After coming together in the previous chapter, Peter, Edmund, and Caspian must now figure out their next steps. As Peter points out, and as we’ve seen before, it is not always certain when Aslan will act, except in “his own time, not ours.” The same is true for God. As we hear in Isaiah 55:8, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways says the Lord.” We don’t know when God will act, or how. We only know that God will act, in “his own time, not ours.” This can be a frustrating thing for us. All we can do is what Peter does: try to act in a befitting manner while we wait for the Lord. Peter does so in a way that is honorable and tries to avoid bloodshed. He also does so in a way that is tactically sound, for as Jesus reminds us in Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” We too must act in a way that is pleasing to our Lord while we wait for Him. In doing so, we must have our eyes and ears open so that we may behold God’s action when it comes. Miraz gets caught up in his own pride when accepting Peter’s challenge. He is a warning and reminder to us of why we are called to wait on the Lord. When we make our actions merely about ourselves, we fall. We must remember, sin is anything that separates us from God. Our pride and ego can do just that. Miraz’s pride not only causes him to forget all logic and reason; it also leads him down the path to become one of the wolves Jesus warns us about. It is worth noting that Glozelle and Sopespian, Miraz’s advisors, nudge him in the direction of fighting, hoping it will be his downfall. They do so as the men who convinced him to take the throne and out of spite that Miraz has not rewarded them more. Despicable men often are attached with other despicable men, who in turn lead to their destruction. Once again we see great examples of why to trust in something higher than ourselves and why to listen and wait for the Lord to guide and help us. Finally, we are told that Edmund had a “kind of greatness” that “hung about him” after Aslan breathed on him. This is similar to the Holy Spirit coming on the Disciples in Pentecost. In John 20:22, Jesus is even depicted as breathing the Spirit upon the Disciples. It is through this gift of the Spirit that we gain our greatness as members of the Body of Christ. It is also through this gift that we turn from being wolves like Miraz, Glozelle, and Sopespian and gain the insight to wait for the Lord in God’s own time.
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Please note, Encanto is rated PG. At the end of Encanto, the Madrigals rebuild their home, this time with help from the town. While, as you can see from the photos above, the house is rebuilt in the same form, the family itself is not the same. Before the change, Isabela felt pressure to be perfect all the time. This was reflected in her clothing, the flowers she produced with her powers, and the man she allowed her family to arrange her engagement to. However, along the way her sister Mirabel helped her realize she could use her powers to create all different kinds of plant life. She began to experiment with them, making creations that weren't always perfect, yet beautiful none the less. Luisa is incredibly strong, but, as her sister Mirabel learns, worries she'll buckle under the pressure of her responsibilities. By the end of the film, Luisa has her powers back, but now has learned to take time for herself to relax and maintain her strength.
When coming into Faith, we maintain the gifts and strengths God has given us, yet we do not walk away unchanged. We see this through Paul's own journey in Acts. While he regained his sight, he was never the same, joining the early Christians he once persecuted in their mission to reveal God in Jesus Christ to the world. We might look the same after coming to Faith, yet there is something about us that never remains the same. This is what we see in Paul and the Madrigals, especially with Isabela and Luisa. Thanks to Aslan in the previous chapter, the children and Trumpkin are finally present and ready to meet Prince Caspian. The passage from when we last saw Caspian till now has almost occurred in real time since they have been long waiting, even fearing that Trumpkin is dead. As a result, Nikabrik has come up with another possible solution. Since it seems that neither Aslan nor the ancient Kings and Queens are going to show up, he decides to turn to the White Witch instead. She was good to the dwarves after all, as he claimed earlier. What Nikabrik is looking at is power. Yet as Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 12:9, the power of God is “made perfect in weakness.” We shouldn’t look at life the way Nikabrik does. To defeat one evil, he would unleash a greater evil upon it. This is not a life worth living. It is not even a life at all as Nikabrik shows from his own death in this chapter. The great issue Nikabrik and his allies have is patience. This is not an issue for Trufflehunter the Badger. Throughout he advocates for waiting. Throughout this ordeal, he never gives up hope or faith. Patience is considered a virtue in part because it stems from Faith. We wait in hope that God will come, even when we do not know that the Lord is coming. We do so because we know that God is worth waiting for, just as Trufflehunter knows Aslan is worth waiting for. At the end of the chapter, Trufflehunter suggests the beasts don’t change. One hopes this is not the case, for as Jesus shows with Simon Peter and even Thomas called the Twin, we all need to change at some point in our lives. This is the very point of Baptism: that we reject the ways of the world and turn instead to Christ Jesus. What I think, or hope, Trufflehunter truly means instead is that the old Narnians have remained faithful, even when it has seemed all is lost. Peter advocates returning Nikabrik’s body to his people. This is a recognition that while the dwarf turned enemy on them, there is sadness due to their opposition. It is always sad in the community when one walks away. We don’t wish ill on the other. Instead we mourn at the loss of a member, as the Prodigal’s father would have when his son walked away. While this hope is not present for Nikabrik, we do hope that others in our lives might be like the Prodigal and eventually return. Peter, on the other hand, shows no concern over the bodies of the hag and the werewolf. It might seem harsh to make this differentiation. However, these two characters bear semblance to wolf Jesus warns of in the Good Shepherd sermon in John 10. They are creatures who have, sadly, turned irredeemably towards evil and mean us harm. There was never hope for them in the same way there was for Nikabrik. A thread throughout the book has been the purpose of blowing Susan’s horn. Does it call Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, or does it call Aslan? Perhaps the two are connected since the former rulers of Narnia executed their reigns in service Aslan. Maybe the horn merely alerted Aslan, who then brought the children back to Narnia Himself.
After Aslan's call for Lucy to follow Him in the previous chapter, the rest of the party have to make a choice. They themselves cannot see Aslan, so they must trust that Lucy does and follow her. This is not unlike Moses leading the Israelites in the Wilderness. While they had signs, such as the pillar of fire at night, going before them along the way, God often spoke directly with Moses alone. The people had to trust Moses to know what God wanted. Sometimes they trusted Moses, even pleading with Moses to handle talking with God on his own. Other times, even in the next moments, they would get bored and do their own thing. Yet to follow where God would have them go, the Israelites had a leader, whether Moses or those who followed after him, to help guide them. Lucy is taking that role for her siblings and Trumpkin. Until they can see Aslan for themselves, they have to trust her to guide in the right direction. This is the case for us as well. As the Faithful, we need good people to guide us, those who can see God on the way ahead of us. As with Lucy, these people need to be those that we trust. For us, this can come through our past experience, which Edmund uses in his decision to follow his sister even before he knows Aslan is there. Susan is an interesting case in this chapter. While she later admits that she did believe deep down, she still chose not to side with Lucy in moving forward to Aslan. When she finally sees Aslan for herself, the Lion tells her that she has let her fear rule over her. This is not unlike the Apostle Peter’s denial of our Lord. While Peter was the one to declare Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, he was afraid of the authorities and that they might put him on trial as they were doing to Jesus. Susan reflects the sticky situation we can find ourselves in sometimes when we are Faithful yet unfaithful. It is for this reason that in Baptism we have a threefold renunciation of the spiritual forces of darkness, the evil of this world, and all sinful things that draw us away from God. These are the same fears that Aslan speaks of. As we reject these things, we take on turning back to God in our Lord Jesus Christ, Trusting in Him, and following and obeying Jesus as Lord. For us, this is the way we keep our fears from preventing us in following God, as they prevented Susan from following Aslan. Trumpkin, throughout Prince Caspian, has been a skeptic and non-believer in Aslan or magic. He has remained so even after all he has seen with the former kings and queens of Narnia. Yet Aslan loves him regardless. Trumpkin is a sign that God loves us no matter whether we believe or not. The hope is that we will come to believe, and God, as with Aslan, puts every circumstance before us so that we will believe. We just have to be ready to listen. Aslan does have a little fun at Trumpkin’s expense, catching him in His mouth and flinging him in the air, as seen in the illustration for this chapter. This is a reminder of God’s wildness, as we learned back in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Chapter 8. The children on seeing Aslan feel, as glad as anyone can who feels afraid, and as afraid as anyone can who feels glad. This is a familiar sense to anyone who has had a close encounter with the Divine. On one hand, “God so loved us that He gave His only Begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have ever lasting life” as we hear in John 3:16. On the other hand, this is the Creator of the world we are approaching who both made us and can unmake us. We shouldn’t forget that bit of wildness in our Lord either, as Aslan demonstrates with Trumpkin. It is therefore not at all unusual, or unexpected, to feel both fear and gladness at the same time when approaching the Lord. As we see at the end of the chapter, God can make some feel one way or the other too. On hearing Aslan’s roar, the Telemarines quiver in fear. At the same time the trees seek after the Lion. This is a sign of how those who work against God, as well as those who seek to follow our Lord, react in the face of the Divine. It is interesting that Lucy, the youngest, is the one who can see Aslan first. This goes against our supposedly educated norms of wisdom with experience. Yet Jesus Himself disproves that theory. It is as a young boy that Jesus marvels the learned and the scholars in the Temple. According to Tradition, Jesus’ ministry only lasted 3 years, from the time he was 30 until 33. One could argue where this placed Jesus age-wise in His day and age, though this is often considered young by our modern standards. Yet Jesus, as a youth and an adult, is the wisest person to have walked this earth.
The point is that wisdom does not come with years. It comes with being open to God’s presence with us. Lucy was open to Aslan’s message in Narnia in a way her siblings weren’t ready for yet. When God approaches us, will we be open to listening in the same way? |
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The Rev. Trey KennedyHere is my take on how Superheroes and other characters can help us know God better. Categories
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