“Greater love has no-one than this, that he lays down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
Can we still make links between our culture and our Christian faith?
During Holy Week – the run-up to Easter – this year, the teenagers from our parish church were asked to prepare for Good Friday and Easter Sunday by watching a series of clips from familiar films under a title gleaned from this morning’s Gospel reading: “Greater love has no-one than this…”
The first clip we watched was from the 1992 film, “The Bodyguard”, starring Kevin Costner as an ex Secret Service agent, employed as a bodyguard for a rich and spoilt celebrity pop-star played by the late Whitney Houston.
Quite early in the film, Whitney Houston’s character persuades her new employee to go on a date with her, during which they talk about the idea of acting as someone’s personal bodyguard, even to the extent of taking an assassin’s bullet for them. She asks him coyly, “Would you really die for me?” to which he replies gruffly, “It’s the job.”
At the end of the clip, several of our group pointed out that they didn’t think there was much point in taking a job in which you might die for someone you didn’t know, as “if you were dead, you wouldn’t get the money anyway.” None of the group could see themselves wanting to protect a celebrity to this extent, and they broadly agreed that they could only imagine themselves dying for someone they actually loved or for a cause they really believed in.
But one person commented, “I don’t think I’d want someone else to take a bullet for me either, because then you’d have to live with that for the rest of your life.”
It was an interesting opening gambit for a week in which we were to reflect on Jesus’ death on the Cross, which we declare in the Creed, he did “for us and for our salvation.”
But how do we understand the message, which Jesus is trying to convey to the disciples in our reading today, “Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends?”
For the second clip, we asked the group to cast their minds back to when they were of an age to read the Narnia books, or to have watched the first of the Chronicles of Narnia, which came out in 2005: “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
We then watched the scenes from the film in which Aslan the Lion takes the place of Edmund, who has betrayed good Narnians for the promise of Turkish Delight, and who therefore deserves to die, according to the ancient laws of Narnia.
As you may remember, Aslan offers himself as a sacrifice in Edmund’s place, allowing the White Witch to humiliate him and then to put him to death. But later, in the early dawn, he rises again, to win a final battle over the Witch and her forces of evil.
C S Lewis, the author of the Narnia books, made no secret of his Christian faith. His stories were always intended to bring the themes and events of Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection alive to his younger readers. But the film’s UK publicity made almost nothing of its religious allegories, and many remained unaware of them, even those children to whom the Easter story itself was very familiar. So we were able to have an interesting discussion with our group about the questions raised – if, (possibly for the first time) we consider that Aslan might represent Jesus, why did Aslan take Edmund’s place?
C S Lewis’s view clearly represented that school of Christian theology, which teaches that we deserve to die for our sins, but that Christ, out of love, took our punishment upon the Cross.
But we then moved on to clips from a newer film, one which at least until recently, made no claim at all to be based on the Easter story – and indeed one which has received considerable criticism from some Christians for its focus on witches and wizards.
The final Harry Potter film, the Deathly Hallows part 2, was considered by many critics, even those who hadn’t been particularly keen fans of Harry Potter up until then, to be the most powerful of the whole series.
Even as the final book was being printed, J K Rowling and her publishers managed to conceal its outcome, and, as you probably remember, the web and the media were full of wild speculation about what would ultimately become of Harry, Ron, Hermione and of course, Voldemort himself. But only after all the books had been published, did J K Rowling admit in a Book Tour of America, that in her mind, there were always clear parallels between Harry Potter and the Christian story. It was only the fear of giving away the ending of the series that prevented her from revealing this explicitly before.
Harry’s story, however, reflects a slightly different Christian understanding of Christ’s death on the Cross, in which Jesus dies as an example of self-sacrificial love, to show how deeply God loves us, and to inspire us to love and to care sacrificially for one another.
Harry Potter goes out to allow Voldemort to kill him, not to save others who deserve to die, but because he loves his friends and supporters. He wants to protect them from further suffering, believing that it is only by his death that they will be given freedom from Voldemort and the evil he represents.
Like Aslan, however, Harry goes unarmed and unprotected to his death, but then rises again, to win a final battle over evil.
But Harry’s secret weapon against Voldemort, as explained to him by Dumbledore, is love.
He was protected from death as a baby by his mother’s loving self-sacrifice, and he continues to be surrounded and protected by the love of his friends and followers.
The subtle message of his death reminds us of Christ’s teaching as we heard it this morning:
“Love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
We see how love has, indeed, inspired Harry’s friends, when Neville Longbottom, bloody but unbowed, limps forward to declare to Voldemort, “Yes, we lost Harry tonight, but he’s still with us – in here… Harry’s heart beat for all of us.”
But Harry and Aslan both return from the dead, mirroring the Christian belief that Christ died on the Cross, in order that he might rise again and demonstrate God’s power and glory. His Resurrection shows us that death is not the end.
When Harry visits his parents’ grave, he sees written on it the words, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians). Hermione explains to him that this is about living after death, a foreshadowing of Harry’s own return from the dead.
In spite of those of us who stand in pulpits(!), the numbers of people who will have seen blockbusters like Narnia or Harry Potter will, at least in the UK, far outweigh the numbers who have recently heard, read or thought about the Gospel account of the Passion.
Yet the Christian story is contained and perpetuated deep within our culture.
We give thanks that in many unexpected ways, the messages of Christ’s Gospel do continue to be heard and reflected upon: the messages of selfless love and compassion, the inspirational giving of oneself for others, and the promise of eternal life.
Amen.