And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved to read.  His parents, I think, were pleased that he loved to read!  Nevertheless, they would say things like "You don't need a book in restaurant, leave it in the car."  They insisted that he should try playing various sports, none of which he was particularly good at.  And they enrolled him in piano lessons, which he wasn't bad at.

Once day, the boy's piano teacher asked him what he was reading, and he told her that he was rereading The Chronicles of Narnia.  The boy explained that he had read it once before, when he was much younger, too young to understand everything he had read and so he was reading it again.  And his piano teacher looked at him and said,

"That story is about the Gospel you know."

The boy was confused.

"Think about it, Aslan sacrifices himself...  comes back to life..."

It hit the boy like a bolt from heaven.  The Chronicles of Narnia had many layers of meaning, some obvious, some more hidden...  and God was in one of those layers.

I am quite sure that The Chronicles of Narnia were among the first fantasy novels I ever read as a boy, and so I have no problem citing them as one of the reasons I became the huge geek that I am today.  But I'm even more sure that my deep interest in the ways theology and popular culture interact with each other in general—and the Geek theology of this project, specifically—can be traced to that brilliant epiphany brought to me by my piano teacher all those years ago.

While there a plethora of Christ figures to explore in fantasy, science fiction, and even horror—for the Easter story, Aslan is still my favorite:

The rising of the sun had made everything look so different — all colours 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 more Aslan.

In one of his many letters, Lewis refers to the Stone Table as Narnia's version of the tablets of stone on which the Ten Commandments were written.  But I can't help interrupting the narrative here to point out that there's another allusion here.  When Jesus breathed his last, the curtain in the temple that separates the Tabernacle—the place where the Glory of God resided in a very real sense—split from top to bottom.  It tore in two pieces.  From end to end.  And where is the Glory of God then, one wonders...

"Who's done it?" cried Susan.  "What does it mean?  Is it magic?"
"Yes!" said a great voice behind their backs.  "It is more magic."  They looked round.  There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
"Oh, Aslan!" cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.
"Aren't you dead then, dear Aslan?" said Lucy.
"Not now," said Aslan.
"You're not — not a —?" asked Susan in a shaky voice.  She couldn't bring herself to say the word ghost.  Aslan stooped 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.
"Do I look it?" he said.
"Oh, you're real, you're real!  Oh Aslan!" cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses."

When the girls calm down, Susan asks Aslan what it all means.  But I'm not going to give you Aslan's answer here—that quote is easy to find and it even made it into the resurrection scene in the Walden Media film.  The point of theology is, indeed, to make meaning.  But sometimes in our struggle to make meaning we forget to pay attention to how we feel.  And Lewis painted a brilliant picture of how the Resurrection—and therefore Easter—should make us feel!

"Oh children," said the Lion, "I feel my strength coming back to me.  Oh, children, catch me if you can!"  He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail.  Then me made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table.  Laughing, though she didn't know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him.  Aslan leaped again.  A mad chase began.  Round and round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge an beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs.  It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.  And the funny thing was that when all three finally lay together panting in the sun, the girls no longer felt the least tired or hungry or thirsty.
"And now," said Aslan presently, "to business.  I feel I am going to roar.  You had better put your fingers in your ears."

Happy Easter!
Be good to each other,
Have a good romp,
Rev. Josh
041514

The scripture lessons for April 6th—The Fifth Sunday of Lent Year A—are:
Acts 10:34-43—Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24—Colossians 3:1-4—John 11:1-45

“It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy.  "It's you.  We shan't meet you there.  And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -are you there 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.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader