Sermon as Preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 7/27/14
Today we continue our
Chronicles of Narnia Sermon series by looking at the book The Horse and His Boy. This
is one of the later written books of the series, but chronologically this book
falls right after The Lion, The Witch and
the Wardrobe. Last week we mentioned that after the great battle and the
defeat of the White Witch, the children ruled Narnia for years and years, until
one day finding their way out of the wardrobe. The Horse and his Boy takes
place during that period in which the children reigned as Kings and Queens.
Though the Pevinse children are the main characters in our series, in our book
for today they play only a minor role.
The book actually centers around a boy named Shasta.
Shasta is a Calormene boy who works like a servant for his “father.” As a baby Shasta washed up on shore and was
raised by a local fisherman. One day a noble Calromene was visiting Shasta’s
father, and as they met Shasta overheard them in discussions for selling Shasta
to this other man. Shasta was shocked,
and went and waited in the stables for his new master. But then something
shocking happened, the visitor’s horse, Bree, started talking to him. We are
familiar with talking animals now after hearing about the Lion, The Witch, and
the Wardrobe, but this was not something that Shasta had ever heard before. Bree,
the horse, tells Shasta of how horrible of a person their master is, and
together they decide to escape to Narnia.
The journey however is a long one, and while Bree is a
noble war horse, Shasta is an unexperienced rider. Together they ride toward
Narnia until they hear the last thing they want to hear, the roar of a lion.
Now we have come to associate a lion with Aslan, but we must remember that in
this part of the land non-talking animals existed, and were savage and
ferocious like the animals we know in our world. Together they darted off at
full speed and as they traveled they thought they heard something riding near
them just on the other side of the river. Finally the realize indeed it was
someone. It was a young girl name Aravis and her talking horse Hwin. Aravis is
running away to Narnia as well, but unlike Shasta, Aravis is from nobility. She
is running away because she refuses to marry Ahosta, who is the grand vizier to
the Tisroc (the King of Calormen). Though Aravis views herself as better than
Shasta, she admires the noble war horse Bree, and they decide to travel to
Narnia together.
To get to Narnia however they first had to go through the
Tashbaan, the capital of Calormen. As they are traveling through the city the
Shasta is separated from the others. It just so happens that the Kings and
Queens of Narnia (the Pevenses) are traveling through Tashbaan because Prince
Rabadash is trying to court Queen Susan. The children mistake Shasta for Prince
Corin, Prince of Archenland, an ally to Narnia. They take Shasta away because
they don’t believe him when he says he’s not Corin. While he’s with the
children he overhears their plot to fake a party for Rabadash and then sail
away for Narnia. Finally the real Corin comes back, and helps Shasta escape.
Shasta escapes Tashbaan goes to the tombs in the
desert, just as the group had planned
for if they were to be separated, but no one was there. As the sun went down,
he heard a great horn from the city, the gates were closed, he was all alone in
the desert. There he started to here strange sounds, he saw the shadow of a
figure that looked like a lion approaching, he thought his life was over. But
it was not a lion, it was a small cat, the cat snuggled up with him and kept
him company throughout the whole night.
While all of this was going Aravis had an adventure of
her own. After Shasta was taken away, an old friend of Aravis recognized her
and called her out in the crowd. To avoid detection, Aravis joined her friend
and told her of her plan to escape. Aravis’s friend told her she would help her
escape city, and that they would do it through the castle of the Tisroc, now
that the gates were closed. As they are making their escape they here footsteps
in the castle hallway, and so they run and hide behind a sofa in the nearest
room. Unfortunately that is the room that the Tisroc himself, as well as Prince
Rabadash, and Ahosta, the man Aravis was supposed to marry, decided to gather
in. As the girls hid they heard them discuss plans to invade Archenland and
Narnia. After the men leave the room, Aravis finally escapes and together with
the horses rejoins Shasta at the tombs.
Aravis tells Shasta of Rabadash’s plan to invade
Archenland and Narnia and so the race off to warn the cities of the attack. The
journey is long and grueling and the horses are getting tired until once again
they find themselves in the presence of a lion. The lion chases the horses for
a long time continually gaining on them, finally catching up to them and
catching Aravis’s back with its claws, Shasta stop, runs at the lion and the
lion flees. Aravis has a nice slash across her back, which is quite painful,
but not life threatening. As the group
ventures forward they find that they are already right at the Edge of
Narnia. Shasta goes and warns the
Narnians while Aravis heals with a hermit they met, and together the Narnians
arrive in Archenland in time to stop the attack. The most striking aspect of this story is
that at the end Aslan appears to Shasta and tells him, “I was the lion
who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the
houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you
slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last
mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not
remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it
came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.” Likewise Aravis encounters Aslan and his told
that he scratched her back so that she would know the pain that she caused the
servant who received lashings after Aravis’s escape from home. The wild lion that they encountered
throughout their entire journey, was none other than the great Aslan.
Probably none of us have been on a journey with talking
horses across unfamiliar lands as we escape from being sold into slavery. (If
you have, I certainly would like to talk to you later). We have most likely
never single handedly stopped an invasion of a foreign nation by warning the
armies just in the nick of time. We have not had the same difficulties that
Shasta and friends faced on their journeys, but each and every one of us have
certainly faced difficulties in our own journeys of life. Life can present us with some pretty
difficult situations. We can lose our job or struggle to find one in the first
place. We can become ill or we can lose someone so close to us. We can battle
our own vices like addiction, or we can battle financial struggles. Life throws
so many different things at us, and each of us has had to face it sometime in
our lives. In the midst of all of these heartaches and struggles it is normal
to feel alone. It is normal to feel as though the weight of the world is upon
your shoulders, to feel as though there is no help to be found. Yet even in our
darkest moments, even when we feel as though we have hit rock bottom and that
we are all alone, God is with us. In our scripture for this morning God gives
us words of encouragement saying, “Do not fear, for I
have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When
you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the
rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not
be burned and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
Do not be afraid, I have redeemed you. I have called you
by name, you are mine. These words were originally words of comfort for the
people of Israel. The Israelites at that time were facing captivity at the
hands of Babylon. Some people had fled, others were left behind, while many
were taken as prisoners. In the midst of these troubles God tells the people do
not be afraid, I have redeemed you. I have redeemed you what does that mean? It
could be a reminder for how God has been faithful in the past, rescuing them
from Egypt, guiding them through the wilderness. This is certainly true, but I
think there is more to it than that. I have redeemed you does not seem to
be something that just happened in the
past, but a reminder that they are still redeemed. It is a reminder that God’s
presence is there with them. It is a reminder that each of their lives is
precious in the Lord’s sight. “I have called you by name” says the Lord. “You
are mine.”
Our story reminds us of the beauty of the grace of God,
because our story looks totally different when viewed from the perspective of
the lion. In our story the orphaned boy unfortunately washes up by a fisherman
who takes him home and treats him like a servant, but the lion sees a baby out
on the water who is going to die, and pushes him towards a fisherman who fortunately
happens to be there that day and who takes the boy home and rescues him from
certain death. Before he even knew it,
this boy was receiving help from Aslan the lion, the God figure of the
Chronicles of Narnia. Later on, from the lion’s perspective, there are two sets
of riders both fleeing by themselves who would be great companions for each
other and so he steers them together.
The lion saw poor, scared Shasta lay at the tomb and in the form of a cat kept Shasta company, and
it was the lion who without Shasta knowing it kept the jackals away that night.
Finally, the lion saw the invaders gaining ground, and so he scared the horses
into outrunning the invaders and arriving in time to warn the Narnians. From
the perspective of the lion, everything was done out of a love, and yet until
the end all of this was done without Shasta and the others even knowing.
This story is an example of what we as Methodists call
prevenient grace. It is a grace that goes before, a grace that at first we may
even be unaware of, but a grace that pushes us back towards God. No one but the
lion knew the lion’s intentions, in fact our travelers saw it as a danger,
Shasta had never even heard of Aslan, and yet it was a grace leading them
together, a grace to comfort them in times of fear, but most important it was a
grace that merited a response. That’s the true beauty of prevenient grace, of
all ways of experiencing grace really, that it merits a response. This response
is often repentance. Just as the scratches on the back of Aravis reminded her
of the pain she caused her servant and caused her to change, sometimes grace
for us can actually be painful, it can show us our faults and where we need to
change. Grace can come in the form of comfort or in the form of hurt that leads
to repentance, but however we receive the grace, our response should always be
to turn towards God. When Shasta started
this journey he was an awkward, scared little boy, but when the lion seems to
be threatening the danger of his friend Shasta responds, he turns and faces the
lion head on.
When we are in our times in struggle and pain, when we
are in our times of despair, may we have
the courage to turn and face the lion; to turn and face God. May we have the
courage to respond to the grace we have been receiving, whether it is gently
nudges or painful shoves. For when we turn and face the lion, when we turn and
face God, we will finally realize that we were never alone. When we respond to
that grace and turn and face God we can finally understand the love that God
has for us. “I have called you by name, you are mine.” When we turn and face
God, we may truly believe it when we hear Do not be afraid, I have redeemed
you. Like Shasta who after facing the
lion had the courage to ride alone to warn the Narnians, we may have the
courage through the grace of God to faithfully serve. That we may recognize
that God has called us each by name because God sees the potential we have to
do something special; even when we fail to recognize it in ourselves. Our story
for today reminds us that we are never alone. It teaches us of that prevenient
grace of God, that goes before us, even before we know it. Finally makes us
search our souls and answer how we will respond to that grace; will we turn and
face God?
No comments:
Post a Comment