesus, "this woman was caught in the very act of adultery.
5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?"
6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.
7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, "All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stones!"
8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.
10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to her, "Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?"
11 "No, Lord," she said. And Jesus said, "Neither do I. Go and sin no more."
1. Christ meets us at a place of brokenness
(The woman caught in adultery was hitting rock bottom)
Psalms 51:8 (NLT)
8 Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me— now let me rejoice.
*Total depravity of humankind
*Pride will always be a stumbling block to coming to Christ or growing in Him. (Thereford, to us, He is not safe.)
We come to the place of brokenness through:
1. circumstances of life -
2. revelation of God’s Word -
When Lewis’ brother asked him why he came to Christ, Lewis replied, “There was nothing else to do.” He came to the end of himself. He came to a place of brokenness. He realized that he could no longer leave God in the safe place he had created.
*Discipline is an attempt to “break” your child.
2. Christ embraces us with His love
(Jesus did not condemn the woman caught in adultery)
Psalms 51:1 (NLT)
1 Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins.
Christ’s holiness will break us so His love can make us. (Not safe, but good)
*A Potter and Clay
When do you most appreciate acts of love and goodness? (God allows us to be broken…not to “teach us a lesson” but to make us greater vessels of His love.)
3. Christ’s goodness calls us to a life of holiness
(Christ told the woman caught in adultery to, “Go and sin no more.”)
Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV)
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--
9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
*The cross of Jesus Christ is the perfect mixture of God’s holiness and love. It is the place where we see a God that is not safe, but good.
11- year old girl wanted to know the name of Aslan in our world. Lewis wrote back, “As to Aslan’s other name, will I want you to guess. Has there ever been anyone in the world who
1. Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas.
2. Said he was the son of the Great Emperor.
3. Gave himself up for someone’s else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people.
4. Came to life again…
Don’t you really know His name in this world?”
BLACK
LIGHTS UP
NARRATOR Susan and Lucy walked to the eastern edge of the hill and looked down. The one big star had almost disappeared. The country all looked dark and gray, but beyond, at the very end of the world, the sea showed pale. The sky began to turn red. They walked to and fro more times than they could count between the dead Aslan and the eastern ridge, trying to keep warm; and oh, how tired their legs felt. Then at last, as they stood for a moment looking out toward the sea and Cair Paravel (which they could just make out) the red turned to gold along the line where the sea and the sky met and very slowly up came the edge of the sun. At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise - a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate.
LUCY What’s that?
SUSAN I - I feel afraid to turn around, something awful is happening.
LUCY They’re doing something worse to him! Come on!
NARRATOR The rising of the sun had made everything look so different - all colors and shadows were changed - that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan. The two girls cried out and rushed to the table.
LUCY Oh, it’s too bad, they might have left the body alone!
SUSAN Who’s done it? What does it mean? Is it more magic?
ASLAN Yes.
NARRATOR Said a great voice behind them.
ASLAN It is more magic.
NARRATOR The two girls look round. There, shining in
the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane stood Aslan himself.
SUSAN AND LUCY Oh, Aslan!
LUCY Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?
ASLAN Not now.
SUSAN You’re not - not a -
NARRATOR She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped and his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.
ASLAN Do I look it?
LUCY Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!
NARRATOR With that both girls flung themselves open
him and covered him with kisses.
SUSAN But what does it mean?
ASLAN It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that 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.
