Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
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In C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy and Edmund are joined on their most recent adventure in Narnia by their cousin Eustace. Now Eustace is a brat and just generally awful. He makes the trip that much harder.
At one point in their journey, Eustace finds some gold bracelets in a dragon's horde of treasure and puts them on out of greed. He finds himself, as a result, magically transformed into a dragon. His transformation causes everyone else to fear him, and he finds himself all alone in the cave with no way to transform back.
When he is in the depths of despair, Aslan comes, and he tells Eustace what to do. Eustace must bathe and wash off his scales. Eustace does this, but every time he sheds one coat of skin, another still remains.
Aslan then tells Eustace "you must let me do it". And Aslan claws away, giving Eustace a sharp pain. And then, it's gone. Eustace appears once again as a young boy, ready to rejoin the crew of the Dawn Treader.
When Eustace returns, there is a noticeable change. It takes Edmund a moment to recognize him. It's not that Eustace completely changes, and it's not that Eustace has just changed physically. Instead, he is no longer the young brat that he was before. Yes, as Lewis tells us, he still has some bad days where he acts the way he used to, but all in all, Eustace is a changed person, and he behaves differently towards others. In fact, he becomes one of the great heroes of the series.
In Eustace, the old, the dragon, has passed away. He is no longer the bratty little boy he was before. He has come out a completely new person. He has come out a hero.
That transformation comes from Aslan, the Christ-figure of Narnia. That same transformation comes to us in our lives through Jesus Christ Himself.
You may have seen this transformation in others. Perhaps you've seen it in yourself, this clear "before and after" moment when Jesus entered your life. For many who grew up in the church and were baptized as infants, maybe this was confirmation, a retreat, or something else that made you re-examine your relationship with God that changed your whole outlook, your whole perspective, on life. Maybe it changed your relationship with God and with other people. I know that's what has happened to me many times in my own life.
It's tempting to see these things as "actualizing" ourselves. The popular way I have heard this expressed through reading popular authors is "finding your true self". The idea is that this transformation isn't something new, we're simply pulling out something that was there to begin with.
Paul, however, has something very different to say in the reading from 2 Corinthians this morning. Paul says that in Christ Jesus, we're not finding something that was already there. Paul tells us that we are made completely new. We are, in fact, a new creation in Christ Jesus. "The old has", very much, "passed away".
This statement, in fact, very much reflects Paul's thoughts on baptism, as well as our own. Paul speaks frequently about how we die to sin and are rise in new life with Christ Jesus. In our own prayer book, as we pray over the water in baptism, we speak of being buried with Jesus Christ in His death. It is through that burial that we rise to new life in the Resurrection, the "Resurrection Life" as we would say here at Church of the Resurrection!
Now Paul's words are meant to be a plea to the Corinthians. He is telling them they have a new life now and that they should act like it, because they often don't. But in actuality, again, there are many times that we see that this change does happen, for example in Paul himself on the road to Damascus. There is a joy in the new life we have in Jesus Christ. There is joy in being forgiven. That joy often translates into new action and new living.
Some of you may be listening and thinking "I haven't experienced that change", and that's okay. What we see in the story of Eustace, as well as through Paul's own life experience, is that resurrection starts through an encounter with the Risen Lord. That starts by being in relationship with Him. Don't just talk to Jesus when you pray, actually listen. God sometimes takes time, even years, but the journey is part of it. Nobody should say that being made new is easy. Eustace certainly wouldn't!
What Paul tells us this morning also applies to what Lent is about. It has to do with the Lenten Life. We live in a world of sin. We often find that sin in ourselves, but in this world of sin there is hope. There is hope that we can die to sin and be resurrected through the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus isn't just helping us live into our so-called "true selves", He's making us new. He is doing the impossible work for us so that we don't have to because we can't do it on our own.
Considering that we live in a world filled with death and despair, it's a good thing that Jesus makes us new. But we should never forget that we also live in a world of hope, hope in the Resurrected Life.