The history of this world is far more like The Lord of the Rings than Seinfeld, “a show,” famously remarked, “about nothing.” In the end, modern sitcoms and reality shows depict very little of reality. God is banished from those worlds; angels are nonexistent; demons are laughed at as monsters under the bed.
Not even the residue of man’s highest ideals remains — the noble and heroic, the glorious or the beautiful or the true. Such stories demand no higher soundtrack than elevator music. Wisdom there is out of character. Holiness is uninteresting. So many of our stories contain nothing bracing enough to elicit wonder or worship, courage or goodness. Man is cast a creature existing for half-hearted chuckles, traveling from dust to dust, uncreated and ultimately unmeaningful.
When one enters Middle-earth, he discovers a world with nature and supernature, a place of giants and dragons, legends and lore, magic and dark woods, prophecy and curses, good and evil, ruined and rising kingdoms — a world he wishes were true. Speak to Tolkien’s characters, and life is demanding of wakefulness, rewarding of watchfulness, and — even when they died short of the glorious end — pulsing with worthwhileness. Why must it all be fantasy?
Isn’t it true that many are bored with life, addicted to television because they long to be somewhere else — anywhere else? Eyes scroll dimly; blood pools unstirred; even you want to change your channel.
Immortal one, you struggle to get out of bed in this life because you have no idea what story you’ve been written into.
Life Transfigured
Most cannot see it. Something greater than The Lord of the Rings is here, yet many believe they’re trapped in an episode of Seinfeld. They believe this life is a show about nothing. Why? “In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). They cannot see the good news, the good story of the glory of Christ dramatized climactically during Holy Week, because Satan gouges out their spiritual eyes. Easter is about candies and bunnies.
Oh, if you could see yourself living in a final paragraph of this wild and untamed tale being spoken forth by God, how your life would change. What would be left untouched, untransfigured? Faith, as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” unveils reality (Hebrews 11:1).
Faith plays Hans Zimmer in our ears and brightens our eyes to a story that gives hope, eternal life, and healing. A story that dethrones us, accuses us, hacks at pride, and then offers us freedom, forgiveness, and the very life of God, in God, with God, forever. A story about a Father and a Son and a Spirit, all one in Godness, three in Person, who conspired to welcome a race of fallen creatures into their own isness and ecstasy and communion. A plan devised before time to name a helpless and hopeless people “sons and daughters,” “bride,” his “treasured possession.”
His story includes unspeakable villainy, it is true — darkness and death and demons. But these are not more true than his hero who crushes each under pierced feet as he walks to extend immeasurable grace to sinners.
Two Sudden Turns
But for a moment, all was bleak. The long lineage of the woman, Abraham, and David held on by a string. How could so much evil be overturned? Heaven seemed silent. Sin reigned, Satan raged, death bared its toothy grin, God’s covenant people seemed all but forgotten. Where were prophets of old? Where was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Where was that dramatic event of grace, that sudden, shocking, and beautiful turn in the story that Tolkien termed eucatastrophe?
Then he came. In the fullness of time and beyond all expectation, the Son of God, who sat eternally enthroned at the Father’s right hand, who for all time was with God and was God, put on human flesh. Divinity himself would be the prophet greater than Moses, the promised offspring of Eve and Abraham, the King of David’s line. He himself entered his own story as the God-man, the radiance of God’s glory, the exact imprint of his image (Hebrews 1:3). And what would man do to the true light, man’s Creator come as man’s Savior? Man would kill “the Author of life” (Acts 3:15).
For a moment, again, all was bleak. And then we come to it: the life, the hope, the promise that could not be detained in the grave. He moves. He breathes. He is risen. Tolkien called it the sudden burst of Joy “beyond the walls of the world” — or the tomb.
The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. . . . There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true. . . . This story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men — and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused. (On Fairy Stories, 78)
Legend and history, mythology and fact, earth and heaven have met and fused. The God-man stands alive and victorious — the story of redemption punctuated in exclamation. The serpent’s skull fractured, his people’s sin buried, heaven’s song deafening.
This Story and the Next
What story do you live in? You and I live within a story written by God, starring God’s Son who lived and died to save his church, his bride, from sin and death.
Holy Week is the most vital chapter of Christ’s story, and thus man’s story. All who see it stand astonished. And those who do not see still have moments of angst, when long and distant memories — of gardens and talking serpents, of magical trees and celestial beings, of walking with God in the cool of the day — have their sure revenge. When melancholy tries her best to wake man from his stupor.
But all will see soon enough, when the skies conceal him no longer, when the resurrected King rides to his conquered territory and brings his sword and succor with him. Armageddon, the lake of fire, the new heavens and the new earth. One story complete, another to begin.
