The Easter way
A mighty army drawn up for battle (Joel 2:5)
I love to read. I have loved reading as long as I can remember. I was one of those children, who, given a good book, would secretly read it under the bed covers with a torch until the early hours. It was probably a good thing that Harry Potter did not come out when I was young or my school work might have suffered badly.
At the moment I am reading, or I should say re-reading, The Lord of the Rings. I always must have a novel on the go as reading a few familiar pages at night is an essential part of my bedtime routine. The prospect of running out of reading material was a worry during lockdown, so, in a flash of inspiration, I decided that the time had come to read again the epic tale of Frodo and the Ring.
It's funny what you remember. Last time I read it many years ago, the Tom Bombadil chapters seemed to go on for ages. It was still wise to leave him out of the film as an unnecessary complication, but this time of reading the events of the Old Forest seemed quite brief.
I am now on the top of Amon Hen. Frodo is given a vision of war on every front and then offered an alternative to destroying the Ring. Take it and win. With it's power we could destroy the enemy. It is not a spoiler to tell you that he chooses a different path for he sees for himself that the Ring's power will corrupt any who tries to wield it.
Tolkien's tale has been seen as an allegory for many things including nuclear weapons. He made it pretty clear that it was pure fantasy, a thing in itself, with echoes of many other tales for sure, but not a deliberate reflection of any one. For me, though, it contains a pretty simple lesson. Some means of battle are wrong, whatever the outcome. It is never okay to bully to get your way, however much your way may be the right way. It is always wrong to kill the innocent, however many others are thereby saved. Or, to put it differently, victory is a much more fundamental thing than winning. The battle is won as much in how we fight as in what is the outcome.
Jesus on the cross shows us this in the starkest terms. Victory over the greatest of enemies, eternal death, comes not with power but with weakness, not with visible glory but with very public humiliation. 'From heaven you came helpless babe' wrote Graham Kendrick. Jesus humbled himself even to death on a cross, to a tortured, criminal death seeing clearly that it was the only way to win.
So on this Easter morn, as we celebrate Christ's victory over the power of sin and death, remember too his means of victory. Not chariots and horsemen, not consuming fire and a great storm, but giving up all for others, friends and enemies. He chose the way of the cross. Can we?
I love to read. I have loved reading as long as I can remember. I was one of those children, who, given a good book, would secretly read it under the bed covers with a torch until the early hours. It was probably a good thing that Harry Potter did not come out when I was young or my school work might have suffered badly.
At the moment I am reading, or I should say re-reading, The Lord of the Rings. I always must have a novel on the go as reading a few familiar pages at night is an essential part of my bedtime routine. The prospect of running out of reading material was a worry during lockdown, so, in a flash of inspiration, I decided that the time had come to read again the epic tale of Frodo and the Ring.
It's funny what you remember. Last time I read it many years ago, the Tom Bombadil chapters seemed to go on for ages. It was still wise to leave him out of the film as an unnecessary complication, but this time of reading the events of the Old Forest seemed quite brief.
I am now on the top of Amon Hen. Frodo is given a vision of war on every front and then offered an alternative to destroying the Ring. Take it and win. With it's power we could destroy the enemy. It is not a spoiler to tell you that he chooses a different path for he sees for himself that the Ring's power will corrupt any who tries to wield it.
Tolkien's tale has been seen as an allegory for many things including nuclear weapons. He made it pretty clear that it was pure fantasy, a thing in itself, with echoes of many other tales for sure, but not a deliberate reflection of any one. For me, though, it contains a pretty simple lesson. Some means of battle are wrong, whatever the outcome. It is never okay to bully to get your way, however much your way may be the right way. It is always wrong to kill the innocent, however many others are thereby saved. Or, to put it differently, victory is a much more fundamental thing than winning. The battle is won as much in how we fight as in what is the outcome.
Jesus on the cross shows us this in the starkest terms. Victory over the greatest of enemies, eternal death, comes not with power but with weakness, not with visible glory but with very public humiliation. 'From heaven you came helpless babe' wrote Graham Kendrick. Jesus humbled himself even to death on a cross, to a tortured, criminal death seeing clearly that it was the only way to win.
So on this Easter morn, as we celebrate Christ's victory over the power of sin and death, remember too his means of victory. Not chariots and horsemen, not consuming fire and a great storm, but giving up all for others, friends and enemies. He chose the way of the cross. Can we?
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| The Easter Garden, St Andrew's Yetminster Church porch, Easter 2020 |
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