My "sci fi and fantasy" sermon
This is the sermon I preached yesterday
This service is full of superheroes, and I want to talk about two of mine. The first is a man who died the year I was born, which I find a bit sad, because I would have loved to have had the chance to meet him. His name was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, and he was the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He was also a very committed Catholic, and he occasionally had to defend his writing of fantasy.
His first defence was that the people who invent new worlds are fulfilling their calling as those made in the image of God, creating in imitation of God the Creator. The psalm that Susan read us is just one of the many, many parts of the Bible that celebrate God as creator, the one who made the heavens and the firmament and in them *set a tent for the sun. (That idea of the sun as a bridegroom emerging from his tent is a simile, by the way, the writer of the psalm didn’t believe it literally.)
In a poem, Tolkien wrote:
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
The other accusation made particularly of this genre is that it’s escapist. We watch Star Wars and Doctor Who and read The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter - and ultimately at the end good wins. There may be sacrifices along the way, and good people may die, but evil is defeated. Tolkien said that one of the characteristics of fantasy is that it contains eucatastrophes (and I can’t believe I got to use that word in the Herald Sun), good catastrophes, the sudden joy that comes in the midst of despair. The reason, Tolkien argued, that fantasy authors like him are able to offer their readers this Consolation of the Happy Ending is because the Creator has already given it to us. He wrote: “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” Every happy ending we enjoy comes with the backing of God.
The other superhero of mine I want to talk about is Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa, who is definitely still alive and who demonstrates in his life what Christianity really means. The extracts Caro read us from John’s Gospel and John’s first letter are both about the love that’s at the heart of our faith. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Jesus came to share that message with us, to demonstrate God’s love, so that we could learn to love one another as God loves us. And I’d argue that at the centre of all the fantasy and sci fi we’re celebrating today is that same message of love.
Desmond Tutu has a very famous prayer, a series of affirmations, Tolkien-like eucatastrophes which, I think, describe the reasons that so many of us enjoy these books, films, comics and television shows. I’m going to show you. Some of these clips might be a bit scary, so you might want to find a hand to hold.
The video clips:
Goodness is stronger than evil
The Two Towers: Sam’s speech to Frodo about holding on to the knowledge that there is still some good in the world.
Love is stronger than hate
Buffy Season 6, Episode 22: Xander prevents Willow from destroying the world
Light is stronger than darkness
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Professor McGonagall and the other teachers and students of Hogwarts respond to Dumbledore’s death by using the light from their wands to destroy the image of the skull that hovers over his body.
Life is stronger than death.
Doctor Who: End of Time Part 1: The Doctor refuses the offer of Wilf’s gun to kill the Master, preferring to face certain death rather than kill.