One of the truly greats is CS Lewis’ children’s story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There are many elements to it, but the one idea that grabbed me the most was that while the White Witch thought she could defeat Aslan the lion by killing him. But the resurrected Aslan explained to Susan and Lucy “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there was a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only until the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
This reflects very strongly the Substitutionary Theory of the Atonement that is evident in some of our Thanksgiving Prayers; but the idea that grabs me about this explanation is the thought that “Death itself would start working backwards.”
This creates a beautiful image of the way that when we become a Christian, when we are “born again”, then the effects of sin in our lives are turned backwards as we walk with Jesus becoming more like him every day.
Another story that gives some insight into what is happening at Easter is, believe it or not, the final of the Harry Potter stories – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows¬ – has a great Christological theme to it.
Death and immortality have been constant themes throughout the stories. Harry Potter’s parents are killed by Voldemort and Voldemort is obsessed with a quest to gain immortality. This is the ultimate threat to life as we know it, so as the series of stories draw to a close Harry Potter discovers that there is only one way to actually and finally kill Voldemort, and rid the world of his evil power – but that task would inevitably lead to Harry’s own death; he was to allow Voldemort to kill him, to not defend himself, but that in this event Voldemort’s power would be extinguished forever.
There was a deeper law that even Voldemort did not understand that meant that Harry’s ability to love others overcame all of his power to kill, and that in giving his life for those he loved, he found life.
This was not a Substitutionary sacrifice as Aslan’s was, but it resonates with a deep truth we understand about Jesus and his death. Jesus said long before he died that we would only find true life if we were willing to give it up. Dying to self means rising to new life – and it is in this new life that we find ourselves increasingly possessed by the mind of Christ that our will, our purpose becomes indistinguishable from Christ’s – Christ lives in us!
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